Body Projects

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Body Projects

• Technologies of the Gendered Body (Week 11)

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Outline

• The body in late modernity
• Body projects / reflexive body techniques
• Presentation (week 15)

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The body in late modernity

• What is late / high modernity?
• Giddens (1991) a radicalising of modern
  trends
• Both modernity and self are neither redundant
  nor anachronistic
• Late / high modernity is characterised by a
  process of continual questioning reflexivity

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The body in late modernity

• The self / identity is intimately bound up with
  these processes of questioning / reflexivity
• Growing importance of the body as constitutive of
  self-identity
• Body is something to be worked on

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The body in high modernity

• But a central body paradox
• We now have the means to exert an unprecedented
  degree of control over bodies, yet we are also
  living in an age which has thrown into radical
  doubt our knowledge of what bodies are and how we
  should control them. (Shilling 1993 3)

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The body in high modernity

• The body is becoming increasingly a phenomenon
  of options and choices (Shilling 1993 3)
• But these choices also produce related dilemmas
  re ownership of bodies and body parts / tissues
  who should be allowed to do what to and with
  their bodies.

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Body projects

• Increasing investment of self-identity in our
  bodies
• The body is increasingly viewed as an entity in
  the process of becoming it can be accomplished
  reflexively as part of an individuals
  self-identity
• Appearance, size, shape, content / constitution
  seen as always potentially open to
  (re)construction in line with the desires, plans
  and purposes of their owners
• Bodies are treated as malleable moulded as a
  trait of personality honed through vigilance
  and hard work.
• A somatic ethic.

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Body projects

• Body projects are attempts to construct and
  maintain a coherent and viable sense of
  self-identity through attention to the body,
  particularly the bodys surface (Gill et al
  2005 40)

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Reflexive body techniques

• body techniques whose primary purpose is to work
  back upon the body, so as to modify, maintain or
  thematize it in some way (2006 104)
• May involve two or more embodied agents, or a
  single body working on itself
• Each society has a repertoire of RBTs.
• There is a wide variation in the distribution of
  RBTs

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Mapping RBTs (Crossley 2005)

• 100 had washed hands in past 7 days
• 99.7 had bathed / showered in past 7 days
• 41.8 had flossed in the last 4 weeks
• 41.1 had eaten carefully for weight loss
  reasons in the last 4 weeks
• 36.2 had manicure in the past 4 weeks
• 25.3 had used a sunbed in the last 12 months
• 6.9 had 1-3 tatoos
• 6.7 had a pierced belly button
• 1.6 had cosmetic surgery
• 0.3 had ever used steroids for body building

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Mapping RBTs

• Incorporates the idea that we have a body and
  are a body.
• Resists mind / body dualism (the body I have
  is a moral, aesthetic, acting and sensuous being
  (Crossley 2005 2)
• Can core zone RBTs and marginal zone RBTs be
  explained in the same way?

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Presentation

• Choose up to 3 images / textual materials around
  a central theme
• Provide a commentary on those images, drawing on
  the relevant literature
• What assumptions of gender, technology and the
  body are at work in those materials?
• What is the preferred reading of those materials?
  How have those ideas been critiqued? Is there an
  alternative reading?
• Like an essay make an argument. Whats your
  overall point?

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Presentation

• Each presentation should last no more than 15
  minutes (with 5 mins for questions)
• All group members should contribute equally to
  the preparation and final presentation
• You will have access to Powerpoint. If you need
  anything further, please discuss with Katy, Mark
  and I well in advance.
• Each group will get written feedback on your own
  presentation.

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Additional reading

• Crossley, N (2005) Mapping reflexive body
  techniques on body modification and maintenance
  Body and Society 11 (1) 1-35
• Shilling, C (2010) Exploring the
  society-body-school nexus theoretical and
  methodology issues in the study of body
  pedagogics. Sport, Education and Society 15(2)
  151-167