Embodying the culture of achievement: Culture between illness and perfection is a ‘thin line’ – obtaining the ideal female body as an act of achievement

2021 ◽  
pp. 1354067X2110040
Author(s):  
Josefine Dilling ◽  
Anders Petersen

In this article, we argue that certain behaviour connected to the attempt to attain contemporary female body ideals in Denmark can be understood as an act of achievement and, thus, as an embodiment of the culture of achievement, as it is characterised in Præstationssamfundet, written by the Danish sociologist Anders Petersen (2016) Hans Reitzels Forlag . Arguing from cultural psychological and sociological standpoints, this article examines how the human body functions as a mediational tool in different ways from which the individual communicates both moral and aesthetic sociocultural ideals and values. Complex processes of embodiment, we argue, can be described with different levels of internalisation, externalisation and materialisation, where the body functions as a central mediator. Analysing the findings from a qualitative experimental study on contemporary body ideals carried out by the Danish psychologists Josefine Dilling and Maja Trillingsgaard, this article seeks to anchor such theoretical claims in central empirical findings. The main conclusions from the study are used to structure the article and build arguments on how expectations and ideals expressed in an achievement society become embodied.

Author(s):  
Régis Mollard ◽  
Pierre Yves Hennion ◽  
Alex Coblentz

The survey realized in 1992 on a military population allowed to collect anthropometric data on 688 males and 328 females. Among 73 measurements and 3 index, 26 of them have been retained for the comparison with previous surveys. Generally used for dimensioning human body models these data represent somatic measurements of reference, as weight and stature and segmentary measurements of trunk and limbs. A comparison with previous data, collected on a equivalent military population in 1973, confirms the modifications along the time are so significant that they can be considered as a phenomenon of morphological evolution. Likewise, the modification of the academic levels, average age and socio-cultural structures in the populations are combined to increase the anthropometric variability. It appears the military population presents a morphological modification with an overall increase in weight, stature and correlated dimensions. Otherwise, a light decrease of the cormic index indicates that the morphological transformation influences on the body proportions, with an increase more notable for the lower limbs compared to the trunk. The collected anthropometric information allow to update the Individual Database of ERGODATA from which ergonomie recommendations and statistical and morphological models of the human body can be proposed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 71-96
Author(s):  
Peter Lindner

Since the publication of Nikolas Rose’s ‘The Politics of Life Itself’ (2001) there has been vivid discussion about how biopolitical governance has changed over the last decades. This article uses what Rose terms ‘molecular politics’, a new socio-technical grip on the human body, as a contrasting background to ask anew his question ‘What, then, of biopolitics today?’ – albeit focusing not on advances in genetics, microbiology, and pharmaceutics, as he does, but on the rapid proliferation of wearables and other sensor-software gadgets. In both cases, new technologies providing information about the individual body are the common ground for governance and optimization, yet for the latter, the target is habits of moving, eating and drinking, sleeping, working and relaxing. The resulting profound differences are carved out along four lines: ‘somatic identities’ and a modified understanding of the body; the role of ‘expert knowledge’ compared to that of networks of peers and self-experimentation; the ‘types of intervention’ by which new technologies become effective in our everyday life; and the ‘post-discipline character’ of molecular biopolitics. It is argued that, taken together, these differences indicate a remarkable shift which could be termed aretaic: its focus is not ‘life itself’ but ‘life as it is lived’, and its modality are new everyday socio-technical entanglements and their more-than-human rationalities of (self-)governance.


Neophilology ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 530-540
Author(s):  
Elena O. Sycheva ◽  
Anatoly А. Serebryakov

The work is devoted to the study of F.M. Dostoevsky’s aesthetics, in particular, the writer’s aesthetic ideal. Following Kant, Hegel, and Schiller, the Russian writer considered the ideal in an anthropological aspect. The writer’s aesthetic ideal is a person who synthesizes the moral and spiritual in himself. The idea of moral beauty is expressed in the theoretical thought of the Russian writer. Harmony, comeliness serve only as an outer shell, when moral height appears as the aesthetic ideal of F.M. Dostoevsky. His works strive for this beauty and truth. Following the examples of “positive beauty” of world and domestic literature and art, F.M. Dostoevsky recreated in his works positively beautiful characters. The Russian writer speaks of the duality of beauty, the “two abysses” of the human soul: “Sodom” – low, sinful, connected with the beauty of the body, sensual, and “Madonna” – high, connected with spiritual beauty, a person can combine both. The writer’s aesthetic ideal is turned to spiritual beauty. Of particular interest is the “A Writer’s Diary” by F.M. Dostoevsky. It is in this work that the writer’s idea of the aesthetic ideal clearly expressed. The question of the ideal person is considered in the context of underground (afterlife) life in the story “Bobok” and above-ground space in “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”. In these stories and journalistic texts framing them, the internal dynamics of the writer’s worldview position are revealed: from stating the corruption of the spirit and immortality of the soul (“Bobok”) to the tragic insight of the truth (“A Gentle Creature”) and the affirmation of the “living” image of truth (“The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”). The story explicitly expresses the overcoming of such a painful contradiction between the individual and the general, between a positively beautiful person and society.


2019 ◽  
Vol 01 (02) ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Dinesh Kumar ◽  
Kalaipriyan T ◽  
Raghav R.S.

The Body Sensor Networks is captivated in gathering the communication module in a more reliable manner along with efficiency in terms of energy, more secure than earlier schema’s, ands enhanced utilization of resources. Wireless BAN (WBAN) has the tendency to be placed even inside the human body. The significance of BSN has the tendency to go through all aspects such as fitness of a person, his/her health issues, caring in critical level, and so on. In 2014 [1] the elevation of body sensors has been grown upto 420 millions from 11 million units in 2009. In this research work, we addressed BAN from On-Body to Body-to-Body cooperative networks at different levels: propagation, protocols and localization applications.


AL-HUKAMA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-171
Author(s):  
Ahmad Zainuri

In implementing the works program of the Branch Management of Indonesian Islamic Students Movement of Malang Regency, for the sake of a good and interesting event, the owners of power use female activists to become workers. Women activists must carry out tasks that are not in accordance with their job descriptions, get coercion from fellow activists to carry out tasks that they themselves have not yet experienced and only try first, and the most striking is when female activists are not happy if there is a women's development program. The practice of exploitation of these women activists, seen in this article, uses Michel Foucault's body discipline theory. The body's discipline works as a normalization of behavior designed by utilizing the productive and reproductive abilities of the human body. The practice of power through disciplining the body, creates a situation where the individual body can internalize submission and make it look like a normal state. This practice is what Foucault calls the normalization of power over the individual body. Individuals will never feel that they are being used and subjugated because they already consider it to be within reasonable limits. It can also be said that this is a veiled exploitation.


Author(s):  
С. С. Бескаравайний

The article discusses the analogies between the formation of humanity as a collective subject, and the modern process of forming artificial intelligence, which should also have the features of a collective subject. It is shown that attempts to rely solely on the study of individual intelligence are unproductive. The isomorphism of anthroposociogenesis and the creation of AI is motivated by the following: AI is created by human civilization - therefore, its thinking will reproduce both the features of individual intelligence and the features of civilization that ensure the socialization of the individual. The problem of copying consciousness is difficult to analyze, therefore, the formation of subjectivity is considered. A technosubject is a collection of devices and programs that can determine their own future. It has been established that the bio-genetic law acts as a vector for the evolutionary variability of technical devices and sets the boundary conditions that must be met in the process of becoming a techno-subject. Copying the process of the emergence of the human mind and at the same time the practice of society in the accumulation and processing of information shows the path of development. Since now all functional mechanisms of the development of the mind and consciousness have not been revealed, it is necessary to correlate the new, computer mind with the form, with the external manifestations of the previous, natural, intelligence. There are also differences between these processes: 1) in comparison with the formation of human intelligence, the formation of AI is more reflexive, conscious, 2) the fundamentally different physicality of AI, due to the transfer of a large amount of information between machines, 3) the formation of techno-subject can be completely different in speed, since the learning ability of neural networks can exceed the learning ability of a person. Now, technological structures for storing information that we perceive in a socio-technological context can become elements of the body of a new subject. The Internet of things shows the possibility of a fundamentally new physicality, and communications in it are equivalent to unconscious biochemical processes in the human body. At the same time, copying the forms of the human body is redundant, but copying of manipulators and robot operators that can interact with the infrastructure created by man is necessary. It is shown that the Internet as a whole, as a single system, in modern conditions cannot become an AI carrier, it is more a medium than a subject. The carriers of AI should be the structural units of the technosphere, which will become the spokesmen of those contradictions that are sources of development. Probably, these will be technocenoses that will strive to achieve autotrophy, which will require extremely clear goal-setting from them, and, as a result, will lead them to the status of a techno-subject.


Author(s):  
Katarzyna Kowalik ◽  
Natalia Miękus ◽  
Tomasz Bączek

Background: L-tryptophan is an essential amino acid, necessary for the human body to function. Its degradation occurs through two metabolic pathways. Approximately 95% of the L-tryptophan available in the body is converted via the kynurenine pathway, while the remainder is degraded via the serotonin pathway. Properly maintained balance between the concentrations of individual small molecular metabolites is extremely important to maintain homeostasis in the human body, and its disruption could lead to the development of numerous neurological, neurodegenerative, neoplastic, as well as cardiovascular diseases. Recent reports suggested that by controlling the levels of selected L-tryptophan metabolites (potential biomarkers), it is possible to diagnose numerous diseases, monitor their course and assess patient prognosis. Objective: The aim of this paper is to review the currently important clinical applications of selected biomarkers from the L-tryptophan metabolism pathways that would be helpful in early diagnosis, monitoring the course and treatment of serious diseases of affluence, which ultimately could improve the patients’ quality of life, as well as support targeted therapy of the aforementioned diseases. Conclusion: Since the biochemical biomarkers determination in body fluids presents the ideal minimally invasive tool in the patents’ diagnosis and prognostication, the topic is up-to-date and, importantly, emphasized the current trends and perspectives of application of analysis of selected L-tryptophan metabolites named kynurenine and serotonin-derived small compounds in the routine medical procedures.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-135
Author(s):  
Robertus Suraji

The word theology comes from the Greek word theos which means God, and logos which means words. Thus theology means words or knowledge about God. The body can say or show or remind something about God as the ruler of human body and life. Reflection on body can bring people to the knowledge of God. The experience of lengger dancers working on the body makes them believe in the existence of God as the origin of his body, even though they did not dare to expressly mention the name of Allah behind all of these experiences. Body work experience gives them confidence that there is something behind this visible physical body. However, the human body is not only owned by a person, but has become a sign system of community culture. The body no longer only has the meaning of itself, but also must obey the general norms that apply in the society where a person lives. The meaning of the lengger dancer's body is very dependent on the interpretation of the surrounding community, the majority of whom are Muslim. While Islam teaches that the body, especially the female body, must be protected because it has the potential to bring sin. However, the community's interpretation of the body is not monolithic. The situation and culture in which they live determines the interpretation of how to treat the female body. This is where there is often a value tension between Islamic teachings and traditional values.


Author(s):  
Antonia Fitzpatrick

This chapter restores the place of the body within Aquinas’s theory of the composition of human nature, explaining his account of the body’s autonomy relative to the soul. The central arguments of the entire study are elaborated: theological problems, particularly the bodily resurrection, led Aquinas to emphasize the body’s goodness; Aquinas thinks that the individuality of the whole person had its origins in matter; the individual body’s autonomy is underpinned by its unique ‘dimensive quantity’—a corporeal form, but an ‘accidental’, not a substantial form, which individualizes the body’s matter. These arguments are established through attending to: essence and its relationship to the individual; the beauty of the human body; embryology, heredity, and the structure of matter; and individuation. A theme running through the chapter is Aquinas’s radical remodelling of Peter Lombard’s concept of the ‘truth of human nature’, i.e. that from which the resurrected body will be constituted.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 133-146
Author(s):  
Miroslav Zelinský ◽  
Ivana Bulanda

The contribution is a consideration of the role of a human body in personal, physical reflections, in the field of art and in media space. The presented text is a thought starting point for a scientific study of the role and forms of the human body in contemporary advertising. In contemporary modern society, there is an increasing interest in the appearance and presentation of the body in its female or male modality. Body image is a complex, dynamic and multidimensional aspect of an individual’s personality, determined by a number of individual and socio-cultural factors. Body image creation takes place under the influence and experience of information and it can change throughout life. The perception of body image is linked to the general ideas that the culture connects with the ideal form of the body. It is not only a mental image, but also includes an assessment component, an attitude based on cognitive schemes and emotional processing of information with which the individual is confronted


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