The Body

Gesture in the Brain: A multi-tasking experiment.

by Nicla Rossini

in Zlatev, J., Johansson Falck, M., Lundmark, C. and Andrén M. (Eds) Studies in Language and Cognition. Pp. 436-453. Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Cambridge.
N.B.: THIS IS A PRE-PUBLICATION DRAFT. IT MAY CONTAIN ERRORS. CONTENTS MAY DIFFER CONSIDERABLY.

The analysis of gesture: Establishing a set of parameters

by Nicla Rossini

In Camurri, A.-Volpe, G. (Eds) Gesture-Based Communication in Human-Computer Interaction. 5th International Gesture Workshop, GW 2003, Genova, Italy, April 2003. Selected Revised Papers. Pp. 124-131. Springer-Verlag: Berlin Heidelberg New York.

Studying gesture has always implied the application of different methods concerning the selection of suitable... more Studying gesture has always implied the application of different methods concerning the selection of suitable parameters for gesture. Several solutions to this problem have been proposed by scholars over the years. These contributions will be briefly reviewed and discussed with the aim of retrieving a common method for the analysis and definition of gesture.

Cuerpo, sujeto, persona: Rodeo etnológico a la ética y la política de las tecnologías reproductivas

by Daniel Alberto Alegrett Salazar

Nociones de cuerpo, sujeto y persona fundamentarían debates éticos-políticos sobre lastecnologías de reproducción... more Nociones de cuerpo, sujeto y persona fundamentarían debates éticos-políticos sobre lastecnologías de reproducción asistida (ART). Éstas encarnarían promesas y amenazas para la“vida humana”. El desarrollo de las ART resolvería la infertilidad, superaría obstáculos a la procreación y satisfacería el deseo de familia. En un contexto tecno-científico, tienen una posición en el mercado y los regímenes de poder. Participarían problemáticamente en procesos de producción de individuos y relaciones. Reemplazarían al parentesco, unaimaginación moral para la que la persona es una especificación. Tal impacto sugeriría undesvío etnológico en la discusión. El registro etnográfico contextualizaría y recontextualizaríalas nociones de cuerpo, sujeto y persona. Recupero la etnología clásica del parentesco como principio de organización y recojo las intenciones de los llamados “nuevos estudios de parentesco” de ir más allá de supuestos naturalistas acerca de las relaciones. Trato de problematizar los usos discursivos de lo humano, natural, biológico, psicológico, social ycultural, incorporados en los debates sobre la intervención tecno-científica en la creación delhijo deseado.

Configuring maternal, preborn and infant embodiment

by Deborah Lupton

An increasing literature on the biopolitics of contemporary maternity and on risk society, individualisation and... more An increasing literature on the biopolitics of contemporary maternity and on risk society, individualisation and parenting has demonstrated the increasing emphasis that has been placed upon pregnant women and mothers to take responsibility for the health and welfare of their children. The ideal female ‘reproductive citizen’ is expected to place her children’s health and wellbeing above her own needs and desires. Here the subject positions of the ‘good mother’ and the ‘responsible citizen’ as they are produced through the discourses and practices of neoliberalism intertwine. This paper looks at the convergence of various influential discourses, images, practices and technologies in configuring maternal, preborn and infant bodies in certain ways in the context of neoliberalism. These include such factors as the growing importance of the concept of risk in relation to preborn and infant wellbeing, the extension of infant identity back into preborn bodies, the emergence of the concepts of the foetal and embryonic (and even the preconceived embryonic) citizen, the precious child and intensive parenting and the symbolic concepts of permeability, purity and danger and Self and Other as they relate to maternal, infant and preborn embodiment.

Pisanje ženskog tela: Mesto (mog) tela u jeziku, slučaj Kathy Acker

by Dragana Stojanovic

Published in Nova misao - časopis za savremenu kulturu Vojvodine br. 16, IU „Misao“, Novi Sad, 2012.

Off-grid Mobilities: Incorporating a Way of Life

by Phillip Vannini

Published in Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies

Drawing from sensory ethnography, the present multimodal writing—accompanied by photography and digital... more Drawing from sensory ethnography, the present multimodal writing—accompanied by photography and digital video—documents and interprets the mobilities of off-grid living on Lasqueti Island, British Columbia, Canada. The data presentation focuses in particular on the embodied experience of off-grid inhabitation, highlighting the sensory and kinetic experiences and practices of everyday life in a community disconnected from the North American electrical grid and highway network. The mobilities of fuel and energy are presented in unison with ethnographic attention to the taskscape of everyday activities and movements in which off-grid islanders routinely engage. The analysis, based on Tim Ingold's non-representational theory on place, movement, and inhabitation, focuses on how the material and corporeal mobilities of off-grid life body forth a unique sense of place.

“Beauty and Concepts of the Ideal,” in A Cultural History of the Human Body, Vol. 6: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Modern Age, Ivan Crozier, ed. (London: Berg, 2010), 127-45. Uncorrected page proofs.

by Christopher E. Forth

Figuration Punk

by Bodo Mrozek

published in: Netzwerk Körper (Hg.): What Can a Body Do? Figuratuionen des Körpers in den Kulturwissenschaften. Frankfurt a.M. / New York: Campus 2012, S. 191-196.

"Punk ereignete sich auf verschiedenen Ebenen: innerhalb der kapitalistischen Produktionslogiken der Musik- und... more "Punk ereignete sich auf verschiedenen Ebenen: innerhalb der kapitalistischen Produktionslogiken der Musik- und Modeindustrie ebenso wie als subkulturelles Zeichensystem, als Bewegung von Kulturamateur_innen und als künstlerische Avantgarde, die zunehmend in etablierte Kulturräume drängte. Ziel dieses Essays ist es, quer durch die unterschiedlichen Erscheinungsformen von Punk übergreifende körpergeschichtliche Aspekte herauszuarbeiten und historisch zu kontextualisieren: [...] die mit den Stilmitteln der Sexualisierung und Fetischisierung konstituierten normverletzenden Körperkonzepte des Punk [sind] als plakative Manifestationen einer neuen Ästhetik zu lesen, die in bis dato ungekannter Drastik mit sozial affirmativen und zukunftsbejahenden Lebensentwürfen brach. Nach dieser Lesart war Punk im wörtlichen Sinne die Verkörperung einer zeitgeschichtlichen Zäsur: des Strukturbruchs der 70er Jahre."

Krpic, T. 2007. Cognitive Body Agency. International Journal of the Humanities 5 (10): 141-148.

by Tomaž Krpič

The author’s prime aim is to introduce the concept of cognitive body agency into cognitive sociology. This is going to... more The author’s prime aim is to introduce the concept of cognitive body agency into cognitive sociology. This is going to be obtained in three steps. First, a brief review of cognitive sociology will be given with regards to the absence of the concept of carnal body, due to a complete preoccupation of the discipline with ‘the body from the neck up’. Secondly, several reasons will be given for the absence of the concept of the carnal body in sociology in general. Thirdly, the author will give the arguments for the concept of cognitive body agency by referring to communication theory and by accepting the body as a material force in its own right.

Beauty and the Beach: Mapping Cosmetic Surgery Tourism

by Meredith Jones

Cosmetic surgery tourism – traditionally defined as the movement of patients from one location to another to undertake... more Cosmetic surgery tourism – traditionally defined as the movement of patients from one location to another to undertake ‘aesthetic’ medical procedures -- is a significant and growing area of medical tourism (Reisman 2010). The UK’s annual International Passenger Survey, produced by the Office for National Statistics, shows that approximately 100,000 UK citizens go abroad each year for medical treatment (a number rising by about 20% annually), and cosmetic surgery tourism is estimated to make up about 85% of the medical tourism market in Australia (Connell 2006). It has also been suggested that although financial crises, privatization and the rising cost of healthcare may have slowed demand for cosmetic surgery in some ‘developed’ countries, crossing national borders to procure those surgeries appears to be increasing as consumers seek out low-cost procedures abroad (see Bell et al 2011).The industry itself is acquiring institutional ‘thickness’ as the various agencies and agents involved increasingly coalesce into assemblages, regulatory and promotional bodies, financial regimes, and complex flows of bodies, knowledges, technologies, money, ideas and images . As Mainil et al (2010: 749) summarize, ‘the global network society has touched the medical field and there is no going back’.

While some commentators argue that ‘tourism’ is an inappropriate label to apply to practices of travelling to obtain medical treatment (eg Glinos et al 2010; Kangas 2010), we want to set that debate aside and instead look more closely at how cosmetic surgery tourism works: this chapter draws on a large-scale, multi-site, mixed methods research project exploring the practices, sites and experiences of cosmetic surgery tourism. In particular, we are interested in this chapter in offering an analysis of the issue of place within cosmetic surgery tourism, in terms of both image and experience. But before we focus in on this discussion, we want to briefly contextualize cosmetic surgery tourism and sketch some of its defining features.

Basels muslimische Schwimmverweigerer

by Marius Rohrer

2009, « Habitus, Freedom and Reflexivity », in Theory and Psychology Volume 19, no. 6, pp. 728-755.

by Mathieu Hilgers

The question of freedom is recurrent in the theory of habitus. In this paper I propose that the notion of freedom is... more The question of freedom is recurrent in the theory of habitus. In this paper I propose that the notion of freedom is an essential and necessary component for the coherence of the analyses which mobilize habitus both in terms of their theoretical articulation and in terms of their grounding in empirical reality. This argument can seem surprising considering that the theory of habitus has often been accused of being deterministic. Yet I show that, from an epistemological point of view, habitus theory is not deterministic. Bourdieu’s treatment of this concept implies at least three principles that exclude determinism: (1) the production of an infinite number of behaviors from a limited number of principles, (2) permanent mutation, and (3) the intensive and extensive limits of sociological understanding. After identifying and describing these principles, I show the reason for their incompatibility with a deterministic perspective and consider their implications for the corresponding model of action. I illustrate this analysis by a discussion of Loïc Wacquant’s carnal sociology of the pugilistic universe which reveals why it is essential to understand and explain the relation between habitus and freedom.

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.

It's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt: images of sport in early Iron Age art of Central Europe

by Katharina Rebay-Salisbury

World Archaeology
Volume 44, Issue 2, 2012
Special Issue: The Archaeology of Sport and Pastimes

Physical, competitive activities played an important role in social life in early Iron Age Central Europe. In this... more Physical, competitive activities played an important role in social life in early Iron Age Central Europe. In this paper, the iconography of the most common forms of sport competitions – dumb-bell fighting, chariot racing and horse racing – are followed across temperate Europe. Although these ‘barbarian’ images remain linked to Mediterranean models, differences in materials, technologies and details in the way persons are depicted reveal local variations and divergent cultural connotations of what might have been understood as ‘sport’ in the European Iron Age.

Blurring the boundaries: breastfeeding and maternal subjectivity

by Deborah Lupton

Femininity, Responsibility, and the Technological Imperative: |Discourses on Breast Cancer in the Australian Press

by Deborah Lupton

The Embodied Computer/User

by Deborah Lupton

M-health and health promotion: the digital cyborg and surveillance society

by Deborah Lupton

This is a preprint of an article that has been submitted for publication. It may be cited.

Precious, pure, uncivilised, vulnerable: infant embodiment in the popular media

by Deborah Lupton

This article is a preprint which has been submitted for publication. It may be cited.

"A Living Relic: Venice’s Doge and His Paradoxical Two Bodies"

by Michelle Laughran

Presented April 2, 2012 at the Royal Body Conference at Royal Holloway University of London, UK

Analysis of the dual role of the doge as titular ruler and yet simultaneously primus inter pares, following the lines... more Analysis of the dual role of the doge as titular ruler and yet simultaneously primus inter pares, following the lines of a Kantorowiczian political theology is, of course, not new in Venetian studies. Paradoxically, though, Kantorowicz is not seamlessly transferable to the Venetian context, however rampant dual-body imagery was in the city’s ceremonial life. After all, the king’s immortal body royal had to depend symbiotically on its body natural, relying upon the later’s unique capacity for biological reproduction in order to ensure continuity of the dynastic bloodline which would allow the monarchy, at least in theory, both to endure in perpetuity. In Venice, however, such a formulation was impossible, not least because, as part of the measures to limit potential ducal reigns, doges – like popes – tended to be elected at an advanced age. Hence, a different formulation of the two-bodies model had to be devised for the Venetian context. Only by becoming the living incarnation of the relics of Saint Mark could the otherwise constitutionally (and perhaps, for that matter, even biologically) largely impotent doge manage to embody both a widely-recognized, powerfully stabilizing influence and a monarchic sacrality.