Eating to become ‘good’ citizens: exploring the visceral biopolitics of eating in Singapore

2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402110650
Author(s):  
Siew Ying Shee
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Body ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Consumer Agency ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
A Site ◽  
Self Formation ◽  
Embodied Agency

This paper develops a more-than-representational approach to consumer agency in food biopolitics that is sensitive to people’s everyday eating experiences. In recent years, studies of food biopolitics have engaged with questions of agency by examining how socially constructed ideas of ‘good’ eating and citizenship are engaged on the ground. Yet, there remain opportunities to depart from the evaluative mind as a dominant site of ethical self-formation, and engage with the body as a site of political action and agency. In this paper, I argue that people’s sense of citizen selves has long been, and continue to be, organised across the interplay of material, discursive, and visceral spaces of eating. I develop this argument by drawing on a critical analysis of historical and contemporary news forums related to public eating in Singapore. For many consumers, their disdain for certain food—ranging from the erstwhile state-vaunted meal plans to leftover food on public dining tables—express an embodied agency in negotiating the technocratic designs of citizenship. In developing a visceral biopolitics of eating, this paper aims to expand understandings of consumers’ capacity in negotiating the ethical tensions between hegemonic imaginings of ‘good’ citizens and the everyday pleasures of eating. Approaching consumer agency this way orientates critical yet oft-overlooked attention to the body’s capacity to act, and possibly effect change, within the broader workings of dietary bio-power.

scholarly journals Transforming Classroom Norms as Social Change: Pairing Embodied Exercises with Collaborative Participation in the WGS Classroom (with Syllabus)

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 ◽  
pp. 14-31
Author(s):  
Cara E Jones
Keyword(s):  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Feminist Pedagogy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Student Agency ◽  
Corporate University ◽  
University System ◽  
Classroom Norms ◽  
Situated Knowledges ◽  
A Site

This article explores tensions between critical feminist pedagogy and the neoliberal corporate university, asking how engaging the body and redistributing student agency highlights larger questions of power that haunt the academy as a whole. Including specific embodied exercises used in WGS classrooms, this essay argues that as students and professors engage within an increasingly corporate university system, embodied activities that incorporate the body as a site of learning and critical analysis can access situated knowledges while projects that de-center power and responsibility are viewed with skepticism. I attribute this discrepancy to the neoliberal structure in which we teach and learn, arguing that we need to value and make visible the labor that goes into critical pedagogy.

The Space of Difference in Law: Inquests into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

Somatechnics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherene H. Razack
Keyword(s):  
Aboriginal People ◽  
The Body ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Aboriginal Community ◽  
Police Custody ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Clear Sign ◽  
A Site ◽  
Deaths In Custody

Paul Alphonse, a 67 year-old Aboriginal died in hospital while in police custody. A significant contributing factor to his death was that he was stomped on so hard that there was a boot print on his chest and several ribs were broken. His family alleged police brutality. The inquest into the death of Paul Alphonse offers an opportunity to explore the contemporary relationship between Aboriginal people and Canadian society and, significantly, how law operates as a site for managing that relationship. I suggest that we consider the boot print on Alphonse's chest and its significance at the inquest in these two different ways. First, although it cannot be traced to the boot of the arresting officer, we can examine the boot print as an event around which swirls Aboriginal/police relations in Williams Lake, both the specific relation between the arresting officer and Alphonse, and the wider relations between the Aboriginal community and the police. Second, the response to the boot print at the inquest sheds light on how law is a site for obscuring the violence in Aboriginal people's lives. A boot print on the chest of an Aboriginal man, a clear sign of violence, comes to mean little because Aboriginal bodies are considered violable – both prone to violence, and bodies that can be violated with impunity. Law, in this instance in the form of an inquest, stages Aboriginal abjection, installing Aboriginal bodies as too damaged to be helped and, simultaneously to harm. In this sense, the Aboriginal body is homo sacer, the body that maybe killed but not murdered. I propose that the construction of the Aboriginal body as inherently violable is required in order for settlers to become owners of the land.

The role of the female body in contesting and negotiating space in sports for women in rural and urban Zimbabwe

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-113
Author(s):  
Obert Bernard Mlambo ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Girl Child ◽  
School Sports ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Gender Ideals ◽  
A Site ◽  
Embodied Practice

This article examined attitudes, knowledge, behavior and practices of men and society on Gender bias in sports. The paper examined how the African female body was made into an object of contest between African patriarchy and the colonial system and also shows how the battle for the female body eventually extended into the sporting field. It also explored the postcolonial period and the effects on Zimbabwean society of the colonial ideals of the Victorian culture of morality. The study focused on school sports and the participation of the girl child in sports such as netball, volleyball and football. Reference was made to other sports but emphasis was given to where women were affected. It is in this case where reference to the senior women soccer team was made to provide a case study for purposes of illustration. Selected rural community and urban schools were served as case references for ethnographic accounts which provided the qualitative data used in the analysis. In terms of methodology and theoretical framework, the paper adopted the political economy of the female body as an analytical viewing point in order to examine the body of the girl child and of women in action on the sporting field in Zimbabwe. In this context, the female body is viewed as deeply contested and as a medium that functions as a site for the redirection, profusion and transvaluation of gender ideals. Using the concept of embodiment, involving demeanor, body shape and perceptions of the female body in its social context, the paper attempted to establish a connection between gender ideologies and embodied practice. The results of the study showed the prevalence of condescending attitudes towards girls and women participation in sports.

Doing Fieldwork in the Andamans

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Zehmisch
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Andaman Islands ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
Local Perception ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
A Site

Chapter 2 contextualizes the Andaman Islands as a fieldwork location. It has two major objectives: First, it serves to introduce the reader to the Andamans as a geographical, ecological, and political space and as a site of imagination. This representation of the islands concentrates on the interplay of discourses and policies which have shaped their global, national, and local perception as well as the everyday life of the Andaman population. Second, the chapter underlines the conflation of anthropological theory, fieldwork, and biographical transformations. It demonstrates how recent theoretical trends and paradigm shifts in global and academic discourse have become enmeshed with the author’s experiences in and perceptions of the field. Elaborating on these intricate personal and professional ‘spectacles’ of the fieldworker, the author thus contextualizes the subjective conditions inherent in the production of ethnography as a type of literature.

scholarly journals After Hajj: Muslim Pilgrims Refashioning Themselves

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Kholoud Al-Ajarma
Keyword(s):  
Social Contexts ◽  
Religious Behavior ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Community Expectations ◽  
Religious Dimensions ◽  
Personal Level ◽  
The Right ◽  
Self Formation ◽  
Do So

The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) is one of the five pillars of Islam and a duty which Muslims must perform—once in a lifetime—if they are physically and financially able to do so. In Morocco, from where thousands of pilgrims travel to Mecca every year, the Hajj often represents the culmination of years of preparation and planning, both spiritual and logistical. Pilgrims often describe their journey to Mecca as a transformative experience. Upon successfully completing the pilgrimage and returning home, pilgrims must negotiate their new status—and the expectations that come with it—within the mundane and complex reality of everyday life. There are many ambivalences and tensions to be dealt with, including managing the community expectations of piety and moral behavior. On a personal level, pilgrims struggle between staying on the right path, faithful to their pilgrimage experience, and straying from that path as a result of human imperfection and the inability to sustain the ideals inspired by pilgrimage. By ethnographically studying the everyday lives of Moroccans after their return from Mecca, this article seeks to answer the questions: how do pilgrims encounter a variety of competing expectations and demands following their pilgrimage and how are their efforts received by members of their community? How do they shape their social and religious behavior as returned pilgrims? How do they deal with the tensions between the ideals of Hajj and the realities of daily life? In short, this article scrutinizes the religious, social and personal ramifications for pilgrims after the completion of Hajj and return to their community. My research illustrates that pilgrimage contributes to a process of self-formation among pilgrims, with religious and non-religious dimensions, which continues long after Hajj is over and which operates within, and interacts with, specific social contexts.

Can’t wait to feel better: Facebook Live and the recalibration of downtime in tending to the body

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110034
Author(s):  
Dang Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Mobile Technology ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Body ◽  
Therapeutic Method ◽  
Temporal Space ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Temporal Structures

This article explores the temporality of liveness on Facebook Live through the analytical lens of downtime. Downtime is conceptualized here as multiscale: downtime exists in between the micro action and inaction of everyday life, but also in larger episodes of personal and health crises that reorient the body toward technologies for instantaneous replenishment of meaning and activity. Living through downtime with mobile technology enables the experience of oscillation between liveness as simultaneity and liveness as instantaneity. By juxtaposing time-as-algorithmic against time-as-lived through the livestreaming practices of diện chẩn, an emergent unregulated therapeutic method, I show how different enactments of liveness on Facebook Live recalibrate downtime so that the body can reconfigure its being-in-time. The temporal reverberation of downtime and liveness creates an alternative temporal space wherein social practices that are shunned by the temporal structures of institution and society can retune and continue to thrive at the margin of these structures and at the central of the everyday.

scholarly journals “IF YOU DON’T KNOW ME BY NOW…”

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Ellen M. Whitehead ◽  
Allan Farrell ◽  
Jenifer L. Bratter
Keyword(s):  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Mate Selection ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Hispanic Origin ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Attitudinal Factors ◽  
A Site ◽  
Intimate Partnerships ◽  
College Educated ◽  
Insight Into

ABSTRACT The racial composition of couples is a salient indicator of race’s impact on mate selection, but how well do those in intimate partnerships know the racial identities of their partners? While prior research has revealed that an individual’s race may be perceived differently than how they identify, most of what is known comes from brief interactions, with less information on established relationships. This study examines whether discrepancies in the reports of a person’s race or ethnicity can be identified even within intimate relationships, as well as which relational, social, and attitudinal factors are predictive of divergent or concordant reports. We draw on the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (n=3467), a U.S.-based dataset that uniquely provides both the father’s self-reported race and Hispanic origin and the mother’s report of the father’s race and ethnicity. We compare reports of the father’s race/Hispanic origin from both parents to assess the extent of mismatch, and we distinguish between whether mothers view the father’s race as similar to or different from her own. We find roughly 14% of mothers provide a race and Hispanic origin that is inconsistent with the father’s report, with a large share reflecting differences in the self-identified and perceived race of fathers who are reported as Hispanic. Among mismatched reports, mothers are more likely to report a race/ethnicity for the father that matches her own, depressing the number reporting interracial unions. Perceptions of racial homogamy are especially likely when mothers view racial sameness as important to marriage. Further, mismatches are more common in the midst of weak relational ties (i.e. non-marital relationships) and are less common when both parents are college-educated. These findings reveal that intimate unions are a site where race is socially constructed and provide insight into how norms of endogamy manifest within formed relationships.

THE POLITICS OF DANCE: EUNOMIA AND THE EXCEPTION OF DIONYSUS IN PLATO'S LAWS

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Yu
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The Body ◽  
Entire Class ◽  
A Site

How to inculcate virtue in the citizens of Magnesia by means of the dance component of choreia constitutes one of the principal concerns in the Laws (= Leg.), revealing Plato's evolving ideas about the expediency of music and paideia for the construction of his ideal city since the Republic. Indeed, a steady stream of monographs and articles on the Laws has enriched our understanding of how Plato theorizes the body as a site of intervention and choral dance as instrumental in solidifying social relations and in conditioning the ethical and political self. As one scholar has aptly put it: ‘a city and its sociopolitical character [are] effectively danced into existence.’ Drawing on this recent work, I focus on an enigmatic passage in Laws Book 7 that merits more attention than it has received, in which Plato curiously singles out Bacchic dances from those that are ‘without controversy’ (815b7–d4): τὴν τοίνυν ἀμφισβητουμένην ὄρχησιν δεῖ πρῶτον χωρὶς τῆς ἀναμφισβητήτου διατεμεῖν. τίς οὖν αὕτη, καὶ πῇ δεῖ χωρὶς τέμνειν ἑκατέραν; ὅση μὲν βακχεία τ᾽ ἐστὶν καὶ τῶν ταύταις ἑπομένων, ἃς Νύμφας τε καὶ Πᾶνας καὶ Σειληνοὺς καὶ Σατύρους ἐπονομάζοντες, ὥς φασιν, μιμοῦνται κατῳνωμένους, περὶ καθαρμούς τε καὶ τελετάς τινας ἀποτελούντων, σύμπαν τοῦτο τῆς ὀρχήσεως τὸ γένος οὔθ᾽ ὡς εἰρηνικὸν οὔθ᾽ ὡς πολεμικὸν οὔθ᾽ ὅτι ποτὲ βούλεται ῥᾴδιον ἀφορίσασθαι: διορίσασθαι μήν μοι ταύτῃ δοκεῖ σχεδὸν ὀρθότατον αὐτὸ εἶναι, χωρὶς μὲν πολεμικοῦ, χωρὶς δὲ εἰρηνικοῦ θέντας, εἰπεῖν ὡς οὐκ ἔστι πολιτικὸν τοῦτο τῆς ὀρχήσεως τὸ γένος, ἐνταῦθα δὲ κείμενον ἐάσαντας κεῖσθαι, νῦν ἐπὶ τὸ πολεμικὸν ἅμα καὶ εἰρηνικὸν ὡς ἀναμφισβητήτως ἡμέτερον ὂν ἐπανιέναι. So, first of all, we should separate questionable dancing far from dancing that is without controversy. Which is the controversial kind, and how are the two to be distinguished? All the dancing that is of a Bacchic kind and cultivated by those who indulge in intoxicated imitations of Nymphs, Pans, Sileni and Satyrs (as they name them), when performing certain rites of expiation and initiation—this entire class of dancing cannot easily be marked off either as pacific or as warlike, nor as of any one particular kind. The most correct way of defining it appears to me to be this—to place it away from both pacific and warlike dancing, and to pronounce that this type of dancing is οὐ πολιτικόν; having thus set aside and dismissed it, we will now return to the warlike and pacific types, which without controversy belong to us.

scholarly journals Data ideologies of an interested public: A study of grassroots open government data intermediaries

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 205395171769075 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Schrock ◽  
Gwen Shaffer
Keyword(s):  
Open Data ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Software Developers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Open Government Data ◽  
Government Data ◽  
A Site ◽  
Institutional Actors

Government officials claim open data can improve internal and external communication and collaboration. These promises hinge on “data intermediaries”: extra-institutional actors that obtain, use, and translate data for the public. However, we know little about why these individuals might regard open data as a site of civic participation. In response, we draw on Ilana Gershon to conceptualize culturally situated and socially constructed perspectives on data, or “data ideologies.” This study employs mixed methodologies to examine why members of the public hold particular data ideologies and how they vary. In late 2015 the authors engaged the public through a commission in a diverse city of approximately 500,000. Qualitative data was collected from three public focus groups with residents. Simultaneously, we obtained quantitative data from surveys. Participants’ data ideologies varied based on how they perceived data to be useful for collaboration, tasks, and translations. Bucking the “geek” stereotype, only a minority of those surveyed (20%) were professional software developers or engineers. Although only a nascent movement, we argue open data intermediaries have important roles to play in a new political landscape.

School nurses keep on shining during the pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (5) ◽  
pp. 249-250
Author(s):  
Sharon White
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Practice ◽  
School Nurses ◽  
The Body ◽  
School Nursing ◽  
Nursing Research ◽  
Effect Change

There have been great examples of school nursing practice so far during the pandemic, which in turn have led to increase in workforce commissions. However, to truly effect change we need to grow the body of school nursing research and evidence, Sharon White explains

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