The body of nature and culture / Rod Giblett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Giblett, Rodney James

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human body--Social aspects.

Human body.

Culture.

Human ecology.

Physical Description:

xv, 204 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Summary:

Exploring the relationship of human bodies with nature and culture, this book looks at how humans affect their natural and cultural environments and how those environments affect humans. Examining how the body has been modelled, and the ways in which the body, disease and illness have been figured in metaphors, the book argues for an environmentally sustainable and healthy relationship between the body and the earth. The book explores: the body as machine; the body as landscape; the body as land, and land as body; the body as 'cyborg' (or cybernetic organism); and disease and illness as an invading army to be fought and defeated on the battlefield of the body. It also celebrates the body as earth or land, the grotesque body, the monstrous body and the Taoist body of Tai chi. These bodies are expressed in carnivalesque tales, eco-friendly illness narratives and health-recovery stories. Ultimately the book explores how to make the relationship and interaction between human beings/bodies and ecosystems/ecology ecologically sustainable.

Contents:

1 Where Land and Body Meet: Body Culture and Nature 1

The body: The starting point 2

Stigmata 7

Body techniques 13

2 Machine Body of Modern Western Medicine 19

The body as machine 20

Body machinery 23

Medical mechanics 27

Mapping the machine of the body 31

3 Battlefield Body of Illness Narratives 37

Illness narratives 37

The body as battlefield 41

The military metaphor in hypermodern medicine 47

The earth as body/body as earth 49

4 Grotesque Body of the Lower Strata 56

The popular body of the marketplace 56

The bourgeois body 60

The s(ub)lime and beautiful body and landscape 63

The body without organs 69

5 Monstrous Body of the Slimy Depths 74

Grotesque, gargantuan, generous, grateful 76

The monstrous-maternal 80

Orally sadistic alien 82

Sky gods, earth goddesses 86

6 Fascist Body of the War-Machine 90

Maculinist, monumental, machinic, metallic, muscular 91

Bachelor machines for a bachelor birth 95

The militarisation of civilian life 99

The war against nature 102

7 Writing on the Surface of the Textual Body 108

Is the soul the prison of the body? 109

The body writes back 113

Body-writing machines 118

8 Sporting Body Imprisoned in the Time-Machine 125

A body built on pain 125

Speed, suffering and sublimation in sport 131

The sporting body of Australia 136

9 Cyborg: The Body-Machine of the Civilian-Soldier 140

Cybernetics and cyborgs 140

Symbiosis and symbionts 148

10 Taoist Body of the Earth 157

Taoism 158

Picture of internals 161

Taijiquan 164

Health recovery stories 167

11 Healthy Land, Healthy Body: State of the Environment, State of Health 173

Soil conservation 174

Taoist ecology 178

The body of the earth with organs and the body of Australia 185.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-202) and index.

ISBN:

9780230222731

0230222730

OCLC:

231680264