Bodies and Culture

Women's sports and embodiment in Australia and New Zealand

by John Nauright

co-authored with Angela Burroughs.

Rendered Subjection: Representations of the neo-Oriental in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

by James C. Vlisides

Beginning in late October 2003, and spanning a series of 8 games and counting, the Call of Duty franchise has... more Beginning in late October 2003, and spanning a series of 8 games and counting, the Call of Duty franchise has established a reputation as the premier First-Person Shooter (FPS) on both PC and console platforms. Traversing a history from WWII to the modern "War on Terror," the Call of Duty franchise highlights significant global conflict from a vantage point of the exceptional American combatant. The franchise recently released Modern Warfare 3 (MW3) in November 2011, selling over 6.5 million copies on launch day and grossed $400 million in the U.S. alone in its first 24 hours. Modern Warfare 3 went on to gross $1 billion throughout the world in just 16 days of availability, making it the biggest entertainment launch of all time. Thus, Modern Warfare 3 represents a potent example of global military-entertainment consumption, and certainly seems to have more to say about the current economic, political, and international relations between nations and states. Through a close reading of MW3 as a text, I will explore questions including: How does MW3 represent the embodied “Other”? How are terrorist bodies corporealized in virtual spaces? How are these bodies rendered both visible and invisible? What spaces does the game privilege? Who has access to this structure of power? With these questions framing my research, I will look into the virtual geography that frames the logic of the game itself. I will engage various texts including The International Journal of Computer Game Research, Roger Stahl's book Militainment, Inc: War, Media, and Popular Culture, and Marcel O'Gorman's book Angels in Digital Armor: Technoculture and Terror Management, among many others. Through these texts I will begin to explore the intersections of technology, culture, the military, cultural economy, and border studies. Further, I will maintain a specific sensitivity to "neo-Orientalism," as the Middle-East has arguably been the primary focus of American economic and military interests since the end of the Cold War. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine how MW3 (re-)constructs the East, the Oriental, and the terrorist within its virtual game space, as well as the spatiality between reality and “virtuality,” and what this has to say about the current social, political, and economic agendas surrounding global conflict.


Keywords: American Empire, Orientalism, US Imperialism, Globalization, War-on-Terror, Bodies, Virtual Reality

Krpič, T. 2010. Your Body, My Pain: Marginal Auto-reflexive Body Techniques and Construction of Feelings in Body Art Performance. Družboslovne razprave 26 (63): 49-62.

by Tomaž Krpič

Abstract

Nick Crossley’s concept of marginal reflexive body techniques is used to develop the concept of... more Abstract

Nick Crossley’s concept of marginal reflexive body techniques is used to develop the concept of auto-reflexive body techniques, whose primary purpose is to work back upon the body of an acting individual, so as to modify, maintain, or thematise the body of the actor in some way, yet nevertheless with the intention to induce certain emotions, feelings, thoughts and agencies, in another individual. The author defines the body art performance as an artistic, social, cultural and political phenomenon where body art performers produce an event on their own body by using different repulsive marginal auto-reflexive body techniques as an investment of (unpleasant) feelings and emotions in the bodies of spectators. Body art performance additionally serves as a vehicle for the expression of private concerns about common matters in public.


Key words

marginal reflexive body techniques, auto-reflexive body techniques, pain, emotions, body art performance, audience, Nick Crossley.

Amazonian Native Youths and Notions of Indigeneity in Urban Areas

by pirjo kristiina virtanen

2010. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 17(2/3): 154-175.

The indigenous presence in urban areas of Amazonia has become more visible as Indian populations have negotiated their... more The indigenous presence in urban areas of Amazonia has become more visible as Indian populations have negotiated their own spaces and acted in new contexts previously reserved for the dominant society. This article looks at ways in which today’s young Indians in an urban area define and interpret their new cultural and social situations, drawing from research conducted with Apurinã, Cashinahua and Manchineri youths in Rio Branco, a city in Acre state, Western Brazil. These young people occupy a variety of “native” and “non-native” habituses and
develop their notions of indigeneity within complex social networks as part of their strategy for rupturing the otherness associated with indigeneity. The text contributes
to the discussion on the theory of practice and identity politics, as well as embodiment. Young Indians in urban Amazonia constitute their agencies in multiple ways and use various embodiments based in the practices and knowledge of
their native groups and those of urban national and global society. The young natives break with the image of Lowland South American Indians as peoples uncontaminated by urban influences and help promote new interactions between
native populations in the reserve and the city.

Clinics of Oblivion: Makeover Culture and Cosmetic Surgery

by Meredith Jones

This paper examines cosmetic surgery tourism, arguing that it can be meaningfully analysed as part of makeover... more This paper examines cosmetic surgery tourism, arguing that it can be meaningfully analysed as part of makeover culture. It shows that while cosmetic surgery tourism sits at a junction of cosmetic surgery and medical tourism, it also has much in common with contemporary tourism practices. The paper posits cosmetic surgery tourism not only as an economic and globalised phenomenon but also as a set of practices that are experienced, and that take place on the body (see also Cook, 2010; Bell et al. 2011). Chris Rojek’s work on contemporary tourist practices is deployed in order to argue that the cosmetic surgery tourist’s body is itself the ‘site’ to be visited and discovered; it is also the souvenir that is brought home. When body and site are brought together in cosmetic surgery tourism, they form a potent nexus that is unique to a contemporary moment tied up with globalisation and consumption, where both identity and self-transformation are managed through the body.

«Finis corporis initium animae»: La qualità morale del nemico nella rappresentazione del corpo. Un excursus tra patristica, epica crociata e odeporica di pellegrinaggio

by Ilaria Sabbatini

in «Micrologus» XX (2012), Estremità ed escrescenze dei corpi / Extremities and excrescences of the body (in corso di stampa).

La visione dei saraceni propria della concezione diffusa a livello popolare, non coincide - è piuttosto ovvio - con le... more La visione dei saraceni propria della concezione diffusa a livello popolare, non coincide - è piuttosto ovvio - con le conoscenze diffuse tra il clero più elevato. Negli ambienti colti non solo l’idea dei musulmani era scevra da sovrapposizioni fantastiche ma il carattere monoteistico e abramitico della religione islamica poteva ben essere conosciuto e ammesso. L’ambito culturale dove maturò l’elaborazione di un’immagine demoniaca dell’islam era pur sempre quello monastico-religioso ma ormai al di fuori dalla sistemazione filosofica cristiana. L’immagine dell’islam come paganesimo contribuiva a giustificare l’idea e ad alimentare l’ideale di crociata. Se i cavalieri crociati diventavano dei nuovi martiri cristiani, i saraceni si potevano aggiustare al ruolo di persecutori e di nemici da uccidere

Indigenous Bodies

by Shino Konishi

Co-authored with Leah Lui-Chivizhe and Lisa Slater, published in Borderlands, vol. 7, no. 2, 2008.

Hybridity, pt. 2: What is Hybrid Pedagogy?

by Jesse Stommel

published on Hybrid Pedagogy: A Digital Journal on Teaching & Technology, 2012

My hypothesis is that all learning is necessarily hybrid. In classroom-based pedagogy, it is important to engage the... more My hypothesis is that all learning is necessarily hybrid. In classroom-based pedagogy, it is important to engage the digital selves of our students. And, in online pedagogy, it is equally important to engage their physical selves. With digital pedagogy and online education, our challenge is not to merely replace (or offer substitutes for) face-to-face instruction, but to find new and innovative ways to engage students in the practice of learning. Hybrid pedagogy does not just describe an easy mixing of on-ground and online learning, but is about bringing the sorts of learning that happen in a physical place and the sorts of learning that happen in a virtual place into a more engaged and dynamic conversation.

Politica dei corpi sessuati

by federica giardini

relazione LUM (libera università metropolitana), 2010

“De Pelos”. Exteriorización de ideas y escenificación de la identidad a través del cabello en cuatro culturas juveniles

by Sebastián Vargas Álvarez

Este artículo se pregunta por las relaciones entre el cuerpo (específicamente el cabello) y las culturas juveniles. A... more Este artículo se pregunta por las relaciones entre el cuerpo (específicamente el cabello) y las culturas juveniles. A lo largo del texto, se explica cómo el pelo funciona como un mecanismo de expresión de ideas, así como una forma de manifestación de las identidades juveniles, muchas veces subalternas o disidentes. El estudio se centra en cuatro culturas juveniles que habitan las calles de Bogotá: rastas, metaleros, punks y skinheads.

"Inventing the healthy body: the use of popular medical discourses in public anatomical exhibitions"

by Elizabeth Stephens

The Body Divided: Human Beings and Human ‘Material’ in Modern Medical History. Edited by Sarah Ferber and Sally Wilde.  Ashgate, 2012. 223-238

"It's not their Job to Soldier': Distinguishing Civilian and Military in Soldiers' and Interpreters' Accounts of Peacekeeping in 1990s Bosnia-Herzegovina

by Catherine Baker

Journal of War and Culture Studies 3:1 (2010): 137-50

Peacekeeping operations throw the use of specialized military forces and the aim of accomplishing change in a civilian... more Peacekeeping operations throw the use of specialized military forces and the aim of accomplishing change in a civilian environment into contradiction. Organizations with cultures that facilitate warfighting have to reorient themselves towards achieving peace and consent rather than victory, making peacekeeping a process of constant intercultural encounters between ‘military’ and ‘civilian’ as well as between ‘international’ and ‘local’. The force’s local employees, civilians necessary in the force’s military tasks, inhabited a particularly ambiguous position. Based on more than 30 oral history interviews with peacekeepers and local interpreters who worked in Bosnia-Herzegovina, this paper shows how four dimensions of cultural and bodily difference emerged from their narratives: uniforms, weapons, disruptiveness and training.

Inscribing Socio-political bodies – from pedagogies for the regulation of the public to strategies for radical research

by John Schostak

Keeney, H. & Keeney, B. (2012). Dancing n/om. Dance and Spirituality: The Sacred in Contemporary Contexts

by Hillary Stephenson Keeney

[Book Review: The Knotted Subject: Hysteria and Its Discontents Elisabeth Bronfen]

by Dianne Hunter

PhD Thesis Abstract (2006)

by Birgitta Haga Gripsrud

PhD Thesis Abstract
______
This work maps the breast(s) as an obsession in late-capitalist culture, positing... more PhD Thesis Abstract
______
This work maps the breast(s) as an obsession in late-capitalist culture, positing this spectacular object as a pedagogical device, a topos, around which to teach a lesson. This is executed through five different approaches, combining different theoretical models.

Chapter One interrogates discourses on breastfeeding and the ideology of motherhood through an exploration of wet-nursing, Rousseau’s writings on breastfeeding, and the French Republic’s problematic appropriation of breasts as symbols of liberty.

Chapter Two locates the breast within Foucault’s history of sexuality; the emergence of a new field of knowledge, exemplified by a theoretical model which posits the breast as sexual organ par excellence, psychoanalysis. According to this model, the breast is a profound presence in infancy and its loss, necessitated by culture, is irreparable: the breast remains throughout life as that which is longed for but cannot be recuperated.

These two chapters which constitute Part I,
largely reflect male concerns with the maternal breast, but also seek to question these attempts to manage the female body, showing how breasts exceed management through discourse.

Part II, Chapter Three takes on recent concerns over breasts as visually pleasing (fun) objects in contemporary western culture, deeply implicated in the
gendered politics of the gaze, repeatedly constructed through fetishistic regimes of hetero-masculine looking which averts from a recognition of woman’s sexual
difference.

Chapter Four is a response to the breast in discourse of Part I and the visual breast in popular culture, exploring different modalities of embodiment, anatomies of breasts, through Beauvoir’s notion of gender as becoming: a process of physiological change and enculturated learning. I argue that a celebration of this anatomic pliability may involve rethinking embodied womanhood after the loss of a breast – to herald a poetic imaginary that celebrates the loss and mourning of a breast, not as castration, but as another link in the chain of becoming.

Chapter Five
encapsulates tensions within this project; seeking to integrate the idealised breasts with modern anxieties around breasted difference/breast-loss through recognition of the breast as a Kleinian container of both good and bad, bringing in the creative sphere of maternal/infantile psychic experiences around incorporation of the mother’s good milk.
Only through recognition of “the good enough mother” in all her complexities can the breast faithfully be put to use as a source for literary, theoretical and artistic productions - inscriptions in Cixousian white ink.

‘A Life told in ink’: Tattoo narratives and the problem of the self in late modern society

by Jussi Turtiainen

Auto/Biography 2005; 13: 111-130

Alter-geopolitics: Other securities are happening

by Sara Koopman

if you don't have access to this journal and want a cleaner copy with proper pagination for citation please email me, I'd be happy to send one.

In an age of increasing state (in)security, groups are coming together on their own to build alternative nonviolent... more In an age of increasing state (in)security, groups are coming together on their own to build alternative nonviolent securities. They are making connections across distance and difference which focus on the safety of bodies (often by actually moving bodies), and ground geopolitics in everyday life. The term anti-geopolitics focuses on resistance to hegemonic geopolitics (material or discursive), rather than this sort of effort to build something new. Feminist geopolitics is a form of anti-geopolitics that not only takes apart but also puts the pieces together in new ways - with broader definitions of security for more bodies in more places. Yet it has not generally looked at that practice as engaged in outside of academia. I propose the term alter-geopolitics for a type of feminist geopolitics as a way to extend both the concepts of anti and feminist geopolitics. I argue for the term as a reminder to look to grassroots practice, to the ways that groups are doing geopolitics in the streets, in homes, in jungles, and in many other spaces ‘off the page’. Though they may not think of their work as geopolitics, framing it in this way can open fruitful conversations. As academics we have much to learn and offer through collaboratively thinking with such groups about security. I have been doing this with international accompaniers in Colombia and discuss their work, and the peace community of San José that they accompany, as forms of alter-geopolitics.

Representing Fijian bodies and the economy of war

by Torika Bolatagici

Proceedings of the 4th Oceanic Conference on International Studies 2010, OCIS, [Auckland, N. Z.], pp. 1-21.

In 2005, a Fijian Government report revealed that there were 816 Fiji nationals working for private security companies... more In 2005, a Fijian Government report revealed that there were 816 Fiji nationals working for private security companies in Iraq. In 2007, there were over 2000 Fijians serving in the British army. Remittances from Fijian workers overseas are the nation’s largest income – exceeding that of tourism and sugar export. There are currently more than 20,000 unemployed former military personnel in Fiji.

While there has been some research into Fijian masculinity in relation to political coups, warrior culture and militarisation over the last decade there is an absence of critical discussion about the ongoing colonisation of Fijian males bodies which seeks to perpetuate the exploitation of Fijians by inscribing the Fijian male body as warrior, athlete, criminal and protector.

This paper traces representations of the black body, which I have related to contemporary masculine identities in Fiji. I have linked historical representations to what I perceive as the ongoing commodification of the Fijian body and argue that opportunities that have arisen from conflict in the Middle East have had a significant impact on employment opportunities for Fijians. I have framed the discussion around a description and analysis of my own photographic and installation artworks produced between 2007 and 2009.

My multidisciplinary research explores the complexities of gender, militarism, colonial and neo-colonial encounters and the position that the Fijian body now occupies within the globalised economy.

Barbie vs. Woman

by Amanda M. Czerniawski

Guest post for Sociological Images on November 27, 2011.

One of the most popular posts of November 2011.