Paper short abstract:

During the Covid-19 pandemic, people are encouraged to stay at home, maintain social distancing and care for their selves. How are such regulations understood in a context of migration and by different social groups? How are migratory bodies redirected, re-regulated and reconditioned in the process?

Paper long abstract:

Migration includes re-starting and re-building a life course. It begins with re-imagination of the journey and the kind of life that is going to take shape in the receiving society. One steps in a migratory journey with knowledge of the past experiences of dealing with risks through, among others, developing an understanding about one’s body. With migration, bodies get displaced, emplaced, replaced and so do cultural perceptions about body, health, illness, and healing. Migration relocates bodies and alongside, regenerates ideas about what a healthy body is and how it is supposed to be (re)constructed and restored. Those entering a new society as asylum seekers and migrants may face requirements of re-understanding their bodies and re-establishing new skills to refine their pre-migration bodies. It is to become good, familiar members of the society. But how do those who cross borders to resettle in a new society perceive these sociocultually constructed ideas about management of risks, preservation of health, and creation of up-to-standard bodies? Who decides what an ideal body is, how it is supposed to be constructed, and what defines a refined, repaired, or restored body? What does it take for these people to be rewarded with the status of good citizens? Outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has created an environment where boundaries between the dos and don' of selfcare have become blurred. In my article, I take the basis of the society of Sweden to address re-regulation of bodies in a context of migration and in time of crisis.

Paper short abstract:

Starting from plastic surgeons’ promise to "repair Asian eye" I propose to think plastic surgery as a practice that goes beyond modifications of the body and how the idea of "repairing" rather than "refining" demonstrates how beauty norms are deeply entangled in dynamics of race, class and power.

Paper long abstract:

During my PhD research – about aesthetic changes made on Chinese migrant women in Portugal - I focus on interviewing plastic surgeons who perform "blepharoplasties on Asian eyes".

As some authors have already stated, a biomedical approach to bodies acts as a powerful discourse. In Portugal this medical specialty is called Aesthetic and Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and it focus on the reparation, correction and aesthetic interventions. Despite the fact that since its first appearance as a medical specialty (Gilman 1998) the first procedures have been performed in opposition to the last, both its borders and the public discourses it conveys are permeable.

One example comes from blepharoplasty often publicized in clinics as an “Asian eye reparation” regardless is aesthetic goals.

I therefore focus on plastic surgery as a medical practice that goes beyond the material modification of the body, but also produces different subjectivities. I address how the discourse emphasizes the dimension of “reparation” rather than “redefinition”, which works to destabilize boundaries and variations of the same procedure, showing beauty norms has both deeply personal and deeply entangled in dynamics of race, class and power.

Using an ethnographic approach, I demonstrate how medical, racial, and political discourses have long reinforced the biopolitical norm (Rose 2006) by excluding or devaluing those deemed outside the pattern. “Repair” has an embodied and fluid concept, that not only intersects identities, but also imposes normative aesthetic ideals and bodies - that would otherwise be considered “ordinary” but have been deemed “abnormal” given these existing norms.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the processes of (re)defining bodies in the incantatory practice documented in 19th-century Ilomantsi, North Karelia. How was the ideal of a normal body expressed and constructed in collected texts?

Paper long abstract:

Incantations were part of everyday life in agrarian communities of North Karelia up to the beginning of the 20th century. People who had little access to modern medicine often turned to the incantatory practice when they would get sick or wounded. Some incantations were common knowledge, while some cases required the help of a specialist, the tietäjä. A common interpretation of the incantatory healing practice is that the tietäjä was restoring the balance of the world, disturbed by the agent responsible for the wound or the disease. By negotiating with non-human forces, the tietäjä could modify the state of the patient’s body and repair it. Love charms were also used when someone could not find a partner and, thus, did not meet the expectations of the community. Where are the limits of one’s body and welfare in a community marked by the idea of the limited good?

In this paper, I explore how the image of the normal state of the body is constructed in a corpus of around 500 charms collected in the parish of Ilomantsi, North Karelia, in the 19th century. How did other representations of the body relate to this ideal of normality? And what processes affected our interpretations of the incantatory practice? The corpus of incantations was formed through negotiations between informants and folklore collectors, who were, for some of them, also practicing modern medicine. Harmful magic practices, which aimed at refining one's own welfare, remained untold, and yet were present in discourses about charms.