ABOUT THIS BOOKLooks at the ways social change is expressed through debates over identities and bodies.
In bodies and selves, we can see politics, economics, and culture play out, and the tensions and crises of society made visible. The women's movement, lobbies for the elderly, pro-choice and pro-life movements, AIDS research and education, pedophilia and repressed memory, global sports spectacles, organ donor networks, campaigns for safe sex, chastity, or preventive medicine--all are aspects of the contemporary politics of bodies and identities touched on in this book. Three broad themes run through the collection: how the body is constructed in various ways for different purposes, how the electronic media and its uses shape selves and sensualities and contribute to civic discourse, and how global capitalism acts as a direct force in these processes. By taking a distinctly cross-cultural and comparative approach, this volume explores more fully than ever the political, economic, institutional, and cultural settings of corporeality, identity, and representation.
Contributors: Antonella Fabri, Eva Illouz, Philip W. Jenks, Lauren Langman, Timothy W. Luke, Timothy McGettigan, Margaret J. Tally.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Theorizing the Body/Self in Global Capitalism vii
Richard Harvey Brown
1 The Illness of Global Capitalism: Female Employees on
"Sick Leave" and the Social Meaning of Pain 1
Margaret J. Tally
2 The Problematics of Democratic Action within Disciplinary
Liberalism: The Norplant Case and the Postmodern Body 17
Philip W. Jenks
3 Genocide or Assimilation: Discourses of Women's Bodies,
Health, and Nation in Guatemala 42
Antonella Fabri
4 The Ludic Body: Ritual, Desire, and Cultural Identity in the
American Super Bowl and the Carnival of Rio 64
Lauren Langman
5 From Body Politics to Body Shops: Power, Subjectivity, and
the Body in an Era of Global Capitalism 87
Timothy W Luke
6 Reinventing the Liberal Self: Talk Shows as Moral Discourse 109
Eva Illouz
7 Reflections in an Unblinking Eye: Negotiating the
Representation of Identities in the Production of a Documentary 147
Timothy McGettigan
8 From Subject to Citizen to Consumer: Embodiment and the
Mediation of Hegemony 167
Lauren Langman
9 Narration and Postmodern Mediations of Western Selfhood 189
Richard Harvey Brown
Contributors 227
Index 229