Body Studies

An Introduction

Margo DeMello

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415699297
• eBook ISBN: 9781134084708
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

In recent years, body studies has expanded rapidly, becoming an increasingly popular field of study within anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies. This groundbreaking textbook takes the topics and theories from these disciplines, and combines them into one single, easily accessible text for students.

Body Studies is a comprehensive textbook on the social and cultural uses and meanings of the body, for use in undergraduate college courses. Its clear, accessible chapters explore, among other things:

• the measurement and classification of the human body
• illness and healing
• the racialized body
• the gendered body
• cultural perceptions of beauty
• new bodily technologies.

This book investigates how power plays an important role in the uses, views, and shapes of the body—as well as how the body is invested with meaning. Body Studies provides a wealth of pedagogic features for ease of teaching and learning: ethnographic case studies, boxes covering contemporary controversies, news stories, and legislative issues, as well as chapter summaries, further reading recommendations, and key terms. This book will appeal to students and teachers of sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, women's studies, gender studies, and ethnic studies.

PART I Understanding the Body from a Social and Cultural Perspective

DOI: 10.4324/9780203519608-1

chapter 1 Introduction

Theorizing the body

DOI: 10.4324/9780203519608-2

One of the most successful horror movies of the 1950s, the era when horror movies really came into their own in the United States, was Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This 1956 film explores a world in which aliens from outer space invade earth by replacing human beings with new bodies that look just like them, but that are devoid of real human emotion. It’s typically interpreted today as a Cold War allegory on either the threat of McCarthyism in the United States, or the dangers posed by the loss of individuality in the Soviet Union. Twenty years later, another horror film, The Stepford Wives, took the idea of body replacement one step further. Stepford, an “idyllic” suburban community in Connecticut, only appears to be perfect; it turns out that the husbands in the town have been killing their wives and replacing them with robots who look exactly like them, but are perfectly submissive, and thus (from the perspective of the men) are perfect wives. This film was made during the rise of feminism in the United States, and is clearly a statement about male fear during the era of women’s liberation. Over the decades, a number of other films have also featured humans being taken over or assimilated by other life forms. In all of these cases, the films focus squarely on the body.

In fact, just a cursory look at the history of horror films shows that a remarkable number of them are indeed focused on the body – bodies that are not what they seem (The Thing), bodies that grow or shrink thanks to exposure to toxins (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman), bodies which transform into animals (An American Werewolf in London) or monsters (Species), bodies which have aliens (Alien) or demons (Rosemary’s Baby) growing inside of them, and bodies which feed on the living (The Night of the Living Dead). Even films where the villain is a “normal” serial killer, and that feature no true monsters, focus on the body. From the slasher film of the 1970s to the torture porn of the 2000s, much of the pleasure and terror in these films comes from watching bodies get literally torn apart. In the 1980s, a new genre of horror film emerged called “body horror” which focuses on the destruction, decay, and mutations of the human body. Re-Animator, The Fly, Body Melt, Videodrome, Splice, It’s Alive, Altered States, Teeth, and Leviathan are just a few examples of films where the body literally is the monster.

Figure 1.1 Sci-Fi Revoltech 001 Alien. Photo Courtesy of Toru Watanabe, via Wikimedia Commons: http://www.flickr.com/photos/torugatoru/4974295014/in/photostream.

But why the body? In these films, bodies are torn apart, transformed, decayed, and turned inside out. It shouldn’t surprise us that the largest audience for horror films has, since the 1950s, been teenagers, who are dealing with, and anxious about, their own physical and sexual transformations. But many adults, too, enjoy horror films because they are the most visceral movies of all, and make us feel in ways that other films don’t: we tense up, we sweat, we squint, we turn away, and we jump while watching them. The experience of watching horror films, then, is embodied, just as the body is central to those same films. As anthropologist John Burton writes, “our bodies are the perpetual medium of all that transpires in our existence, from birth until death” (2001: 3). This is the case with horror films, and it’s also the case with the rest of society.

An introduction to body studies

What is the body, really? It seems like such an obvious question, and yet the answer is much more complicated than what you may think. Sure, it is a collection of cells, combined into organs, which themselves operate in systems (like the cardiovascular system, nervous system, or reproductive system) which ultimately make up the whole of the body. In humans, that body typically takes on a form with two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head.

But is that all there is when we talk about bodies? And can we really speak of bodies without also speaking of society and culture? In other words, is there such a thing as a universal, decontextualized body? A tabula rasa, simply awaiting inscription by culture?

The answer is no. Bodies are shaped in myriad ways by culture, by society, and by the experiences that are shared within a social and cultural context. In addition, bodies are shaped by history, and as such, they are always changing, as are our ideas about them. Bodies are contingent: molded by factors outside of the body, and then internalized into the physical being itself. This is what we call a social constructionist approach to the body. Constructionism, which is the perspective used in this textbook, suggests that beauty, weight, sexuality, or race do not simply result from the collection of genes one inherited from one’s parents. Instead, these bodily features only take on the meaning that they have – That woman is beautiful! That man is fat! – in the context of history, society, and culture. Yes, a person may have a certain set of facial features, or weigh a certain number of pounds or kilograms. But how we think about those facial features or those pounds – are they attractive or unattractive? – comes from the time and place in which we live.

In addition, these meanings occur within a set of culturally constructed power relations that suggest that, for example, women must be attractive in order to be valuable. But this process does not just happen after we “enter” culture. Instead, it happens immediately; we are born in a particular skin, with a particular type of hair, with a particular set of eyes, a nose, and a mouth. How those features will be interpreted will then be shaped by culture, but the features themselves will already be present.

One of the reasons why this theoretical approach is often difficult for students to understand is that, since phenomena like beauty or obesity or race are expressed in the body, it seems like they must be natural. In fact, what occurs is that once something comes to take on cultural meaning, it becomes naturalized: we think that things are the way that they are because they have always been that way, and that they are, therefore, natural. We don’t realize that these meanings have been created, and that they can change, and that there’s nothing natural at all about the popular belief in many Western cultures, for example, that straight hair is more attractive than curly or kinky hair. Even something that seems to be so rooted in the body as disability is partially socially constructed. There are people who have no arms, for example, and must use their feet to cook, to dress themselves, or to drive a car. That is a biological reality. But how we conceive of those people – as abnormal, or even freakish – comes from culture. There’s nothing inherently abnormal in those people’s reality.

Figure 1.2 “Threads.” Bodies can be used to represent a great many things. Photo courtesy of David Brooks.

Race is another good example. Every ten years since 1790, the United States has asked its citizens to fill out a census, which is used for redistricting, for social policy decisions and to meet a variety of legislative requirements. On every census that has so far been used, there have never been two censuses that have used the same racial categories; instead, each census uses a separate set of terms (like Quadroon, Mulatto, Chinese, Mexican, or Hindu), demonstrating how arbitrary those terms really are. In Chapter 6, we will further explore the notion that race is a social construction.

This differs from what might be called an essentialist view of the body. Essentialism means that bodies are defined largely or entirely by their biological makeup – bones, muscles, hormones, and the like – and that much of human behavior can also be reduced to many of those biological functions. In fact, social scientists call this reductionism: the idea that complex human behaviors can be reduced to something as simple as, for example, hormones.

Sure, the hormone testosterone is responsible for, among other things, driving sexual behavior in both men and women, and men have more testosterone in their bodies than women. But does that alone account for the fact that men are, in many cultures, encouraged to be sexually aggressive while women are encouraged to be sexually passive, and that rape is one of the most common crimes committed against women in a variety of cultures around the world? Social scientists would argue that it is reductionist to reduce the sexually aggressive behaviors of many men to testosterone and to ignore the role that socialization, mass media, and the glorification of violence and sexual violence plays in these behaviors.

This book, using a constructionist perspective, will help you to deconstruct many of the bodily categories that seem so normal to you. We will cover the mundane – health and illness – to the frightening – torture and death – all with the aim of allowing you to understand how bodies are shaped by culture and society, and how categories like sexuality or race are constructed in relation to other categories and within systems of power. How do, for example, social institutions like politics, law, health care, and mass media shape both our perceptions of our bodies, but also how much access we have to health care, nutritious food, or safe working conditions? And what does it mean that some people, by virtue of their gender, race, class, or nationality, get greater access to those things, while other people have less access?

According to theorist Michel Thevóz, “there is no body but the painted body” (1984: 7) because the body must always be stamped with the mark of culture and society; without marking, the body cannot move within the channels of social exchange. Of course we paint the body quite literally with body paint, tattooing, makeup, and jewelry. But human bodies are never “blank” or unmarked, even when not explicitly marked through adornment or modification. Bodies can be fat or thin, dark or light, male or female, young or old, sick or healthy. In these ways, too, social position and culture is marked onto even naked bodies, in every society.

In addition, as technology changes, bodies change as well. From cosmetic surgery to organ transplantation to alternative reproductive technologies to the various practices and procedures considered within the term cyber, the body is being shaped by technology in a variety of ways today. Bodies are also changing thanks to changing perceptions, fuelled by mass media, of beauty, thinness, and muscularity, with new illnesses, practices, and obsessions emerging.

Interesting issues: born this way blog

Among those who study sexual orientation, there’s no real consensus on how sexual orientation develops or is produced. It appears to have no relationship to parenting, since gay and lesbians are almost entirely raised by heterosexual parents, and gay and lesbian parents, for the most part, raise heterosexual children. And while the studies that seek to find evidence of a “gay gene” or some indication that hormones or brain structure “cause” homosexuality are thus far inconclusive, at least in some cultures, there appears to be anecdotal evidence to show that sexual orientation develops very early in life and is not a “choice.” (In Chapter 8, however, we will discuss the ways that culture plays a role in how sexuality is expressed.) In 2011, DJ Paul V started a blog called “Born This Way” featuring photos sent in by gay men and lesbians of themselves as children. Many of the photos, accompanied by stories, show little boys in feminine poses and little girls with butch traits. All of the entries include statements indicating that the submitter knew that they were “different” from a very young age; whether or not they knew they were gay, they simply knew that they were not like the other kids. Paul’s stated goal in the blog is to both show that being gay is not a choice, and also to create a space where gays and lesbians can feel safe about sharing their stories and where they can feel pride about themselves. He writes, “if my blog helps stop even just ONE LGBTQ person from taking their own life, or feeling bad or ashamed or unloved, then I feel I’ve achieved my goal.” One of the criticisms of the blog is that it conflates sexual orientation with gender non-conformity; in other words, the men and women who send in their photos suggest that it’s the way in which they dress or behave which challenge the norms of their gender which “prove” that they were gay. Homosexuality and gender non-conformity, however, do not always go hand-in-hand, and many transgendered people, in fact, emphasize that gender identity can be ambiguous and fluid rather than fixed and unchanging.

Embodiment

As noted in the introduction, this text will take the position that the body is, to a major extent, socially constructed. That does not mean that bodies are not biological organisms, which are subject to natural laws. It simply means that we cannot understand the biological organism without first understanding the social, cultural, and historical context in which it exists. Biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling, for example, tells us that even our biological components – bone, blood, organs – are shaped by a complex relationship between biology and the physical and social environment in which we live. Our health and our behavior are shaped by both biology and history (2005). She also points out that biologists, too, the very people whose scientific analysis of the body many of the postmodern theorists now critique, are themselves socially constructed beings (as are we all), with their own biases and agendas. Science, too, is at least partially socially constructed.

This is a relatively recent theoretical development, however. For most of the history of philosophy, the body has been relatively untouched by such thinking. Instead, it is has always been seen as a biological object, and, typically, has been set aside from the mind or soul, which has generally been seen as a separate entity, subject to different laws. This was known as mind/body dualism, and was the typical way in which the body has been seen: as the physical being that is separate from, and inferior to, the mind. Furthermore, women have long been associated more with the body than have men, who have, historically, been seen as the more rational beings, i.e. men are more closely aligned with the mind, while women are more aligned with the body. Thanks to feminist theorizing which emerged in the 1970s, that view has been successfully challenged, but until recently the body itself was only understood within the realm of biological inquiry.

How we live in our bodies and how we experience the world through our bodies is a subject explored in the philosophical and psychological fields of inquiry known as phenomenology. Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in a groundbreaking essay (1962), analysed the body in the context of the lived experience of everyday life. We do not just have bodies; we are bodie...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Preface
• Part I Understanding the Body from a Social and Cultural Perspective
• Part II The Scientific and Biomedical Body
• Part III Mapping Difference onto Bodies
• Part IV Bodies and Privilege
• Part V Extraordinary Bodies
• Part VI State and Corporate Regulation of the Body
• Part VII Bodies of the Future
• Bibliography
• Index