Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture (Race, Gender, & Science) - Hardcover

Terry, Jennifer; Urla, Jacqueline L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253328985 ISBN 13: 9780253328984

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1995

Synopsis

"The intellectually sophisticated and rigorously supported arguments in this volume show how the deviant body has been constructed and the uses to which it has been put in western societies. Without question "Deviant Bodies" shows the value of multi-disciplinary critical approaches in unraveling the powerfully complex and problematic relationship between so-called deviant behavior and the bodies of socially marginalized groups."- Evelynn Hammonds. "Deviant Bodies" argues that bodies are knowable only through culture and history; they are not in any simple way natural, nor are they ever free of relations of power. Modern life sciences and medicien, and the popular perceptions they engender, have not merely observed and reported on bodies - they construct them through particular investigatory techniques and culturally informed research goals. A number of essays trace the construction of particular deviant bodies, including the homosexual body, the HIV-infected body, the infertile body, the deaf body, the colonized body, and the criminal body. Other chapters reveal how whole categories of peopleNwomen, Jews, Native Americans, BlacksNhave been designated fundamentally deviant not by virtue of symptoms they manifest, but because of their subordinate location in systems for distinguishing gender, ethnicity, and race. Together the essays in this volume stree that concepts of deviancy have been used to shore up notions of what is normal - often a white, heterosexual, healthy, male body, and what is not. "Deviant Bodies" reveals that the normal and healthy body is a fiction of science, and documents the subversive resistance of the deviant body. The contributors are Anne Fausto-Sterling, Carol Groneman, Lisa Handwerker, David G. Horn, Janice Irvine, Susan Jahoda, M. Susan Lindee, K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Dorothy Nelkin, Cindy Patton, Robert Proctor, Alan Swedlund, Jennifer Terry, Rachel Tolen, and Jacqueline Urla.

About this title

Review:

"... the papers in Deviant Bodies reveal an ongoing Western preoccupation with the sources of identity and human character. Times Literary Supplement "Highly recommended for cultural studies ... "The Reader's Review "It would be useful for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in the sociology of the body, the history and sociology of science and medicine, and women's studies courses, particularly those exploring the feminist critiques of science and medicine." Contemporary Sociology "... a powerful deconstruction of the scientific gaze in configuring bodily deviance as a means of legitimating the social order within multiple historical and social contexts... the many excellent selections will make for compelling reading for students of medical anthropology and the history of science." American Anthropologist

About the Author:

JENNIFER TERRY, assistant Professor of Values in Science and Technology in the Division of Comparative Studies at Ohio State University, has written articles on queer theory, women and medical surveillance, and the history of sexual science in the United States. She is at work on a book entitled Siting Homosexuality: A History of Surveillance and the Scientific Production of Deviant Bodies. JACQUELINE URLA is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is working on a collaborative research project exploring the representation of whiteness in native peoples’ art, material culture, and visual media.

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0253328985
• ISBN 13: 9780253328984
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 424