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Body
Turner, Bryan
Turner, Bryan
Author
Abstract
Contemporary academic interest in the human body is a response to fundamental changes in the relationship between body, economy, technology and society. Scientific advances, particularly new reproductive technologies and therapeutic cloning techniques, have given the human body a problematic status. Ageing, disease and death no longer appear to be immutable facts about the human condition. The emergence of the body as a topic of research in the humanities and social sciences is also a response to the women's and gay liberation movements, and environmentalism, animal rights, anti-globalism, religious fundamentalism and conservative politics. Further, the human body is now central to economic growth in various biotechnology industries, in which disease itself has become a productive factor in the global economy and the body a code or system of information from which profits can be extracted through patents. In modern social theory, the body has been studied in the contexts of advertising and consumerism, in ethical debates about cloning, in research on HIV/AIDS, in postmodern reflections on cybernetics, cyberbodies and cyberpunk, and in the analysis of the global trade in human organs. The body is a central feature of contemporary politics, because its ambiguities, vulnerability and plasticity have been amplified by new genetic technologies.
Keywords
bio-economics, bio-politics, bio-tourism, genomics, post-human future
Date
2006
Type
Journal article
Journal
Theory, Culture and Society: explorations in critical social science
Book
Volume
23
Issue
3
Page Range
223-229
Article Number
ACU Department
Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty of Education and Arts
Faculty of Education and Arts
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Open Access Status
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Controlled