Body Modification
Body Modification involves a huge range of procedures, from tribal practices such as lengthening necks and scarification to modern piercings and tattoos, and even medical procedures such as plastic surgery and surgical implants. Reasons for body modification may be socio-cultural (especially related to subcultures such as gangs), aesthetic (because it's considered beautiful) or psychological (eg body dysmorphia or masochism). This powerpoint introduces some of the key issues, including mastectomy and breast reconstruction from a feminist perspective.
- Dave Paul Strohecker Body Modification, Gender and Self-empowerment outlines some of the theoretical issues surroundings the meaning of tattooing based on social and self-perceptions of the body.
- The Legal Services Commission outlines the SA laws governing body modification practices - Do they reflect current practices?
Tattoos in the workplace (CAFS)
In contemporary Western culture, tattoos are relatively common; however, the association of tattooing with certain subcultures can create social prejudices against the practice.
You will need to think about:
Current views on tattoos in the workplace can be found at Allbusiness [http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/workforce-management-employee/4113152-1.html], The Economist [http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21610334-body-art-growing-more-popular-though-few-employers-are-keen-ink-blots], BBC News [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28758900] cites the example of a consultant sacked because her tattoo was showing, Other stories can be found at ABCNEWs Illawarra [http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2013/04/22/3742014.htm], Queensland University of Technology [http://www.qutnews.com/2012/05/15/australians-dont-want-tattoos-at-work-survey/#.VFGqcxaMV8E], the Sydney Morning Herald [http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/beauty/tattoos-still-taboo-at-work-20120620-20mzb.html], Politician Stephen Wade's blog about victimisation by the police [http://www.stephenwade.com.au/Portfolio/Health/tabid/120/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/133/SUMMARY-OFFENCES-TATTOOING-BODY-PIERCING-AND-BODY-MODIFICATION-AMENDMENT-BILL.aspx], The Equal Opportunities Commission [http://www.eoc.sa.gov.au/eo-you/workers/work/dress-codes-workplace], Human Capital Online [http://www.hcamag.com/hr-news/enforcing-a-dress-code-what-you-need-to-know-188107.aspx], Employment Law Practical Handbook [http://ask.employmentlawhandbook.com.au/articles/unfair-dismissal/dreadlocks-tattoos-and-piercing:-managing-your-workplace-dress-code-63.html and Swaab attorneys [http://www.mondaq.com/australia/x/211352/employee+rights+labour+relations/Can+an+employer+ban+tattoos+in+the+workplace] have legal advice on this issue. The NSW Police has written a special handbook (look at page 5) on their dress code [https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/278815/Body_Art_and_Modification_Policy.pdffor employees]. Something to think about: If tattooing is a form of self expression and individuality, why do trends in tattooing follow celebrities like actors, singers and sport stars? |
Piercings and other body modifications
Many of the isssues facing people with piercings in the workplace are the same for people with tattoos, so read the links above, especially the legal information about dress codes. However, the reasons for body modification tend to be be more diverse than tattoos, so you might schoose to focus your research in this area. Some useful definitions (and an awesome image!) can be found at ABC's RN site [http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/360/taking-body-modification-to-the-extreme/5120232], and Lightspeed [http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/the-art-and-history-of-body-modification/] and this site [http://www.fragrancex.com/fragrance-information/the-history-of-body-modification-around-the-world.html] gives a good general overview with links to body modification sites (despite having no references or author!).
The Better Health Channel [http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Piercing] lists some medical issues around piercings, while Heavy Magazine [http://heavymag.com.au/special-report-the-stigma-surrounding-body-modifications/] explores the social stigma and Southern Cross Univeristy [http://scu.edu.au/schools/sass/virtualGALLERY/insideout/tribalbody.html] describes some motivations for body modification.
If you are a very good reader, you may wish to have a look at "Under the Skin, reviewed at Psychoanalysis Downunder [http://www.psychoanalysisdownunder.com.au/downunder/backissues/1115/1129/1131] and extracted here [http://www.bethspencer.com/bodymodifications.html]. Psychoanalysic uses complex theories so see Ms Carmyn about psychoanalytic theory before you start.
Piercing-specific cases include:
The Age [http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/people-with-piercings-still-facing-job-hurdles-20120308-1un89.html],].]
The Better Health Channel [http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Piercing] lists some medical issues around piercings, while Heavy Magazine [http://heavymag.com.au/special-report-the-stigma-surrounding-body-modifications/] explores the social stigma and Southern Cross Univeristy [http://scu.edu.au/schools/sass/virtualGALLERY/insideout/tribalbody.html] describes some motivations for body modification.
If you are a very good reader, you may wish to have a look at "Under the Skin, reviewed at Psychoanalysis Downunder [http://www.psychoanalysisdownunder.com.au/downunder/backissues/1115/1129/1131] and extracted here [http://www.bethspencer.com/bodymodifications.html]. Psychoanalysic uses complex theories so see Ms Carmyn about psychoanalytic theory before you start.
Piercing-specific cases include:
The Age [http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/people-with-piercings-still-facing-job-hurdles-20120308-1un89.html],].]
Social meanings change over time
Things are definitely changing. However, while society may be becoming more accepting of body modifications, the degree of acceptance is determined by the position of the person in society - ie a White middle class man will find more acceptance than a working class migrant woman. "Claims of widespread acceptance are often misleading, as the acceptability of the modified body is constrained by the location of the modification and one’s social location within class and economic structures." [Authentic Bodies: Subcultural reactions to the mainstreaming of Body Modification]. Bruce Tranter and Ruby Grant A class act? Social background and body modifications in Australia examines the key social divisions around body modification in Australia today (2018). This is a must for any project on the theme of body modification, but you'll need to access it through your local or state library.
News Items (Good for IRP students just starting off)
Articles (Good for PIP students)
News Items (Good for IRP students just starting off)
- Is extreme body modification even legal? points out gaps in the law that are clearly not keeping up with current body modification practices.
- The psychology behind why people enjoy body modification lists one example of motivations along with pictures of different kinds of body modification
Articles (Good for PIP students)
- David Strohecker Towards A Pro-Social Conception Of Contemporary Tattooing: The Psychological Benefits Of Body Modification is a literature review from 2011 which looks at current trends in research about tattooing, including "coping, mastery, self‐efficacy, and narrative as part of the construction of the self. Finally, I question whether contemporary body modification practices are simply a form of privilege for Westerners, who have adopted these practices from non‐Western others."
- Josh Adams Bodies of Change: A Comparative Analysis of Media Representations of Body Modification Practices notes that media representations of plastic surgery and tattooing tend to be positive and downplay dangers while marginalising piercings as deviant and unsafe.
- Jocelyn Camacho The Tattoo: A Mark of Subversion, Deviance, or Mainstream Self-Expression? found that having a visible tattoo (in America) was almost as important as being Black as a predictor of getting arrested! What does this say about the social significance of tattoos? this is further explored in ‘Freak’? The Social Politics of Body Modification: Gender, Culture and Stigma.
- Andrew J. Perrin Body Modification and Personality: Intimately Intertwined? outlines the stereotype of body modification as evidence of mental instability and its stigmatisation in the community.
- Carol Saccaggi Imaging the body: a discourse analysis of writings by people with tattoos points out the fact that their are specific hierarchies in the tattooing subculture, with the tattoo artist having the most power and untattooed people having virtually no voice at all.
Theorists
Foucault is one of the most important theorists when it comes to understanding how power works in our society, especially how individuals take on a self-censoring role to make sure they confirm to social expectations. Power and Bodily Practice applies these theories to the diet and fitness industries, the production of femininity and the field of obstetrics. You will be able to extrapolate these ideas to discuss what you find out about body modification practices in your primary research.
Australian philosopher, Liz Grosz, wrote one of the most influential postmodern books about gendered embodiement (it's not about body modification but you might want to use her theories to talk about your topic). Here is a review of her book Volatile Bodies. Ms Carmyn has a copy at home that you can borrow if you want to read further.
"In Phenomenology of Perception (1962) Maurice Merleau-Ponty writes that the "body is to be compared, not to a physical object, but rather to a work of art... it is a focal point of living meanings..." (p. 150-151). By assimilating the body to a work of art, Merleau-Ponty argues that our understanding of the body should not be relegated merely to the realm of biology and the physical. The body is also a powerful aesthetic form imbued with personal and cultural meanings. As such, the body becomes a visual artifact that reflects human aesthetic impulses, as well as the symbolic and coded system through which we present these impulses to the world. As Freud (1931) tells us "there can be no doubt that art did not begin as art for art's sake. It worked originally in the service of impulses" (p. 97). The human body is clearly the oldest and most persistent medium through which we express these aesthetic impulses." [Explorations of Visual Culture: Written on the Body]
Theoretical approaches
Enid Schildkraout Inscribing the body reviews recent literature in anthropology and related disciplines pertaining to the cultural construction of the inscribed body.
Joshua R. Adams Transient Bodies; Pliable Flesh is a PhD thesis that contrasts social transgressive (tattooing, piercing) and socially sanctioned (plastic surgery) body modifications using media analysis and interviews. Central to the tehorising is "Shilling’s (1993) notion of the “body project” which suggests that within capitalist, consumer society, the body has become an object to be worked at as a means of accomplishing individual identity".
Extreme Deviance, by Erich Goode and D Angus Val, is a collection of essays that look at the social construction of body modification. I'm trying to get a copy for the library but meanwhile you can access the intro and first two articles on Googlebooks.
Derek Roberts Modified People: Indicators of a Body Modification Subculture in a Post-Subculture world uses body modification as evidence that it is still important to consider the role of subcultures in Anthropological methodologies, noting class and age issues that don't trranslate to the wider community.
Feminist viewpoints
In Fitting In: Young British Women’s Reported Experiences of Body Modification, Abigail Tazzyman states that "Unlike third-wave feminist discourse, which frequently refers to body modification in terms of freedom and choice... Women do not engage in body modification just because they want to, nor are their decisions made in a situation of free choice. Choice and agency were never cited by any of my participants as a key motive for their practices". , but Professor Laurie E Hicks reminds us that "some women intentionally design their bodies not as a means of submission, but as a vehicle for self empowerment" [Explorations of Visual Culture: Written on the Body]
Shiela Jefferies is an "essentialist" so her views are very controversial these days, but you might want to use her essay, ‘Body Art’ and Social Status: Cutting, Tattooing and Piercing from a Feminist Perspective, to explore or critique other theorists' viewpoints.
Much has been written about body modification as a form of self empowerment for women (Atkinson 2004; Braunberger 2001; Pitts 1999; 2003). For instance, Margot Mifflin’s Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo (1997) argues that women’s role in the tattooing coincides directly with the three waves of feminism. She draws parallels between the First Wave and tattooed women of the carnival circuit, the Second Wave and female tattoo artists of the Tattoo Renaissance (60s and 70s), and the Third Wave and the contemporary proliferation of tattooed female bodies (many with widely different political agendas). [Body Modification, Gender and Self-empowerment] These theorists may be worth following up.
"The metaphor of inscription on the body and the constitution of the body through those inscriptions have been widely used in recent attempts to theorize the body. Michel Foucault calls the body the ‘inscribed surface of events’ (Foucault, 1984: 83) and Elizabeth Grosz argues that the ‘female (or male) body can no longer be regarded as a fixed, concrete substance, a pre-cultural given. It has a determinate form only by being socially inscribed’ (Grosz, 1987: 2). The body becomes plastic, inscribed with gender and cultural standards. While Foucault assumes the existence of a pre-inscriptive body, many theorists reject that idea and argue that ‘there is no recourse to a body that has not always already been interpreted by cultural meanings’ (Butler, 1990: 8). The constitution of the body rests in its inscription; the body becomes the text which is written upon it and from which it is indistinguishable".[Metaphors of Inscription:Discipline, Plasticity and the Rhetoric of Choice]
GLTBIQA+ Perspectives
The skin we live in is a review of several books on tattooing and compares "two divergent approaches to sexual citizenship: first, the rights-based claims of the gay and lesbian movement that argue for inclusion in definitions of citizenship and family; second, queer political strategies that reject heteronormative and narrow notions of sexual citizenship entirely. In favor of a queer approach to the investigation of citizenship, they argue that the national body itself is heteronormative and framed within a discourse on the family that makes citizenship for sexual dissidents unattainable. Therefore, in their examination of rights based claims, Bell and Binnie ask, is it a good strategy to fight for rights simply because they are denied? Moreover, who is to benefit from the rights that are gained?"
Age and body modification
A New Ethic of older: subjectivity, surgery and self-stylisation suggests that older recipients of cosmetic surgery are not trying to look young, but inscribing new meanisng s aopn their aging bodies.
OTHER RANDOM STUFF
Authentic Bodies: Subcultural reactions to the mainstreaming of Body Modification is a case study of how members of one online group reacted to the mainstreaming of tattoos.