A Body Worth Having, or A System of Natural Governance

Cohen, Ed

doi:10.1215/9780822391111-003

Cited by 8 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…xi Such a view is apparent in the unidimensional accounts of some Anglophone social work and mental health perspectives e.g. see http://fosteringandadoption.rip.org.uk/topics/attachment-theoryresearch/ and https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/blog/why-relationships-are-so-important-children-and-youngpeople xii And see Cohen (2008) …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Troubling Children’s Families: Who Is Troubled and Why? Approaches to Inter-Cultural Dialogue

McCarthy

Gillies

2017

Sociological Research Online

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article draws on multi-disciplinary perspectives to consider the need and the possibilities for intercultural dialogue concerning families that may be seen by some to be 'troubling'. Starting from the premise that 'troubles' are a 'normal' part of children's family lives, we consider the boundary between 'normal' troubles and troubles that are troubling (whether to family members or others). Such troubling families potentially indicate an intervention to prevent harm to less powerful family members (notably children). On what basis can such decisions be made in children's family lives, how can this question be answered across diverse cultural contexts, and are all answers inevitably subject to uncertainty? Such questions arguably re-frame and broaden existing debates about 'child maltreatment' across diverse cultural contexts. Beyond recognizing power dynamics, material inequalities, and historical and contemporary colonialism, we argue that attempts to answer the question on an empirical basis risk a form of neo-colonialism, since values inevitably permeate research and knowledge claims. We briefly exemplify such difficulties, examining psychological studies of childrearing in China, and the application of neuroscience to early childhood interventions in the UK. Turning to issues of values and moral relativism, we also question the possibility of an objective moral standard that avoids cultural imperialism, but ask whether cultural relativism is the only alternative position available. Here we briefly explore other possibilities in the space between 'facile' universalism and 'lazy' relativism (Jullien, 2008(Jullien, /2014. Such approaches bring into focus core philosophical and cultural questions about the possibilities for 'happiness', and for what it means to be a 'person', living in the social world.Throughout, we centralize theoretical and conceptual issues, drawing on the work of Jullien (2008Jullien ( /2014 to recognize the immense complexities inter-cultural dialogue entails in terms of language and communication.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Troubling Children’s Families: Who Is Troubled and Why? Approaches to Inter-Cultural Dialogue

McCarthy

Gillies

2017

Sociological Research Online

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…(21 Grams, 2003) Stating the biomedical approach to transplantation, the transplant surgeon affirms embodiment as ownership. The fact that the heart resides inside Paul -and maintains his life -is sufficient for it to belong to him, to be a part of him and thus to be literally his property (Cohen, 2008). Reaffirming a Cartesian model of transplantation, the surgeon presents to the viewer the dominant biomedical view that the mind and the body are separate, that organs are inalienable objects, and that the history of organ donation (how organs travel) is irrelevant to the present embodiment (of an imagined restoration of a healthy body; Fox and Swazey, 1992: 35-38).…”

Section: Biopolitical Temporalities and Bioethical Demandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transplant temporalities and deadly reproductive futurity in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s21 Grams

McCormack

2015

European Journal of Cultural Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores the generally pathologized relationship between organ recipients and the families of deceased donors. Its focus is Alejandro González Iñárritu's 2003 production 21 Grams because this film brings to the fore both the urgent desire of the organ recipient to be close to the donor family and the purported pathological ramifications of such encounters. Furthermore, the formal representation of time portrays the very ways in which normative structures of temporality are disrupted and perhaps irreversibly altered by the organ transfer process. The article explores how the film forecloses the possibility of the organ recipient and the donor family creating a viable relationship. It argues that the film terminates a transplant temporality by structuring the narrative ending through a normative linear trajectory of reproductive heterosexuality. It concludes with an examination of how the donor family returns to a life of sameness where social norms are restored and repeated, and where transplantees accept a deadly fate so that anxieties about bodily relationality and disruptive temporalities can be assuaged.

show abstract

“…33 In depriving the host of its own proper and essential material, the parasitic microbe thus "naturally" violates liberalism's most sacred precept (i.e., that one owns one's body as one's property). 34 Disregarding the body's propriety by purloining its essential property -like the bad guest that violates its host, as we will consider below -the germ materially perturbs the quasi-natural basis for liberal personhood (i.e., "the body" defines a "natural" metonym for the person 35 ). Hence, insofar as it comes to represent the "virulent agent" of epidemic-causing infectious diseases, which themselves necessarily enfold the biological within the political, the "microscopic parasite" not only biologically but also politically threatens the organism's "economy."…”

Section: Particularity; or How Viruses Come To Mattermentioning

confidence: 99%

A Body Worth Having, or A System of Natural Governance

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Troubling Children’s Families: Who Is Troubled and Why? Approaches to Inter-Cultural Dialogue

Troubling Children’s Families: Who Is Troubled and Why? Approaches to Inter-Cultural Dialogue

Transplant temporalities and deadly reproductive futurity in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s21 Grams

The Paradoxical Politics of Viral Containment; or, How Scale Undoes Us One and All

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About