Bodies Beyond Borders

Globalization is often thought of as an abstract process that happens "out there" in the world. But people are ultimately the driving force of global change, and people have bodies that are absent from current conversations about globalization. The original scholarly research and first-person accounts of embodiment in this volume explore the role of bodies in the flows of people, money, commodities, and ideas across borders. From Zumba fitness classes to martial arts to fashion blogs and the meanings of tattooing, the contributors examine migrating body practices and ideals that stretch across national boundaries.

The human body in scientific and artistic representations Around 1800 anatomy as a discipline rose to scientific prominence as it undergirded the Paris-centred clinical revolution in medicine. Although classical anatomy gradually lost ground in the following centuries in favor of new disciplines based on microscopic analysis, general anatomy nevertheless remained pivotal in the teaching of medicine. Corpses, anatomical preparations, models, and drawings were used more intensively than ever before. Moreover, anatomy received new forms of public visibility. Through public exhibitions and lectures in museums and fairgrounds, anatomy became part of general education and secured a place in popular imagination. As such, the anatomical body developed into a production site for racial, gender, and class identities. Both within the medical and the public sphere, art and science continued to be closely intertwined in anatomical representations of the body. Bodies Beyond Borders analyzes the notion of circulation in anatomy. Following anatomy through different locations and cultural domains permits a deeper understanding of its history and its changing place in society. The essays in this collection focus on a wide variety of circulating ideas and objects, ranging from models and body parts to illustrations and texts. Together, the essays enable rethinking the relations between metropolis and colony, university and fairground, and scientific and artistic representations of the human body. Contributors: Sokhieng Au (KU Leuven), Margaret Carlyle (University of Minnesota), Tinne Claes (KU Leuven), Veronique Deblon (KU Leuven), Raf de Bont (Maastricht University), Stephen C. Kenny (University of Liverpool), Helen MacDonald (University of Melbourne), Natasha Ruiz-Gómez (University of Essex), Kim Sawchuk (Concordia University), Naomi Slipp (Auburn University-Montgomery), Joris Vandendriessche (KU Leuven), Kaat Wils (KU Leuven)

Crossing both disciplinary and geographical boundaries, this volume draws together a number of important contributions from acknowledged leaders in three respective fields: the trade in bodily commodities, biomedical tourism and migration of health care professionals. It explores and maps out the key characteristics of this emerging, although as yet poorly researched global trade, questioning how, where and why bodies cross borders, whether this exacerbates existing health inequalities and how these circulations impact on healthcare services. In addition the book invites comparisons of the ways in which body parts, patients and medical professionals cross national borders, elucidating common themes, concerns and issues.

Historically organised at a local or national scale, the fields of medicine and healthcare are being radically transformed by new communication, transport and biotechnologies creating, in the process, a genuinely globalised sphere of biomedical production and consumption. This emerging market is characterised by the circulation of bodily materials (tissues, organs and bio-information), patients and expertise across what traditionally have been relatively secure ontological and geographical borders. Crossing both disciplinary and geographical boundaries, this volume draws together a number of important contributions from acknowledged leaders in three respective fields: the trade in bodily commodities, biomedical tourism and migration of health care professionals. It explores and maps out the key characteristics of this emerging, although as yet poorly researched global trade, questioning how, where and why bodies cross borders, whether this exacerbates existing health inequalities and how these circulations impact on healthcare services. Considered together, the chapters in this volume invite comparisons of the ways in which body parts, patients and medical professionals cross national borders, elucidating common themes, concerns and issues. Contributors also pose important questions about the ethical and legal implications of the circulation of bodies across borders and evaluate current and future strategies for regulation.

Historically organised at a local or national scale, the fields of medicine and healthcare are being radically transformed by new communication, transport and biotechnologies creating, in the process, a genuinely globalised sphere of biomedical production and consumption. This emerging market is characterised by the circulation of bodily materials (tissues, organs and bio-information), patients and expertise across what traditionally have been relatively secure ontological and geographical borders. Crossing both disciplinary and geographical boundaries, this volume draws together a number of important contributions from acknowledged leaders in three respective fields: the trade in bodily commodities, biomedical tourism and migration of health care professionals. It explores and maps out the key characteristics of this emerging, although as yet poorly researched global trade, questioning how, where and why bodies cross borders, whether this exacerbates existing health inequalities and how these circulations impact on healthcare services. Considered together, the chapters in this volume invite comparisons of the ways in which body parts, patients and medical professionals cross national borders, elucidating common themes, concerns and issues. Contributors also pose important questions about the ethical and legal implications of the circulation of bodies across borders and evaluate current and future strategies for regulation.

The book Our Bodies, Ourselves is a feminist success story. Selling more than four million copies since its debut in 1970, it has challenged medical dogmas about women’s bodies and sexuality, shaped health care policies, energized the reproductive rights movement, and stimulated medical research on women’s health. The book has influenced how generations of U.S. women feel about their bodies and health. Our Bodies, Ourselves has also had a whole life outside the United States. It has been taken up, translated, and adapted by women across the globe, inspiring more than thirty foreign language editions. Kathy Davis tells the story of this remarkable book’s global circulation. Based on interviews with members of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, the group of women who created Our Bodies, Ourselves, as well as responses to the book from readers, and discussions with translators from Latin America, Egypt, Thailand, China, Eastern Europe, Francophone Africa, and many other countries and regions, Davis shows why Our Bodies, Ourselves could never have been so influential if it had been just a popular manual on women’s health. It was precisely the book’s distinctive epistemology, inviting women to use their own experiences as resources for producing situated, critical knowledge about their bodies and health, that allowed the book to speak to so many women within and outside the United States. Davis provides a grounded analysis of how feminist knowledge and political practice actually travel, and she shows how the process of transforming Our Bodies, Ourselves offers a glimpse of a truly transnational feminism, one that joins the acknowledgment of difference and diversity among women in different locations with critical reflexivity and political empowerment.

This book examines a series of questions associated with the increasing application and implications of biometrics in contemporary everyday life. In the wake of the events of 9/11, the reliance on increasingly sophisticated and invasive technologies across a burgeoning field of applications has accelerated, giving rise to the term 'biometric state'. This book explores how these ‘virtual borders’ are created and the effect they have upon the politics of citizenship and immigration, especially how they contribute to the treatment of citizens as suspects. Finally and most importantly, this text argues that the rationale of 'governing through risk' facilitates pre-emptory logics, a negligent attitude towards 'false positives', and an overall proliferation of borders and ubiquitous risk, which becomes integral to contemporary everyday life, far beyond the confined politics of national borders and frontiers. By focusing on specific sites, such as virtual borders in airports, trusted traveller programs like the NEXUS program and those delivered by airlines and supported by governmental authorities (TSA and CATSA respectively), this book raises critical questions about the emerging biometric state and its commitment and constitution vis-à-vis technology of ‘governing through risk’. This book will be of interest to students of biopolitics, critical security, surveillance studies and International Relations in general. Benjamin J. Muller is assistant professor in International Relations at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada. He completed his PhD in the School of Politics and International Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2005.