Social Bodies

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Author :
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 9781845455538
Total Pages : 198 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (555 download)

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Book Synopsis Social Bodies by : Helen Lambert

Download or read book Social Bodies written by Helen Lambert and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Social Bodies

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Author :
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1845458974
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (454 download)

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Book Synopsis Social Bodies by : Helen Lambert

Download or read book Social Bodies written by Helen Lambert and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Social Bodies

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400821452
Total Pages : 203 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Social Bodies by : David G. Horn

Download or read book Social Bodies written by David G. Horn and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1994-11-14 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using as his example post-World War I Italy and the government's interest in the size, growth rate, and "vitality" of its national population, David Horn suggests a genealogy for our present understanding of procreation as a site for technological intervention and political contestation. Social Bodies looks at how population and reproductive bodies came to be the objects of new sciences, technologies, and government policies during this period. It examines the linked scientific constructions of Italian society as a body threatened by the "disease" of infertility, and of women and men as social bodies--located neither in nature nor in the private sphere, but in that modern domain of knowledge and intervention carved out by statistics, sociology, social hygiene, and social work. Situated at the intersection of anthropology, cultural studies, and feminist studies of science, the book explores the interrelated factors that produced the practices of reason we call social science and social planning. David Horn draws on many sources to analyze the discourses and practices of "social experts," the resistance these encountered, and the often unintended effects of the new objectification of bodies and populations. He shows how science, while affirming that maternity was part of woman's "nature," also worked to remove reproduction from the domain of the natural, making it an object of technological intervention. This reconstitution of bodies through the sciences and technologies of the social, Horn argues, continues to have material consequences for women and men throughout the West.

The Body: A Very Short Introduction

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0191059498
Total Pages : 144 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Body: A Very Short Introduction by : Chris Shilling

Download or read book The Body: A Very Short Introduction written by Chris Shilling and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human body is thought of conventionally as a biological entity, with its longevity, morbidity, size and even appearance determined by genetic factors immune to the influence of society or culture. Since the mid-1980s, however, there has been a rising awareness of how our bodies, and our perception of them, are influenced by the social, cultural and material contexts in which humans live. Drawing on studies of sex and gender, education, governance, the economy, and religion, Chris Shilling demonstrates how our physical being allows us to affect the material and virtual world around us, yet also enables governments to shape and direct our thoughts and actions. Revealing how social relationships, cultural images, and technological and medical advances shape our perceptions and awareness, he exposes the limitations of traditional Western traditions of thought that elevate the mind over the body as that which defines us as human. Dealing with issues ranging from cosmetic and transplant surgery, the performance of gendered identities, the commodification of bodies and body parts, and the violent consequences of competing conceptions of the body as sacred, Shilling provides a compelling account of why body matters present contemporary societies with a series of urgent and inescapable challenges. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Acting Bodies and Social Networks

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Author :
Publisher : University Press of America
ISBN 13 : 076184998X
Total Pages : 439 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (618 download)

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Book Synopsis Acting Bodies and Social Networks by : Bianca Maria Pirani

Download or read book Acting Bodies and Social Networks written by Bianca Maria Pirani and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2009-12-15 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

The Imposteress Rabbit-Breeder

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198734883
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (987 download)

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Book Synopsis The Imposteress Rabbit-Breeder by : Karen Harvey

Download or read book The Imposteress Rabbit-Breeder written by Karen Harvey and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-01-23 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In October 1726, newspapers began reporting a remarkable event. In the town of Godalming in Surrey, a woman called Mary Toft had started to give birth to rabbits. Several leading doctors - some sent directly by King George I - travelled to examine the woman and she was moved to London to be closer to them. By December, she had been accused of fraud and taken into custody. Mary Toft's unusual deliveries caused a media sensation. Her rabbit births were a test case for doctors trying to further their knowledge about the processes of reproduction and pregnancy. The rabbit births prompted not just public curiosity and scientific investigation, but also a vicious backlash. Based on extensive new archival research, this book is the first in-depth re-telling of this extraordinary story. Karen Harvey situates the rabbit-births within the troubled community of Godalming and the women who remained close to Mary Toft as the case unfolded, exploring the motivations of the medics who examined her, considering why the case attracted the attention of the King and powerful men in government, and following the case through the criminal justice system. The case of Mary Toft exposes huge social and cultural changes in English history. Against the backdrop of an incendiary political culture, it was a time when traditional social hierarchies were shaken, relationships between men and women were redrawn, print culture acquired a new vibrancy and irreverence, and knowledge of the body was remade. But Mary Toft's story is not just a story about the past. In reconstructing Mary's physical, social and mental world, The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder allows us to reflect critically on our own ideas about pregnancy, reproduction, and the body through the lens of the past.

A Traffic of Dead Bodies

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691186146
Total Pages : 445 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis A Traffic of Dead Bodies by : Michael Sappol

Download or read book A Traffic of Dead Bodies written by Michael Sappol and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Traffic of Dead Bodies enters the sphere of bodysnatching medical students, dissection-room pranks, and anatomical fantasy. It shows how nineteenth-century American physicians used anatomy to develop a vital professional identity, while claiming authority over the living and the dead. It also introduces the middle-class women and men, working people, unorthodox healers, cultural radicals, entrepreneurs, and health reformers who resisted and exploited anatomy to articulate their own social identities and visions. The nineteenth century saw the rise of the American medical profession: a proliferation of practitioners, journals, organizations, sects, and schools. Anatomy lay at the heart of the medical curriculum, allowing American medicine to invest itself with the authority of European science. Anatomists crossed the boundary between life and death, cut into the body, reduced it to its parts, framed it with moral commentary, and represented it theatrically, visually, and textually. Only initiates of the dissecting room could claim the privileged healing status that came with direct knowledge of the body. But anatomy depended on confiscation of the dead--mainly the plundered bodies of African Americans, immigrants, Native Americans, and the poor. As black markets in cadavers flourished, so did a cultural obsession with anatomy, an obsession that gave rise to clashes over the legal, social, and moral status of the dead. Ministers praised or denounced anatomy from the pulpit; rioters sacked medical schools; and legislatures passed or repealed laws permitting medical schools to take the bodies of the destitute. Dissection narratives and representations of the anatomical body circulated in new places: schools, dime museums, popular lectures, minstrel shows, and sensationalist novels. Michael Sappol resurrects this world of graverobbers and anatomical healers, discerning new ligatures among race and gender relations, funerary practices, the formation of the middle-class, and medical professionalization. In the process, he offers an engrossing and surprisingly rich cultural history of nineteenth-century America.

Bodies, Boundaries and Vulnerabilities

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Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319224948
Total Pages : 174 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (192 download)

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Book Synopsis Bodies, Boundaries and Vulnerabilities by : Lisa Folkmarson Käll

Download or read book Bodies, Boundaries and Vulnerabilities written by Lisa Folkmarson Käll and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-10-30 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the interrelations between bodily boundaries and vulnerabilities. It calls attention to the vulnerability of bodies as an essential aspect of having boundaries and being bound to other bodies. The volume advances an understanding of embodiment as the central aspect of subjectivity, its identity formation and its relations to others and the world. The essence of embodiment is what connects us with others and in equal measure what distinguishes us from others. The collection also addresses the centrality of the body to political and cultural activity, targeting the role and constitution of norms in the regulation of bodies, and the construction of spaces that bodies inhabit, in constructing national and cultural identities. It raises questions of how bodies and boundaries materialize in co-constitutive relation to one another; how bodies are situated and come to embody various bodies and intersections between different categories of identity and systems of value, meaning and knowledge; how the regulation and policing of bodies and the boundaries between them come to constitute bodies as being weak, strong, vulnerable or resilient and as having more or less fixed or fluid boundaries. The chapters in the volume all demonstrate how individual human bodies are formed in relation to each other as they are regulated and distinguished from one another by larger collective bodies of nature, culture, science, nation and state, as well as by other human or non-human animal bodies.

The Body and Social Theory

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Author :
Publisher : SAGE
ISBN 13 : 9780761942856
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (428 download)

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Book Synopsis The Body and Social Theory by : Chris Shilling

Download or read book The Body and Social Theory written by Chris Shilling and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2003 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Children’s Bodies in Schools: Corporeal Performances of Social Class

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Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137442638
Total Pages : 130 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (374 download)

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Book Synopsis Children’s Bodies in Schools: Corporeal Performances of Social Class by : S. Henry

Download or read book Children’s Bodies in Schools: Corporeal Performances of Social Class written by S. Henry and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together sociology of the body with powerful examinations of educational theory and social class, Henry examines how children's experiences of school and pedagogy are shaped by their bodies and the ideas of social class and class identity that their bodies carry.

Modern Bodies

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Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807862025
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Modern Bodies by : Julia L. Foulkes

Download or read book Modern Bodies written by Julia L. Foulkes and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-11-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1930, dancer and choreographer Martha Graham proclaimed the arrival of "dance as an art of and from America." Dancers such as Doris Humphrey, Ted Shawn, Katherine Dunham, and Helen Tamiris joined Graham in creating a new form of dance, and, like other modernists, they experimented with and argued over their aesthetic innovations, to which they assigned great meaning. Their innovations, however, went beyond aesthetics. While modern dancers devised new ways of moving bodies in accordance with many modernist principles, their artistry was indelibly shaped by their place in society. Modern dance was distinct from other artistic genres in terms of the people it attracted: white women (many of whom were Jewish), gay men, and African American men and women. Women held leading roles in the development of modern dance on stage and off; gay men recast the effeminacy often associated with dance into a hardened, heroic, American athleticism; and African Americans contributed elements of social, African, and Caribbean dance, even as their undervalued role defined the limits of modern dancers' communal visions. Through their art, modern dancers challenged conventional roles and images of gender, sexuality, race, class, and regionalism with a view of American democracy that was confrontational and participatory, authorial and populist. Modern Bodies exposes the social dynamics that shaped American modernism and moved modern dance to the edges of society, a place both provocative and perilous.

Bodies and Social Rhythms

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000074110
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Bodies and Social Rhythms by : Steven Knoblauch

Download or read book Bodies and Social Rhythms written by Steven Knoblauch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-13 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exciting new book traces the development of an unfolding challenge for psychoanalytic attention, which augments contemporary theoretical lenses focusing on structures of meaning, with an accompanying registration different than and interacting with structural experience. This accompanying registration of experience is given the term ‘fluidity’ in order to characterize it as too fast moving and unformulated to be symbolized with linguistic categorization. Expanding attention from speech meaning to include embodied registrations of rhythm involving tonality, pauses and accents can catalyze additional and often emotionally more significant communications central to the state of the transactional field in any psychoanalytic moment. This perspective is contextualized within recognition of how cultural practices and beliefs are carried along both structural and fluid registrations of experience and can shape emotional turbulence for both interactants in a clinical encounter. Experiences of gender, culture, class and race emerging as sources of conflict and mis-recognition are engaged and illustrated throughout the text. This book, part of the popular "Psychoanalysis in a New Key" book series, will appeal to teaching and practicing psychoanalysts, but also an increasing volume of therapists attending to embodied experience in their practice and drawn to the practical clinical illustrations.

Heavenly Bodies

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Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN 13 : 146744622X
Total Pages : 683 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (674 download)

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Book Synopsis Heavenly Bodies by : Ola Sigurdson

Download or read book Heavenly Bodies written by Ola Sigurdson and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2016-07-30 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deep and wide study of 2,000 years of Christian thought on the human body Does Christianity scorn our bodies? Friedrich Nietzsche thought so, and many others since him have thought the same. Ola Sigurdson contends, to the contrary, that Christianity — understood properly — in fact affirms human embodiment. Presenting his constructive contributions to theology in relation to both historical and contemporary conceptions of the body, Sigurdson begins by investigating the anthropological implications of the doctrine of the incarnation. He then delves into the concept of the gaze and discusses a specifically Christian "gaze of faith" that focuses on God embodied in Jesus. Finally, he weaves these strands into a contemporary Christian theology of embodiment. Sigurdson's profound engagement with the whole history of Christian life and thought not only elucidates the spectrum of Christian perspectives on the body but also models a way of thinking historically and systematically that other theologians will find stimulating and challenging.

Unruly Bodies

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Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807877630
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (776 download)

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Book Synopsis Unruly Bodies by : Susannah B. Mintz

Download or read book Unruly Bodies written by Susannah B. Mintz and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-01-05 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first critical study of personal narrative by women with disabilities, Unruly Bodies examines how contemporary writers use life writing to challenge cultural stereotypes about disability, gender, embodiment, and identity. Combining the analyses of disability and feminist theories, Susannah Mintz discusses the work of eight American autobiographers: Nancy Mairs, Lucy Grealy, Georgina Kleege, Connie Panzarino, Eli Clare, Anne Finger, Denise Sherer Jacobson, and May Sarton. Mintz shows that by refusing inspirational rhetoric or triumph-over-adversity narrative patterns, these authors insist on their disabilities as a core--but not diminishing--aspect of identity. They offer candid portrayals of shame and painful medical procedures, struggles for the right to work or to parent, the inventive joys of disabled sex, the support and the hostility of family, and the losses and rewards of aging. Mintz demonstrates how these unconventional stories challenge feminist idealizations of independence and self-control and expand the parameters of what counts as a life worthy of both narration and political activism. Unruly Bodies also suggests that atypical life stories can redefine the relation between embodiment and identity generally.

Bodies in a Broken World

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Author :
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 0807862258
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Bodies in a Broken World by : Ann Folwell Stanford

Download or read book Bodies in a Broken World written by Ann Folwell Stanford and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2004-07-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this multidisciplinary study, Ann Folwell Stanford reads literature written by U.S. women of color to propose a rethinking of modern medical practice, arguing that personal health and social justice are inextricably linked. Drawing on feminist ethics to explore the work of eleven novelists, Stanford challenges medicine to position itself more deeply within the communities it serves, especially the poor and marginalized. However, she also argues that medicine must recognize its limits and join forces with the nonmedical community in the struggle for social justice. In literary representations of physical and emotional states of illness and health, Stanford identifies issues related to public health, medical ethics, institutionalized racism, women's health, domestic abuse, and social justice that are important to discussions about how to improve health and health care. She argues that in either direct or indirect ways, the eleven novelists considered here push us to see health not only as an individual condition but also as a complex network of individual, institutional, and social changes in which wellness can be a possibility for the majority rather than a privileged few. The novelists whose works are discussed are Toni Cade Bambara, Paule Marshall, Gloria Naylor, Leslie Marmon Silko, Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, Bebe Moore Campbell, Sapphire, Ana Castillo, and Octavia Butler.

Social Histories of Disability and Deformity

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134235593
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (342 download)

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Book Synopsis Social Histories of Disability and Deformity by : David M. Turner

Download or read book Social Histories of Disability and Deformity written by David M. Turner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-27 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collecting together essays written by an international set of contributors, this book provides an important contribution to the emerging field of disability history. It explores changes in understandings of deformity and disability between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, and reveal the ways in which different societies have conceptualised the normal and the pathological. Through a variety of case studies including: early modern birth defects, homosexuality, smallpox scarring, vaccination, orthopaedics, deaf education, eugenics, mental deficiency, and the experiences of psychologically scarred military veterans, this book provides new perspectives on the history of physical, sensory and intellectual anomaly. Examining changes over five centuries, it charts how disability was delineated from other forms of deformity and disfigurement by a clearer medical perspective. Essays shed light on the experiences of oppressed minorities often hidden from mainstream history, but also demonstrate the importance of discourses of disability and deformity as key cultural signifiers which disclose broader systems of power and authority, citizenship and exclusion. The diverse nature of the material in this book will make it relevant to scholars interested in cultural, literary, social and political, as well as medical, history.

Dissenting Bodies

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Author :
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231139462
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (311 download)

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Book Synopsis Dissenting Bodies by : Martha L. Finch

Download or read book Dissenting Bodies written by Martha L. Finch and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-22 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the Puritan separatists of seventeenth-century New England, "godliness," as manifested by the body, was the sign of election, and the body, with its material demands and metaphorical significance, became the axis upon which all colonial activity and religious meaning turned. Drawing on literature, documents, and critical studies of embodiment as practiced in the New England colonies, Martha L. Finch launches a fascinating investigation into the scientific, theological, and cultural conceptions of corporeality at a pivotal moment in Anglo-Protestant history. Not only were settlers forced to interact bodily with native populations and other "new world" communities, they also fought starvation and illness; were whipped, branded, hanged, and murdered; sang, prayed, and preached; engaged in sexual relations; and were baptized according to their faith. All these activities shaped the colonists' understanding of their existence and the godly principles of their young society. Finch focuses specifically on Plymouth Colony and those who endeavored to make visible what they believed to be God's divine will. Quakers, Indians, and others challenged these beliefs, and the constant struggle to survive, build cohesive communities, and regulate behavior forced further adjustments. Merging theological, medical, and other positions on corporeality with testimonies on colonial life, Finch brilliantly complicates our encounter with early Puritan New England.