rhe body
2.1 The body
2.2 What is the body?
2.3 The body as a space
2.4 The body as a project
2.5 Bodies taking up space
2.6 Bodies in space
2.7 The body and time
2.8 Future bodies?
W,   2.1 The body
( n'. iiiiiiplii'is ■ m- I Denied mi :ln- bod\ li^   space. Adrte......      KUi I l''Sh: JM.'i 4e$Cl dv-
rhe body as 'the geugrapln closest in'. It marks a boundary between self and other, both in a literal physiological sense btic also in a social sense. It is a personal sluice. A sensuous organ, the sire of pleasure and pain around which social definitions nit well being, illness, happiness and health are constructed, it is our mentis for connecting With, and experiencing, other spaces, lr is rhe ptirriary locution where our personal rdervtiries are constituted and social knowledges and meanings inscribed. For example, social identities and differences are constructed around bodily differences such as gender, race, age, and ability (Smith 199:3). These can form the basis fur exclusion and oppression (Young 1990a). The body then is also a $ite of struggle and contestation. Access to our bodies, control over what can he done to them, how they move, and where they can Of cannot go. are rhe source of regulation and dispute between household members, at work, within communities, at the level or' the state, and even rhe globe (see Chapter 3. Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6 and Chaprer 9). The following sections of this chapter outline geographical work in relation to each of these different dimensions of the body,
The chapter begins by exploring debates about rhe narure of the body, focusing Specifically on understandings ahoui the relationship between the hotly and mind and whether the body is a 'natural' or social entity, Second, it examines the body
16   Chapter 2 ■ The body
as a space — a space made up of surface, senses and psyche. Third, it explores tensions between rhe body ;Ls an individual project over which we have control versus tine body as a site regulated or inflected by other regimes of power. Fourth, it considers how bodies take up space by looking at how we physically occupy and connect with surrounding spatial fields. Fifth, it addresses how our bodies make a difference to our experience of place, examining how" corpoteal difference can become rhe basis ol discrimination and oppression. Sixth, it tocuses on the social construction of. age. Finally, it examines how the development of new technologies and possibilities for medical intervention in the body are producing new uncerraintics about what the body is and what future it has.
W   2.2 What is the body?
From the ancient Greeks and the Romans, through J u da co-Christian thought, from the Renaissance to the present, the body has fascinated and preoccupied philosophers. There is even no universal agreement about where the body begins and ends iSynott lyy.'Vi. Anthony Synotr (199 a) asks, for example* whether the shadow is part of the body and what about nail clippings and faeces - are they merely the hod> m another place? Neither is there is any consensus about the meanings of the body. Different philosophers throughout the ages have defined the body Las good or bad; tomb or temple; machine or garden; cloak or prison; sacred or secular; friend or enemy; cosmic or mystical; at one with mind and soul or separate; private or public; personal or the property of the state; clock or car; to varying degrees plastic, bionic, communal; selected from a catalogue, engineered; material or spiritual; a corpse or a sell' (Syriort 1993: 37), These different understandings of corporeality are nor confined to particular moments in time, but rather have been (rc)produced as competing, sometimes complementary and often contradictory paradigms.
Of all these philosophical debates about the meaning and nature of the body, two in particular are important to understanding how geographers have looked at, and thought about, rhe body: the relationship between the mind and the body; and whether the body is a 'natural' or social entity.
Wi   2.2.1 Mind/body dualism
The seventeenth-century philosopher Descartes established a dualisrie concept of mind and body. He argued that only the mind had the power of intelligence, spirituality, and therefore selfhood. The corporeal body was nothing but a machine (akin to a car or a clock) directed by rhe soul {Turner 1996}. Mis philosophy is captured in his famous phrase; Cogito ergo sum - [ think therefore 1 am. Although his view was contested by other philosophers borh at the rime and since, the Cartesian division and subordination of the body to the mind and the emphasis placed on dualistic thinking
2.1 ■ What is the body? 17
and scientific rationalisation had a profound impact oil Western tfrpUght. Indeed, rhe Cartesian view of the world is said to have laid the foundations for rhe develop-iiu'iit of" modern science and, in particular, medicine by establishing tlie body as a site of elective intervention ro bo mapped, measured and experimented on (Turner I 9cth).
i his distinction between tlie mind and the body has been gendered. Whereas the mind has been associated with positive terms such as rationality, consciousness, reason and masculinity, rhe body has been associated with negative terms such as emorionahry, nannv, irrationality and k-mummy. Although both men and women have uodieSi in Western culture, white men transcend their embodiment (or at least have their bodily needs met by others) by regarding the body bis merely the container of their consciousness (l.onghurst I997j. In contrast, women have been understood as being QtOfO closely lied to, and ruled by, their botlies because ot natural cycles of menstruation, pregnancy and cbildbirrh. Whereas Man is assumed to be able to separate himself from his emotions, experiences and so on. Woman has been presumed to be 'a victim or die vagaries of her emotions, a creature who can't think Straight as a consequence" [Kirby 1992; 12-13).
Feminist geographers such as Gillian Rose (1993) and Kobyn l.on^huist 119971 have argued that these dualisms are important because they have shaped geographers' understanding? or society and space and the way geographical knowledge has been produced. Drawing pn rhe work ol feminists such as Michele 1 £ Doeuff (199I), [lose i 1993) suggesrs that theorists from Descartes onwards have defined rational knowledge as a form ot knowledge which is masculinise. It 'assumes a knower who believes he can separate himself from his body, emotions, values and past experiences so chat he and his thought are autonomous, context-free and objective' [Rose 1913: 7). As a result ot this belief in rhe objectivity of mascnlinist rationality - that it is unralnted by bodily idemity and experience - Rose claims that it is assumed to he universal, rhe only form o| know ledge available. In other words, she argues that white, bourgeois, heterosexual man tends ro see other people who are not like himself only in relation to himself. She writes: "He understands femininity, for example, only in terms of its difference from masculinity. Me sees other identities only in terms ol his own self-perception; he sees them as what 1 shall term his Other' [Rose \ fi).
Applying rhese arguments to geography, Rose (1993) shows how white, heterosexual men have tended to exclude or marginalise women as producers of geographical knowledge, ami what are considered women's issues as topics to srudy. The mind/body dualism has therefore played a key role in determining what counts as legitimate knowledge in geography with rhe consequence that topics such as embodiment and sexualiry were, until the mid-late 1990s, regarded as inappropriate topics to reach and research. They have been 'othered' within rhe discipline ■: l.onghurst 1997).
Fortunately, these sons of critiques have played an important parr in stimulating geographers at rite end of the twentieth, and at the beginning of rhe rwenty-firsc, centuries to challenge the privileging of the mind over the body within the discipline. As a result, what ' onghurst (I 997; 494) terms 'dirty topics' are being pur on
Chapter 2 ■ The body
the map arid geographers are beginning to think about ways of writing (for example, using autobiographical material and personal testimonies) ant! methodological practices which recognize rhiir ail knowledges are embodied and siuiared i Rose ] 997),
Wl   2.2.2 The natural and the social
Historically, women have been srereotypically defined in terms of their biology. The notion chat women were closer to nature and the a3iimal world than men because rhey men st ru ;ite and give birrh gained important en r res icy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Women's periods were read as signs of women's inherent, lack of eontrol over rheir bodies. Women leaked, while men were self-contained (although see Grosz's 1-994 discussion oi seminal thud). Their role in reproduction was also understood to mean rhar they were 'naiundly' more nurturing and rhere-fore more closely linked to Mother barth than men. The other side of rhis association between women and nature was an assumption that, ju« as nature was wild and potentially uncontrollable (except in rational male science), so women were less able to Control their emotions and passions than men {Merchant 1990). Indeed, women's unstable bodies were considered to be a threat to their minds i' Jordanova I9K91, In the late nineteenth century, when the sulfragcrie movement with it^ campaigns for women's right to vote and to education began to gain momentum, opponents used scientific claims that women had naturally smaller brains than men and thaT education (ttjgrit damage rheir ovaries to justily excluding them from public life (Shilling 199 a). In other words, women's bodies were used to justify what was regarded as a 'natural inequality' between the sexes.
These notions that women's bodies are both tit Herein ami inferior to men's persisted into the rwentierh century (see also Chapter 5). Chris Shilling (1993) notes rhar even in the 1960s, the argument that women's hormones meant that they were Inherently inrellectually anil emorionally unstable vtas used to prevent women being allowed to train as pilots in Australia. He writes:
There Iwvr been repeated attempt1; to limit women's civil, social and political tights by taknis; the male body, however defined, as 'comjikae" and the norm anJ b)! dtlintaj women as different and interior a,s tl restiii rjt riiuir unstable bodies. Women were supposedly confined by rheir biolo|',k:,il Limitation*, tu tlie private spheiv, while only men were corporeally fit for participating in public life (Shilling ll>9.i: 55j.
Similar naturalistic views have been used to legitimize the subordination of black bodies. Like women, black people have also been defined through their bodies. The black body has been understood ro be pre-social, to be driven by biology, in opposition to the civilized and rational rehire body (Shilling 1993). In particular, coio-niaiization and slavery have played an important part in defining and developing understandings of black bodies as driven by insatiable sexual appetites, 'dangerous', ancjvil&erj, uncontrollable, and ,i threat to whites (Mercer and Race 19NS). bor
2.2 ■ What is the body?
example, Shilling (199.3: 57) argues that in rhe USA white slave- papers developed myths about animal nature and black sexuality ro [usrify rhe a rr< cities perpetuated against black people; "defining the worth o\ black people through their bodies was also used to justily the trcatniCUt of blacks as commodities and the use of black women for slave breeding1, He notes, for example, that one in three of all the bjack men hitched in rhe l.'SA between I$8,5 and 1900 were accused of tape.
These claims about the 'natural1 differences between men and women, white and black, are what are known as essentialisf arguments. They assume thai sexual and racial differences are determined by biology, that bodies are 'natural' or pre-discursive entities - in oilier words, that bodies have particular stable, fixed properties or 'essences' (fuss 19.90). k'ssencialist explanations have been challenged by social constructionists. They argue that there is no 'natural' body, rather, die body is always 'culturally mapped; it never exist* in a pure or uncoded state' (fuss 1990: 6)4 so that what' essential ists 'naturalize' or portray as 'essence" is actually socially constructed difference. These differences are produced through material and social practices, discourses and systems fof representation rather than biology. Social constructionists demonstrate this by pointing to the fact that what is understood by 'man' and 'woman', 'black' and 'white1 (for discussions of whiteness see Chapter 7 and Chapter 9) varies historically and in dilierent cultural contexts.
bemi:iists have made a distinction between sex - the biological difference between men and women - and goidfr (masculinity and femininity) - the social meanings which are ascribed to men and women (sec Women and Geography Study Croup 1LJ9"7, Laurie pi tiL 1999). The term 'gender' incorporates a recognition of the way differences between the sexes are socially constructed in a hierarchical way (see Figure 2,1b Likewise, other writers have argued that meanings ascribed to black and white bodies are also socially produced in ways which exaggerate and hierarchize rhe differences between them. Focusing on the wider associations of blackness in white societies, David Sibley iJ99.Sa) points out how black is used to describe dirt, disease, death and decay. These associations not oiify emphasize the threatening quality ot blackness but also carry implicit suggestions of contamination, This fear of infection, that raciali/ed minority groups carry disease and threaten white society, was evident in 'moral panics1 (see also Chapter (5) which occurred in the UK in 190.5 following an outbreak of smallpox amongst Pakistani immigrants (Shilling 199.1). More recently, the same anxieties about the black body have been reproduced in racist claims thai AIDS originated from Africa.
Another example is found in the work of Vron Ware (f992: 1) who opens her book Heyonti the i'atc with tile lollowing 'story' or urban myth about a white knglish woman holidaying in New York. USA:
Nervous about travelling as a snsiile woman and alarmed at the prospect of being id a city renowned lor violent ennie, she booked into an expensive hotel where she (bought she would be safe. One day she stepped into an empty elevator CO go up to her rnnin, and was startled when a tall black man accompanied by a large ferocious-looking dog came ni and stood besides her ftisi as the lift doors were closing. Since lie was wearing
20   Chapter 2 ■ The body
Figurg 2.1 Gender incorporates a recognition of the way differences between the sexes ate. socially constructed in a hierarchical way
dudes she could nor he sure whether he was looking at her, hut slic nearly leapi out nit his skin when she heard his K'oiec: 'Lad):; lit' down'. Tei'i'ditd, she iuOtVSd to ohey him, nraymg Hut someone would call the eleearor and rescue her in time, lint instead of touching Iilt the man stepped hack in confusion. L[ was talking to my Joe,", he explained, almost ,is embarrassed ass she was'.,, later it transpires the in.m in the lih as Lionel Rite hie,
This 'story' shows how the block body continues to he constructed as an object oi dread by white women (See also Chapter fi). Wiire (1992) unpacks why this is.so, ex-plaining how this anecdote can only he understood within the context of' slavery and colonialism. She argues that colonial ideologies about black masculinity (its dangerous, criminal ami uncontrollable I and white femininity (pure, vulnerable, ere] conrinue to underpin social relations between black men and white women in con-Temporary Western .societies,
In ilie same way, if you go back ant! reread [he examples above about the suffragettes, Australian women pilors, and black masculinity-, you should he able to see how rhese understandings of the female and the black male body are also a product of discourses, representations and material practices rather than being the product of 'natural' essences.
Sbtiete: LIBERT*
2.2 ■ What is the body?
ft is important to note, however, that although essentialisr explanations for sexual and racial differs sees have olieii been used to justify sexism ant I racism, radical feminists and rhe black power movement have also celebrated women's closeness to nature and black corporeality respectively iShilling 1LW|. bor example, in rhe 1970s radical feminists countered the way esseutialist arguments about women's closeness to nature were used to subordinate women by employing similar esseutialist arguments but reversing their meaning, They celebrated the power of women's biO' logy, their connectedness to Mother Earth, arguing that women's reproductive role provided them with privileged knowledge and power (Griffin 197K, O'Brien 1989). Their goal was not to achieve equality with men by challenging and changing the social meanings of masculinity and femininity; rather they sought to achieve complete autonomy from men and the man-made world by creating women-only communities I see Chapter 8).
Other groups have employed what is termed 'strategic essentialism'. They have mobilized a belief in a shared identity and experience in order to achieve a particular political aim. This tactic involves recognizing, but suspending, differences between those involved in order to form a strategic alliance. For example, lesbian and gay activists have sometimes used the argument that their sexuality is a product ot a gay gene rather than being a social choice {even though they believe this to he untrue) in order to establish lesbians and gay men as a legitimate minority group that deserve the same protection and civil rights as ethnic minorities | Epstein I 987). The danger of adopting such an approach, however, is rhat it imposes an as sump-lion oi homogeneity on lesbians and gay men which obscures other differences (such as gender, class, age, ethnicity) between them; and it also makes lesbians and gay men a more visible, and therefore easier, target for opponents (Epstein 1987).
The debate between essentia I ism and constructionism has gradually been overtaken by a recognition that the distinction between biology and social meanings -between-sex and gender - does not hold up. Julia Cream (199>) identifies three bodies which disrupt traditionally accepted notions of ses; and gender: the Itausst-'xsuii, the intersex haby and the XXV female.
• TraussLwisuli believe their body does not correspond with their gentler identity. They believe themselves to be either women trapped in men's bodies or men trapped in women's bodies. 1 he development of medical lechuologies has enabled transsexuals to change their sexed bodies to fit their gender identities !see Hkins and King 1999).
• fciersexed babies have genitals which are neither clearly male nor female. Usually, doctors assign these children a sex soon after birth according to rhe best genital hi, In this way, the anomalous hotly is made to conform in order CO maintain the fiction of a binary distinction between male and female.
• XXV fpngfes are women who have XXY chromosomes rarher rhan XX chromosomes which women are assumed to carry, or XY chromosomes which
27   Chapter 2 ■ The body
men Lire assumed to have. This chromosome pattern, which disrupts rhe assumed male/female binary, first cami: to light when chromosome or whit Wis tcnltcd 'sex CCS^hg was introduced ttt rhe Olympics to prevent men competing in women's events. It led to suggestions thai perhaps women With XXY chromosomes were 'really' mcn.
C ream's | 199.5) three examples neatly demonstrate rh^r we do not .til nccessar-ily fie into one of only two bodies: male or female. There are no coherent 'natural' C^EegbrifiSi man/woman. Yet, despite all the biological ambiguity evident in Cream's examples, i.nir bodies are still allowed ro he one of two sexes only, Ambiguous bodies such as transsexuals, intersex babies and XXY females are contained and mcd-icali/.ed in order to conform to our culture's demand for only two categories of se\ (rnaJetfernate) a"d tt> confinn or maintain the association between gender and sex (Cream 1995). For cample, intersex babies are tisnalK upe. rated on soon after birth so rh;!i they can be id e mi lied as ei titer mule or female. 'What [his means is that our understanding oi sender (man and woman) is nor determined by sex (male and female) bui that our understandings of sex itsell are dictated by an understanding that man and wonum should inhabit distinct and separate bodies. So, sex does nor make gender; gender makes sex' (Women and Geography Study Group 1997: 195). In other words, the diehoromons distinction (outlined earlier) which some academics have made between sex 1 biological or essenrialist) and gender (social) is collapsed; both are exposed as social. The body can never lie understood lis a piste, neutral or pre-social form onto which social meanings are pmjected, Ir is always a social and discursive object (Gross1. 1^94},
Understandings of gender have been fundamentally challenged and reworked by the philosopher Judith Butler 11990, l99Ja). She rejects the notion that biology is li bedrock which underlies the categories or gender and sex. Rather, she theorizes gender land implicitly other identities too) as performative, arguing that 'gender is the repeated srylisation of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory framework that Congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a narural sort of being' < Butler 1990: S3), In other words, gender is ail effect of dominant discourses and matrices of power. There is no 'real' or original identity behind am gender performance. Hurler (1993a) suggests that social and political change within the performance ol identity lies in the possible displacement of dominant discourses. In a reading of drag balls she argues that the parodic repetition and mimicry of heterosexual identities at these events distupts dominant sex and gender identities became the performers' supposed 'natur.il" identities las male) do not correspond with the signs produced within the performance leg. feminine body language and dress). '|b]y disrupting rhe assumed correspondence between a 'reap interior arid its surface markers {clothes, wait.', hair, etc), drag balls make explicit the way in which all gender and sexual identifications are ritually performed in daily life' {Nelson 1999; 3_i9). In nthcr words, they expose the fact that all identities are fragile and unstable fictions.
2.3 ■ The body as a space
butler's (1990) weiring has became important within social and cultural geography. The no lion a J performari vity has been used to frame geographical studies, and to talk, not only about bodily identities, but also about space (e:g, Rcll e-i id. 1994, McDowell and Court 1994, Sharp 199 6, Kir In 1996, Lewis and Pile 1996, Valentine J9L>6a, Rose 1997 and Delph-Januirek 1999}. Instead of thinking about space and. place a> pre-cxl>tuig sites in which performances occur, some of these studies argue that bodily performances themselves constitute or fre)produce space and place. However, geographers have also been criticized for overlooking the problematic aspects of Butler's work (particularly in relation to her assumptions about subjectivity, agency and change) when employing her theorization of perfornativity (Walker 1995, Nelson 1993J,
Wt. Summary
» The Cartesian division and subordination of the body to the mind has shaped geographers' understandings of .society and spa eg;
• 1 listorically, the notion rhar women's bodies are different from,, and inferior to, men's has been used to justify their limited participation m public space.
• -Similar 'naturalistic' views have also been used to legitimate the subordination of black bodies.
• Arguments that assume sexual and racial differences are a product of biology or natural essences are termed essentia list.
• .Esseutialisr explanations have been contested by social const met ionises, who argue that bodies are the product of discourses, representations and material practices rather than blulogy.
• A distinction has been made between sex (a natural category based on biological difference) and gender {the social meanings ascribed to sex).
• Geographers, however, are now moving away from thinking a hour sex and gender in this way. Instead the focus is on embodied performance.
fflt   2.3 The body as a space
Adrienni: Rich describes the body as The geography closest in'. The body is not just in space, it h <t <pjce> There are three ways-in which we can think or the body as a space, It is a surface which is market! and transformed by our culture; It is a sen* suous being, the material basis for our connection with,.and experience of, the world. It is what hounds the space of the psychic.
24   Chapter 3 ■ The body
2.3.1 Surface
The body is n surface <>( inscription - a surface on which we inscribe our identities, ant! a surface upon which cultural values, morality and social laws are written, marked, scarred or transformed by various instlrunonal regimes. This process Elizabeth Grosz (199_i: 12) has rermed 'social tattooing'. She wrires;
(n our u;.vn culture, inscriptions occur boih violently and in more subtle forms: In the hirst e.ise, violent* is demonstrable ttl Social institutions, keeping the body confined, eon so. lined, supervised, and regiiiieiHi'd, rnarfetd by implements such as handcuffs... the straiijarkcT, the regimen of drtiii habituation and rehabilitation, chronologically regulated onic and labor divisions, cellular and solitary confinement, die deprivation rit mobility, the bruising of bodies in police interrogations, etc. less openly violent but no less coercive are the inseripiiuiis ol eutrural and personal Values, norms, and commitments according to the morphology and categorization of the both into socially significant groups - male and female, hl.ii-k ,ukI white. and ,o on. I he bods is involuntarily marked, bin ii is also incised through 'Voluntary* procedures, lifc-srytes, habits, and behaviours. Makeup, stilettos, bras, hair sprays. elorlimg. underclothing suark women's bodies, whether black Or white, in ways in which hnir styles, professional training, person id grooming, gait; posiurc. body budding, and sports may mark men's. There is noihiog ii.uural or ahisrorical about these modes of corporeal inscription. Through theni, bodies are made amenable to the prevailing exigencies of power. They make ih<: flesh into a particular type of body - p:igjin, primitive, medieval, capitalist, Italian, American, Australian. What is sometimes loosely called body language is a not inappropriate description of the ways in wlneh culturally specific grids of power, Regulation, and force condition and provide it-dmiLiues tor the formation of panieulai' bodies (Ctrosi 1994: 141-2).
The work of three social theorists - Norbert Klias, Tierre hVmrdieu and Michel Hmcault - has been particularly important in helping social scientists to think about the body as a surface which is inscribed and regulated.
W   1, i.l.l b.li.is: ihe civilized body j
From the Middle Ages to the present there have: been fundamental changes in what |
are considered appropriate forms of bodily expression. In medieval times lite was l
short, food was scarce, emotions were freely expressed, people even rook pleasure |
from watching the torture and mutilation of others. There were lew social ptohibi- j
lions about appropriate bodily behaviour — it was commonplace for people to eat, ; belch, tart, shit and spit in public. 1 be emphasis was on satiating the self, not on
moderation or self-restraint. Then, in I Till, Krasmus produced a short treatise on ,
manners, De CiyUitffie Mortim Ptierilitiui, which set out new codes of bodily pro- (
priety which required rhar rhe body should he controlled and hidden and that .ill ,
signs of bodily functions should take place in 'private' rather than 'public' space. |
2.3 ■ The body as a space
According to the German sociologist Norbert illias (1978/19821, this marked a y rsitl liliI hut fundamemal shift in public behaviour. Body manage m em and control of the emotions increased as taboos tie veľ >pcd around bodily functions such ns spit-ring and defecating, culminating in rhe emergent? of concepts such as self-resrrainr, embarrassment and shame. Ulias documents rhe role of Renaissance court society in promoting 'eiviliry'. He argues that an individual's survival ill court depended not on their physical faces or strength bur on their impression management and etiquette. An individual* social identity n r status could be read from their bodily deportment and manners. Those who regarded themselves as socially superior attempted to distinguish themselves from others through their superior bodily control, while those who wanted ro be climb the social ladder had to imitate their superiors. These moral 'codes' eventual U trickled down the social strata arid became practised ro different decrees by all citizens, becoming parr of accepted everyday behaviour. Thus parents liave to 'civilize' children by teaching them how to manage the í r bodies, to use the toilet, not to spit, and so on. fhtough such processes children's bodies are turned rnto adult bodies (see also Chapter 5). As F.lias i 1982: 38) notes, contemporary children now have 'in the space ol a lew years ro attain the advanced level or shame and revulsion that |adu!ts havej developed over m;iny centuries'-
T'Iik gradual civilizing of the body has produced five significant cultural shirrs: first, in the nature of fear. While individuals in unregulated medieval societies lea red attack, in modern socieries social fears of shame and embarrassment are, for most people, more pressing everyday concerns. The second shift is in the construction of rhe social in opposition to biology/nature: by controlling our bodies we suppress our 'nature', transcend our animality and emphasize our humanness. The third lies in the importance o! rational tin'nigh t and rhe control of emotions. The fourth is. in social differentiation, namely that increased emphasis on self-control has encouraged greater rcflcxivity abour mir bodies, individualization, and a desire to distance ourselves from others. The fifth shift is in the social distance which has developed between adults and children (Shilling 1993).
%   2:3.1*2 Hourdieu: the hody as the bearer ef symbolic value
ín a famous book titled Distinction: ti Social Critique of the jncigctrtcitt of 7,f5re, the French sociologist Pierre Hourdieu {Í994; 190) argues that 'the body is the most indisputable materialization tif class taste'. Me suggests that class becomes imprinted upon our bodies in three ways {Shilling 1993). l-'irst, through our social location in that our material circumstances shape rhe way we can look after our bodies, dress, etc. Second, through what he termed habitus. This is rhe class-oriented, unintentional pre-disposcd ways we have of behaving which olten betray our class origins, Hourdieu argues that every aspect of our embodiment, from the way we hold our cutlery to the way we wall:, articulates and reproduces our social location in this way. Third, through tasiť, ľhis refers to 'the processes whereby
chapter 2 ■ The body
individuals appropriate as voluntary chokes and preterenet's, lifestyles which art actually rooted in material constraints'' (Shilling 1993: 12y)r Thus Shilling (1993* 129.1 argues, 'The development ot taste, which can he seen as a conscious manifestation ol habitus, is embodied and deeply affects people's orientations to their bodies.' for example, working class people usually have limited material resources to spend on food so rbcy tend to buy cheaper foods, 'iTiese are commonly foods that are high in fat. hi turn, their preference for and consumption of these foods affect their bodily shape, health and ultimately mortality.
lionrdieu*s (19N4i work clearly shows how different classes produce different bodily forms. For example, the working classes have little free rime and so the body is lor them a means to an end. Working-class sports, such as boxing, football and weight lifting, reflect this in that they are about excitement - a temporary release from the tensions of everyday life - and involve developing strength and skills which are oriented towards manual work (Shilling 1993). In conrrasr, rhe middle classes have more leisure time and resources to invest in the body as a project. Their emphasis is often on slimness and looking good because appearance or presentation rather than strength is important in many middle-class occupations (see Chapter 5), There is also significant differentiation within the middle classes, with different groups being oriented differently towards their bodies. While the upwardly mobile middle class tend towards activities such as fitness training, the elite bourgeoisie tend to engage m leisure pnrsuhs mu:h as polo, riding, yachting or golf, which combine sport with socializing. These activities develop physical, social and cultural capital.
The distinct bodily forms produced through rhe different relationships the working classes and middle classes have wirh their bodies are important because they are valued differently and, so Bourdieu (19S4) argues, contribute to the development of social inequalities. The physical capital of rhe working classes has less economic value than thar of the middle classes. Likewise, the working classes find it more difficult to convert their cultural capital into other resources because their bodily comportment fin terms of manners, ways of speaking, etc) is often judged as negative at employment interviews. Shilling 11993) suggests that, in the case of social capital, the aggressive management ol bodies which enables young working-class men to gain respect amongst their peers is not valued in other contexts. In contrast, the middle classes, especially the elite, have more opportunities to turn physical capiral into other resources. For example, elite sports which have strict codes of etiquette enable individuals to acquire or demonstrate char they have rhe sort of bodily competence which is often crucial in employment and educational selection processes. These sports can also enable individuals to develop social networks which may allow them to make important professional contacts and to meet appropriate partners (Shilling 1993).
Then' are two further important points to note about liourdieu's analysis of the body as the bearer ol symbolic value. Firstly, social differences in bodily forms are often mistakenly assumed to be 'natural' differences. Secondly, flu- value attached to different bodily forms is nor fixed, but rather there are struggles and conflicts between and within social groups to define and control which bodily forms are valued.
2.3 ■ The body as a space
Geographers have drawn on fiourdleu's work specifically in relation to studies of consumption ie.g. Bell and Valentine 19.97), and of genrrification and middle-class formation (e.g. Savage    ji. 199.'. Ley (sec Chapter 7).
B   2.3.1.3 liiuL.inli: the disciplining gaze
Michel Koucault is a 1 icnch philosopher whose work has been particularly inlluen-ttal in shaping understandings or' how the body is produced by, and exists in, discourse and how it lias historically been disciplined and snbdited (Driver L9S5). He coined the rerrn 'biopower' I power over Jilei to describe a diverse range of' techniques through which bodies are subjugated and populations controlled (Foucault 1978).
In his, work oil sexuality Foucault (1.978) argued that sex is not a 'natural' or biological urge (see also section 2.2.2} Inn rather is an historical consrrttcr. ! le traced the history of rhe way sexua lines have been produced through disc nurses, idenrify-Jmw heterosexual relations have been produced as the 'norm' and other forms-lit h'umiity classified as "deviant'. In this way, Foucault showed how these discourses have played an important role nor only in controlling individual bodies bur also in rhe management of whole populations,
hmcaub also had a particular interest in the regulation of populations and societies through rhe discipline power of the surveillant gaze. His book Di$ciph>a.' ami Punish (1977) opens with a graphic description of an eighteenth-century prisoner bring tortured to death. Foucault uses this example to evplain how in traditional societies the body was rhe target of penal repression. Punishment for social wrongdoing was literally acted put an the bod)' pf individual prisoners through these public acts of ritual torture, Foucault then goes on to trace the development of penology and to show how. following penal reform in the eighteenth century, mure snhrle tactics and new techno logics of power were used rn punish offenders, which relied on using institutional space as a way of controlling prisoners. Irnucauh focuses on the example ol a prison designed by |eremy Bcnrhain, Known as Rent ham's Panopticon, rhis prison had a circular design to ensure that all rhe cells were under potential constant surveillance from a central watchtowcr, although the occupants of rhe cells could run tell it. or when, they were actually being watched. (There is some dispute, however, as to whether such a prison was ever huilr.i
Foucault (1977: 177) argued that die fact ol being able always to he seen meant that individuals would exercise self-surveillance and selt-discipline. He writes: Tl |here is no need lor arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interior-ising to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising surveillance over and against himself iFoueaulr 1977: IJSJii Through rhis control and regulation of movements, rime and everyday activities, Fotieauh argues, the body becomes invested with relations of power and domination, resulting in obedient 'docile bodies" I I'oucault 1977: 177). He also pointed out, though, that where there i-. power
28   Chapter 1 ■ The body
there is always resistance, These idem have been applied by social scientists beyond the realm or institutional settings such as prisons, (a think about the ways 'normaľ social lire and activities Takes place within a system of 'imperfect I'anoprieism'll lannah
L997).
J-H(UL.ii])r"s work has therefore hecorne v en important in the.social sciences. first, it demonstrates that the body is constituted within discourse and that different dis cursive regimes produce different bodies. Second, it demonstrates that the transition trom traditional to modern societies was marked by a shift in the target ofdiscourse av..u n mu controlling the. body through brute force towards the use of the mind as the Surface of the inscription of power. Third, it reveals 3 shift in the scope t>f discourse, away from controlling individual bodies ti wards controlling the population as a whole. Fourth, it emphasizes the individual body as the effect of an endless circulation of power and knowledge. In doing so it makes an important connection between everyday practices and the operation or power at a wider scale i Shilling
i99s;.,
Geographers in particular have used 1-oncaiilr's ideas to think ahoui the way bodies are disciplined in a range of spatial contexts, rut example: the asylum (1'hilo the workhouse (Driver I Íu the workplace (McDowell I5£5h the prison {sec Valentine 1998), and rhe srate iKobinson 1930) (sec- Chapter 5). They have also drawn upon the concept of Limpev!ecL ľatiopticism' (Hannah I 9L.)7l in discussing new Technologies í such asCi TV) and the emergence of a surveillance society í Hannah I 9<J7, 1-vreaiid Kanru^tcr 1998, Graham 1998) isce Chapter hi.
Wi   2.3.2 The sensuous body
Section Z.s.l focused on how the body is produced through discourse. However, Bryan Turner (1V N4: 24 í! armies that such work ignores the material body, lie writes thai the ■'immediacy of personal sensuous experience of embodiment which is involved in rhe notion nŕwŕy hody receives scant attention, My authority, possession and occupation of a personalised body through sensuous experience are minimised in favour ol an emphasis on rhe regulatory controls exercised from oittside.'
Among r hose who lun-e focused on rhe lived body is the phenomenologisi Meiieau-l'onty i 1^2.1. Pot Merleau-I'onrv ([962) subjectivity is located in the hody rather than the mind, lie argues that the body is the locus or experience, ir exists prior lo all reflection and knowlcelgc. The body, and the way ir act*; and orientates itself to its surroundings, is rhe basis of everything else |YouJi£ 1990b). His emphasis is therefore on perception. The suh|ecr exists tor him insofar lis the body can approach and connect with its surroundings and thus bring them into being i Young 19901)1. As Langer (1989; 4 1 f writes, 'my a u areness ol my body is inseparable from the world of my perception. I'he rhinos which 1 perceive, I perceive always in reference to nn body, and this is so only because I have an immediate awareness ol
2.3 ■ The hody as a space 79
triy hotly itself as ir exists "toitwtte ibeiu".' In other words, tor Merleau-Ponty, the miitd 'is always embodied, always based on corporeal and sensory relations' fCjrosi1.
For Merleau-bonry >, i9(i2| the hotly is the subject that const it u tes space because without the body there would be no space, but it is also rhe object of spatial re I a -tii his. 1-Je grants the hod v uitentionality, arguing that bodib movements can be directed by rhe body's Intelligent connections with the world which surrounds it.
The geosraplier David Seamnn (1.979) bas drawn on Merleau-Polity's "'ork to .under stand lbe everyday nature of environ menta I experience. Using focus groups conducted with students, he explored the way in which people move through and occupy every da j spaces. Like Merle an Portly, aeanion does not conceive of the body as a passive object, but rather as capable of its own thought and action. To illtisiratt tin1, he draws on extracts from his locus group discussions it) which participants describe bow rhey would do rhings 'automatically', such as walking home without thinking about the route rhey were taking or reaching for a clean towel under the sink before they have remembered there is not one there (Box 2,11. Seam on (1979; i^' arc,nes rbat underlying and guiding rhe.se everyday movements is a bodily inten-t uma lie y which he terms 'body subject1, lie describes rhis as 'the inherent capacity of the body to direct behaviours of the person intelligently, and thus I unction as ;1 special kind of.subject which expresses its.clf in a p'recon scions way usually described by such words as "automatic", "habitual"", "involuntary" and "mechanical"1 íšeaitton [ 979: 41).
Desek) ping rhe theme of habitual movement. Seam on (1979: 55) goes on to argue that individuals build up 'time-space routines'. This is the series of behaviours or rituals of everyday life we habitually repeat as part of daily or weekly schedules -for example, getting up at T-o() a.m.t having n bath, tlnosing, having breakfast, leaving the home at a set time, buying a paper from the neai'by store, catching the same bu;i to work, and so ott. Where many individuals' time-space routines come together they fuse to create "place ballets' (Sea mou 1979t .íň k These can occur in all sorts of environ me ncs from the street, to the univetsity, a marker pi ace or a station. Tor Sea i turn 11979) the power of place ballets to generate a sense o I" place has important implications for planning and design.
While Sea mo it's work focuses on the way bodies move through and occupy space, other geographers have been concerned with the role or the senses in forming a ilia login: between the body and its surroundings fRodaway 1994 J. According to Roduway (1994: J]), there are four dimensions to understanding the sensuous geography oi the body. First, the bodv's geometry (awareness of I rout, back^ up, down, ere) and its senses givť us an tirirnUiiiou in the world. Second, the senses provide a nii\isttre of the world in that they enable us to appreciate distance, scale, etc. Third, the lacoiuvittiti of the body enables us to explore and evaluate our surroundings with ail our senses, h'onrrlu the hotly is a č&fyřtnt íyiírui Integrating and coordinating the information and experiences git there d by each of the senses.
30   Chapter 1 ■ The body
Box 2.1: Bodily intentionality
'When I was living at home and going to school, I couldn't drive to the university directly - I had to go around one way or the other. I once remembered becoming vividly aware of the fact that ! always went there by one route and back the other - I'd practically always do it. And the funny thing was that I didn't hove to tell myself to gu there one way and back the other. Something in me would do it automatically; I didn't have much choice in the matter.'
'I know where the string switches to the lights in my apartment are now. In the kitchen, even in the dark, I walk in, take a few steps, my hand reaches for the string, pulls and the light is on. The hand knows exactly what to do. It happens fast and effortlessly - I don't have to think about it at all.'
'Sometimes for an early class I'll get to the class and wonder how I got there -you do it so mechanically. Von don't remember walking there. You get up and go without thinking - you know exactly where you have to go and you get there but you don't think about getting there while yuu're on the way.'
'I operated an ice-cream truck this past summer. On busy days I'd work as fast as I could ,,. As I worked, I'd get into a rhythm ol getting ice cream and giving change. My actions would flow, and I'd feel good. 1 had about twenty kinds of ice cream in my truck. Someone would order, and automatically I would reach for the right container, make what the customer wanted, and take his [sic] money. Most of the time I didn't have to think about what I was doing. It all became routine.'
Cited in 5eamon 1979: 163-4, 165, 170.
While everyday perception is, tor innsL people, multi-sensual, involving some combination ol touch, taste, hearing, smell and sight (though see geographical work on sensory impairment, notably (he experiences of the visually impaired and blind: butler I 994, Butler and Howlby 1997), geographers have tended to privilege rhe visual over rhc other senses. The emphasis has often been on how bodies are dressed and <m how they appear as they move through and occupy space. The 'surveilianl ga^e' I see secrion 2..i, Iabove) ban been an important means through which bodies are interpreted and regulated. Recently, however, some geographers (e.g. Thrift I^Wi) have begun to stress the importance of valorizing all the senses and forms of social knowledge, nor just rhe visual and the act ol looking. Our understandings of our bodies and our attempts to manage them are based not ntst on visual information bur also other sensual in format ion. Space and time are perceived through all the different senses of rhe body. Our bodies might h>nk active, young and dynamic, yet we might
2.3 ■ The body as a space 31
leel heavy, slow, immobile, have an inhibited sense pi our own spatialiry - or vice-versa (Valentine 1999a),
The body may also be considered as a site ol pleasure, Lynda Johnston's 119981 work on women body builders captures some of rhe corporeal pleasures of pumping iron (see also section 2.4,1.1) while David Crouch (1999) describes some of the physical and sensual pleasures of caravanning. Yet, this is not to lorger rhat the body is also a site of pain. Liz Crow (1996) warns that by locusmg on the sucial construction ot disability and challenging stereotypes ot the disabled as dependent or vulnerable, researchers are in danger of ignoring die very real bodily experiences of pain rhat an illness or impairment can cause. The complex and contradictory bodily realities ot a chronic illness are evident in Tarn Moss and Isabel Dyck's (1999) study of women with Pttyjifeii mc^p{)al(iMy0ta (MEJ, I I ere. they describe how the women's experiences of fatigue, pain and cognitive dysfunction may be followed by days of being svmprom-tree, showing how these contradictory bodily experiences can position the wnmc-n as simultaneously 'ill' and 'healthy'. This theme is also pursued ill Moss's 11999) autobiographical account of having ME, while elsewhere Dyck i 19991 considers how women with multiple sclerosis 1 NT S i negotiate changes in their bodies' corporeality.
W   2.3.3 The psyche
The previous sections have distinguished between surface presentations - how we might appear - and sensuous experiences - how wc might feel. This section pursues the distinction between 'surface' and 'depth' or 'inside1 and 'outside' further by focusing on the psyche - how we really feel (Kirby 1996: 14),
Geographers have used psychoanalytical theory and its concern with the unconscious to try to understand the relationship between the individual and rhe external world. Analysts believe that if is the unconscious (mental processes of which we are unaware) which generates the thoughts and feelings which motivate or inhibit our actions. Consequently. h is the uneon sett his, rather than consciousness, which they regard as the key to understanding individual and group behaviour (Pile t;996). In summarizing the complex and highly contested 'notion' of rhe unconscious, Steve File (1996: 7) explains that -For most analysts . . , die unconscious is made up of residues of infantile experiences and the representatives of the person's (particular sexual) drives. Although there is considerable disagreement about how children develop increasingly intricate and dynamic psychological structures, the experiences of early childhood are generally accepted to he critical.' He goes on to explain that we cope with early upsetting or painful experiences by repressing diem from our consciousness. Til is causes a split within the mind into rhe conscious and the unconscious. Although the unconscious does not dictate what goes on in the mind, it does continually srruggle To express itself, for example through dreams.
32  Chapter 2 ■ The body
There are many different schools oh psychoanalytic thought, each of which is highly contested. Geographers have drawn on a range of approaches, including the work of Freud, Lacan, W'innicott, Krisieva and Klein, in order think about the relationships between subjectivity, society and space (see lor example: Aitketi and I leriuan 1997, Blum andNast l«W>. gondi 1997, Pile I99S, Rose 1996). David Sibley's work I 1995a, 1995b) is a particularly good example or how psychoanalytic theory can be used to understand how we locate ourselves and others in the world.
In his liook Cw.o\>rnphsv& uf Exclusion David Sibley (1995a) examines why some groups; including gypsies, children, lesbian and gay men and ethnic minorities, are both socially and spatially marginalized. I Ie argues that each of these groups is feared or loathed and goes on to shows how this attirade to cultural difference is played our in space, giving examples of how- each of these groups has been subject to spatial regulation and segregation. In trying to understand why these groups are feared and how soeio-spatial boundaries are constructed along a.xes of difference such as race ami sexuality Sibley 11 995a, I 995b) draws on the work of object relations psy-choanalysists such as Metallic Klein and Julia Kristeva. He uses their work to understand how people make the distinction, and mark boundaries between self and other.
Pile (19961 explains - in his own words, very crudely - that in object relations theory the child's sense of itself is developed through its relation to objects (which include the mother, toys, etc). Specifically, the child develops a sense oi itself as a single bounded identity as a result of its gradual recognition that it has a separate body from that of its mother. The mother is both a 'good' object because she gives the child food, love, and so on, and a "bad' object because she is not always available or eloes not aKvays respond to the child's desires. This tension between these experiences of desire and insecurity produces a sense of ambivalence within the child towards the mother (Pile 199li), Sibley 11 995b: 1251 writes: 'Aversion and desire, repulsion and attraction, play against each oilier in defining the border which gives the self identity and, importantly, these opposed feelings are transferred to others during childhood,'
Sibley then uses Kristeva's concept oi abjection to explain this displacement oi these contradictory feelings onto those regarded as different. For Kristeva, the subject feels a sense of repulsion at its own bodily residues (excrement, decay, etc). To maintain the purity of the self, the boundaries of the body must be constantly defended against the impure. Sibley (1995a; Kl argues that the 'urge to make separations between clean and dirty, ordered and disordered, "us" ami "them", that is, to expel the abject, is encouraged in western cultures, creating feelings of anxiety7 because such separations can never be finally achieved1 (Sibley 1995a: 14). Sibley goes on ro examine the relationship between these processes and organization of space, social values, and power relations. He shows how cultural and social values in Western society construct particular groups (such as gypsies, lesbians and gay men, ethnic minorities, and so on) as Lelirty' or polluting. Using examples, Sibley \ I 995a I demonstrates how people often respond to these 'abject others' with hittred, arrempting to create social and spatial boundaries to exclude or expel them. Through this literal mapping
7.a ■ The body a$ a project 33
ill power ivlarions and rejection Sibley argues thai particular exclusionary landscapes are developed in different times and places (see also Chapter 6|.
Tih Summary
* The body is a surface upon which cultural values, morality and institutional regimes are inscribed.
* It is constituted within discourse. Different discursive regimes produce different bodies.
* The hotly is also <\ sensuous being, the material basis lor our connection with, and experience of, our environment.
■ Some geographers have used psychoanalytical theory to try to understand the relationship between the individual and the external world.
•'</.'.   2.4 The body as a project
M   2.4.1 The individual body
In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries affluent Western societies have been marked by a growth in mass consumption, the democratization of culture, a decline in religious morality and a postindustnal emphasis on hedonism and pleasure (Turner 19921. In this context, the body has emerged in consumer culture as an important bearer of symbolic value (see section 2.3,1.2) and as constitutive ot our sell-identities. As Chris Shilling (ľWÍ: 3) explains: 'for those who have lost their faith in religious authorities and grand political narratives, and are no longer provided with a clear world view or self identity by these trans-personal meaning structures, at least the body initially appears to provide a firm loundation on which to reconstruct a reliable sense ofrhe self in the modem world/ In particular, the exterior surface or appearance of the body is seen to symbolize the self.
Developments in everything from plastic surgery and laser treatments to sports science mean that we each have increasing possibilities to control and (rclconstruct our bodies (although this is not to say that we all have the interest, desite or resources to do so} in terms of size, appearance, shape, and so on. The body is malleable and dynamic rarher than static (i.upton [996). Therefore '[i|n the affluent West there is a tendency for the body to he seen as an entity which is in the process of becoming; a pmici! which should be worked at ant! accomplished as pari of an iisdii-nUsaľs self-identity' (Shilling 199$: 5). This emphasis on our individual responsibility for our bodies is evident in government health campaigns. The onset of all sorts of
34   Chapter 1 W The body
illnesses [such as cancer or diabetes) and even the ageing pmccss, we are told, can be avoided hj|' at least delayed, if we look after our bodies properly, ear the nghr foods, watch our weight, exercise, do nor smoke, drink In moderation and so on, The media, advertising, fashion indusrries, medicine and consumer culture all provide a framework of discourses within which we can each locate, evaluace and understand our own bodies (Featherstoue 1991).
In this context then, where the body is a symbol of the self, an object of public-display and the responsibility of its 'owner1, we are expected to be vigilant a hour our site, shape and appearance and to discipline ourselves in order to produce our bodies in culturally desirable ways (Valentine I 999a, I 999bJ, Drawing on ťóucaulťs notion of the surveillanr ga*e (see section 2,3.I.J), writers have argued that disciplinary power is most effective when it is not extern a I bur is exercised by, and against, the self. The failure to maintain a silm, youthful, heterosesLialLy desirable body is thus commonly seen not only as a social, but also a personal and moral failing (Synott 199J), Anthony Synott (1993) suggests that oiar bodily identities are central to our life chances. People who arc overweight are often stereotyped as self-indulgent, hty.y, uiiErustworthy and non-conforming (see Chapter 5), There are many examples of organizations as diverse as The Disney Corporation, the Mew York City iiafhc Department and City o I London banks who have established rheir own corporate bodily norms, or fired employees for being overweight (Rell and Valentine 1997, Valentine 1999a),
There are other pay-oifs too for those who treat their bodies as a project. According to Shilling (199.?: 7), 'Investing in the body provides people with a means of self-expression and a way of potentially feeling guod and increasing the control they have over their bodies. If one feels unable to exert influence over an increasingly complex society, at least one can have some effect on the siře, shape and appearance of one's body.'' Mote extreme forms of control - which may develop as extensions of mundane everyday bodily practices such as dieting, exercise and el less - i nc I title plastic-surgery, liposuction, hotly building (Johnston 1993) and body modification (Rell and Valentine 199:5 b).
It is alio important to remember that this sort of identity construction is nor an option within reach of everyone, however. Mike hear her stone í I 999: 5) points out, for example, that raciatized bodies 'cannot be so easily reconstituted and made into a project',
B   2.4.1.1 Body building
'The body builder . . - is involved in actively re in scribing the body's skeletal frame dirOLtgh the in script ton of muscles (the calculated rearing and rebuilding of selected muscles according to the exercise chosen} and of posture and internal organs' (Crosr 1994: 143). A muscular physique has been associated in the Western trad i -rion with the male sex [Johnston 199ČÍ). Lli/.aheth Gros/. M994: 224) argues thar
1.4 ■ The body as a project
male body budding can be read as an attempt to render rhe whole body into rhe phallus, 'creating the male body as hard, impenetrable, pure muscle'. Interestingly, though, Lynda Johnston (199S) points out that the narcissistic practices of waxing, oiling and posing which this investment in the body tan involve might be seen as a feminine activity.
In a paper tilled 'Creating the perfecr bod}1' Lee Monaghnn (1999) highlights the extent to which male body building can he a natcissistie act. lie identifies a range of muscular bodies that men can potentially produce through body building, their obsessions with their cthnophysiology (separation between muscles, muscle defim-u:i:i, hody tat, and so on I and evaluation and appreciation of other men's bodies in bodybuilding magazines and competitions. Drawing on Interview material, Mouaghau 11 999) exposes rhe anxieties and dismay some men experience when they spend considerable amounts of time building bodies which they think will have sexual capital only to find that women laugh at them when they parade on the beach. One, far example, describes the horror of working his body to produce a 'rhino' or 'frog' shape (big back and shoulders, small waist, big thighs) only to find out that be should have gone for a more athletic or sleeker look, such as the 'tiger' or 'puma*. Others fret that wearing clorhes over bulked up muscles makes rhem look fat rather than fit.
The female body builder both reinforces and destabilizes traditional notions of femininity. By exercising self-surveillance, constantly monitoring their diets and shape, and employing plenty of feminine signifies such as lipstick and earrings, some female body builders accentuate their femininity lAoki 199(j, Johnston I99S). Others, who develop strong, muscular bodies, understand body building as a transgressive act which destabilizes a feminine bodily identity and questions women's difference from, and otherness to men (see section 2.2,2}. As a consequence of diet and training women can reduce their body fat to such an extent that their breasts are reduced in size or even eliminated and menstruation can stop (Johnston 1998). by developing attributes which are usually associated with men - Strength, stamina, muscularity and control - some women feel empowered, 1 ikewise, [Jumping iron in itself is also a corporeal and potentially erotic sensation. The quotes in Rox 2,2 capture the pleasure and pain of working out and watching the pump transform the body.
Sffi   2.4.1.2 Hotly modification
Body modifications in the lorm of tartoomg, multiple piercing, branding, cutting, binding, scarification ami inserting implants are increasingly visible aspects of many contemporary siib-euhural srylcs in Western societies (Sanders 1989. .Vtascia-I ees and Sharpc 1992, Myers 1992), 'fT]oday tattoos and body piercing have become increasingly stylish; even fashion models get delicate piercing, and modern bohe-mians sport pierced lips, cheeks, nipples, tongues and genitals' I Steele 199b: 160).
Many accounts by body modifiers emphasize it as a way of taking control of the body, possessing it, and expressing a self-identity. David Curry (1993: 69) explains:
3b   Chapter 7 ■ The body
Box 7.2: Body building
Pain
Fiona: 'It's not just the way you end up looking, urn, it's the feel of lifting the heavy weights, ! really enjoy that. There's something about it. Like this morning - I did chest this morning - rust chest alone and 1 left and I felt all tight across here [points to her chest], It's a really good feeling and also you get to like [original emphasis] the pain you get the next day. For legs you usually get sort [of] two days of pain ... I'm still feeling it from the other day on me.1
Pleasure
Fiona: 'Yeah I feel good when I'm walking along and even covered Up, urn, there is some sense of feeling good and holding your head up, walking square shoulders and knowing underneath you've got this changed body that you're working on.'
Sarah: 'I used to think no way [original emphasis]. I'm not going to be a woman with muscles because again I envisaged this big huge thing and until you start to push a little bit of weights and notice the change in your body you start to appreciate that, you know, it looks nice.'
Johnston 199fi: 255-6
"Body decoration lies at the interface between the private and the public. The skin is the actual membrane between what, on one side, is inside me and, on rhe other side, is outside me. If is superficially me and at the same time a surface onto which J can both consciously and unconsciously project thai which is more deeply me." In this respect, body modifications are regarded as a way ol articulating individuality, pi resisting the superficiality of consumer culture and of making a statement of difference. People oltcn yo to great lengths ro design their own unique rartoos. One of Paul Sweerman's (6Sl interviewees explains '. . . it makes you Feel individual ► i . you know like, everyone's born with roughly rhe saute bodies, but you've created yours in your own image |in hue with) what your imagination wants your body to look like. It's like someone's given you something, and then you've made it your, own, so you're not like everyone else any more/ While a man with a lar^e-scale back tattoo feels 'J am a different person now, and I realise that in many ways, I am not the average guy on the street. On a more public level, my tattoo affirms that difference. It visually sets me apart from the masses' (Klesse t?99i 20).
In contrast to other ways of articulating a scli-identiry many hod}' modifications have the advantage ol permanence (although this varies as piercings and some tattoo-, can he removed!. As one woman with a tattoo explains, 'Before, I could express myself in clorhes and things like that, now it's actually something that's permanent
2.4 ■ The body as a project 37
Plate 2.1   Body modification can be kept private by clothing or displayed at will
,ind that's definitely me' iSweetman [999; .si>}. In rhis way. bod) modifications can be a stronger, definitive statement of die self, 'an attempt to fix and anchor the sell by permanently marking the body* (Fcatherstotie 1999: 4). Indeed, some use them as a way of recording defining moments m their lues (e.g. a wedding! onto their bodies. As such, body modifications arc a "permanent diary that no one can take of I you' (Sweet man 1999: o9i. Consequently, t lie American tattoos st Don Kd Hardy argues that it is misleading to suggest that tattoos and piercings are just fashion, hie says, 'It is on your body; it's permanent; you have to live with it and it hurts' (quoted in Sweerman 1999: 71),
Although body modifications are on the exterior ol the body, levels or visibility Wary widely, from whole-hod y tattoos or piercings on the face, to discreet butterllies hidden on rhe burrocks (see Piate 2.11. The fact that body modifications can he kept private by clothing and displayed publicly at the will ol the bearer offers one of rhe rransgressive pleasures ot adornment: the knowledge that under the smart suit is a pierced nipple (Bell ami Valentine 1995111.
In contrast to those who use body modification to express individuality, others use it as a group marker. These non-mainsrrcani body modifiers include 'Modern Primitives*, a movement which originated in California, USA in rhe 1970s. These people claim to have primal urges to alter their bodies. Among their practices, which rhey rerm 'body play', ate Contortion, including foot-binding and stretching ol body parts; bondage and various forms ol boely constriction; deprivation, including being
38   Chapter 2 ■ The body
en god in boxes, bags, and body suirs; wearing 'iron' (martacles, heavy bracelets, etc); burning, branding and shock treatment penetmiion including piercing, skewering, tattooing; and various forms of suspension I mm different body parts (Klesse 1999). Modern Primitives seek their inspiration, and appropriate wrhjH they regard as 'primitive rituals' and body modification techniques, trom indigenous traditions of Polynesia and elsewhere. Their movement emphasizes spirituality ami community (see also Chapter S, section N.5.2). Through the creation of 'new tribes' they claim to give people a sense of belonging which rhey feel the)' have lost m contemporary society, It is a movement, however, which is widely criticized for ferishizing other cultures - most notably idealizing and essentializing primitive cultures - and for reproducing repressive gender and racialized stereotypes (Klesse 1999),
V6   2.4.2 The connected body
The popular and academic focus on the body as a project [2.4.1 above) reflects what Chris Shilling f 199.1; J) describes as 'the unprecedented hidiuidualisatian of rhe body' in contemporary- a i fluent societies. Vet, this perhaps overs tares the degree of control individuals actually have over iheir own bodies. Writing about places, Dorcen Massey (199J: 66) argues rhar they 'can be imagined as articulated moments in networks oi social relations and understandings' Isee also Chapter I). Ir. the same way, it is possible to think ol bodies not as bounded and discrete entities bur as relational 'things', as the product of interactions, as constituted by constellations of other social relations. This means rhar rather than thinking about the individualization of bodily practices, geographers need to recognize the Connectedness of bodies ro other places Isee also Nast and ľile I99S), and specifically, the ways in which bodies are inflected by material practices, representations, social relations and structures til political-economic power in wider locations such the home, workplace, community, state and so on.
For example, the extent to which individuals can produce the space of their bodies m accordance with their own individual desires depend-, upon rhe extent To which rhey feel able to demarcate ownership or control over their own bodies. Within spatial settings such as the home and the workplace our bodies can be 'open" locations that are subject to control and regulation, by others. David Morgan 11 99ŕi; I >2l uses rhe term 'bodily density' to describe tine ways that close proximity to a person over a period of time 'can result in knowledge, control and care of each other's bodies in numerous repeated and often unacknowledged ways'. Nowhere is this more apparent than in sexual relationships and in shared households where bodies can become contested terrain between partners, housemates, parents and children (see box 2..!i. Likewise, rhe role of workplaces and conn n tin i tie s in defining how 'members' should dress and manage rheir bodies iGreen I 99 j. McDowell 1 995, Valentine 1 9991) and the role of the stale in regulating bodily behaviours, from sadomasochistic sexual practices (liell ]99.5aT 1995b), to assisted suicide and abortion, farther expose the limits of individuals' corporeal freedoms.
2.4 ■ The body as a project 39
Box 2.3: Bodily density
Carol; 'I mean there are times when I say "Right f'm going to be good for the next munth, cut down, you know, I know I've put on weight", and then two days later I'll be eating something and Mike [her husband] will say to me "What arc you eating that for? I thought you wete trying to lose some weight" and, er, it gets me mad.''
Valentine 1999a: 333
Mike: 'I worked in buying and buying was, you were always taken out for lunch by sales people who came to visit you and, er, so you know, I don't know, possibly three or four times a week really you'd be taken out for meals and go to restaurants or pubs or whatever... 1 mean five pints at lunch time was common, you know in buying.,. I started to put, well I started to put a lot of weight on because I was just eating all the time. I remember coming up to Christmas and I'd been out for 18 or 19 Christmas dinners... I just got, you know, a big stomach and, err my face was fat.'
Valentine 1999a: 346
Jasmin: 'I've got good intentions but they never work, I mean, I like to go swimming but it's, like, finding the time when I can go swimming when I haven't got the children, or ] haven't got to go and pick children up from nursery and things ... just doesn't work.'
Valentine 1999a: 341
These wider locations can also frustrate individuals' attempts to discipline and aianagc their bodies in chosen ways, Although the bodies of workers in many professional occupations are constituted within discourses which elide slimness with success, productivity and professionalism {see Chapter 5k the cultural practice of the 'business lunch'' can actually drive 'professtonal' bodies out pi shape by making them indulge in excess consumption (sec Box 1,M Likewise, women often find it hard to diet and exercise when their corporeal Ireedom is limited by the need to provide meals to suit the tastes of other family members and by the time-space constraints oi household routines (see Box 2.3).
The erosion or permeability of individuals' body boundaries in these ways demonstrate how little corporeal freedom we can actually have to shape our bodies according to our individual desires. Contrary to popolar (and some academic) discourses about the body as an individual project, activities such as healthy eating, dress, and exercise, are not necessarily individualized practices. Rather, a focus on the "situated interdependence' (Thrift 1996: 9i of everyday life, reveals that our bodies are better understood as porous locations which are inflected by wider socio-spatial relations (Valentine 1999a).
40   Chapter 2 ■ The body
film is id so a Tendency within popular discourses and the academic literature on the body to emphasize discipline and control. Vet, there are other meanings around bodily practices such as eating ami exercise which stress their pleasurable and hedonistic dimensions as well as the physical sensations and emotions such as comfort, release of stress, and happiness, which they can produce (hup ton 19'Ju). It is these sensual pleasures rhat create ambivalences and tensions for individuals who, on the one hand, want to manage their bodies'hi line with dominant discourses around self-discipline- yet who, on the other hand, enjoy the physical sensations of eating, are sceptical about medical advice or who rake a fatalistic arrirude towards their body shape and appearance (Lupton 1.996, Valentine 1999a).
Indeed, individuals.may sometimes experience competing understandings of how they should be producing rhe space ut their bodies in different locations in which their body is s omen rues constructed as a 'public'' location and sometimes a 'private location' (Valentine 1999a) - for example, encountering pressure from employers and colleagues ac work to diet, while at home taking pleasure from cooking for, and dining with others, or relaxing and comfort eating alone. Consequently, individuals1 bodies are rarely completely disciplined or, in Fouea Lilt's term, 'docile* (see section ZJ.1.3) yet neither are they completely free from the shadow of ascetic discourses about self-discipline and individual responsibility. As Deborah I.tiptoe (1996: 153) writes, "In consumer culture there is, therefore, a continual dialectic between the pleasures of consumption and the ethic ot asceticism as means of construed ng the self.'
'lib Summary
• The body has emerged in contemporary consumer culture as a project which should be worked at and accomplished as part of an individual's sell-identity.
• Individuals are expected to take responsibility for their own bodies by exercising vigilance and self-discipline.
• The popular and academic emphasis on self-discipline cart overstate the degree of corporeal freedom or control individuals may have.
• Bodies are inflected by material practices, representations, social relations a ltd structures of political-economic power in wider locations.
• In addition ro ascetic discourses there are orher meanings a round bodily practices which stress their pleasurable and hedonistic dimensions.
• In consumer culture there is a continual tension berween rhe bodily plensures of consumption and the ethic [if asceticism as means of constituting self-identities,
• Our bodies are rarely completely disciplined, yet neither are tIncompletely free from the shadow of these ascetic discourses.
2.5 ■ Bodies taking Lip space 4!
Vh.  2.5 Bodies taking up space
This section examines how we physically occupy space, connect with surrounding spatial fields and rake up space through our *ize and appearance (2,5,1) and bodily comportment (2,a.2). Both examples emphasize how women's bodies are expected tc) occupy less space than men's.
EB   2.5.1 Size and appearance
Research suggests that the citizens or contemporary Western societies are getting fatter, yet slimness is the aesthetic ideal promoted by the media, fashion and consumer industries, Being thin is equated with health and sexual attractiveness in what Deborah Lupton (1996: 137) terms the food/health/beauty triplex. Although there is some evidence diat men are increasingly coming under pressure to watch their weight and rake care of their bodies (Hocock 199.?), it is women who have traditionally been expected to pursue what Susan Bordo (1993: I fid) describes as the 'ever changing, homogenizing, elusive ideal or teminiuicy', She writes: 'Through the exacting and normalising disciplines of diet, make-up and dress - central organising principles of time and space in the day ol many women - we are rendered less socially oriented and more ceurripetally focused tin self-modification. Through these disciplines, wc continue Co memorise on our hodies the feel and conviction of lack, of insufficiency, ol never being good enough' (Bordo 1993: 166).
While not all women pursue this commoditied ideal, and some women deliberately reject it (Orbach I9ttfi), the U'SOs onwards have witnessed a growth in earing disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. A number oi feminist writers have argued that eating disorders are an indictment of women's position in society. They suggest that many women willingly accept the bodily 'norms' they are encouraged to aspire to because, through dieting, women are able to experience a sense of control and power (traditionally coded as male) and independence which they do nor have-in other aspects ol their lives and in return they receive admiration (both (or their self-control bind for their shape) from a world where they often feel excluded and undervalued (Orhach 19:88). l;or some women these rewards become so addictive that they take the issue of controlling their body's demands for food to the extreme where they seek to kill off its needs altogether, Jenefer Shute (199.1), in her fictional account of a woman's battle with anorexia. Life Site describes how her character, Josic. struggles to lose weight and so minimize the space she takes up, while sneering at those she thinks are too fat and are occupying too much space.
Bordo (1993) suggests that dieting ro the point where a woman loses her lemin-ine curves and develops a 'boyish' body represents for some women a way of escaping the vulnerability (both social anil sexual} which is associated with having a female body and of entering a male world. However, she argues that the sense of power or control this may induce is illusionary. For feminist writers such as Bordo (199.3: 175) anorexia is not a product of individual psychopathy or dysfunction but rather is a
42   Chapter 1 ■ The body
form fjf embodied protest against womcn's:s.o^:£| and cultural position. She- writes: 'It is unconscious, inchoate, and counter productive protest without an effective language, Voice, or politics, hut protest nonerhelcss,'
In contrast, those who are nvet1 weight are often accused tif taking up loo much space. Schwartz. (;l-98t>: .328) observes how everyday environments are designed to accommodate only certain body shapes ant I sizes: 'Airplane sears, subway turnstiles, steering wheels in cars ate designed to make ("at people uncomfortable.' In the. face of unaccommodating en v iron mem s, the hostile gaze of slim bodies, and sometimes even overt discrimination, overweight bodies can feel pressurized into self-concealment and be inhibited in everyday spaces from the restauram to the beach (•dine 1990).
Not surprisingly, the body Oat and thin! has also become a-site of resistance. In response to fat discrimination in the USA the National Association to Aid Fat Americans held a Tat-In in New York in 1967. Fat is also, as Orhacb (19SS) famously declared, a feminist issue, hi the I 970s and I ^St'ls feminists argued rhar bodily practices such as dieting, wearing make-up and shaving legs were aimed at pleasing men. Women were encouraged to give up all forms of body maintenance and concerns about their appearance (Green 1991). At the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, however, there has been a backlash against what became seen as oppressive atrempts by feminism ro police women's bodies. Rather the emphasis is now on re-engaging with femininity on new terms jRell e{ til. 1994).
M   2.5,2 Bodily comportment
In an. essay titled 'Throwing like a girl1 Iris Marion Young (19.90}. argues thai women are alienated from their bodies and, as a result, occupy and use space in an inhibited way compared to men. She begins her analysis by drawing on the observations of the writer F.rwtn S?rauss about the different way that boys and £irls throw a ball. Whereas boys use their whole bodies to throw, leaning back, twisting and reaching forward, girls, Strauss noted, tend to he relatively snffand Immobile, only using their arms to produce a throwing action. Young (1990) argues that women demonstrate similar restricted body movements and inhibited comportrnent in other physical activities too. For example, women tend to sit with their legs crossed and rheir arms across themselves, whereas men tend to sit Tvith their legs open and using their hands in gesrures. In other words. Young (1991)) claims that women do not make full Ltse of their bodies' spatial potentialities. This is not because women are inherently weaker than men but rather ir is to do with the different way that men and women approach tasks. Women think they are incapable of throwing, lifting, pushing and so on, and so when they try these sorts of activities they are inhibited and do not put their whole bodies into the task wirh the same ease as men (for example, only using their arms to throw). Young f 1990: 148) describes this as 'inhibited mten-i tonality', it is a bodily comportment which is learned. A number of writers have
2,5 ■ Bodies taking up space
argued, tor example, that teenage girls give up sporr and leisure activities in order ro spend time with hoys li.iriffin 1985:), whereas schools promote physicality among*! hoys through sport (.Viae an Ghail 1996).
Not only do women underestimate their physical abilities and lack self-confidence, bu( they also fear getting hurt. Describing women as experiencing their bodies as a 'fragile encumbrance', Young (1990: 147) writes that 'she often lives her bod) as a burden which must be dragged and prodded along and at the same time protected'. Women also experience their bodies as fragile in another sense too. in thai their bodies are the object ol the male gaze. Young {1990} suggests that it is acceptable lor men to look at, comment on or touch women's bodies in public space and that, as a result, women are fearful that their body space may be invaded by men in the form of wolf whistles, minor sexual harassment or even rape {see also Chancer 6). As pa it of a defence against ibiš fear or invasion, women experience their bodies as enclosed and disconnected from the outlaying spatial held. Young Í1990: 146) writes. Tor many wrotnen as they move ... a space surrounds us in imagination that we are not free to move beyond; the space available to our movement is a constricted space/ It is important to note, however, that Young (1990) docs point out that her observations apply to rhe way women typically move but not to all women or all of the time.
In contrast to women, men learn to experience a connectedness between their bodies and their surrounding spatial iield and to view the world as constituted by their Bwn intentions. Hob Conned (1983), for example, argues that whereas women are valued for their appearance, men arc expected to demonstrate bodily skill in terms of their competence to operate on space, or rhe objects in it, and to he a bodily force in terms of their ability to occupy space. This competence is developed through cults of physicality, sporr (formal and informal), drinking, fighting, work and so on. For instance, certain forms of manual labour like lifting, digging, carrying are closely linked to some sense of bodily force in masculinity. Although economic restructuring means the stress on pure labouring has declined, the social meanings and relations of physical labour and bodily capacity to masculinity have nor (Council I99..Í), According to Young 11990), men live their bodies in an open way. They feel about to move out and master the world. Council (198$; 19) explains; 'To be an adult male is distinctly to occupy space, ro have a physical presence in the world. Walking down rhe street, I square my shoulders and covertly measure myself againsr other men. Walking pasi a group of punk youths late at night, I wonder if 1 look formidable enough/
The difference in rhe meanings of men and women's physicaliry is evident in relation to naked bodies. Whereas a male srranger's naked body Is seen as a sign of aggression and as frightening or threatening to women, a female srranger's body is not road in the same way by men. Men do not feel assaulted or threatened by seeing an unknown Woman naked. It is assumed that men want to look at the nude bodies of women because they are an opportunity for pleasure. Consequently, in the eyes ol the law women cannot commit the crime ol 'Hashing' because, in contrast to men.
44   Chapter 2 ■ The body
their naked bodies are regarded as non-aggressive and nor sexually threatening, being read instead as entertaining. Tile only time a woman sari be arrested for indecent exposure is if her actions are understood to be an offence against public sensibilities (KirLn 1995:.
'till Summary
We physically occupy space, connect with surrounding spatial fields and rake up space through our bodily size and appearance and bodily comportment.
• Women's bodies are expected to occupy less space than men's.
• Fai and thin bodies have become political issues and sites ol resisrance.
Wi   7.6 Bodies in space
Adrieunv Rich (19S6) observes that our material bodies are the basis of our experience of everyday spaces. Our bodies are what people react to; we read into them stories of people's age, lifestyle, politics, identity, and so on. 'They connect us with other people and places but rhey also serve to mark us out as di lie rent from o dispeople and as 'out of place' iCresswell 1996), Reflecting on how people have viewed and treated her because she is white and female, Rich (1986: 216) writes that to locate herself in her own body means recognizing 'the places it [her body| has taken me, the places it has not let me go',
iQjjtf1 bodies nulic a difference to our expefienes of places: whether we are young or old. able-bodied or disabled. IMack or White in appearance does, at least partly, determine collective responses to our bodies, . .' (Laws 1997a: 49). Corporeal differences are the basis of prejudice, discrimination, social oppression and cultural imperialism lYouug 1990b), These exclusionary geographies operate at every scale from the individual to the nation, discursively defining what different bodies can and cannot do, dividing conceptual space and operating materially to structure physical and institutional spaces \ Young 1990bk 'Bodily differences open and close spaces of opportunity: because their bodies are sexed female and thereby subject to the threat of violence, many women will nor travel alone at night; because rhey are old, some women will avoid cerraiu parts ol town; because of their skin color, some people find it difficult (if not impossible) to join certain clubs' [Laws 1997a- 49),
Within geography there is a significant amount ot work on 'bodies in space' which explores how different bodies, most notably those of pregnant women (Longhnrsr 19961, lesbians, gay men and bisexuals (bell and Valentine I995al. ethnic minorities (Davis 1990}. children jPhilo 1992, Valentine 1996b), 'Ciypsies' (Sibley 1995a), the
2.6 ■ Bodies in space
sick [Moss and Dycfc I99M, the disabled (mirier and Parr J 999) and ihc mentally ill [Parr 15)97) are defined as 'other" and art- marginalised and excluded within a range o| sparial contexts (see, for example, section 1.3.1 above, Chapter jS and Chapter &)- Such oppressions can be produced through lormal laws or policy, bur more olten are the pro duet of informal everyday talk, evaluation, judgements, jokes, stereoryping, and so on,
W   2.6.1 The disabled body
Understandings of disability have, until recently, focused on the physical body, hi biomedical models of disability individual bodies are defined, usually by medical insrinirions, as 'disabled' because they do not meet clinically defined 'norms' of form, mobilin or abiliry. The medical and social significance which is accorded to bodily 'normality' means that 'disabled' individuals are further categorized as socially inferior and as a 'problem' for society. (A more detailed outline of the medical model and its critique is found in Parr and Hurler 1999.) Bodily and sensory technologies istich as hearing aids, wheelchairs, and so out are regarded as the solution to the problem oi the 'deviant body'.
Disability theorists, however, have challenged this biomedical model of disability lexamples of such work within geograpln include lirown 1995, Chouniard 1997, Doni and Laws 1994. Cleeson [996, Hahn 1986, Laws 1994, etc). In the social model of disability, they shift the focus from the physical body to etrtphasr/.e the role of society in creating disability (see I'arr and Imtier 1999), White illness and accidents cause bodily impairments it is everyday socio-spatial environments which dis-able people by marginalizing them economically, socially and politically lUiouniard 1997. Dyck 1995, laws 1994J (see box 2.41. Disability theorists are critical oi rhe economy for excluding and devaluing bodies rhat cannot meet the demands ot capitalist work regimes (see, for example. Hall 1999). Likewise, urban planning is blamed tor constructing environments that are designed lor, and prioritize the needs and abilities of the able-bodied and so restrict the mobility of those with physical impairments (Imrie ll'9fi). Commenting on a wheelchair user's description of Los Angeles as 'a vast desert containing a few oases'. Malm \ 1&0'\ describes the city as having an 'impenetrable geography".
In the past, because the problems disabled people experienced in finding paid employment and navigating environmental obstacles were regarded as a product of their individual functional limitations (i.e., their unspoken biological inferiority), rather than as a.shared or political problem, many disabled individuals withdrew irom public life or were confined to relatively barrier-free environments (Hahn 1986). In this way, they were further marginalized. Piiiersuii (J99S) describes the impaired body as Ldys-appearing' in everyday environments because ir does nor fir in either functionally or aesthetically. Nevertheless, disability activists are now challenging rhe laws arid policies which produce dis-abting landscapes, '['hey imagine a city where all spatial barriers ate eliminated and where there are residential environments which
46   Chapter 2 ■ The body
Box 2.4: The dis-abted body
'in 1934, after walking on crutches for more than thirty years, I finally made the transition to a wheelchair. Many friends obviously felt that this decision implied a reduction in status, but I regarded it initially as a liberating experience. 5mall pleasures such as having lunch, which I had previously passed, were suddenly open to me. And yet, as I ventured into the major thoroughfares of Los Angeles, which are less accessible than Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington but more accessible than Broadway in New York, or Michigan Avenue in Chicago, or most of the major streets in European or third wotld countries, I gained an enhanced appreciation ol the importance of simple measures such as curbcuts to freedom of movement Frequently, I found that I simply could not "get there from here". The chair did have some compensating advantages. I discovered again the pleasures of washing my hands, which was nearly impossible on crutches. But the search for accessible rest-rooms, the frustration of encountering steps in front of buildings that I wanted to enter, and similar barriers gradually curtailed my sense ol adventure... Often I travelled countless blocks in a [utile search for an accessible route to my destination. And the inability to maintain eye contact while seated in my chair places me at a serious disadvantage in personal conversations. Sometimes I have found paths formed by skateboards, baby carriages, and shopping carts. These modifications suggest that others also may have difficulty in moving through the environment. But I suspect that, until they learn about the benefits of having their own "scooter chairs", the effort to change the environment is going to entail a major struggle/
Harm 1985: 3
can suit individual notions f)f independent living, arguing that environments which enable expanded com act between rhe able-bodied and the disabled may also help to reduce or eliminate discrimination and prejudice, I However, there are some debates anumgsr disabled gm ups about whether to seek integral ion in able-bodied communities or whether to aim for separate re si den rial communities where members might provide mutual supporr and protection for each other - see. for example. De Jong I9H.S.)
Campaigners in both the USA and the UK have taken non-violent threet action, such as handcuffing themselves ro buses and trains, blocking roads and occupying public offices with wheelchairs, in order to disrupt able-bodied space and to draw attention to rhe d is-a ill Ing effects ol the environment. In I 990 the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which makes ii mandatory for public buildings to be accessible ro disabled people came into effect and in J99.1 rhe Disability Discriminjtitin Act (DDA) was passed in the UK.
2.6 ■ Bodies in space
Figure 2.2   The disability movement has campaigned against discrimination (fc Angela Martin)
Accessible environmenrs are, however, only a small part o| the concerns of rhe disabled. It is not enough to change rhe built environment if discriminatory attitudes persist. Contemporary Western cultural values emphasize corporeal perfectibility llJahn 198f>). Yet physical impairments are often regarded as 'ugly' or ma)1 produce involuntary bodily movements or noises that are considered socially inappropriate [Hurler l99,Sr. As a result, font Shakespeare (I994r 2%) argues, disability is often seen to represent 'the physicaliry ami animality of human evisrence'. lie goes on to suggest chat the disabled ate often objectified through the gaze of the able-bodied in a'similar manner to the way that women are objectified by the gaze of men. As Morris explains, 'It is not only physical limitations that restricr us to our homes and those whom we know. It is the knowledge that each entry into the public world will he dominated by stares, by condescension, by pity and by hostility' iMorris 1991: 25, quoted in Butler and bowl by 1997: 411).
The disability movement has therefore not only campaigned to change the physical environment but to challenge the hostility, patronizing behaviour, misunderstand iii£s and discrimination experienced by disabled people in everyday spates Isee Figure 2.2), It has sought to encourage people not to be ashamed of their impairments, criticized representations of the disabled as dependent and in need of
48   Chapter 1 ■ The body
11l-Ip, and mobilized people with impairments to recognize oppression and to fight for their civil rights (Butler and Row I by 1^97, Parr and Butler 1999), In turn, however, rhe disability movement has itself been criticized lor being the domain of" white, heterosexual men, for failing to acknowledge the heterogeneity of different forms of impairment (e.g. deafness, spinal injuries, and so on} and the way that other axes of difference such as gender and class Intersect with a disahled identity [Butler and Bowl by 1997, Rarr and Butler 1999). Writing about the experiences of disabled lesbians and gay men, Ruth Butler (1999) observes bow they encounrer \ihlcism' in the lesbian and gay 'community' and homophobia amongst the disabled 'community', white Vera Chonulard (19991 highlights the efforts of d is a tiled lesbian and heterosexual women activists in Canada to challenge their political invisibility,
Recently, disability theorists have argued that illness should be considered alongside impairment because those who are sick also experience the dis-abling effects of physical environments and encounter the sort of social attitudes described above [see. for example. Moss and Dyck 1996, 1999). Indeed, Hester Parr and Ruth Butler (1999) argue that categories of health /Illness and ability/disability7 are leaky and unstable. They point out that the bealrhy majonry may only temporarily occupy able bodies. At different times and in different spaces we may each experience different states of physical and mental illness/wellbeing ffor example as-a result of ageing, pregnancy^ accidents, and so on). Thus, the problems disabled and ill bodies encounter in everyday spaces are nut just a concern for so-called 'deviant bodie.s' but are potentially an issue for'everyone. In this way, rhe body is being seen as an important site of resistance and emancipatory politics I Brown I99^a, Porn and Laws 1494, liiyck 199.51.
ffl Summary
• Our bodies make a difference to our experience of places. They - at least partly - determine collective responses to us.
• Corporeal differences are the basis of prejudice, discrimination and oppression. Geographical work examines why/how parricubr bodies are defined as 'other' and marginalized.
» In biomedical models of disability individual bodies are defined by medical institutions as "disabled' because they do not meet clinically defined 'norms' of form, mobility or ability.
■ Contemporary theorists challenge the biomedical model. Tn the social model of disability, they emphasize the role of society in creating disability.
2.7 ■ The body and time
1   2.7 The body and time
Age is important understanding our social work!, The medical model of ageing, like the medical model of disability, is being challenged by those who recognize lis.n age, like gender, race and disability, is a social rather than a biological category i Feather stone and We'mick |99,s| (see section 2.6.1). Bodies are marked by social norms and expectations which shape what we think they can and cannot do at different ages, what they should or should not be doing, where they should or SnOuld not be going and how they should or should not be dressed \Harper ami Laws Ll-95l. For example, the menopause is supposed to mark rhe age at which a woman is too old to cope with the responsibility of looking after a dependent cfjild) yet women of this age are routinely expected to care tull-time for dependent elderly relarives (laws 1997a;), Expectations about young-old bodies, then, are not predicated on biology hut arc actively socially constructed in discursive practices which vary across space and time. I hey have important consequences because they shape individual opportunities, structure collective experiences, and have spatial ramifications (see sections 2.7. I and 2.7.2 helow'i il larperand Laws 1995, Katz and Münk 1993).
People are often expected tu follow a linear sequence through rhe lifecoutse, spending their childhood and youth in education, adulthood if) paid employment and old age in retirement* Yer this model is increasingly being challenged as people live more individualized and diverse lifestyles, in which the body becomes a project to he worked at. and identities are defined more by consumption rhan production I see section 2.4.11. for example, older people may be retiring from work but are then taking up parr-time work or returning to education [Harper and Laws 19LJ,v, beat her stone and wVmiek 1995), These complexities and multiple understandings of what it means to have a body of a different age are beginning to challenge some of rhe stereoryp-ical images and forms ot discrimination which are based on assumptions about the inherent bodily characteristics of different age groups (which bear striking similarities to assumptions made about female bodies and black bodies, see section 2,2,2): notably the young and (he old.
M   2,7.1 Young bodies
Western thought has imagined the child's body in two ways: as "innocent' and as 'evtl' I Valentine 1996c, Holtoway and Valentine 2000). In the romantic images pi poets and ariisis such as Blake ami Wordsworth children are imagined as innately gimd. The eighreenrh-cenrury writer Rousseau, in particular, contributed ro this 'Apollonian' (Jenks 199(>l view of childhood in which children are imagined as 'pure' and 'innocent1 in contrast to the ugliness and violence of the adult world from which they must be protected. This discourse of the 'innocent child' which emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries laid the foundations for child-centred education,
Chapter 2 ■ The body
concerns about children's safety and vulnerability and the belief chat children should be the concern of everyone because they represent the future I James, Jenks and Prom 199JJ), Allison James, Chris Jenks and Alan Prout (1498: 152) note chat this imagining ui childhood explains the horror and outrage child abuse engenders in aduhs. They write. 'Children's bodies are to he preserved at all costs, any violation signifying a transgressive act of almost unimaginable dimensions. To strike a child is to attack the repository of social sentiment and the very embodiment of "goodness".'
It is important to remember, however, that the Apollonian view of childhood is an imagining of childhood rather than the reality experienced by most children. The experience of childhood has never been universal; rather, what it means to be a particular age intersects with other identities so chat experiences ot poverty, ill health, disability, having to care for a sick parent, or being taken into care have all denied many children [his idealized time ot innocence and dependence (see. lor example. Stables and Smith's 1999 account til the lives of young carers).
hi contrast to the Apollonian view of childhood, the Dionysian < Jenks 1996) imagining of childhood stems froth the notion of original sin, in which 'evil, corruption and baseness are primary elements in the constitution of "the child"' (James, Jenks and Trout 199S'; 10), I he evil child threatens the srahiliiy of the adult world and is in need of education and discipline in order to develop sufficient bodily control to be eivih/cd iiuo membership of the human race (see also Chapter 5). It is an imagining of childhood evident in hooks such as Lord i>[ the Plies and in contemporary constructions of teenagers as troublesome and dangerous (see Chapter b).
While both the Apollonian and Dionysi.m understandings: ot childhood are always present in children's complex-and diverse experiences, at different historical moments one or the other of these binary conceptualizaoous ofieii appears to dominate the popular imagination- At these times, other meanings of childhood can Iv overlooked or forgotten, before being periodically rediscovered (Staincon Rogers and Stainton Rogers I992i.
Both these understandings of childhood have been used to justify children's exclusion from public space. The Apollonian understanding constructs children as less knowledgeable, less competent and less able than adults and therefore as vulnerable and in need ot protection from adults and the adult world (see Chapter 6), while rhe Dionysiau understanding constructs children as dangerous, unruly and potentially out of control in adultisr public space (Valentine 1996b, 1996c).
The chiltl's body has nor (use been undetscood in terms of these discursive constructions, bur has also been the subject of ethnographic studies in both sociology and geography which have sought to understand the body as emit)1 experienced by children within the spaces ot their own social worlds and cultures (see, lor example, James, Jenks and Prout 1998, Holloway and Valentine 2000, Valentine 200U). In a study of the body in children's everyday lives Allison James (1.993} points out that 'children's perceptions of their own and Other bodies constitute an imporratir source ol their identity and pcrsonbood", She argues that a ruthlessly patterned hierarchy characterizes children's cultures. While there is no necessary relation between
i.i ■ The body and time
phyiSc.jiJ difference and marginaliry or outsiderhood, different bodily forms are given signilicance in terms ol' social identity hy other .children. James (|9LJ.i; identifies rive aspects of the body that have-significance for children's iden rides: height i specifically, the importance of physical development - where sine marks social independence and 'lttclr is a form ol abuse;, shiifte. ^f/frSiit^itHiti gtiljd&t (shape, appearance and gender are all based on adult, heterosexual notions of desilability and issues of mora I in j, and fn'i'fttriihiiiCL' frhis includes dynamic aspects such iflts gracefulness of bodily movement and sporting prowess or ability). While some differences may he temporary - a growth spurt mlghr can help to shake off rhe nickname 'fitch1 -ntheis produce more permanent stigmatised identities.
fatties f'T?93j further explores bow children have to negotiate their changing bodies within the context of changing institutional settings in which the meanings of rheir bodies change drastically. Summarising her work, she and two co-authors explain ijanies-, Jenks arid Prout I99f>: 156):
in die later suges a J nursery SLbuul children came io Tkink nt themselves as 'big'; their apprehension ol the- difference between themselves and children hist entering the nursery plus die significance of the impending transitinn nt primary seliool signalled their identity. But once they had made the transition and were at the beginning t>f iheir career in primary school, they were catapulted hack into being 'small' taicc again. This relativity produced a (lutditj in rheir understanding ol the relationship lie twee n sjze and itattss, generating what j nines identifies-as a typical ■edgitiess' among children a hunt bndy mean In ks. 'I he body in childhood is a crucial resource fur making anil breaking idnmty prctlK'eb- because of Its unstable materiality,
In the adult world children's bodies are socially and spatially segregated, from grownups through the schooling system (see Chapter 5) and through laws, curfew*.and in formal regulations which bar them from certain public spaces at specific times (e.g. bars, cinemas, the street, shops) (see also Chapter 6). It is worth noting though, that children can and do (it) negotiate rhe meanings of rheir biological a£e i see Chapter
section 3.6). David Sibley (I99.sa) notes how, further up the age scale, the bodies of yontli are ambiguously wedged between childhood and adulrbood because the legal classifications of where childhood ends and adulthood begins are tiotoriously vague, The age at which young people can drink alcohol, learn to drive, earn innncy, consent to sex or join the armed forces varies widely in different .spatial and historical contexts. This poinr is also made by Cindt Katz and .fan Monk ll9L!.S}. whose edited book !:ttli (jrctva: C<.'ui;)\iphics uj''lbs.* %ifecQttr$iB demonstrates how-young people's .spatial freedoms vary considerably according to their age, gender, environ mental setting and household type,
E   2.1,2 Older bodies
Like the meanings of childhood, the meanings of older bodies are in it static but change over tittle and space, in some cultures elderly people are respected for their life
Chapter 2 ■ The body
Box 2.5: When I am an old woman
Warning
When I am an old woman 1 shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me,
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sil down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat And eat three pounds of sausages at a go Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes,
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry And pay out rent and not swear in the street And set a good example for the children. We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
Rut maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
Joseph 1996
experience and wisdom; However, in contemporary Western societies older bodies are often not valued because, as nnn-parricipants in the labour market, and as past the age ol reproduction (for women at least), they are deemed to have no economic or social worth and are stigmatized and disempowered (Fcatherstone and Wernick 1945, 1 logman 1999:. The state creates structured dependency among oltler people by establishing rerireinenr ages and defining resources and services lor them. Yer, while 60-65 years old is commonly defined as retirement age in rhe affluent Wesi, this definition ol "old age' does uoi necessarily accord with specific biological markers of ageing, nor with the diverse experiences ot this age group. While some elderly people are trail, housebound and relatively dependent on others socially and economically, others are rit. active, mobile and possibly srill work bag or rra veiling (see Box 2.5. Plate 2,2). Richard Ilugman (1999) claims that less than one-third of the population
2.7 ■ The body and time
Plate 1.1  'Gray power'
aged oyer é 5 art.' actually Íra j j or lid well enough to need professional eate or support in rheir everyday lives. Graham Rowlcs ( [ 98.3 j makes -a distinction between the "old-old1 who are physically hail and isolated and the 'young-olď who are more mobile and adept at drawing on support beyond tlieiľ immediate community.
In both the USA and Australia some retirees-have begun to emerge as a ^ i guinea n t social torce, dubbed 'gray power'. Asa group, íle s pite no longer being in paid employment, some older people lune a higher than average income (from pens ion s T savings and investments) and have begun to establish homogeneous, relatively small communities, such as 'Sun City' (in California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida, USA) based on sineJe-Lnnily houses and eondo developments in accessible locations such as the edge o t cities or highways (Laws 1995, Laws 1997b). These are usually based around a goh course and otren have recreation or arts ami cratr centres. They are landscapes of consumption rather than production and are promoted as ideal and h urn initio us 'communities' away Írom the problems o í city liíe. In effect, rhey are quite S$It-contained, security-conscious and surnetimes gated con ii nun i ties in which outsiders, particular!} those aged under 50, both stand out and are not welcome (see also Chapter 4 and Chapter tit. Cdeuda Laws (i 99.5: 26) argues rhar r h e emerge: nee of these types o t age-segregated ret i re men r communities - which she describes as 'embodied built em iromnenrs' - reflects the inhospitable nature of cities for older bodies who may be relatively immobile and Irail, and ihe
54   Chapter 2 ■ The body
extent to which these bodies arc socially marginalized in everyday spaces. Laws (1995: 2b) lurcher argues that, m rum. these embodied built environments contribute ro the hurt he r social and spatial differentiation of society according to age, while what she terms rhe 'empUced bodies' within them also contribute ro rhe construction of particular social i d en riries.
These sorts ot communities srand in stark contrast to institutional tonus of residential care for the elderly, which are variously labelled 'nursing homes', 'old people's homes', 'resr homes', 'aged-care hostels', etc (llugman 1999). Such institutions have been critiqued for sparially segregating the elderly Írom the rest of society in such a way thai they may abn lose contact with family and friends, for depriving individuals of The right ro determine their own use of space and time, and for ire!producing the older body as dependent and docile, hi this sense, and because residents may not have chosen to be there or feel "at home' there I see Chapter .?), residential care institutions are often compared with other total institutions such as prisons and asylums (Hugman 1994, 1999, Laws i997b; see also Chapter S).
As our bodies age we accumulate different experiences that shape our. perceptions Of Space and place (i aws 1995}, In two studies of elderly people, one group of whom had lived in an old industrial rown in New England, USA (given che pseudonym 'Lancaster') for more than .1(1 years, and ihe other group of whom lived in a rural town in Appalachia, LISA (given the pseudonym 'Cotton'), Rowles (1978, l9o3l found that as the respondents' bodies had aged, so their investment in the places in which they lived had changed. As they became more physically immobile and their activities were inhibited, they invested more emotionally and psychologically in their homes. What he terms the 'surveillance zone' - the held of vision around their home - became an important source oi support in which certain supporrive, if transitory. relationships developed- bor example, he explains, 'observing the daily routine of neighbours, chastising the children lor overly zealous play in the path outside and watching those who regularly pass by. provides support through a sense ot ongoing social involvement' (Rowles I9K3: 110).
His rural participants claimed ro have a strong sense of'insiderness' in Colton because of their familiarity with the place. Rowles (|9K.i: | |4f explains: 'Repeated use o I the same routs; in the journey to rhe store, or to church over a period of several decades means thai these paths become ingrained within the participants' inherent awareness of rhe setting . , . The old person comes to wear rhe setting like a giove.' For bath the urban ami rural elderly, the places where they lived had become a landscape ot memories which provided them with a sense of identity: where a child was born, a husband was met or a tirsi job was obtained (Rowles |9X.>L In this sense, Rowles < I9JÍ.1/ suggests that, tor some elderly people, it ii still as if rooms or the neighbourhood are in habile d by missing people (the dead, their children who were nowr grown up and had left home! because they can still visualize them there. For these people, rerreating in their imaginations inio the past becomes an escape from bodies that are relatively confined in space by physical limitations. Thus, he argues, their lives become lived in their minds rather than their bodies.
l.B ■ Future bodies?
K Summary
» Age is a sua a I rather than a biological category.
■  F.xpeitations about young-old bodies are socially constructed in discursive practices which vary across space anil rime.
• These social norms matter because they shape individual opportunities, structure collective experiences, and have spatial ramifications.
• Multiple understandings of what it means to be a particular age are beginning io challenge stereotypical images and tonus ol discriniination which are based on assumptions a hour the inherent bodily characteristics of particular ages.
%   2.8 Future bodies?
Slime comnieuL.itors argue [hat we are on rhe edge ot undergoing a third technologic^] revolution..The lirst involved transport (steam engine, car. aircraft), the second trdtlstwssipft (radio, television, Internet) and the third will involve miiihitiiriziltion [the ttausplant revolution). Both the second and third ot these revolution-, have rhe potential to transform the human body, The emergence of new information and communication technologies (K-T) and the development of new possibilities for medical interventions in the body (biotechnologies such as Transplants, in vitro fer-nlizarion and plastic surgery and nanorcchnolpgiCS anil miniaturization) are thus producing new uncertainties about what the body is, what is 'natural', and which scie-ntific nr medical bodily interventions should be allowed. All these are alleged to be leading to a crisis in the body's meaning. First, K'T, which is regarded as a discialmd-itii form of communication, offers a vision ol the future in which we can do away with the bod) altogether. Second, there is speculation about the extent to which the body is being merged with technology: the cyborg-,
Z:ii   2.8.1 Disembodiment
Dubbed 'meat' or 'werware rrash' by cyiierenthusiasts, the body is regarded as a nuisance. Morse 11994: $6, in Lupton 100) writes: *};or couch potatoes, video
games addicts and surrogate travellers of cyberspace alike, an organic hod\ [list gels in the way." Its demands to be fed, to he washed, to sleep and so on, interrupt cyber pursuits and interactions. Writers such as Barlow (1990) imagine a Utopian vision of a future fHsst-biatogiCi.il worhi where we will be able ro escape the 'meat*, for
Chapter 2 ■ The body
example, by ttattsferring our memories into computers or robots (kite hin I£98). 'The idealized virfüäl body docs not cat, drink, urinate or defecate; ic does not get tired; it docs nor become ill; it does not die' [l.upton 1995: 100), In this sense, the desire or cybcrtitopians to have 'your everything amputated' I Barlow 1990: <J2) harks back to rhe Cartesian division and subordination ol the body to the mind I see section 2.2.1), in which the mind is considered ro be the 'authentic1 self.
While technology does not yet offer us the possibility of achieving the desire of tlte Utopians to be completely liberated from our bodies, ICT is claimed bv some writers to offer disembodied lorms of communication that citable us to he freed from some ot the constraints of our bodies. Most famously, it is argued that because of the meanings which are read off from our physical bodies and the judgements which are made about particular bodily characteristics such as age, health, race and gender isee section 2.6), the body can act as □ social barrier to some relationships (Van Gelder 1996}, K..T therefore offers a cloak of anonymity. As Turkle's informant (1 996: 1.5X1 argues, 'You don't have to worry about rhe slots other people pur you in as much. It's, easier to change the way people perceive you because all they've gut is what you show them. Thev don't look at your bod}' and make assumptions. They don't bear your accent and make assumptions. All they see is your words." The advantage ol KT, then, i.-. that it potentially enables individuals to construct one or multiple on-line identities lor themselves which may bear no relation ro their pbysicality. There are many famous examples of men claiming to be women on-line, rhe- able-bodied to be disabled, and so on (Slouka J 9961.
This practice of creating multiple alternative identities which are played with and then forgotten is termed 'cycling through' (Turkic 19961, It is often promoted as appealing to those - such as the voting, the old and the disabled - who want to escape off-line bodies which are commonly regarded as incompetent and undesirable !Valentine and llolloway 2000).
Yer, this discourse ol disembodiment has been subject to critique, A number of writers have argued that on-hne textual persona cannot be separated Irum the offline physical person who constructs them. Rather, disembodied identifies and conversations are commonly based on embodied off-line identities, bot example, in Box 2.6 Francesta desci'ibtjs bow she uses her off-line interests as a basis ot her on-line identity and friendships. Even when individuals make up new person as, rhe.se online identities are often chosen because of off-line experiences - in other words, because they are a way of resisting or overcoming the problems of off-line bodies, in Box 2.6 Andy and Steve describe how- rhey rry to 'pass' as adults h\ pretending ro be bouncers or to go to pubs [Valentine anil Holloway 20001, In this way their on-line identities are a producr of their dis-identification with 1 heir riff line bodies.
Not surprisingly, many ol the practices and .structures which shape off-line lives also mediate on-line interactions (Kirchin 1998), Most notably, cyberspace has been crititfued as the domain of wbire males [although there is a significant feminist and lesbian on-line culture). There are many well-known accounts of women being harassed and even "raped' on-hne (Gilbert 1996),
2.6 ■ Future bodies?
Box 2.6: Disembodied identities
Frandnc: I just have a couple of handles thai I use from books that I've read that I like, people's names and stuff, I think it's kind of fun, but I don't have an alter egu nr anything you know, I just go on there and talk about stuff that I'm, L me actually I'm interested in, I know you get people on there who pretend they're models or whatever but I don't really see it like that.
Interviewer. How do you kind of represent yourself on screen [in relation to a conversation about a Teen Chat RoomJ? You just give yuurself d nickname of something like that, is that how it works?
Andy: Well you just give yourself a name, just make something up and then just describe yourself or whatever.
Interviewer: And so you can just pretend to be somebody else? Andy: Yeah
interviewer: Do, have you done that, have you pretended to be? Andy: Yeah
Interviewer: What have you done? Andy; I posed to be a bouncer, [laughs] interviewer: A bouncer? Andy: Yeah.
Interviewer: Why was that?
Andy: Oh, I don't know. It was just that I was in this ermr the Teen Chat one, and there was this, there's girls on itr so, so I pretended to be a bouncer of 72,
Steve: Ob me and a friend acted we were 17 years old. Interviewer: 17?
Steffi: Yeah and if was like we was drunk and we kept writing different things, like strange things.
Interviewer: You were drunk or were pretending to be drunk?
Steve; Pretending,,,
[editj
Interviewer: Why was itr why did you enjoy pretending to be older than you arc? Steve; Because you can write about all different things and just nomaai games. You can write about sort of like going to the pub and all that.
Valentine and Holloway 2000: 10
lor Vi venue Solid lack the impossibility of" escaping her material body on-line was brought home ro her when she had to have major surgery for cancer. Referring to her experience of physical pain while reading about discourses of disembodiment, she writes, 'there is nothing like a little pain to bring vis back to our senses, nothing like a real (not imagined) mark or wouuel to counter the romanticism and
58   Chapter 2 ■ The body
fantasies of rechrto-sexua! transcendence that characterise so much ol the cutrenr discourse on the rech no-body that is thought to occupy the cyberspaces ol post-modertutv' (Sobchaek \ 2(i7i. So he hack's experience is an important reminder that - certainly at the current level of technology - the discourse of disembodiment is something of a misnomer. Cyberspace is always entered inro and interacted with from the site of the body, the body is always present. '| W|c do not just have bodies, but . . . we are our bodies. Bodies cannot be transcended; rather, they are a fundamental constituent of us, of being' (kitebiu 1998; Sob
28   2.8.2 The cyborg
In a h-S.s | republished in 1990) paper titled ,-\ Manifesto fur Cybnrgs the feminist historian of science Donna llaraway argued that the bod}' and technology .are merging or coalescing into what she termed 'the cyborg': a 'hybrid of machine and organism' (Haraway 1990: iLJ U where technology is a substitute or supplement for the llcsh.
Contemporary science fiction contains many imaginings of creatures who are part human or animal, part-machine (see, for example, the writing of William Gibson, Occayia Butler, Vonda Mclntyre, and so oui. The cyborg has also been popularized in films such as Bhde Runner, Rnboatp, and Ti-rmnhitur, where it is represented as stronger rhan the more fallible and vulnerable human body, immune to pain and able to repair any injury or damage to itself and so cheat 'death' (l.upton 1995), In these movies '[T|he cyborg body is constituted of a hard endpskclctoi, covered b;. soft flesh, the inverse of the human body, in which the skin is a vulnerable and easily broken barrier between 'inside' and 'outside' (Jones 1993: 84, quoted in L.upton
199s; 10T}.
Yet the cyborg is trot only fiction or image but also partly hicr. Modern medicine and biotechnologies are increasingly transforming and recreating the human body. Technology is already built into human bodies, troin assistive technologies to replace or supplement organs, limbs and sense (such as plastic heart values, prostheses and cochlea implants) to gene therapy, trans-species transplants and trans-genetic organisms. In Haraway's (199(1, 1.99J, 1997) terms therefore we are all cyborgs - fabricated hybrids of machine and organism. All predictions suggest that the future will only briny a further merging of bodies and technologies.
Nanotccliiinlogy, for example, offers possibilities ol inner body interventions with 'molecular machines roving the bloodstream to search and destroy viruses' iFeatherstone 1999: 2) and smart pills that will he able to transmit information about our nerves or our blood to external monitors. Other visions, ol a future in which we Will be able ro plug our bodies into cybersy.sreius and machines so rhat thej will function more powerfully arid precisely, further modiiy the horizons of what the body can be. The cybercrinc Paul Virilio (1997: S3) imagines a nightmare future scenario of a body colonized by machines - a 'citizen terminal1 in which the body becomes nor a site but a collection ot parts:
2.8 ■ Future bodies?
this citizen-terminal soon to l.v decked out to the eyeball* with interactive prostheses based on the pathological nkidd ol the 'spastic' |s/c|; wired to control his/her domestic L-rmrnnmenr without having physically to stir; the catastrophic figure of an irnlividn.il who has lost the capacity ti.ir nnniuLli.iit' intervention along with natural motility and who abandons himself |.*.'(| lor wain ol .mulling bcirer, ro rhe capabilities of tnptors, ■itnsois and other ivinoU' conirol scanners that turn in in into i Being epritrV'ltcd bv the machine Witll which the} viy, he talks.
In writing about the cyborg Ha 1*3Way prgUCS tbar technology is breaching three rarher leaky boundaries:
• Thai hnntniiiiy bettveen bitnuns and animals. Trans-genetic organisms such as O'neo mouse, and iraris-ipeocs. such as pin-human, organ transplants iHaruwaj I 997) suggest that '|t|ar iroin signalling a walling off of people trout other living things, cyborgs signal disturbingly and plcasurably right couplings' 11 Lira way 1990: 193).
» The l'nitiijji-y between orgaiiirfn ianwial-hsnnau! ami■titseHtHS. Distinctions between what aspects of the body are 'natural' or 'artificial' and what is sell-developing rather than externally designed (e.g. through gene therapyl are becoming more ambiguous so rhat it is increasingly difficult to be certain abour what counts as 'nature' or 'natural'.
• The buwsdiiY\ bstwem physical and noN-pbystk&k High technology ami scientific culture are producing machines which are increasingly fluid, portable, mobile, and even opaque or invisible, 'Our besr machines , . , are norhing but signals, electromagneric waves, a section of a spectrum' (Haraway 1990; 195).
The cyborg is unsettling because it disrupts our sense of these boundaries, particularly the distinction between humans and other living and nun living filings. As Haraway 11 990: 21 9)j says, ir is nor clear 'who makes and who is made in the relation between human and machine', Yer, she argues that we should take pleasure in the confusion or transgression of these boundaries and rhe potent fusions and possibilities they offer, [hi- world, she suggests, is being restructured through social re I a -dons of science and technology; communication technologies and biotechnologies are creating new moments for redrafting bodies and therefore opening op po.ss.ibil-hic*. tor ne'.'. social relations. She sees cyborg imagery as important because it challenges universal totalizing theory and assumptions about purity and identity, and n offers a way out of dualistic Western thought (human-animal; miiul-body; rrtale-1 em ale; inrernal-esrcinal, narure-cuJrure, sell-orber, etc) by pTodueingand destroy-in;.; identifies* categories, relationships, spaces, and so on.
This has appealed ro some feminists because, by making cultural categories and bodily boundaries indeterminate and fluid, the cyborg offers us possibilities for escaping the limitations of gender and other stereotypes, female embodiment is traditionally seen as organic Isee section --!--)-, but because cyborg embodiment is dynamic, lluid and partial rather than given or waiting to he reinsenhed, women have rhe chance to re-code the selt and the body, to replace patriarchal dualisms and to re-appropriate
60   Chapter 1 ■ The body
and contest rjcyy social relations (Ltipron 1995), 'The cyborg is l-lara way's figur.i-ritm of a possible feminist and posthuinanisi subjectivity' (l'ritis 1995: 360);
However, some rune after writing die Cyborg Manifesto. 1 faraway warned against the liberatory cyborg she promoted, pointing our that it denies mortality, that 'we real!)1 do die, rhat we really do wound each other, ih.it die earth really is finite, that there aren't any Hither planets our there that we know we can live on, that escape-velocit> i> a deadly fantasy' (Penley and Ross 1991: 20). She has also been criticized because the cyborg htc-forms she identifies arc essentially organic rather than mechanical. She therefore tends to 'find kinship with animals, riot machines, as well as lodge identity in creatures, not apparatuses' (Luke 199"7; 1370),
W Summary
• The development of technology is producing new uncertainties about what the body is, what is 'natural', and is bringing about a crisis in the body's meaning.
• Disembodied forms of communication offer a vision of the future in which we can do away with the body altogether.
• At the current level of technology the discourse of disembodiment is something of a misnomer. Cyberspace is always entered into, and interacted wiih, from the site of the body.
• The body and technology are merging or coalescing into what is termed the cyborg: a 'hybrid of machine and organism'.
• Cyborg imagery challenges universal, totalizing theory, and offers a way out of dualistic Western thought (body/mind; human/animal; nature/cuiture, etc).
W.   Further Reading
■  Useful overviews of geography and the body are provided by Longhurst's (20011) single-authored text Bdtfi&'S: explaining fluid i>i:!nnlarie^ Routledge, London; and a number of edired collections, including: Amlej, R. {llJ9J}| (ed.) Neat Ih-oriims of Space, Bodies atid Gender, Routledge, London: Duncan, K. fed.f <1996) Body* I face: Destabilizing Geographies of, Gender and Sexuality, Routledge, London; Nast, IT. and Rile, S. (eds) (1998) Places Through the Body, Routledge, London; Pile. S- and Thrift, N. (eds.) (1995) Mapping the Subject, Routledge, London, and Tearher, b'.K. (ed.) (1.999) I'.ndiodicd Geographies: Spaces. Bodies and Riles ol Passage, Routledge, London.
■ Further reading
• Beyond geography's porous hi mi id a rit: s good overviews of the body and s tibial theory lire found tur Fearhetst one, VI,, 1 Lep worth, jVt. and Tum er, B. S. (cds) (iíŠÍ) The Body, Sage, London; MeNay, 1.., ((994) Voitcatdti a éťkicsl
I tit rod net ion, U lack we LI. Oxford; Shilling, C. (I 99.1) J he Body titu! Social The* >ry. Sage, London; Syn Ott, A, (199a) The Hody Social: Symbolism, Seif Md Society, Kou t ledge. London, and Tli me r. B, I 199 M Tbc Rody and Society, Sage, London.
» Tni I ne n rial fem i nisi writings on [he hody include; Hordo, S. (199.5) Unbeatable Weigh ti hem i nh in. Western Culture and I be Body, University of California Press, Los Angeles: Grosz, K, (|9^H) Vota t de Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism, Indiana University Press, Bloomingron and Indianapolis, and Young, I.M, 11990b) Throwing i.i ke a Girl and Otber Essays t n feminist Philosophy and Sot:ial Theory,. Indiana University Press, Ulooinington and Indianapol is.
• Questions of embodied idenfiiies and/or socio-spatial exclusion are the subject of a number or key books, notably: Hell, D. and Valentine, G. (1995a I Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sc vitalities, K o ml edge, London; J11 tint, A. and Wiils, J. (2000J Dissident Geographies, Prentice Hall, Harlow; Bonnert, A. Í20001 WhM identities. Prentice Hall, Marlow; Butler, IC and Parr, H. leds.i (1999) Mind and Body Spaces; Geographies, of Illness-, Impairment and Disability, Rout ledge, London; Cleeson, B. (1999) Geographies of Disability, Rour ledge, London; Jackson, P. and Penrose. |. feds) 11 993 í Constructions of Race, Place and Nation, \ it'l. Press. London; James, A. (199.1) Childhood idea t Hies, F.din burgh University Press, Kdin burgh, London; and Sibley, D.
f 1995a) Geographies of I'.xctnsion: Society and Difference in the Weil^ Ron fledge, London. These issues also feature heavily in articles in journals such as Body & Society, Fnt'ironment and Fla Utting I'J: Society and Space, Gender. Place and Culture and Social and (..nttura! Geography.
■ The best edited collection on technological embodiment is Fear heist one, M, and Burrows, k. (eds) (1995) Cyberspace, Cyberbodics and Cyberpunk: (Mittlres of Technological hndnidiment. Sage, London, A useful summary f if tbc cyberbodics literature is found in Kiichin, R. (J 998) Cyberspace, John Wiley cc_ Sons, Chichester; while a more difficult, theoretical, but extremely influential book isr Haraway, D. \ 1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Free Association Books, London.
• Jene lei' S b Lite's (1993) novel laß Size ! Mandarin paperbacks) contains reflections on the issue of taking up space in her account of anorexia; Nancy Malrs (199,5) Remembering the Bone House (Beacon Press, Boston, MA) writes powerfully about the experience of MS; while G a rot Shields Stone Dianes 11994, Fourth Estate. New York) explores the process of ageing. William Gibson's popular and influential science hction is worth reading because of the way he reconfigures bodies and represents geographies of Cyberspace (e.g. oieitromancer, 1984, Grafton, London).
Chapter 2 ■ The body
111 Exercises
1. Keep a diary for a few days about your everyday movements and encounters. Use this to reflect on how you perform your own identity in different places, and how yDu think your identity is read by others. Are there places that your body will or won't let you go or where you feel 'out of place'? Ate you aware uf altering your dress, behaviour, and so on because ot the disciplining gaze oi friends, lecturers, employers, etc or of exercising sell-surveillance in different spaces?
2. Drawing on the work of Seamon (1979, see section 2,3,2), with a small group of friends reflect on and discuss the everyday ways your own bodies move through and occupy everyday spaces, and the relationship of your bodies to their surroundings. To what extent do yout experiences parallel those of Seamen's students? How might you criticize his work?
3. Collect a range of different women's and men's magazines. How are different bodies represented in these texts? What discourses can you identify? What are the similarities and differences in the way that men and women are encouraged to locate, evaluate and manage their bodies?
4. Spend some time in on-line ehatrooms. Write a field diary about your observations as you would if you were conducting participant observation in an off-line space. Think about how people represent themselves, how you choose to construct your own identity, the nature of the social relations in these disembodied spaces, and the relationship between your on-line and off-line worlds.
W,   Essay Titles
"I. Critically evaluate Adrienne Rich's (1986) claim that the body is 'the geography closest in'.
2, Using examples, critically assess the role of the mind/body dualism in shaping the way geographical knowledge has been produced.
3, To what extent do you agree with Shilling's (1993) claim that in contemporary affluent societies we have witnessed the unprecedented individualization of the body?
4, Critically evaluate Law's concept of 'embodied built environments'.