Beyond the Body Proper by Margaret Lock

Beyond the Body Proper by Margaret Lock

Over the past several decades, scholars in both the social sciences and humanities have moved beyond the idea that there is a “body proper”: a singular, discrete biological organism with an individual psyche. They have begun to perceive embodiment as dynamic rather than static, as experiences that vary over time and across the world as they are shaped by discourses, institutions, practices, technologies, and ideologies. What has emerged is a multiplicity of bodies, inviting a great many disciplinary points of view and modes of interpretation. The forty-seven readings presented in this volume range from classic works of social theory, history, and ethnography to more recent investigations into historical and contemporary modes of embodiment.Beyond the Body Proper includes nine sections conceptually organized around themes such as everyday life, sex and gender, and science. Each section is preceded by interpretive commentary by the volume’s editors. Within the collection are articles and book excerpts focused on bodies using tools and participating in rituals, on bodies walking and eating, and on the female circumcision controversy, as well as pieces on medical classifications, spirit possession, the commodification of body parts, in vitro fertilization, and an artist/anatomist’s “plastination” of cadavers for display. Materialist, phenomenological, and feminist perspectives on embodiment appear along with writings on interpretations of pain and the changing meanings of sexual intercourse. Essays on these topics and many others challenge Eurocentric assumptions about the body as they speak to each other and to the most influential contemporary trends in the human sciences. With selections by: Henry Abelove, Walter Benjamin, Janice Boddy, John Boswell, Judith Butler, Caroline Walker Bynum, Stuart Cosgrove, Michel de Certeau, Gilles Deleuze, Alice Domurat Dreger, Barbara Duden, Friedrich Engels, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Judith Farquhar, Marcel Granet, Felix Guattari, Ian Hacking, Robert Hertz, Patricia Leyland Kaufert, Arthur Kleinman, Shigehisa Kuriyama, Jean Langford, Bruno Latour, Margaret Lock, Emily Martin, Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nancy K. Miller, Lisa Jean Moore, John D. O’Neil, Aihwa Ong, Mariella Pandolfi, Susan Pedersen, Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Rayna Rapp, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Kristofer Schipper, Matthew Schmidt, Peter Stallybrass, Michael Taussig, Charis Thompson, E.P. Thompson, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Victor Turner, Terence Turner, Jose van Dijck, Keith Wailoo, Brad Weiss, Allon White

“This discerning collection offers a highly creative reading of the development of modern social thought about bodies as means of life in the worldBeyond the Body Proper will be an invaluable classroom companion across a wide range of disciplines in the human sciences.”—Jean Comaroff, Bernard E. and Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago
“[E]xpansive and provocative. . . . This volume offers an indispensable resource for scholars and an excellent reader for courses on medical anthropology, anthropology of the body, and social theory.” -- Sarah Pinto * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *

Margaret Lock is Professor of Anthropology and the Marjorie Bronfman Professor in Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University. Her many books include Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death and Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America.

Judith Farquhar is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China, also published by Duke University Press, and Knowing Practice: The Clinical Encounter of Chinese Medicine.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780822338451
ISBN 10	0822338459
Title	Beyond the Body Proper
Author	Margaret Lock
Series	Body Commodity Text
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Duke University Press
Year published	2007-04-13
Number of pages	704
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable