Full Description
Our bodies reveal the values, priorities, anxieties, and material realities of the society in which we are situated, and in contemporary consumer societies, human bodies both reflect the defining characteristics of our time and carry the markers of social hierarchies based on categories such as gender, race, and class.
Consuming Bodies: Body Commodification and Embodiment in Late Capitalist Societies explores the ways our bodies are increasingly commodified, from before birth to after death, through both long-standing forms of commodification (captive labor, sex work, and spectator sports) and newer forms (commercial surrogacy, the thriving trade in human biomaterials, female genital "rejuvenation" surgery, global romance tourism, and green burial practices, among others). As this diverse range of topics demonstrates, body commodification reaches increasingly into every realm of our lives, from our most intimate experiences to encounters with pop culture, the "beauty" industries, the medical-industrial complex, and the state.
This volume takes a critical perspective on body commodification and embodiment both in the US and across the globe, making an important contribution to social scientific understandings of the body, both by going beyond the Eurocentric approach that typifies much of the extant scholarly literature, and by addressing newly emerging practices that are growing out of techno-scientific and social changes.
Contents
Contributors
Part I Introduction
1. Introduction: Body Commodification and Embodiment in Late Capitalist Societies
Sarah Whetstone and Jackie Hogan
2. Thinking Bodies: A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Bodies and Embodiment
Jackie Hogan
Part II Bodies and the Commodification of Sex, Love, and Desire
3. Consuming Racialized Labor: Sex Tourists, Romance Tourists, and Retirement Migrants in the Philippines
Julia Meszaros and Maria Cecilia Hwang
4. "Blackfishing": Hypersexualization, Racial Parody, and the Fetishization of the Black Femme Body
Maxine K. Wright
5. "Love Addiction" and the Paradox of "Healthy" Love
Tayler Nelson
6. Craving Bigger Bodies: Size, Sexuality, and Becoming Larger
Tony E. Adams
Part III Pleasure, Play, and Authenticity in Bodily Expressions
7. Sensory Authenticity: Embodying and Commodifying "the Other"
Nicholas Bascuñan-Wiley
8. Pretty, Powerful, and Playful: Self-commodification and "Postfeminist Sensibility" among Women Action Sports Athletes
Charli Kerns
9. Paying to Perform: Self-commodification and Stigma Management Strategies in Contemporary Burlesque
Nicole B. Oehmen and Kathryn Rittenhour
10. Dancing for Ourselves: Autonomy, Community, and Embodied Resistance in Recreational Pole Dancing
Sarah Whetstone
Part IV Disciplining Bodies: Commodification and Social Control
11. Economies of Violence: Pay-to-Stay and the Value of Incarcerated Bodies
Brittany Friedman, April D. Fernandes and Gabriela M. Kirk-Werner
12. The Urbanormative Discipline of Rural Bodies and the Construction of Rural Delinquency
Jimmy Robinson and Margaux Crider Robinson
13. From "Adopt a Clitoris" to "Designer Vaginas:" Critical Reflections on Genital Surgeries and the Commodification of Female Genitalia
Fae Chubin
Part V Bio-commodification, Bio-ethics, and Biomedical Marketplaces
14. Risky Bodies: BRCA Testing, Previvors, and the Reification of Risk
Jackie Hogan
15. Neoliberal Eugenics in the Egg and Sperm Donation Marketplace
Mia Rosario Milne
16. Organ Transplantation, Surrogacy, and the "Gift" Masquerade
Sanchita Sarkar
17. Corpses, Clients, and Commodification in the Natural Burial Marketplace
Doug Valentine
Index
