Bodies, Culture, and Power: Introduction to Body Politics
* norms (ideas & rules about how people should behave)
* values (beliefs about what is important/true/right/good)
* symbols (anything that signifies something else)
* power
* cultural hegemony (Antonio Gramsci: ability of the dominant group to create consent/agreement without overt force)
* unmarked category (assumed standard against which difference is marked)
* agency
Tracking Bodies
* Cartesian Dualism (mind/body dichotomy)
* bodyminds
* experiential vs. quantified self (Natasha Schull)
* embodiment
Gendering Bodies
* gender vs. sex
* gender as performative (Judith Butler)
* gender-bending
* hegemonic masculinity
Desiring Bodies
* Intersectionality
* gender expression vs sexual orientation
* queer
* heteronormativity
* homophobia
* socioeconomic class aspirations
* distinction
* taste
Racializing Bodies
* race (a flawed system of classification using physical traits to divide people into discrete groups)
* social construction of race
* ethnicity
* minzu
* nationality
* ethnocentrism
* embodied racism
Reproducing Bodies
* eugenics (“positive” vs “negative”)
* birth planning (计划生育 jihua shengyu) vs family planning
* China’s one-child policy
* selective reproductive technologies
* stratified reproduction [definition from Rayna Rapp: “Reproductive futures are embedded inside other forms of hierarchy… Put starkly, pregnancies are not conceived, medically managed, or delivered on equal social terrain… Stratified reproduction is reproducing far more than individual babies: It is a lens through which we can see how representations of pregnancy and parenting, gender relations, socioeconomic futures and collective as well as familial aspirations for the next generation are also being reproduced.” ~ Rayna Rapp, 2000, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America, Routledge.]
* medicalization [definition from Diana Parry: “Medicalization is a social process whereby an expert-based biomedical paradigm dominates discussion of health and frames it in negative ways, usually as illness experiences understood as biological and individualistic ….the process of medicalization occurs when life events come to be understood as questions of illness and are then subject to the authority of medical institutions with their cadre of experts from whom we expect proper diagnosis and isolation of our health problems…” ~ Diana Parry, 2008, “‘We wanted a birth experience, not a medical experience’: exploring Canadian women’s use of midwifery,” Health Care Women Int 29(8): 784-806. https://doi.org/10.1080/07399330802269451 ]
Disciplining Bodies
* sovereign power [Foucault’s analysis of punishment inscribed on the body through public spectacle (torture, dismemberment, execution); physical pain & obliteration of the criminal]
* disciplinary power [Foucault’s analysis of imprisonment / detention becoming the dominant form of punishment with the rise of the modern nation-state; not just about punishing the criminal act but also about reforming/rehabilitating/transforming the person themselves]
* docility-utility [Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary techniques; meticulous control over operations of the body impose relation of “docility-utility” that makes the body “more obedient as it becomes more useful” (Foucault, 1975, Discipline and Punish, p. 137-8)]
* panopticon [this is both a building plan for a prison (developed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham) & Foucault’s conceptual model for how disciplinary power works; internalizing discipline (way of getting people to conform to norms on their own; learn to inspect/manage/correct themselves)]
Commodifying & Objectifying Bodies
* commodification of the body and its parts
* ideology of the gift (organs as the “gift of life”)
* global traffic in organs (organ donation vs selling)
* objectification (including sexual objectification, self-objectification)
* the gaze (as an act of power, subjection, and othering) — including the male gaze, the medical gaze, the colonial/imperial gaze
Enhancing & Modifying Bodies
* technologies of the self (Michel Foucault)
* makeover culture
* medicalization of distress
* symptom pool
* disordered eating (anorexia, bulimia)
* culture of slenderness (Susan Bordo)
Disabling & Stigmatizing Bodies
* disability vs impairment vs handicap
* medical vs social vs embodied models of disability
* social stigma (Erving Goffman)
* freak shows
* disablism & ableism
* damaged self
* symbolic violence
* structural violence
Suffering & Dying Bodies
* ideas about death in traditional Chinese culture (Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist influences)
* medicalization of death
* commodification of death
* urban haunting (separation of life & death; rise of stranger society & economy) [Andrew Kipnis]
* hospice & palliative care
* McFunerals & transformation of the funeral service industry in urban postwar Japan
