296 Pages
    by Routledge

    296 Pages
    by Routledge

    Body/State brings together original essays addressing various aspects of the evolving interaction between bodies and states. While each essay has different empirical and/or theoretical focus, authors consider a number of overlapping themes to appreciate the state's engagement with, and concern about, bodies. Divided into five parts, the first part, 'Bodies Modified and Divided' considers how the production, regulation, policing and maintenance of borders (physical, social, sexual, political, religious, etc.) are used to enable or constrain the physical (re)shaping of the body. Part two, 'Capital Bodies', extends the state's concern with the flows of bodies that make up the nation to consider how they are enrolled in the complex structures of capitalist exchange that form the basis for maintaining and contesting a set of relationships between states and markets. Part three, 'Deviance and Resistance', examines both how states seek to discipline ’non-normal’ bodies and appreciates the capacity of changes in the socio-cultural meaning and nature of bodies to resist and/or escape states. Part four, ’Sovereignty and Surveillance’, develops themes of deviancy and resistance by considering the impact of new technologies both on the intimate regulatory reach of states into and across bodies and on the nature of embodiment itself. Finally, Part five, ’The Body Virtual’, examines the impact of new technologies and online spaces both on the intimate regulatory reach of states into and across bodies and on the nature of embodiment itself. A varied collection of essays that address important and complex topics in a readable and creative way.

    Biography

    Angus Cameron, University of Leicester, UK; Jen Dickinson, University of Leicester, UK and Nicola Smith University of Birmingham, UK.

    ’We need much more work on embodied political economy to understand power in its deepest senses. The breadth of this volume is an excellent indication of how rich this terrain is for critical understanding towards a better world.’ Gillian Youngs, University of Brighton, UK ’Body/State offers an innovative take on how relationships between money and politics, representation and embodiment, visibility and political participation increasingly detour through flesh and blood, leaving our bodies at once ruled and unruly sites for political transformation.’ Kath Weston, University of Virginia, USA