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With much recent work in Victorian studies focused on gender and class differences, the homogenizing features of 19th-century culture have received relatively little attention. In Making a Social Body, Mary Poovey examines one of the conditions that made the development of a mass culture in Victorian Britain possible: the representation of the population as an aggregate—a social body. Drawing on both literature and social reform texts, she analyzes the organization of knowledge during this period and explores its role in the emergence of the idea of the social body. Poovey illuminates the ways literary genres, such as the novel, and innovations in social thought, such as statistical thinking and anatomical realism, helped separate social concerns from the political and economic domains. She then discusses the influence of the social body concept on Victorian ideas about the role of the state, examining writings by James Phillips Kay, Thomas Chalmers, and Edwin Chadwick on regulating the poor. Analyzing the conflict between Kay's idea of the social body and Babbage's image of the social machine, she considers the implications of both models for the place of Victorian women. Poovey's provocative readings of Disraeli's Coningsby, Gaskell's Mary Barton, and Dickens's Our Mutual Friend show that the novel as a genre exposed the role gender played in contemporary discussions of poverty and wealth. Making a Social Body argues that gender, race, and class should be considered in the context of broader concerns such as how social authority is distributed, how institutions formalize knowledge, and how truth is defined.
Scholars have only recently discovered that the human body itself has a history. Not only has it been perceived, interpreted, and represented differently in different epochs, but it has also been lived differently, brought into being within widely dissimilar material cultures, subjected to various technologies and means of control, and incorporated into different rhythms of production and consumption, pleasure and pain. The eight articles in this volume support, supplement, and explore the significance of these insights. They belong to a new historical endeavor that derives partly from the crossing of historical with anthropological investigations, partly from social historians' deepening interest in culture, partly from the thematization of the body in modern philosophy (especially phenomenology), and partly from the emphasis on gender, sexuality, and women's history that large numbers of feminist scholars have brought to all disciplines.
Praise for the First Edition: `Essential to any collection of work on the body, health and illness, or social theory' - Choice `Sophisticated … and acutely perceptive of the importance of the complex dialectic between social institutions, culture and biological conditions' - Times Higher Education Supplement `Chris Shilling has done us all a splendid service in bringing together and illustrating the tremendous diversity and richness of sociological thinking on the topic of human embodiment and its implications' - Sociological Review This updated edition of the bestselling text retains all the strengths of the first edition. Chris Shilling: provides a critical survey of the field; demonstrates how developments in diet, sexuality, reproductive technology, genetic engineering and sports science have made the body a site for social alternatives and individual choices; and elucidates the practical uses of theory in striking and accessible ways. In addition, new, original material: explores the latest feminist, phenomenological and action-oriented approaches to the body; examines the latest work on `body projects' and the relationship between the body and self-identity; and outlines a compelling theoretical framework that provides a radical basis for the consolidation of body studies.
A proliferation of press headlines, social science texts and "ethical" concerns about the social implications of recent developments in human genetics and biomedicine have created a sense that, at least in European and American contexts, both the way we treat the human body and our attitudes towards it have changed. This volume asks what really happens to social relations in the face of new types of transaction - such as organ donation, forensic identification and other new medical and reproductive technologies - that involve the use of corporeal material. Drawing on comparative insights into how human biological material is treated, it aims to consider how far human bodies and their components are themselves inherently "social." The case studies - ranging from animal-human transformations in Amazonia to forensic reconstruction in post-conflict Serbia and the treatment of Native American specimens in English museums - all underline that, without social relations, there are no bodies but only "human remains." The volume gives us new and striking ethnographic insights into bodies as sociality, as well as a potentially powerful analytical reconsideration of notions of embodiment. It makes a novel contribution, too, to "science and society" debates.
Written for activists and educators, this cultural critique of female body image discusses the topic as it relates to sports, fashion, advertising, and propaganda, and offers practical strategies for those willing to fight unhealthy or unrealistic female images in society. Original. Tour.
In this Very Short Introduction Chris Shilling considers the social significance of the human body, and the importance of the body to individual and collective identities. He examines how bodies not only shape but are shaped by the social, cultural, and material contexts in which humans live.
Dress, Adornment, and the Body in the Hebrew Bible is the first monograph to treat dress and adornment in biblical literature in the English language. It moves beyond a description of these aspects of ancient life to encompass notions of interpersonal relationships and personhood that underpin practices of dress and adornment. Laura Quick explores the ramifications of body adornment in the biblical world, informed by a methodologically plural approach incorporating material culture alongside philology, textual exegesis, comparative evidence, and sociological models. Drawing upon and synthesizing insights from material culture and texts from across the eastern Mediterranean, the volume reconstructs the social meanings attached to the dressed body in biblical texts. It shows how body adornment can deepen understanding of attitudes towards the self in the ancient world. In Quick's reconstruction of ancient performances of the self, the body serves as the observed centre in which complex ideologies of identity, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and social status are articulated. The adornment of the body is thus an effective means of non-verbal communication, but one which at the same time is controlled by and dictated through normative social values. Exploring dress, adornment, and the body can therefore open up hitherto unexplored perspectives on these social values in the ancient world, an essential missing piece in understanding the social and cultural world which shaped the Hebrew Bible.
This book analyzes the complex interactions of body, mind and microelectronic technologies. Internationally renowned scholars look into the nature of the mind - a combination of thought, perception, emotion, will and imagination - as well as the ever-increasing impact and complexity of microelectronic technologies.
Interaction design that entails a qualitative shift from a symbolic, language-oriented stance to an experiential stance that encompasses the entire design and use cycle. With the rise of ubiquitous technology, data-driven design, and the Internet of Things, our interactions and interfaces with technology are about to change dramatically, incorporating such emerging technologies as shape-changing interfaces, wearables, and movement-tracking apps. A successful interactive tool will allow the user to engage in a smooth, embodied, interaction, creating an intimate correspondence between users' actions and system response. And yet, as Kristina Höök points out, current design methods emphasize symbolic, language-oriented, and predominantly visual interactions. In Designing with the Body, Höök proposes a qualitative shift in interaction design to an experiential, felt, aesthetic stance that encompasses the entire design and use cycle. Höök calls this new approach soma design; it is a process that reincorporates body and movement into a design regime that has long privileged language and logic. Soma design offers an alternative to the aggressive, rapid design processes that dominate commercial interaction design; it allows (and requires) a slow, thoughtful process that takes into account fundamental human values. She argues that this new approach will yield better products and create healthier, more sustainable companies. Höök outlines the theory underlying soma design and describes motivations, methods, and tools. She offers examples of soma design “encounters” and an account of her own design process. She concludes with “A Soma Design Manifesto,” which challenges interaction designers to “restart” their field—to focus on bodies and perception rather than reasoning and intellect.
Bringing together an international range of case studies and interviews with individuals who have had genital re/construction, Body, Migration, Re/constructive Surgeries explores the socio-cultural meanings of clitoral re/construction following female genital cutting (FGC), hymen reconstruction, trans and intersex bodily interventions; and cosmetic surgery. Drawing critical attention to how decisions around such surgeries are affected by social, economic and regulatory contexts that change over time and across spaces, it raises questions such as: How are bodies genderized through surgical interventions? How do such interventions express cultural context? How do women who have experienced female genital cutting respond to opportunities for clitoral reconstruction? How do female-to-male (FtM) trans people decide on how and where to undertake body modifications? What roles do cultural expectations and official regulations play in how people decide to have their bodies modified? Suggesting that conventional gender binaries are no longer adequate to understanding the quest for bodily interventions, this insightful volume seeks to give a greater voice to those engaged in gender body modification. It will appeal to students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Gender Studies, Social Studies, Sexuality Studies and Cultural Studies.