Embodying The Problem

The dominant narrative of teen pregnancy persuades many people to believe that a teenage pregnancy always leads to devastating consequences for a young woman, her child, and the nation in which they reside. Jenna Vinson draws on feminist and rhetorical theory to explore how pregnant and mothering teens are represented as problems in U.S. newspapers, political discourses, and teenage pregnancy prevention campaigns since the 1970s. Vinson shows that these representations prevent a focus on the underlying structures of inequality and poverty, perpetuate harmful discourses about women, and sustain racialized gender ideologies that construct women’s bodies as sites of national intervention and control. Embodying the Problem also explores how young mothers resist this narrative. Analyzing fifty narratives written by young mothers, the recent #NoTeenShame social media campaign, and her interviews with thirty-three young women, Vinson argues that while the stigmatization of teenage pregnancy and motherhood does dehumanize young pregnant and mothering women, it is at the same time a means for these women to secure an audience for their own messages. More information on the author's website (https://jennavinson.com)

Embodying the Problem shows that the dominant narrative regarding teenage pregnancy perpetuates harmful discourses about women and sustains racialized gender ideologies that construct women's bodies as sites of national intervention and control. However, many women who embody the "problem" of teenage pregnancy actively resist this narrative by publishing their own stories.

Rethinking design through the lens of embodied cognition provides a novel way of understanding human interaction with technology. In this book, Christopher Baber uses embodied cognition as a lens through which to view both how designers engage in creative practices and how people use designed artifacts. This view of cognition as enactive, embedded, situated, or distributed, without recourse to internal representations, provides a theoretical grounding that makes possible a richer account of human interaction with technology. This understanding of everyday interactions with things in the world reveals opportunities for design to intervene. Moreover, Baber argues, design is an embodied activity in which the continual engagement between designers and their materials is at the heart of design practice. Baber proposes that design and creativity should be considered in dynamic, rather than discrete, terms and explores “task ecologies”—the concept of environment as it relates to embodied cognition. He uses a theory of affordance as an essential premise for design practice, arguing that affordances are neither form nor function but arise from the dynamics within the human-artifact-environment system. Baber explores agency and intent of smart devices and implications of tangible user interfaces and activity recognition for human-computer interaction. He proposes a systems view of human-artifact-environment interactions—to focus on any one component or pairing misses the subtleties of these interactions. The boundaries between components remain, but the borders that allow exchange of information and action are permeable, which gives rise to synergies and interactions.

How do we know we are ill? Are health, illness and disability universal categories? How important is the body in our understanding of health? These crucial questions are just some of the issues tackled in this comprehensive and insightful new book. Embodying Health Identities offers a fundamental account of the sociology of health, exploring the relationship between health and identity through a focus on embodiment. Bringing together existing literature with new cutting edge theories, the authors investigate the implications of the body on our experiences of health and illness and its role in how health, illness and identity relate to each other. The text begins by outlining the key concepts of health and illness, and then continues with an exploration of the social factors which impact on health and a consideration of the journey of illness, from causation to treatment, across the life course. Throughout the text, theoretical arguments are effectively illustrated with contemporary examples taken from every day life and a diverse range of cultures. Written by two reputed authors in the field, this accessible text offers stimulating and refreshing reading for all students of the sociology and anthropology of health.

At a moment of notably rising levels of anti-Asian hate, this book offers antiracist resources informed by Asian/North American feminist theology and biblical scholarship. Although there exist scholarly books and articles on Asian American theology (broadly defined) have proliferated in response to the current ethical, political, and cultural environment have been prolific, there have been few concerted efforts to interrogate or dismantle anti-Asian racism inseparable from anti-black racism, and white settler colonialism that have often undermined the communal spirit and livelihood of Christian churches in the current political climate. In the current political climate, COVID-related anti-Asian hate and racial conflict, which all intersect with gender and sexuality-based violence, require theological, moral, and political inquiries. Hence, this book notes the current paucity of work with critical discussions on the multiple facets of racism from Asian American feminist theological perspectives. Contributors deepen the inter/transdisciplinary approaches concerning how to dismantle racist theological teachings, biblical interpretations, liturgical presentations, and the Christian church’s leadership structure.

This book combines approaches from the design disciplines, humanities, and social sciences to foster interdisciplinary engagement across geographies around the identities embodied in and of peripheries. Peripheral communities bear human faces and names, necessitating specific modes of inquiry and commitments that prioritize lived human experience and cultural expression. Hence, the peripheries of this book are a question, not a given, the answers to which are contingent forms assembled around embodied identities. Peripheries are urban fringes, periphery countries in the modern world-system, Indigenous lands, occupied territories, or the peripheries of authoritative knowledge, among others. No form can exist outside historical relations of power enacted through knowledge, political structures, laws, and regulations.

Discussing spirituality and religion in the therapy room is increasingly accepted, some even forgetting that integration of psychology and Christianity was once a rare thing. Yet even as the decades-long integration movement has been so effective, the counselor's lived context in which integration happens grows increasingly complex, and the movement has reached a new turning point. Christian practitioners need a fresh look at integration in a postmodern world. In Embodying Integration, Megan Anna Neff and Mark McMinn provide an essential guide to becoming integrators today. Representing two generations of counselor education and practice, they model how to engage hard questions and consider how different theological views, gendered perspectives, and cultures integrate with psychology and counseling. "Many students," they write, "don't want models and views that tend to simplify complexity into categories. They are looking for conversation that helps them dive into the complexity, to ponder the nuances and messiness of integration." More than focusing on resolving issues, Neff and McMinn help situate wisdom through personally engaging, diverse views and narratives. Arising from conversations between an up-and-coming practitioner and her veteran integrator father, this book considers practical implications for the day-to-day realities of counseling and psychotherapy. Personal stories, dialogues between the coauthors, and discussion questions throughout help students, teachers, mental health professionals, and anyone interested in psychology and faith to enter—and continue—the conversation. Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS) Books explore how Christianity relates to mental health and behavioral sciences including psychology, counseling, social work, and marriage and family therapy in order to equip Christian clinicians to support the well-being of their clients.

How are militarism and militarisation embodied and why is it important to study these concepts together? This volume highlights a lack of research into people’s emotions, bodies and experiences in global politics, and brings these important dimensions to bear on how we study militarism and process of militarisation. This collection showcases innovative research that examines people’s everyday lived experience and the multiple ways militarism is enshrined in our societies. Emphasising the benefits of interdisciplinary thinking, its chapters interrogate a range of methodological, ethical, and theoretical questions related to embodiment and militarism from a range of empirical contexts. Authors from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds reveal the myriad of ways in which militarism is experienced by gendered, raced, aged, and sexed bodies. The volume covers a wide range of topics, including the impact of social media; gender, queer, and feminist research on the military; the challenges of writing about embodied experience; and the commercialisation of military fitness in civilian life. This book fills a gap in the study of militarism and militarisation and will be of interest to students and scholars of critical military studies, security studies, and war studies. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Critical Military Studies.