Turner: The Social Skin

"Man is born naked but is everywhere in clothes"(Turner)

copy of article here

• Decorating, covering, uncovering or otherwise altering the human form in accordance with social notions of everyday propriety or sacred dress, beauty or solemnity, status or changes in status, or on occasion of the violation and inversion of such notions, seems to have been a concern of every human society of which we have knowledge.
  
  
  

  • the surface of the body seems everywhere to be treated, not only as the boundary of the individual as a biological and psychological entity but as the frontier of the social self as well
  • the body (as the common frontier of society, the social self, and the psycho-biological individual) becomes the symbolic stage upon which the drama of socialization is enacted, and bodily adornment (in all its culturally multifarious forms, from body-painting to clothing and from feather head-dresses to cosmetics) becomes the language through which it is expressed.
    • Dress and bodily adornment constitute one such cultural medium, perhaps the one most specialized in the shaping and communication of personal and social identity
      
      
      
      KAYAPO "social skin" (Turner)
      

      • Use social skin to indicate all the social distinctions made within the culture as well as accomplish these social distinctions and socialization.
      • form of social expression and social control
      • symbolic nature is not just asthetic
      • Cleanliness (equals health) and acceptance into social world (Douglas)
      • body cleaned of all residue at least once a day
      • no hair on face or body
      • head hair: distinguishes tribes in South America
      • shave hair to top of forehead and the rest is long, but the ability to wear your hair long is an honor
      • head hair is liminal and connotes great internal power. the styling of it is therefore about social control and status expression
      • men grow hair long when they are of an age to reproduce as an expression of this. They are reproducing society

      • Penis sheaths and men
      
      • symbolizes manhood and controls sexuality by preventing public erection
      • socializes sexually, like hair cutting

      • Other socially significant markers
      • Pierced ears, ear-plugs, and lip-plugs comprise a similar distinct complex of social meanings. Here the emphasis is on the socialization, not of sexual powers, but of the faculties of understanding and active self-expression.
        
        
      LIP PLUGS and Men:
     
    

    

    Lip plug for small boy

    
    

    

    adult male lip plug (public speaking important)

    
    

    

    elder male lip plug made of crystal (less public speaking)

    
    

    • Ear Piercing: 
    • Plugs for children so that they have the ability to hear. 
    • Children and adults just wear beaded strings
      
    • Body painting and self expression
    • Black is applied to the trunk of the body, the upper arms and thighs. Black designser stripes are also painted on the cheeks, forehead, and occasionally across the eyes or mouth.  
    • symbol of transition between social and natural world
    • Black is associated with the idea of transformation between society and unsocialized nature. The word for black is applied to the zone just outside the village that one passes through to enter the ‘wild’ forest (the domain of nature). It is also the word for death (that is, the first phase of death, while the body is still decomposing and the soul has not yet forsaken its social ties to become a ghost:ghosts are white).  
    • Red is applied to the calves and feet, forearms and hands, and face,especially around the eyes. Sometimes it is smeared over black designs already painted on the face, to render the whole face red 
    • Red, by contrast, is associated with notions of vitality, energy and intensification. It is applied to the peripheral points of the body that come directly into contact with the outside world (the hands and feet, and the face with its sensory organs, especially the eyes). 
      • The principle here seems to be the intensification of the individual’s powers of relating to the external (that is, primarily, the social) world.

    

    
    

    

    
    

    

    
    

    

    
    

    

    
    

    
     

  •   What does the social skin do? (social function)
  • At one level, the ‘social skin’ models the social boundary between the individual actor and other actors; 
  • at a deeper level it models the internal, psychic diaphragm between the pre-social, libidinous energies of the individual and the ‘internalized others’
  • at yet a third, macro-social level, the conventionalized modifications of skin and hair that comprise the ‘social skin’ define, not individuals, but categories or classes of individuals, (for example, infants, senior males, women of child-bearing age, etc.).

  • at this third level of interpretation, the social skin becomes the boundary between social classes. 
  • That the physical surface of the human body is systematically modified in all human societies so as to conflate these three levels of relations should give us cause for reflection.
    

Images of Addiction: Using the Body as Cultural Metaphor

faces of addiction

the Addicts Body as a Metaphor for Deviance

•  body acts as a symbolic map for the social significance of drug use and addiction, but also DEVIANCE and SOCIAL and BODILY DISORDER
• Turner's "Somatic Society"
• our major political and moral problems are expressed through the conduit of the human body
• persistence of and fascination with the addicts body 
• What are we viewing in the Addict in light of the somatic society? (4 things)
• effects of drug use on the body's physical integrity
• addict is represented as occupying the margins of our society in both social and geographical terms
• addict as "other'
• addict as "marginal"

• Body is conceptualized in 3 ways (Turner)
• body as actualized in a set of social practices through which the body id constantly produced, regulated and sustained
• the body as a system of "signs" (symbolic significance)
• body stands for and expresses the relations of power within a given society

• Metaphors of drug use:
• disease
• demonization
• criminality, sex & drugs
• weakness
• flaw
• contagions (boundary violation -Douglas)
• blood borne illnesses like HIV
• blood outside the body with needles piercing into it
• decay
• breakdown of the skin, teeth, veins and other organs
• seen as an example of how the body can be understood as a set of maps and metaphors for the wider social body, as the ravaged body of the addict is dipicted in ways that aim to discipline and to promote anti-drug messages
• the body in our society has BECOME A PROBLEM which needs to be regulated. this is just one example

• Women & Drug Metaphors:Victims who posses little or no autonomous power or agency
• reflects key themes that area associated with women in other contexts and narratives
• vulnerability
• sexual availability and unreliability
• drug use as something done to them (usually by men)
• decay and threat of decay of natural physical state of the body (including beauty and youth)

• Vampire metaphor: victims injected by their lovers, pale, sunken cheeks, haunted look of despair & self-loathing
• high is better than sex
• symbolic prison of addiction and dependency

• Ciminality & the threat at the MARGINS
• dont let drug dealers change the face of your neighborhood
• transitional cityscape: link between drug use, urban spaces and decaying social order
• images are dark and seedy  "othering"

Consumer Culture & Body Modification

Communicative Body: origins of MODERN PRIMITIVISM

As members of Western culture are more constrained by external, impersonal forms of social control, the body has become the singular focus of SELF-CONTROL and IDENTITY. Modern primitivism is a feature of  POPULAR CULTURE in association with renewed concerns about environmental issues as well as a sentimental fascination about so called "primitive" peoples. Call against the destruction of the "environment"

• molding, marking and shaping the body in different cultures signifies STATUS and status changes
• may be permanent or temporary
• body is used as an expressive medium and dressed distinctively to present a spectacular self that expresses a distinct group identity
• against middle-class forms of body conduct
• mostly working class men who first did this
• girls: fashion and makeup (surface and temporary)
• body is a vehicle for fashion to combat decay and deterioration…the body is a vehicle for pleasure and self-expression
• emphasize LUDIC and GROTESQUE in opposition to the dominant culture. 
• piercing
• tattooing
• branding
• TATTOOED BODY
• scarification, tattooing and piercing all overturn ideals of bodily presentation in Western culture and contexts.
• WESTERN: focus on the elaboration of ones own body (contrary to non-Western contexts).
• usually associated with marginal groups. So what does it mean when they are used by those who are not marginals to deliberately mark themselves? (pirates, criminals, social deviants)
• disassociation from those that lead conventional lives
• rite of passage
• women tend to use them more in private contexts and men display them in public contexts
• way to remind oneself of individuality and personal experience in a culture where this is so important and where making distinctions allows you to feel connected. (individuation)
• Way to identify themselves and give them "magical qualities"
• DECORATION & Asthetic
• Pierced body (Western)
• example of the body as an unfinished product
• FASHION 
•  
• visible as well as intimate parts of the body
• homosexulaization
• fascination with non-Western cultures (modern primitivism)
• a way of signaling discontent with modern society and confronting notions of deviance in Western culture through association with the primitive. (against dominant norms and recaptures the sensual self)
• EXTREME BODIES EXTREME CULTURE (etched cultural aesthetics into the body
•  Nilotic people of Africa: facial scarification is a way to mark ethnic affiliation
• Wodaabe men of northern Nigeria paint their faces in elaborate colorful patterns that are judged as more or less beautiful by their female suitors
• Wodaabe women adorn their faces with permanent tattoos which enhance their beauty and protect them from the evil eye
• Polynesia: body tattoos are a means of ethnic identification and serve to decalre status and rank and relationship

"BODY-MOD" Tourism

• Although many of these practices may seem exceptionally invasive and painful to us, they are seen as rites of passage for young adults. After all, if they can handle the suffering of the modification, they can handle the challenges of being an adult in their community, making us think that bar mitzvahs aren’t so bad after all!

• Body-mod tourism isn’t as rare as you’d think and it’s controversial. Although an influx of tourists has brought wealth to impoverished tribes and attention to cultural practices, some argue it has also led to a deteriorating way of life for many rural people or the cheapening of certain traditions.

Neck Rings

The practice of wearing neck rings originated in Burma with a few small subset groups of the Kayan Tribe. Although the Kayan tribe as a whole was located in what is now Myanmar for hundreds of years, they were forced to flee to Thailand in the sixties and seventies because of military conflict.

Most Kayans lived for a short time along the Thai border in refugee camps and were soon placed in permanent homes by the Thai government. Shockingly, the Kayan women who wear neck rings were singled out of the masses of Burmese refugees and settled in a neighboring camp and have never left. Many sources report that the Thai government did this so the women could be used for tourism purposes, which explains why neck rings are now associated with Thai culture. According to a BBC report, today most of these women are stuck in limbo working at tourist-trap villages, posing for pictures, and are unable to move on due to complicated (and seemingly malicious) bureaucratic Thai refugee laws.

Although you can see these women in their villages around the city of Mae Hong Son on the Burma-Thailand border, be prepared for a tourist trap that may look more like a human zoo than a traditional village.

Lip Plates

Although there are many independent cultures who have at some point donned lip plates, there is only one remaining tribe that still actively practices lip stretching: the Mursi tribe in Ethiopia. According to tradition, six months to a year before a girl is to be married, a small incision is made in the middle of her bottom lip and a stick is put in. Slowly over time, larger disks are inserted until her lip is stretched big enough to be used for a basketball hoop. In addition, many girls have their two lower teeth knocked out to accommodate the huge plate.

Rationale behind this practice is unclear to anthropologists. Other than the inherent disfigurement and pain, many Mursi women have trouble speaking normally and often drool since they essentially have no lip or teeth on the bottom of their mouth. One Darwinian-ish theory is that the practice was started so women could prove their strength, and therefore worth, as wives and mothers. The bigger the lip plate, the more physical strife the woman is able to withstand, and the stronger she’ll be as a partner to her husband.

Although there are many unknowns about lip plates, one thing is for sure: Mursi men seem to love it. For the women of this tribe, getting a lip plate is the only hope they have for a decent marriage: the bigger the lip, the more desirable a woman is, and the more cattle the groom’s family has to “trade” for him to get a wife.

Along with limited marriage potential if they chose a life sans lip plate, Mursi women also face added pressure from the outside world to continue with the practice. Currently the Mursi struggle to survive economically and face drought and worsening agricultural conditions. Ironically, their lip plates and reputation as an “untouched” African people have led to an exceptional amount of tourism in their home in the Omo Valley of Ethiopia and are currently helping to sustain the Mursi financially.

San Yak Tattoos

They may be extra trendy these days (think Angelina’s vertical tattoo that runs down her back), but San Yak tattoos have adorned the holy and superstitious for hundreds of years in Thailand and Cambodia. Traditionally the tattoos are a mix of Buddhist prayers, images, and shamanistic spells that have survived from the pre-Buddhist, Hindu religion in Southeast Asia.

Because of the religious nature of these tattoos, holy men, or even Buddhist monks themselves, will tattoo people using the traditional method of long metal needles, tapping ink deep under the skin. The level of detail the tattoo artists are able to achieve is stunning given the rudimentary tools, but the popularity of these tattoos aren’t just for their aesthetic appeal. Like religious amulets, San Yak tattoos are believed to ward off evil spirits and give their owner ridiculous amounts of luck. The more the better, like St. Christopher medals.

You can spot San Yak tattoos on monks and regular people alike, especially in Southeast-Asian countries, whose inhabitants need a little luck. Perfect example: the tattoos are incredibly popular among many Muay Thai boxers.

---

Nose Plugs

The Apatani tribe lives in the district of Arunachal Pradesh, India. The tribe keeps no written records, but they do have an exceptionally unique way of identifying their women. Traditionally women get face tattoos and distinctive nose plugs at an early age, which they wear for the remainder of their life. According to some anthropologists, they created this practice in order to make the women unattractive to neighboring tribes who might otherwise want to kidnap their super-hot women.

Although this practice has been around for hundreds of years, it’s very quickly losing popularity. Not many women who were born in the eighties and beyond have chosen to get nose plugs, so as the older women of the tribe pass away, so will the tradition.

Scarification

Scarification, or the practice of making permanent scars for aesthetic reasons, is traditional in many parts of Africa. Although Westerners might balk at the thought, many tribes in Northeast Africa see being marked as a rite of passage. Scars can denote age, social status, wealth, or increase a person’s sexual attraction. (Really, are fake boobs that much less of a body modification?) Most scarification is made in repeating, geometric patterns by cutting the skin, and then rubbing ash or acidic juice into the wound to assist in creating a lasting scar. Marks on the face, back, belly, legs (pretty much anywhere) are common.

The lip-plate sporting Mursi tribe also liberally practices scarification, and for this practice both men and women are invited to join in the fun.

Nuer people in Sudan are famous for their geometric facial scarification. They receive scars as a mark of adulthood in the tribe. It is believed if they can sustain this process, they are ready to be respected as grown ups. Different subsets of the Nuer tribe make their own unique markings; certain subsets draw six lines across young men’s foreheads, while others utilize geometric designs to make their mark.

Foot Binding

The ecstacy experienced by Chinese men upon seeing or fondling a lotus foot was the equivalent of that experienced by Western men  upon seeing or fondling a female breast.The Chinese also believed however that foot binding had a special bonus, namely it caused layer after layer of folds to develop in the vagina, resulting in a supernatural exaltation during intercourse. The inability to walk also supposedly caused women's thighs to become sensually heavier and caused the genital region to tighten.

this was a symbol of HIGH STATUS, since a family always wanted their daughters feet to be as small as possible, but had to weigh this against practicality, since the economic well being of the family may be dependent upon her ability to work.

Manufactured Bodies

• Cosmetic Surgery in the West
• breast enhancement, concealment and reduction
• sexual organs enhanced by both sexes (labia size decreased and penis size increased)
• collectively express conformity to an ideal body type

• Cosmetic Adornment in the West
• tanning
• nail salons
• hair salons
• full body waxing

Tanned Body

• two competing frames for interpretation
• the medical frame
• sees the medical dangers of tanning in relation to skin cancers
• the seduction frame
• sees the value of tanning as symbolic capitol for the sexualized body (METAPHORICAL EXCHANGE VALUE OF A TANNED BODY)
• tanning as healthy, fit and sexy
• only the tanned WHITE body matters
• gendered, but men can tan if they are
• metrosexual and concerned with their looks and grooming
• gym rats and concerned with how their muscles look
• Frames inform one another but show from a symbolic interactioninst perspective how one's body is viewed from the perspective of how others view it when it is displayed.
• features & factors
• pre-tanning for display on special occasions
• pre-tnning because it makes you feel skinny (female) or shows off your muscles (male)
• body is constantly changed through technological advances which blur the line between "natural" and "fake"
• natural is still better, but not always desired

EXTREME BODIES & EXTREME CULTURE

• a particular set of practices, ideas, images and commodities that surfaced in the last decades of the twentieth century that revolved around the ideas of physical engagement, competition and rick (phenomenological approach to analysis)
• extreme bodies engage in practices and regimes that push beyond the mundane and acceptable. Extreme bodies are the product of excessive physical modification, transformation, or activity, and are also aware of , and accept the physical risks that come with radical carnal engagement. (experience in the body)
• cultural context
• generation x: grappling with an uncertain future
• extreme sports-X games
• about an embodied experience that involves an intense engagement of the senses that is beyond the ordinary
• heightened level of physical engagement in the world.
• proposes that the body and the mind must be awakened to achieve a type of embodied metaphysical nirvana
• lust for life is implied
• the body is an entity which is a project. We are responsible for the shaping of this project through various embodied experiences. (no pain, no gain)
• site for reinvention, renovation and modification
• Not all bodies are alike or have the same capacity for experimentation (the body is a biological, social, psychological and symbolic entity)
• race
• gender
• disability
• physical characteristics
• age
• health
• Bodies are constantly expected to be upgraded
• especially for women
• New views of the body are influenced by
• interiorized body
• CSI
• spectacularized body (before and after)
• the swan
• extreme makeover
• biggest loser
• I want a famous face

The Body in Consumer Culture

Consumer Culture

• oriented toward self indulgence
• Comodification is a result of modernization

Visual Appearance and Imagery

• "the look" (Featherstone)
• packaged images for wide consumption (through media)
• what are these? For men? For Women?
• underline the importance of visual appearance
• create images which highlight who we are and WHO WE CAN BECOME
• premium on images of YOUTH (greater value to youthful bodies)
• leads to many techniques of BODY MAINTENANCE
• pursuit of outer appearance rather than health as part of the aging process
• imperative on health and regulation of RISKY ACTIVITIES by individuals (through discipline)
• smoking
• sugar
• large soda bans
• etc.

How is this "sold" to us?

• Instrumental body maintenance (Featherstone again)
• exercise and dietary control (to look good)
• accompanied by the pursuit of pleasure (Calculated hedonism) 
• excess an indulgence in consumption is countered through exercise and dietary control
• men for example will purchase this through supplements and gym exercise
• "Heathism" and body maintenance
• responsibility for ones body in response to health messages about disease prevention
• the body is a resource that can be preserved through vigilence
• cosmetic side effects: -people need to look good and feel good (inner state is conflated with outward appearance)
• prejudice against bodies that do not fit "the look" (which is sold over and over since it is almost impossible to achieve without consumption-clothing, plastic surgery, activities, etc.)
• appearance signifies inner discipline and invites moral evaluation
• getting "in shape"
•  Transvaluation: the body is an unfinished product which seeks modification
• Bourdieu: says the body has SOCIAL VALUE and social class in particular
• material context in which bodies are located dictates shape and size
• bodily gestures and conduct reveal information about the social location in which a body develops- deeply ingrained gestures (habitus)
• tastes and preferences people have for one product rather than another are rooted in consumer culture rather than being individual choices (choices distinguish one group from another)

The Body as Capitol

• Body as Social Capital: the activities, relationships and processes that allow people access to prized material and social goods and services (body behaviors that have value)
• Body as Cultural Capital: resources or repertoires of knowledge or taste that people use to build value and social status in contexts that are especially meaningful to them (body beliefs that have value)
• these processes and types of capital are particularly acute in relation to those who make a living displaying and performing their bodies (fitness gurus, models, professional athletes)
• people make investments in their bodies to be successful-and transform their bodies into a product that has certain exchange value-must CONSUME to do this
• workouts
• plastic surgery
• dietary controls
• interventions and modifications
• "gender capital" as a form of social capital

GENDER CAPITAL

• masculinity, identity and embodiment
• shaped by homosexual norms and aesthetics (Queer eye)
• muscular mesomorph as a response to women gaining power in the workforce, etc since the 50's
• sexualized for the male gaze in media as women have been for quite some time the objects of female gaze for consumer culture

• discipline and docility
• personal discipline is important in the west as a marker of correct body image
• the beauty myth and male gaze
• de beauvoir (the second sex)
• female body is one that invites transformation. women have been asked historically to transform their bodies in different ways at different times
• no matter the period, women are encouraged to be BEAUTIFUL (Naomi Wolf-The Beauty Myth) and men are encouraged to own beautiful women -commodity
• consequences: constant monitoring and care which takes time and saps women of their potential to succeed in other endeavors.
• beauty and women's beautiful bodies become a currency, which encourages women to compete with one another
• women use beauty for access to public life, so (social capitol) they can fail on succeed based on this
• beauty demands counter economic gains, since women in public life are REQUIRED to meet beauty norms

• VISUAL IMAGES: Advertising and The Body
•  You purchase the product, but also IDENTIFY WITH THE NARRATIVE and LIFESTYLE in which the product is embedded
• Products are given a SYMBOLIC EXCHANGE VALUE
• Changing Themes & Social Change in Advertising

• 1940s ads: Fat-shaming is rooted in skinny-shaming

  The cultural obsession over weight, physical appearance, and body-shaming is nothing new....Just different!
  
  
  
• Good grief. I know it’s been trumpeted that the image of the ideal woman has shifted in the past 70 to 80 years from appreciating a more balanced, healthily curvy body type to the more emaciated look of the current culturally “ideal” body types, but I have to say – these ads made me feel just as crappy as the ones I see in today’s magazines. They do a pretty good job of telling women that no matter how they look, they don’t look good enough.

• Let’s see here: 1940's If you want to be popular, you can’t risk being skinny; skinny girls can’t be glamorous; you will have zero sex appeal if you’re a “beanpole”; men won’t look at you if you’re skinny; and those who are “naturally skinny” (why is that in quotes? Did they not think being naturally skinny was a real thing? And is the use of the word “flesh” creeping out anyone else?) need to pack on some pounds pronto…hmm.

• To be considered appealing, interesting and attractive, you have to change something about yourself since your natural state is repellant – doesn’t mean that they are all that different from today’s messages.

• The primary difference,may be that the ads of the past seem to focus more on the women finding a mate (and the terror that accompanies the prospect of not finding a mate), while the ads of today focus more on women being intensely sexually appealing to every person who gazes upon them.

• It is still a heavily gendered issue – there simply aren’t as many advertisements suggesting men would be more attractive if they made specific changes to their appearance and body weight as there are geared towards women.

•  

• (Wolf) emancipation of women and the mass production of the beauty myth through advertising go hand in hand
• women's magazines as the vehicle for selling this lifestyle
•  advertising supported these trends and reflected and reinforced the post-war swing toward domesticity

TRANSFORMATION OF "BEAUTY"

Society’s interpretation of beauty has significantly changed over time and will always continue to change. 

Women are not coming up with these beauty and style decisions on their own, however. The media and advertising plays a huge role in influencing what women view as “beautiful”. Flooding women’s brains with the tan, tall, slender bodies of modern models is a tactic the media uses to keep society up with the times. If a certain image is repeated enough through television, printed ads, movies, commercials, billboards, etc., society will accept this image as the norm and copy it (Alice, 2010). In conclusion, as society transforms and changes over time, our image of beauty will subsequently continue to change as well. 

---

1950's Woman was fine - she did everything well dressed and in the service of her household

Themes: 
Getting and keeping a man
pursuing a happy family
becoming beautiful
self-help
cooking tips
patterns for sewing your own clothing
crafts



• FERGUSON'S "Cult of Femininity"



• 
   
• 1960's Cult of Femininity
  




• lasted well into the 1980s
• sees women as SEXUALIZED
• virginia slims (youv'e come a long way baby)
• Carlie (perfume) Tomboy
• 
  

Civilizing the Body Continued...Birth and Death

Social Constructions of Birth and Death (interesting article linked here)

Laboring Now: Rothman's Comment on "Laboring On"

• the FETUS is real...it is the patient
• ultrasound: gets through the maternal barrier and looks directly at the fetus trapped there
• attachment moment: the baby on the screen is thought tio be realer than the baby within?
• sexing with ultrasound
• the pregnant woman has become an abstraction
• Before ultrasound there were PREGNANCIES which resulted in BABIES, not FETUSES
• technicians "babycize" the images on the screen to give the fetus personhood

• PRENATAL CARE
• medicine emphasizes the disease-like nature of pregnancy
• riskiness=justifies medical management
• fetal parasite-disease-like state  (focus)
• maintain the normalcy of the mother throughout the stress of the pregnancy
• morning sickness
• weight gain
• fatigue

• Prenatal care is still only a SCREENING PROGRAM. (sold as health regimen)
• screen for pathologies most of which they can do absolutely nothing about

• midwifery: pregnancy is normal and healthy-psychological and physical growth and development
• same symptoms seen as indicating health of the mother

• Medical conceptions of labor
• FALSE LABOR (does not result in dilation)
• labor time is determined by doctors as is admission to hospital
• STAGES OF LABOR
• latent
• active
• time to push
• birth phase

• Medical gaze: Woman's pregnant boy is objectified as a vessel for the fetus.
• may be poked and prodded at will
• may be kept alive to host a fetus
• may be forced to birth a baby in certain ways less they be held in violation of laws
• Midwives were taken out of authority by the medical establishment and capitalist medical system 

AVERAGE COSTS BY STATE

• C-SECTIONS, INDUCEMENT and NATURAL BIRTH  (Giving Birth or Being DeliverED)
• Births — Method of Delivery (Data are for the U.S.)

• Number of vaginal deliveries: 2,650,744
• Number of Cesarean deliveries: 1,296,070
• Percent of all deliveries by Cesarean: 32.8%

• Routine inductions at 41 weeks (Pitocin)
•  makes likelihood of C-Section twice as high
• The problem with augmentation is that it produces an abnormal labor. Synthetic oxytocin can interfere with the delicate orchestration of the mother’s natural hormones during birth, and according to some research, with the baby’s brain and hormones as well.
  It’s crucial to understand that the effect of synthetic oxytocin is not the same as that of natural oxytocin produced by a laboring woman.
  
  • The uterine contractions produced by synthetic oxytocin (Pitocin) are different than the contractions which are stimulated by natural oxytocin – probably because Pitocin is administered continuously via IV whereas natural oxytocin is released in pulses.
  • Pitocin-induced contractions will be longer, more forceful and much closer together than a woman’s natural contractions. This can cause significant stress to the baby, because there’s not enough time to recover from the reduced blood flow that happens when the placenta is compressed with each contraction. The net effect of this is to deprive the baby of necessary supplies of blood and oxygen, which can in turn lead to abnormal fetal heart rate patterns and fetal distress.

Readings on the Racial Body

The Black Male Body: Violence and Homophobia

• Rodney King and the justification of a beating
• see black male body as the potential for violence
• see black male body as the potential for rape
• justifies beating by the police.
• black male body is never helpless or innocent. It is always a threat

Anthropometry: Measuring Heads and Racist Perspectives

• The human body can be measured in a thousand ways. Any investigator convinced beforehand of the inferiority of a group can select a small set of physical measures to prove this. 
• Assumption: The races can be RANKED in a linear scale of mental worth. It did not occur to courier, Broca and others that human variation might be random, rather than linear and hierarchical.
• Hottentot Venus and other Living Anthropologies: Ape-like
• she had a way of pouting her lips exactly like what we would have observed in the Orang-utang. Her movements had something abrupt and fantastical about them, reminding one of those of the ape. Her lips were monstrously large. Her ear was like that of many apes, being small, the tragus weak, the external border almost obliterated behind. These are animal characters. I have never seen a human head more like that an ape than that of this woman." (Georges Couvier 1878)
• Broca's Studies of Racial Body
• Measuring forearm bones
• long forearms seen as apelike, so used as a way to rank races with longer forearms as more inferior and place them on a scale from Ape to Civilized European
• did not work (whoops!)
• Measuring Brains
• a table on which races were arranged by order of their cranial capacities would not represent the degree of their superiority or inferiority, because size represents only one element of the problem [of ranking races]. On such a table, Eskimos, Lapps, Malays, tartars and several other peoples of the Mongolian type would surpass the most civilized people of Europe. A lowly race may therefore have a big brain….But this does not destroy the value of small brain size as a mark of inferiority. The table shows that West African blacks have a cranial capacity about 100cc less than that of European races. To this figure we may add the following: Caffirs, Nubians, Tasmanians, Hottentots, Australians. These examples are sufficient to prove that if the volume of the brain does not play a decisive role in the intellectual ranking of races, it nevertheless has a very real importance. (Broca 1873).
• We surmount the problem easily by choosing, for our comparison of brains, races whose intellectual inequalities are completely clear. Thus the superiority of Europeans compared to African Negroes, American Indians, Hottentots, Australians and the Negroes of Oceania, is sufficiently certain to serve as a point of departure for the comparison of brains. (Broca 1878).
• Beliefs about race and the hierarchy of human beings dictates the the conclusion of evidence of race gathered from measurements and imaginings of the human body.
• WOMAN'S BRAINS & BRAINS OF LOWER CLASS
• Broca viewed himself as a liberal and did not condemn groups to permanent inferiority based on their current status. 
• women's brains had degenerated through time due to a socially enforced under usage. They might increase again under different social conditions. 
• Primitive races had not been sufficiently challenged
• European brains grew steadily with the march of civilization. 
• social class is limiting and has led to the lack of brain growth among some Europeans. This has skewed the sample making European brains look smaller than they are.

Of What Importance is Skin Color?

The Racial Nose

• The Camper Index: Camper's facial angle was used to determine a "beautiful face" which meant one that was very different from other primates like apes. 
• too flat or too large noses like those of Blacks and Jews respectively, were signs of their inferiority
• bodies portrayed in art during the 19th century mimicked this angle or even exaggerated it to express the ideal of beauty of the face
• Black Nose is the key to understanding facial deformity in the Enlightenment= facial asthetics is the asthetics of race
•  Buffon, Kant & Montesqieu: All see the black nose as a result of their adaptation to a tropical environment, the result of mother's smashing children's faces at birth, and leprosy or yaws - powerfully associated in the European fantasy with the tropics and interchangeable with the idea of SYPHILIS (hence the syphilitic nose).
• too flat.-lazy, inactive slow...and other moral qualities

• Jewish Nose: closer to African than European, so equally ugly.Also had short, black curly hair and darker skin.
• "their rapid speech and brusk and precipitous actions also come from this source. i believe that jews have more gall than other people. (Lavatar 1751).
• black Orientals
• "the African character of the jew , his muzzle-shaped mouth and face removing him from certain other races (Knox 1791).
• rhinoplasty in the 19th century allowed jews to pass for white 

• Irish Noses: Pug Noses- innovated surgeries by Roe cured the racial nose and allowed the Irish to pass for anglo-saxons. without scars!
•  pug nose defined Irish as black, curing it allowed moral growth as well
•  5 categories of noses distinguished by Roe-all associated with moral qualities
• roman-strength
• greek-refinement
• jewish-commercialism, greed
• pug or snub- weakness, lack of development (Irish)
• celestial-inquisitiveness

• Oriental noses & eyes: un-erotic in American culture
• japanese were particularly concerned with this and developed ideals which looked to Anglo features
• Idealized the ethnic Ainu of northern Haikkaido for their eye lids
• represented themselves in these idealized versions in art
• eyelids have negative impact on sight
• feminizing features, so only men underwent or sought to transform themselves through surgery.=banish negative JIBYO
• bad for women" small eyes, flat nose, big face+ now it is about HEALTH (argument) rather than astheitics

• Disappearing Nose
• fear of racial mixing

MIDTERM EXAM: Due Friday, 3/7 (or after break)

Midterm Exam

Imagining The Body

Spring 2014

Due March 7 (or after break) J

Please Answer The Following Questions using the material we have covered in the readings and in class discussion. Remember that we have not had time (snow…snow…etc.) to go over ALL the material in class. You will impress me by your ability to weave the material from the readings into your answers. Since I am late at getting this out to you, you may take the break if you wish to complete this assignment:

(1) The Body/Mind Connection: How does Cartesian Dualism define the relationship between mind and body? How has this affected the way that we see (have seen) and give the body meaning over time?

(2) Theory at the Foundations of Analysis: Compare and Contrast the theories of Phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty) and Symbolic Interactionism (Goffman) as it pertains to the analysis of the body? Give an example of the analysis of the body from each perspective.

(3) Social Norms & the Body: The Disabled Body carries a stigma (Goffman). Why is the “face” so important as a marker of normality and as a manager of the disabled body in American culture? Consider “Face Work” -Foucault, Hochschild, Goffman- and Grealy’s memoir in your discussion.

(4) Gender, Sex & the Body: Gender is a bodily performance of social norms attached to sexual identity and roles. How do the non-normative gender performances we have read about (tomboys, drag queens and kings, lesbians, transgendered) reveal the “enacted” nature of this performance? Use your readings!!!!!

(5) The Civilized Body & Taboo: Culture makes distinctions between things that are “pure” and things that are “dirty” (Douglas). How are our notions of contamination expressed in learned “body techniques” (Mauss)- body management and body taboos? (consider orifices-sex, elimination, etc.)