Short Abstract:
The panel will focus on technologies of bodily enhancement and their social reverberations.
Long Abstract:
The theme of the joint IUAES/JASCA conference provides a timely opportunity to explore, anthropologically, the present and future of the human body. We are interested in technologies of bodily enhancement and their social reverberations: in elective biomedical and biotechnological interventions on human bodies which may rely, experimentally, on the bodies of non-human animals. Such interventions include, but are not confined to, assisted reproductive technologies, plastic/cosmetic surgery, performance enhancing drugs and anti-ageing interventions. Such interventions are often couched in the promises of 'more' and 'better': more beautiful, more fulfilled, more intelligent, faster, better memory, better life and so on: more, that is, than is required for the maintenance of individual health and human flourishing. However, it is not easy to maintain the boundary between therapeutic and 'merely' enhancement technology, and policing such a boundary is both a moral and ethical intervention; as is drawing attention to the way in which the impetus for 'more' and 'better' bodies, human capacities and abilities is growing in a global context where many people have 'not enough' (health care, shelter, security, readily available clean water etc.). We invite papers that present ethnographic examples of technologies of bodily enhancement in the present, as well as reflections on their future trajectories or historical precedents. We also welcome philosophical and theoretical contributions that help us think through concepts such as augmentation and enhancement, as well as the promissory or dystopia of the post or trans-human, or shifting senses of the 'good life' and 'life itself'.
Accepted papers:
Session 1
A study of the standards of beauty and hair culture in East Asia: a historical analysis of wigs in the Joseon Dynasty
Maria Watanabe
(Nagoya University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper describes East Asian hair culture and provides an analysis of standards of beauty. It focuses on hair exports to China and Japan during the Joseon dynasty and examines how hair culture differed in these regions.
Paper long abstract:
East Asian standards of beauty have historically included hair. This paper seeks to shed light on the history of East Asian hair culture, including the international trade in hair within the region. During the Joseon Dynasty hair was exported to Japan and China, a situation which may have influenced how South Korea and China are today leaders in the international wig industry. Wigs have long been considered as little more than decorative products despite their role as one element in a broader hair culture. Throughout the region and over the centuries, wigs have been central in displaying hair to convey rank, authority, and social position, but there has been attention paid to the role of wigs. This paper examines hair exports during the Joseon Dynasty and considers the wigs made from that hair and the related standards for beauty in the context of the overall hair culture of East Asia. Consideration will be given to both historical materials and to legends and other traditional tales. This approach will clarify the history of the hair trade before looking at the hair culture of today. The paper does not, however, attempt to examine the present; rather it uses the long Joseon Dynasty as a way into the overarching hair culture of East Asia.
"The old me, the new me, and the new me again": crafting future selves in online worlds
Espen Helgesen
(University of Bergen)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I explore how children engage in timework as they craft avatars in an online world. I argue that, in giving imagined future selves material form, avatars allow for projections of, as well as experimentation with, the capabilities and limitations of the human body.
Paper long abstract:
Children in Norway are increasingly inhabiting online worlds, where new kinds of self-formation emerge as they craft and experiment with avatars. In this paper I draw on ethnographic fieldwork from an urban neighborhood in Kristiansand, Norway, to explore how 8- and 9-year old children playfully imagine and embody future selves in an online world called MovieStarPlanet. I argue that avatars constitute chronotopes; potent spaces of compressed time where children imagine and act out a variety of futures. Whereas children's actual bodies grow at an imperceptible rate, avatars can, and often do, change their outward appearance with the single click of a mouse. The concept of timework, which refers to the practical aspects of people's engagement with temporality, draws attention to how imagined futures are given material form in children's play.
Somadril and edgework in South Sulawesi
Anita Hardon
(Wageningen University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper describes how in South Sulawesi sex workers use a potent painkiller, which they can buy freely over the counter in pharmacies, to feel confident (and less shame) when approaching clients. They use large quantities, and pool resources to buy the desirable drug.
Paper long abstract:
The use of psychoactive prescription drugs (PPDs) by young people is part of a broader worldwide trend towards the consumption of pharmaceuticals to improve social, emotional, and sexual performance. The paper uses the concept of ‘edgework’ to make sense of PPD use by young people. Edgeworkers are at once attracted by the sensation of being on the edge as an intense form of pleasure, and the accomplishment of being able to avoid a bad or disastrous effect. Ethnographically the paper focuses on PPD use among sex workers in two cities in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. They frequently use one potent painkiller, Somadril, which is freely available over the counter in pharmacies. Despite their cautious use of PPDs, our informants have become dependent. The sex workers reported using between 6 and 24 pills a day, far above the recommended daily maximum. They crave for Somadril, suffering all kinds of aches and pains, anxiety, and insomnia when they cannot get it. They manage their dependence by pooling resources to buy Somadril, and by sharing cheaper alternatives if they cannot afford their preferred substance. This paper also traces the history of the active component in Somadril, carisoprodol. Developed in the United States where it was soon used recreationally, we found that knowledge of its effects in our urban field sites seeped from health professionals into youth networks, where it spread by word of mouth. The flow of information on carisoprodol’s harmful effects, however, was less evident.
Technologies of cloning and our human future: a Shia theological perspective
Shirin Naef
(University of Zurich)
Paper short abstract:
The paper will focus on technologies of cloning and their social consequences from the viewpoint of Shia jurisprudence.
Paper long abstract:
My research has examined the Iranian debates surrounding assisted reproductive technologies through multi-sited-ethnographic fieldwork conducted since 2005 in Iran combined with a textual approach. Many Shia scholars - in legal and theoretical terms- consider a clone as offspring and not a sibling and define a lineage - either paternal or maternal- for it. My focus in this paper is to offer an analysis of the viewpoints of some leading Shia authorities, among whom Ayatollah Mo'men's -a prominent Shia religious authorities- legal contributions stand out. As he views cloning as a new form of reproduction, the present paper makes an effort to shed light on how he defines human cloning, and its particular relevance to issues of the 'future of human nature' and the 'good life'.
Living with comatose patients: the process of articulating experiences in a Japanese hospital
Goro Yamazaki
(Osaka University)
Paper short abstract:
I explore how medical staffs and families justify their experiences toward comatose patients in a Japanese hospital. I focus on the process under which people ‘tell the truth’ under conditions of communicative ambiguity.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I explore how doctors, nurses, physical therapists, and families justify their experiences toward comatose patients. Based on my anthropological fieldwork since 2013 in a Japanese hospital, I deal with the life of patients under persistent vegetative states (PVS) and minimally conscious states (MCS). I also focus on the process and the manner under which both medical staff and families 'tell the truth' under conditions of communicative ambiguity.
The ability of patients under PVS and MCS to communicate verbally is highly limited or non-existent, but they sometimes use their bodies to convey meaning and even articulating some phrases by blinking or slight moving. The problem is that no one can surely explain what is going on under such a state of consciousness and what patients really think about their lives.
I will analyze a politics of life regarding the comatose in a modern Japanese hospital by focusing on the process of articulating communicatively indeterminate experiences. I also discuss my field experience within a Japanese medical and ethical context in general.