Focusing on social dialogue and the sensory body within a tandem cycling group pairing blind and sighted riders, this article addresses the creation of a ‘dialogical performance’ (Conquergood, 1985), arguing for the ways integrated tandem cycling challenges distinct binary categories, bodily hierarchies, and constructs of social otherness. Based on one year of fieldwork conducted during cycling, I examine the form of ‘togetherness’ this activity creates, as well as the ‘intersensory’ aspects of this activity, discussing the ways it allows group members to critically reflect upon their bodily and sensory identities, and to re-embody sight as an active and somatic sense. Contributing to and integrating disability ethnography, anthropology of the senses, and the sociology of sporting bodies, I examine the ways this mutual experience enriches the meanings of both blindness and sight, and challenges rigid definitions of and boundaries around the senses, social identities, and bodily functions.
This article examines the contradictions inherent in blind women’s appearance management. Based on an anthropological analysis of interviews with 40 blind women in Israel, the article argues that while serving as a valuable tool within stigma management, appearance management operates simultaneously as a site of rigorous discipline of the body in an effort to comply with feminine visual norms, and as a vehicle for the expression and reception of sensory pleasure. It argues for the significant role of blind women’s appearance in negotiating normalcy and rejecting the normative, stigmatizing script written for them as disabled-blind-women. By studying the role of appearance in the lives of women who do not rely on sight as a central mode of perception, the article addresses the complicated position of blind women in visual culture and challenges the traditional ocular focus of the study of feminine identity and gender performance.
<p>Power relations and the researcher's gaze are extremely relevant to the research of blind people, yet rarely documented. Based on three years of anthropological research with blind women in Israel, this paper discusses the methodological considerations raised by the ethnography of blindness and the position of a sighted-woman-researcher in the field. Employing a "reflexive interpretation," the analysis explores the ways in which research with blind participants raises specific questions regarding researcher-researched power relations and social interactions, offering a fresh approach to the discussion of the researcher's "gaze" and knowledge gathered in the field. Focusing on sight and blindness within the research process, the article addresses "<em>sensory knowledge</em>" raised in the field, offering a nuanced account of the ethnographic inquiry as a sensory endeavor, promoting a dialogue among disability studies, anthropology of the senses, feminist disability studies, and qualitative methodology.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Key words: </strong>blindness; ethnographic research; anthropology; senses; Israel; visual culture; disability; power relations. </p><p> </p>
When people with widely diverse bodily characteristics collaborate in dancing together, an exploration and communication of movement and embodied knowledge takes place through dialogue and shared practice. Engagement in these activities develops participants’ awareness of and appreciation for kinaesthetic complexities and diverse embodiments, promoting an understanding of bodily difference as contributing to, rather than detracting from, the realm of physical arts and society as a whole. Based on fieldwork conducted in Israel and the United States with integrated dance projects bringing together people with and without disabilities, this article offers an ethnographic analysis that continues the anthropological endeavour of revealing the ways kinaesthetic knowledge (awareness and knowledge of the movement and spatial orientation of one's body) is fostered. Introducing disability into movement theory, I offer an understanding of movement/stasis as a spectrum of ways of moving, looking at what happens when individuals who are different from one another engage in shared, critical reflection upon their movement practices.
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