5. Bodies as commodities

2016 ◽  
pp. 80-96
Author(s):  
Chris Shilling
Keyword(s):  
Physical Appearance ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
P Bodies ◽  
For Profit ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Alternative Practices

Bodies have been conceptualized and valued in a wide variety of ways across contrasting cultures. There has been a multiplication of methods through which the physical appearance, organs, and flesh of the living and the dead have become implicated in market transactions. ‘Bodies as commodities’ considers marketing appearance, medicalizing bodies for profit, trafficking body parts, and selling embodied subjects into forced labour and slavery, which each highlight a breakdown of the distinction between physical subjects and commodities. It also discusses the resistance of such commodification by international bodies and anti-slavery organizations working to end forced and indentured labour, and alternative practices challenging the commodification of body parts, fluids, and processes.

scholarly journals Do I Look Gawky? The Association between Pubertal Asynchrony and Peer Victimization

Children ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 794
Author(s):  
Misaki N. Natsuaki ◽  
Sofia T. Stepanyan ◽  
Jenae M. Neiderhiser ◽  
Daniel S. Shaw ◽  
Jody M. Ganiban ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Peer Victimization ◽  
Peer Relationships ◽  
Psychosocial Functioning ◽  
Physical Appearance ◽  
Breast Development ◽  
Growth Spurt ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Voice Change ◽  
Adoption Study ◽  
Using Data

Pubertal synchrony is defined as the degree of coherence to which puberty-related body changes (e.g., breast development, growth spurt, voice change, underarm hair growth) are coordinated. During the pubertal transition, youth’s body parts grow asynchronously, making each youth’s physical appearance unique. Physical appearance is a known correlate of youth’s psychosocial functioning during adolescence, but we know little about how pubertal asynchrony plays a role in their peer relationships. Using data from an adoption study (the Early Growth and Development Study; n = 413; 237 boys, 176 girls), this study examined the effect of pubertal asynchrony on peer victimization. Results revealed sex-specific effects of pubertal asynchrony; pubertal asynchrony was associated with a higher risk of peer victimization for girls but a lower risk for boys. Findings highlight the intersection of physical development and social context in understanding youth’s experiences of puberty.

From undergraduate to postgraduate uses of the dead human body: consequential ethical shift

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (7) ◽  
pp. 474-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
D Gareth Jones
Keyword(s):  
Surgical Training ◽  
Human Body ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Code Of Practice ◽  
Satisfactory Model ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Training Programmes

The dependence of surgical training programmes on the supply of bodies by for-profit organisations places them at serious ethical risk. These risks, with their commodification of the bodies used in the programme, are outlined. It is concluded that this is not a satisfactory model for the trainees’ subsequent interaction with living patients and that a code of practice is required.

scholarly journals Ataxin-2 Interacts with the DEAD/H-Box RNA Helicase DDX6 and Interferes with P-Bodies and Stress Granules

2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1385-1396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ute Nonhoff ◽  
Markus Ralser ◽  
Franziska Welzel ◽  
Ilaria Piccini ◽  
Daniela Balzereit ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Translational Control ◽  
Translational Regulation ◽  
Neurodegenerative Disorder ◽  
Stress Granules ◽  
Rna Helicase ◽  
Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type ◽  
P Bodies ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Ataxin 2 ◽  
The Dead

Tight control of translation is fundamental for eukaryotic cells, and deregulation of proteins implicated contributes to numerous human diseases. The neurodegenerative disorder spinocerebellar ataxia type 2 is caused by a trinucleotide expansion in the SCA2 gene encoding a lengthened polyglutamine stretch in the gene product ataxin-2, which seems to be implicated in cellular RNA-processing pathways and translational regulation. Here, we substantiate a function of ataxin-2 in such pathways by demonstrating that ataxin-2 interacts with the DEAD/H-box RNA helicase DDX6, a component of P-bodies and stress granules, representing cellular structures of mRNA triage. We discovered that altered ataxin-2 levels interfere with the assembly of stress granules and cellular P-body structures. Moreover, ataxin-2 regulates the intracellular concentration of its interaction partner, the poly(A)-binding protein, another stress granule component and a key factor for translational control. Thus, our data imply that the cellular ataxin-2 concentration is important for the assembly of stress granules and P-bodies, which are main compartments for regulating and controlling mRNA degradation, stability, and translation.

Green death: sustainability and the administration of the dead

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiloh R Krupar
Keyword(s):  
Human Remains ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Equity Issues ◽  
The Dead ◽  
To Come ◽  
Utilitarian Ethic

This article explores changing American death care – the handling of the dead body and its materiality beyond death – in the context of US-based power relations over administration of human remains. The article briefly surveys efforts to make the afterlife of the dead more ‘sustainable’. I argue that this expanding governance entails intensified bioremediation: the reuse and reprocessing of dead bodies/parts, intensified forms of material-biological extraction, and the conversion of afterlife to forms of biovalue beyond death. First, some disposal efforts encourage an economy of body/parts and a utilitarian ethic of ‘no remains’. Accordingly, the afterlife is not ‘the end’ but a renewable material resource and opportunity to economize the body in death and put the dead body to work. Second, a range of practices now reimagine death as an opportunity for personal legacy and redeem the dead body’s decomposition as natural/as part of the natural world. Bioremediation in this case conceptually recuperates death into life so that death is not wasted; instead, the corpse serves as a material input for nature and a vehicle for personal ‘biopresence’. The article then considers some of the paradoxes and costs of greening the dead and outlines future research directions that might advance our understanding of the ways new sustainable disposal and commemorative technologies of the dead entrench racism and impact civil, consumer, and environmental rights. How bodies affect our environments today will impact people and landscapes in years to come. Because US governance of the dead has historically entailed the differential treatment of bodies after life, the article critically reflects on ‘death equity’ issues that operate across the living and the dead. The article concludes by querying how conduct for the dead might advance social justice through a material politics of human remains.

scholarly journals Embalmment: a veritable source of human body preservation

1970 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 995-999
Author(s):  
Ajayi Abayomi ◽  
Edjomariegwe Odiri
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Physical Appearance ◽  
Historical Aspect ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Organic Decomposition

Embalmment is the process of chemically treating the dead human body to reduce the presence and growth of microorganisms, in order to retard organic decomposition and restore acceptable physical appearance. This paper presents a synopsis of the historical aspect of embalming and the various documented techniques of embalming in ancient and modern times.Keywords: Embalmment, mummification, techniques, death

Dead among the living landscape

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Harding
Keyword(s):  
Data Base ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Final Stage ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Burial Ground ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Age Studies ◽  
Grave Goods

The discovery of human remains in both hillforts and settlements has a long archaeological history, whether whole or partial skeletons or simply individual bones and fragments, though the former were often dismissed as the atypical disposal of social outcasts or malefactors, and the latter were never satisfactorily explained as casual discards. The fact that complete or near-complete skeletons were found in pits that evidently had been designed for another purpose, together with the absence of grave-goods, militated against their interpretation as formal burials, and set these apart from those grouped burials in pits that we have treated as small cemeteries. As regards fragmentary remains, the idea that the dead were exposed for excarnation, possibly over a protracted period of time, is now well established in Iron Age studies. What happened after excarnation is less clear, whether the skeleton was reassembled and buried, either in a formal cemetery or in a settlement context, or distributed as body parts or individual bones in pits, ditches, entrances, or other locations around settlements. Alternatively, in ethnographic contexts it is not unknown for the dead to be interred in a temporary burial ground for a period of months or even years, whilst the process of decomposition took place, before exhumation and re-burial following a final funerary feast. That final stage of re-interment in the British Iron Age likewise could have involved complete or near-complete re-burial, or separation of body parts and their distribution into liminal locations, as a means of incorporating the benign dead into the living community. And hillforts might well have served as the location, not only for excarnation platforms, but for temporary burial as well. We should not, however, exclude other possible interpretations. As Duday (2006: 30) warned, ‘one must not presuppose a funerary context of all such deposits because certain intentional deposits of human remains have nothing to do with burial’. Necessarily, of course, researchers are dependent upon the quantity as well as the quality of the excavated data-base, particularly in terms of statistical assessments, and for this reason Danebury has tended to dominate recent studies.

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