Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory

ISBN-13: 9780631225850 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 314 str.

Helen Thomas; Jamilah Ahmed

Opis

Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory is a unique collection that integrates two increasingly key areas of social and cultural research: the body and ethnography.

• Breaks new ground in an area of study that continues to be a central theme of debate and research across the humanities and social sciences
• Draws on ethnography as a useful means of exploring our everyday social and cultural environments
• Constitutes an important step in developing two key areas of study, the body and ethnography, and the relationship between them
• Brings together an international and multi-disciplinary team of scholars

Recenzje

"An interdisciplinary text that offers cutting–edge theoretical and methodological means for analyzing, understanding, and imagining how the body materializes in cultural historical context and practice." Heidi Nast, DePaul University

"Bringing together some of the most challenging contemporary research, this theoretical, empirical, experimental work presents a unique interdisciplinary understanding of how the body speaks, moves and interacts. It is fascinating, making visible some of the unknown and unseen parts and wholes of the body by exploring the materiality of physicality." Beverley Skeggs, University of Manchester

Spis treści

Acknowledgements.

Notes on Contributors.

Introduction.

Part I: Ethnography:.

1. Inscriptions of Love: Les Back (Goldsmiths College).

2. From Catwalk to Catalogue: Male Fashion Models, Masculinity and Identity: Joan Entwistle (University of Essex).

3. Reading Racialized Bodies: Learning to See Difference: Suki Ali (Goldsmiths College).

4. Narratives of Embodiment: Body, Aging and Career in Royal Ballet Dancers: Steven P. Wainwright and Bryan S. Turner (King s College; University of Cambridge).

Part II: Ethnography and Theory:.

5. Being a Body in a Cultural Way: Understanding the Cultural in the Embodiment of Dance: Sally Ann Allen Ness (University of California, Riverside).

6. Bare Life: Nigel Thrift (University of Bristol).

7. Lolo s Breasts, Cyborgism and a Wooden Christ: Simon Shepherd (Central School).

8. Talking Back to Neuro–reductionism: Emily Martin (New York University).

Part III: Theory:.

9. Eating for a Living: A Rhizo–ethology of Bodies: Elspeth Probyn (University of Sydney).

10. Health and the Holy in the Afro Brazilian Candomblé: Thomas Csordas (Case Western Reserve University).

11. Here Comes the Sun: Shedding Light on the Cultural Body: Simon Carter and Mike Michael (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Goldsmiths College).

12. Reaching the Body: Future Directions: Jamilah Ahmed.

Index

O autorze

Helen Thomas is Professor of Sociology of Dance and Culture at Goldsmiths College. Her publications include Dance, Modernity and Culture: Explorations in the Sociology of Dance (1995), Dance and the City (editor, 1997), and The Body, Dance and Cultural Theory (2003).

Jamilah Ahmed gained her PhD from Goldsmiths College. She is currently an editor at Sage Publications.

Blurb

Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory is a unique collection that integrates two increasingly key areas of social and cultural research: the body and ethnography. The body continues to be a central theme of debate and research across the humanities and social sciences and in subjects such as gender, race, identity, and science and technology. However, existing literature on the body has taken a largely theoretical direction. Cultural Bodies breaks new ground by refusing to neglect the experiential and the empirical.

Bringing together an international and multidisciplinary team of scholars, Cultural Bodies draws on ethnography as a useful means of exploring our everyday social and cultural environments and, in doing so, demonstrates the constant need for researchers and their research to be made accountable to readers. In this way, ethnography reveals as much about the frameworks of social research as it does about the societies that they move in and out of. By focusing on the body and ethnography, Cultural Bodies constitutes an important step in developing these two key areas of study and the relationship between them.