ANTH 227 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Reductionism, Malignancy
Learning objectives
1. ‘eflect on childrens own notions of health, illness and the body in their complexities and
subtleties and how others (parents, doctors) represent childrens bodies
2. Consider the active role children play in their own health/illness processes and how they
make sense of their bodies in their everyday lives with cancer and other life-threatening
conditions
3. Understand the paradox of damaging today to benefit in the future (transgender corporal
boundaries) in which children, families and professionals are embedded
What happens when we un-bracket the body?
● We lack a precise vocabulary with which to deal with body-mind-society interactions
and so are left suspended in hyphens, testifying to the disconnectedness of our thoughts
(Scheper-Hughes and Lock: 10)
Basic Assumptions of Anthropology of the Body
1. We cannot take the body for granted as self-evident anymore (critique to the body
proper or universalizing ideas of the body)
2. We need to put the body at the center of our analyses and place it within a particular
context (both theoretical and ethnographic)
3. We must think about and form the body beyond the central dichotomies of
nature/culture, mind/body, subject/object, self/other
Williams & Bendelow : ‘ecalcitrant Bodies?
● Between two extremes
○ Caught between phenomenological studies of lived experience, and
constructionist accounts which prioritize issues of social representation, the
question of how we bring the material body back into sociological discourse
without, on the one hand, falling to biological reductionism, or, on the other
hand, dissolving the body into an insubstantial set of symbolic meanings or
intertextual effects, becomes a central concern (p. 52)
Childrens Bodies (but anybody)
● Biological (maturation) AND socio-cultural processes (socialization, rationalization and
individualization)
● Body often take-for-granted (order) → illness, pain, disability,
death (dis-order) = recalcitrant bodies
● ‘odily order → corporeal transgression (as with cancer)
● Recalcitrant bodies → uncontained, will of its own
● ’imilarly to my research It is not your fault, it is not your lack of will
[that you are not getting better], it is your blood, your body the one to blame (Doctor
telling a child)
● As a primordial, recalcitrant body that despite our best efforts, can go horribly wrong,
always threatening to overspill the boundaries which currently seek to contain it
(p.53)
● How we can learn to live with this recalcitrant body, especially when looking at children
as active actors and negotiators of their own lives
● Also, how can we study childrens experiences of cancer treatments from their bodies
“sing drawings to elucidate childrens perspectives on health, illness and dying
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
We lack a precise vocabulary with which to deal with body-mind-society interactions and so are left suspended in hyphens, testifying to the disconnectedness of our thoughts (scheper-hughes and lock: 10) Biological (maturation) and socio-cultural processes (socialization, rationalization and individualization) Body often take-for-granted (order) illness, pain, disability, death (dis-order) = (cid:549)recalcitrant(cid:550) bodies. Odily order corporeal transgression (as with cancer) (cid:553)recalcitrant(cid:554) bodies uncontained, (cid:553)will of its own(cid:554) "imilarly to my research (cid:312)it is not your fault, it is not your lack of will. [that you are not getting better], it is your blood, your body the one to blame(cid:313) (doctor telling a child) As a (cid:309)primordial(cid:310), (cid:309)recalcitrant(cid:310) body that (cid:312)despite our best efforts, can go horribly wrong, always threatening to (cid:309)overspill(cid:310) the boundaries which currently seek to (cid:309)contain it(cid:310)(cid:313) (p. 53) How we can learn to live with this (cid:309)recalcitrant(cid:310) body, especially when looking at children as active actors and negotiators of their own lives.
