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Rebuilding the body through violence and control
Abstract
In this article, I examine the bodily changes that soldiers undergo in an intensive counter-terrorism military training course. I argue that military draftees develop control and violent capabilities through Violent Reflexive Bodily Practices (VRBPs), a concept I introduce here. VRBPs, which form the core of training in this elite military unit, are simultaneously recursive, reflexive and reconstructive: they are expressed by the soldier's body and inflicted upon his body, by using them more violence is created, and their aim is not breaking the body apart, but rebuilding it into a new entity. VRBPs are concrete body techniques that are not discussed through a broad theoretical or cultural approach but as a material and concrete experience that reconstructs individuals' bodies. This article shows how 'techniques of the body' (Mauss, 1973) can be changed in a short period and reveals possible dynamics of habitually instilled capabilities.
... The military unit itself seems to be of great importance to soldiers' legitimation of violence. This is due partly to their professional training ( Bar and Ben-Ari 2005 ;Samimian-Darash 2013 ) and partly to the informal socialization of violence, which results from the conduct of the tactical command staff the soldiers fall under. Since the main military's expertise is in the exploitation of violence, the socialization of violence is part and parcel of the basic training that all soldiers, especially those in combat units, go through ( Cockerham 1973 ;Sion 2006 ;Lande 2007 ). ...
... This leads to each unit formulating its own rules of engagement. The normalization of violence is expressed as an integral part of both a soldier's self-image and the model of soldiering that develops during the occupation (e.g., Bar and Ben-Ari 2005 ;Samimian-Darash 2013 ). ...
During the past decades, militaries have increasingly used force against civilians and armed adversaries in operational settings other than war. Theories about legitimacy for the use of military force often focus on macro variables such as international law, government policy, and structural political contingencies. The strength of such theories in explaining military violence during conventional wars notwithstanding, this article argues that they fail to explain the legitimization of the use of force in situations that cannot be categorized as “classic” warfare, where institutional and international norms seem to fade, rational calculations become unclear, and governments often do not hold themselves accountable for soldiers’ violent behavior. When such conflicts linger, they often develop into situations in which sovereignty is fragmented and statehood is limited in ways that further undermine institutional legitimacy. Using the accounts of Israeli soldiers deployed in the occupied Palestinian territories in the last two decades, this article broadens the analytical perspective on military violence's legitimacy by depicting its micromechanisms and local factors. In doing so, it identifies three clusters of factors: emotions, space and time, and informal organizational culture. We posit that, during intense friction between soldiers and civilians in the context of prolonged occupation, the structural variables and formal powers that typically dictate the use of force give way to more fluctuating dynamics that shape the patterns of military violence and, ultimately, influence its legitimacy.
... This body of literature includes important work on the normalization of the Occupation through legal means (Cohen 2011;Hajjar 2005;Kretzmer 2002) and on the mechanics of the military administration by which Palestinian life is controlled (Berda 2015). Studies specifically focused on the IDF have typically emphasized 'kinetic' or high-intensity episodes, such as targeted killings (Luft 2003), raids (Catignani 2005), and other actions involving lethality and the calculated use of violence (Bar and Ben-Ari 2005;Samimian-Darash 2013). Only a small number of studies have explored the more mundane, everyday actions of the IDF in the Territories (Gazit and Ben-Ari 2017;Rosenfeld 2004). ...
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) routinely rotate ground forces in and out of the Occupied Territories in the West Bank. While these troops are trained for soldiering in high-intensity wars, in the Territories they have long had to carry out a variety of policing activities. These activities often exist in tension with their soldierly training and ethos, both of which center on violent encounters. IDF ground forces have adapted to this situation by maintaining a hierarchy of ‘logics of action’, in which handling potentially hostile encounters takes precedence over other forms of policing. Over time, this hierarchy has been adapted to the changed nature of contemporary conflict, in which soldiering is increasingly exposed to multiple forms of media, monitoring, and juridification. To maintain its public legitimacy and institutional autonomy, the IDF has had to adapt to the changes imposed on it by creating multiple mechanisms of force generation and control of soldierly action.
... Against this backdrop, Csordas (1993) constructs the expression "somatic modes of attention" that sees individual, following Husserl, as one platform with two interconnected dimensionswhich in turn belong to consciousness. Samimian-Darash (2013) examines this somatic phenomenology with respect to the reconstruction of the body (and in fact the habitus or the "second nature" in the terms of Bourdieu, 1984) in the training of combatants and their transformation from civilians to soldiers. Her findings depict how the body learns to experience not only new physical awakenings ("learning to get hurt," "remaining standing"), but also encounters specific emotions (like pleasure), which make the transformation even more dramatic, or create advanced (physical-mental) change (especially in the sense of a coherent narrative that makes it easier to carry out the military tasks). ...
Through in‐depth interviews, this article examines the accounts of subjects who, due to their selfhood and bodies being marked as “ethnic,” do not pass the selection process to enter night clubs in Tel Aviv. Their experiences of pain are expressed via a connection between the social, the physical and the mental, and indicates a unique somatic awakening. This awakening is expressed through an experience of body parts being perceived as “transparent” or “marginal” and not receiving phenomenological and somatic attention in everyday life. Using psychoanalytical model related to the symbolization levels of the somatic awakening, we propose interpreting this awakening ‐ of the “marginal” ‐ as metonymic somatic evidence. This awakening and the interpretation of it create continuity between the experience of “marginal” organs and the experience of marginality in the nighttime arena of ethnic selection. The discussion suggests that the sources of this mental‐somatic awakening are related to the transformation of the private subject into a symbolic type (“the guy that doesn't pass selection”), which in turn expresses the collapse of the inimitable.
... Against this backdrop, Csordas (1993) constructs the expression "somatic modes of attention" that sees individual, following Husserl, as one platform with two interconnected dimensionswhich in turn belong to consciousness. Samimian-Darash (2013) examines this somatic phenomenology with respect to the reconstruction of the body (and in fact the habitus or the "second nature" in the terms of Bourdieu, 1984) in the training of combatants and their transformation from civilians to soldiers. Her findings depict how the body learns to experience not only new physical awakenings ("learning to get hurt," "remaining standing"), but also encounters specific emotions (like pleasure), which make the transformation even more dramatic, or create advanced (physical-mental) change (especially in the sense of a coherent narrative that makes it easier to carry out the military tasks). ...
Through in‐depth interviews, this article examines the accounts of subjects who, due to their selfhood and bodies being marked as “ethnic,” do not pass the selection process to enter night clubs in Tel Aviv. Their experiences of pain are expressed via a connection between the social, the physical and the mental, and indicates a unique somatic awakening. This awakening is expressed through an experience of body parts being perceived as “transparent” or “marginal” and not receiving phenomenological and somatic attention in everyday life. Using psychoanalytical model related to the symbolization levels of the somatic awakening, we propose interpreting this awakening ‐ of the “marginal” ‐ as metonymic somatic evidence. This awakening and the interpretation of it create continuity between the experience of “marginal” organs and the experience of marginality in the nighttime arena of ethnic selection. The discussion suggests that the sources of this mental‐somatic awakening are related to the transformation of the private subject into a symbolic type (“the guy that doesn't pass selection”), which in turn expresses the collapse of the inimitable.
... Der Umgang mit Schmerzen spielt im Krav-Maga-Training, besonders im militärischen Bereich, eine zentrale Rolle (Cohen, 2011;Samimian-Darash, 2013). Im Bereich des Krav-Maga-Trainings für Frauen werden explizite Empfehlungen formuliert, welche sich darauf stützen, dass Frauen sensibler auf kurze, dynamische Schmerzreize reagieren (Hashmi & Davis, 2014). ...
Bereits vor über 40 Jahren betonten Pascelé, Moon und Tanner (1970) die Wich-tigkeit von Selbstverteidigungstraining für Frauen mit zwei verschiedenen Zielen: (a) das Erhöhen der eigenen Sicherheit und (b) das Entfalten des vollen Potentials als Frau. Auch heute ist das Erweitern der technisch-taktischen Handlungsalterna-tiven für mögliche Angriffssituationen neben Aspekten wie der persönlichen Weiter-entwicklung sowie der körperlichen Erfahrung eigener Stärke nur ein Teil eines Selbstverteidigungstrainings für
... Training in this case is a matter of both pedagogy and active work on the self, and perhaps in some measure also one of violence: a wrenching experience to which those present voluntarily submit, but that proceeds inexorably and wrests transformation from its participants (see Samimian-Darash, 2013). The videos, however, are integrated in multiple forms of questioning and re-enactment that bring them into the domain of ethics. ...
In this article, we explore how cameras are used in policing in the United States. We outline the trajectory of key new media technologies, arguing that cameras and social media together generate the ambient surveillance through which graphic violence is now routinely captured and circulated. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, we identify and examine intersections between video footage and police subjectivity in case studies of recruit training at the Washington state Basic Law Enforcement Academy and the Seattle Police Department’s body-worn camera project. We analyze these cases in relation to the major arguments for and against initiatives to increase police use of cameras, outlining what we see as techno-optimistic and techno-pessimistic positions. Drawing on the pragmatism of John Dewey, we argue for a third position that calls for field-based inquiry into the specific co-production of socio-techno subjectivities.
... Beyond an early interest in the supposed 'naturalness' or 'universality' of violence (Fortune 1939;Mead 1940;Chagnon 1968) 6 and a subsequent rejection of this approach that rather emphasized the local meanings and social function of performances of violence (Feldman 1991;Frake 1998;Isbell 1998), a strain of anthropological investigation of more direct concern for an anthropology of police has provided an exploration of subjective experience of violence (Das et al. 2000;Haanstad 2009), especially as it extends beyond a moment of trauma into ethical reflection on 'ordinary' life through the banality of state practices (Das & Poole 2004;Das 2007;Deal 2010;Beek & Göpfert 2012;Bolten 2012;Richardson 2015). 7 Combined with a similarly burgeoning anthropological focus on bureaucracy and paperwork (Bernstein & Mertz 2011;Hull 2012), an anthropology of police influenced by this tradition has the potential to illustrate the line of flight connecting bodies (Fassin & D'halluin 2005;Samimian-Darash 2013), bureaucratic aesthetics (Wender 2008) and the oftentimes banality of state gewalt (Feldman 2008;Mulla 2014;Verdery 2014). ...
Despite its foundational ties with many of the disciplines traditionally associated with police studies—cognate disciplines such as comparative legal science, sociology, political science, and criminology—the discipline of anthropology has only recently seen the emergence of a topical subfield interested specifically in the ethnographic description and broader theorization of policing. This lacuna can be attributed to several factors intimately tied to the discipline’s core self-understanding, chief among them its historical role as a discipline whose raison d’être rests upon serving within the interdisciplinary ecumene as specialists in the study of non-Western, small-scale, pre-modern societies existing outside, or at most only in parallel to, state formations. Ancillary to this self-definition has been a professional ethical commitment to offering voice to and acting as the political champions of otherwise disenfranchised groups. After tracing the historically vexed relationship between the discipline of anthropology and the broader field of police studies, this chapter will survey the work of a growing cadre of scholars clearing space at the intersection of the two traditions of knowledge production. As such, it will outline the current and potential contributions and challenges of the young field of the “anthropology of police”.
... Our bodies, therefore, are not merely passive objects that encapsulate a mind, but also serve as active mediums of and for embodied knowledge (Turner, 2006). Insights into the world of embodied knowledge within sports, performance arts and martial arts have included studies on the lives of ballet dancers (Turner & Wainwright, 2003;Wainwright, Williams, & Turner, 2006); traditional martial arts from Asia (Farrer & Whalen-Bridge, 2011); Lindy hoppers (Wade, 2011); military training in the Israeli Defence Forces (Samimian-Darash, 2012); and more recently, the phenomenon known as mixed martial arts (MMA), which has developed into a popular spectator sport (Downey, 2007;Spencer, 2009Spencer, , 2014 on a global scale. Similarly, the emergence of 'fighting scholars' (Sanchez Garcia & Spencer, 2013) -scholars in the social sciences who have continued to conduct their research within the martial arts -are often at the forefront of ethnographic and theoretical contributions within performative cultures, where the ...
Based on an ethnographic study conducted from 2002-2005 in Canada, this paper argues that the practice of Aikido within a specific community of practitioners does not simply exist as a medium for acquiring martial knowledge, but is also a viable conduit for acculturating or essentializing aspects of Japanese culture and identity. This is made possible in light of the highly embodied and corporeal dimension of Aikido practice, which requires one to develop the necessary dispositions and strategies for the construction of an Aikido habitus. Consequently, the path towards becoming an Aikidoka enables one to potentially embody, in similar but also unique ways, the cultural and moral worldviews that the art seeks to represent within intercultural and transnational spaces.
How does secrecy shape narratives of militarized hegemonic masculinity? This article assesses a gap at the intersection between theories of masculinities and organizational secrecy. Supported by 15 interviews with current and former male workers of a covert section of an Israeli national security organization, it argues that secrecy is experienced as both an external hurdle and a central component to the way that men internalize masculinity. Unable to access social capital outside the security organization, the respondents of the study construct a social field inside it through which they can assert their masculinity. They do so by conceptualizing their jobs, themselves, and the organization through a prism of sacrificial warriorhood, and actively incorporate secrecy’s constraints into a narrative of “super-men”. This study thus examines secrecy in the context of a militarized environment, showing the experience of masculinity and a perceived lack of power-access among members of a dominant group.
This paper seeks a theoretical approach to the body best suited to the anthropological study of body movement in the martial arts. It follows the development of the anthropological attitude to the body from its formative period up until the present day, and this is done from the position of the “embodiment” paradigm as a theoretical orientation which enables a deeper understanding of the connection between specific cultural environments in which martial arts evolve and the meaning of the movements themselves. The introductory section provides a brief summary of “unembodied” theoretical schools of thought, which laid the foundations for the “somatic revolution”. The paper then considers the authors who have made the most significant contribution to the anthropological study of embodiment, and looks at four theoretical perspectives on the body, namely, the physical, socio-cultural, embodied, and dynamic embodiment perspectives. The paper also considers the question of overcoming the ontological body-mind dichotomy, which is the legacy of Cartesian dualism. Particular attention has been given to the embodiment and dynamic embodiment perspectives, and to their potential for application in anthropological studies of martial physical practices, illustrated with concrete examples.
Although the skilful body has been ever-present in research accounts of consumption experiences, no sustained attention has been given to the acquisition of skills necessary for successful engagement with those experiences. In the present study, we report an empirical investigation of the acquisition and diffusion of embodied competencies among high-speed motorcyclists. In doing so, we mobilize the concept of reflexive body techniques in order to unpack the social, physical and mindful aspects of skilled embodiment. We demonstrate that skill acquisition is a necessary precursor to successful immersion into certain kinds of consumption experiences offered by the marketplace. Further, we underline the role of skill acquisition in subject formation.
This chapter introduces social theories about gender and the body. Rather than focusing on sex (that is, the physiological characteristics typically associated with maleness and femaleness) this chapter instead looks at how cultural norms for femininity and masculinity shape people’s relationship to their own bodies and the bodies of others. Examining the association of masculinity with active bodily subjects—and of femininity with passive bodily objects—this chapter studies the ways bodies reproduce and, sometimes, challenge gendered power dynamics.
International scientific and professional conference entitled "Applicable research in wrestling" was held from 5th to 7th May 2017and it was organized by the Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Zagreb and the Faculty of Sports and Physical Education, University of Novi Sad and under the auspices of the International Network of Wrestling Researchers (INWR), the United World Wrestling (UWW) and the International Association of Sport Kinetics (IASK). The conference was held at the Faculty of Sports and Physical Education in Novi Sad and gathered more than hundred researchers, wrestling coaches and students from all over the world. Young scientists were awarded for best scientific works ; Cristina Casals (Spain) won first place, Dragana Zanini (Serbia) won second place and third place was taken by Daichi Yamashita (Japan). The speciality of the conference was cooperation UWW Scientific with Refereeing commission. Also, the conference was held during European Wrestling Championship so programmes complemented, resulting in higher interest for participant and visitors. Efforts in organizing this conference were made by two faculties from different countires: Faculty of Kinesiology in Zagreb (Croatia) and Faculty of Sports and Physical Education in Novi Sad (Serbia). Many respected experts visited this conference, including Mr. Nenad Lalović, the president of United World Wrestling. 125 authors from 25 countries presented their work at the conference. Their papers and abstracts are available in Proceeding book in both print and electronic pdf version.
Drawing explicitly upon the bodily techniques of military basic training and the corporeal competencies of ex-military personnel, military-themed fitness classes and physical challenges have become an increasingly popular civilian leisure pursuit in the UK over the last two decades. This paper explores the embodied regimes, experiences, and interactions between civilians and ex-military personnel that occur in these emergent hybrid leisure spaces. Drawing on ethnographic data, I argue that commercial military fitness involves a repurposing and rearticulation of collective military discipline within a late modern physical culture that emphasizes the individual body as a site of self-discovery and personal responsibility. Military fitness is thus a site of a particular biopolitics, of feeling alive in a very specific way. The intensities and feelings of physical achievement and togetherness that are generated emerge filtered through a particular military lens, circulating around and clinging to the totem of the repurposed ex-martial body. In the commercial logic of the fitness market, being ‘military’ and the ex-soldier’s body have thus become particularly trusted and affectively resonant brands.
■ Nationalism is the untenable union of the impersonal, mechanistic, bureaucratic logic of the state and the intimate, emotional, organic logic of the nation. While practicing martial arts, the participants at the Israeli Survival School of Ju Jutsu create a utopian Israeliness, using bits of state-national understandings to form a family-like organicity. At the North Indian school of wrestling described by Joseph Alter, too, an organic utopian nationalism is practiced into existence through meticulous care for the body itself. A comparison between those modes of embodying the national, set in very different cultural and national realities, reveals not only different understandings of the national and of its organic nature, but also different uses of semiotic mechanisms. Whereas the Israeli world of the Survival School is based on representation, the Indian one is constructed from the body and the environment, set in dense connectedness forming this world in and of itself.
Although the emotion management perspective dominates the micro-sociological study of emotions, a phenomenological approach provides access to phenomena that are inaccessible through emotion management. While the former shows the strategic management of one’s emotions to conform to norms, the latter reveals the myriad ways in which emotions move us. Indeed, if not for the poignant resonance of emotions in social life, emotions would hardly be worth “managing.” This article will employ a phenomenological perspective on emotions as they were expressed by applicants and workers in a Section 8 housing office throughout the course of eligibility interviews. I will show that despite giving off an impression of detachment and neutrality, workers are unavoidably sensitive to the emotional displays of applicants. Hence, a research agenda focusing on interpersonal emotional sensitivity is proposed as a complement to the conceptualization of emotions as managed.
This article concerns kime, a somatic code used in the ‘empty hand’ Japanese martial art of karate. Kime is a tactile-kinesthetic entity born out of practice, coming into being in a social setting through the specific organization of the body-self, fusing body and self into one stance and movement. Kime is entirely embodied, yet can only be operated and recognized inter-subjectively. It plays a crucial role in combat and at the same time also indicates a spiritual possibility that depends on eradication of emotion and volition. An analysis of kime shows how cultural understandings can emerge without necessarily using symbolic representations or verbal discourse in their construction. These somatic non-dual understandings can come to form an entire world-of-meaning directly through the moving body. The moving body shapes itself within itself even as it interacts with and contributes to shape its immediate environment. This is a world-of-meaning that includes complex inter-subjectivity founded on the speed and ambiguity of the interface between the innerness and the outerness of the body.
In this article I discuss some of the findings of an on-going ethnographic study of two once-weekly circuit training classes held in one of the growing number of private health and fitness clubs. The article has four aims. First, to demonstrate and explore the active role of the body in a central practice of body modification/maintenance: i.e. circuit training. Second, to demonstrate that circuit training is a social structure which both shapes the activity of the agent and is shaped by that (shaped) agent. I aim also to explore this structuration process. Third, to draw out a number of aspects of the sociality of body maintenance/modification. Training, I argue, is a form of symbolic interaction, localized within specific and durable social networks. The final aim of the article is to weave these various claims together into a coherent overall account of circuit training as a form of body modification. As an investigation of the embodied nature of practices of body maintenance and the active role of social agents in relation to these practices the article rejoins an important strand of sociological investigations of ‘the body’. At the same time, however, the article seeks to challenge those approaches, often rooted in Foucauldian analysis, which portray the body as ‘docile’ in relation to body maintenance. Foucauldian inspired studies often reify practices of modification as ‘technologies’ or ‘apparatuses’, ignoring the active role of embodied agents in these practices and eliding the difference between texts which prescribe ways of acting and the more messy and complex reality of those ways of acting.
This paper draws on data from a qualitative study of bodybuilding and drug-taking. It discusses the ambiguous role of medicine as a source of knowledge and expertise among participants who systematically disavow medical pronouncements on the uses and dangers of ‘physique-enhancing’ drugs. Empirical data on perceptions of the medical profession, risk, and bodybuilders’ various sources of ethno-scientific knowledge, suggest that medicine is simply one ‘authority’ among many in the construction of the self and body within late modernity. These ethno-graphic observations correlate with sociological claims that medical orthodoxy is currently being subjected to an external critique and that implicit trust in both the individuals who practice medicine and the underlying system of knowledge may have been weakening.
Outline of a Theory of Practice is recognized as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu, a distinguished French anthropologist, develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood. With his central concept of the habitus, the principle which negotiates between objective structures and practices, Bourdieu is able to transcend the dichotomies which have shaped theoretical thinking about the social world. The author draws on his fieldwork in Kabylia (Algeria) to illustrate his theoretical propositions. With detailed study of matrimonial strategies and the role of rite and myth, he analyses the dialectical process of the 'incorporation of structures' and the objectification of habitus, whereby social formations tend to reproduce themselves. A rigorous consistent materialist approach lays the foundations for a theory of symbolic capital and, through analysis of the different modes of domination, a theory of symbolic power.
Based on an interview study of neonatal nurses, this article sets out to explore the management of emotions within a work context where their suppression is a professional requirement. Drawing on Bolton’s (2000a, 2000b) identification of different types of organizational emotionality, in particular prescriptive and philanthropic emotion management, the article seeks to demonstrate the complexities involved in the performance of emotional labour. It does this by first exploring the times when a nurse chooses to perform one form of emotion management over another (e.g. prescriptive over philanthropic). Second, the article examines the relationship between these two forms of emotion management, taking into account their gendered nature and highlighting the existence of any tensions between them. Lastly, it considers how nurses create informal communities of coping (Korczynski, 2003) as a means of dealing with the consequences of having to move between these two different forms of emotion management.
This article examines emotion in organizations and the emotion management skills organizational actors possess. While Hochschild's (1983) seminal work on emotional labour is perhaps one of the greatest contributions to our understanding of emotion in organizations, this article challenges key tenets of Hochschild's thesis and goes on to offer an evolved analysis of emotional labour and alternative conceptualizations of organizational emotionality. Using comparable data, this article depicts airline cabin crews as skilled emotion managers who are able to juggle and synthesize different types of emotion work dependent on situational demands. In addition, the capacity for cabin crews to resist and modify the demands of management and customers acts to further contradict Hochschild's claim regarding the `transmutation' of feelings.
This article addresses the issue of primary group bonding and non-conventional methods for promoting unit cohesion. Conventional army training intensifies the power of group pressure within its ranks using methods that teach recruits the need for teamwork. Less conventional methods, such as initiation rites, are also used to promote group bonding. This report examines initiation rites in the Canadian Airborne Regiment, beginning with a brief description of the Regiment and then examining formal initiation to the regiment- the Airborne Indoctrination Course, informal initiation rites, Airborne initiation rites are discussed in detail by using models developed in anthropology to describe rites of passage in traditional societies, rites that occur in three stages, the first occurring when the initiates' former identity is stripped away and they are set apart and made very similar to one another. They are then "leveled" into a homogeneous group, by suppressing individuality, and thus encouraging an investment in the group. They then enter the liminal phase of the rite, where events become parodies and inversions of real life, a stage in which group bonding is reinforced as the initiates undergo standard processes of testing and humiliation. Finally, they are reincorporated into the group as members of the regiment. We then look at hazing and other rites of passage in the Canadian Airborne Regiment, and conclude with a discussion of the use of extreme initiation in primary group bonding.
This article examines the process of learning the Alexander Technique, a method of body re-education, in relation to Bourdieu's observation that bodily knowledge is often subconscious and not easily translatable into words (1988). It argues that Alexander Technique is a useful case study for examining how the body learns because of the Technique's emphasis on conscious awareness and overcoming habitual reactions. Based on 18 months of fieldwork undertaking lessons in Alexander Technique and interviewing teachers and pupils, the Technique is examined as a `somatic mode of attention' (Csordas, 2002) and its effects on the habitus and bodily hexis are discussed. The relationship between habit and conscious control in the Technique has implications for our understanding of embodiment in the context of teaching and learning bodily practices.
Modeling is a challenging occupation because employment is irregular, the physical demands are great, and competition is fierce. Success as a model requires the careful management of bodily capital and the performance of emotional labor. Drawing on participant observations and interviews with models in the Atlanta fashion industry, the authors examine how they do the former and why they do the latter. They manage their bodily capital by subjecting themselves to intense self-regulation. Models perform emotional labor to sell themselves to clients and agents, to create illusions for observers and the camera, and to find dignity in a job that is often degrading and humiliating.
This article explores the carnal dimensions of existence through ethnographic research in a mixed martial arts club. Mixed martial arts (MMA) is an emergent sport where competitors in a ring or cage utilize strikes (punches, kicks, elbows and knees) as well as submission techniques to defeat opponents. Through data gathered from in-depth interviews with MMA practitioners and participant observation in an MMA club, I elucidate the social processes that are integral to the production of an MMA fighter habitus. I examine how body techniques are learned and become attached to the identity of mixed martial arts fighters. Using Crossley’s concept of reflexive body techniques, I examine how MMA fighters engage in body callusing through use of reflexive body techniques thereby allowing them to withstand the rigors of the sport.
This article aims to do two things. The first of these is to introduce the concept of reflexive body techniques into the debate on body modification/maintenance. The value of the concept in relation to this debate, in part, is that it ensures that we conceive of the body as both a subject and an object, modifier and modified, and that we thereby avoid the trap of conceptualizing modification in dualistic (mind/body or body/society) terms. Second, the article seeks to explore the pattern of distribution of practices of modification (conceived as reflexive body techniques) through society and to reflect upon the potential usefulness of multi-dimensional scaling as a tool for doing this. This aim is related to the first aim as it is argued that the concept of reflexive body techniques serves to identify and anchor practices ofmodification in a way that is amenable to both quantitative and qualitative forms of analysis, as well as theoretical investigation.
Recent years have seen a considerable resurgence in the popularity of tattooing and piercing, a development that some have dismissed as a fashionable trend. Others have argued that the relative permanence of such forms of body modification militates against their full absorption into the fashion system. Drawing on interviews with a variety of body modifiers, the article examines this debate, and notes that certain tattooees and piercees appear, in some respects, to regard their tattoos and piercings as decorative accessories. At the same time, however, such corporeal artifacts are approached and experienced as distinct from other, more free-floating products in the `supermarket of style'. Whether or not their meaning is fixed in these terms, tattoos and piercings are employed by some as a form of anti-fashion and as a way of fixing or anchoring the reflexively constructed self. In this sense they share both affinities and differences with other forms of contemporary body project.
Theatre1 provides a unique set of conditions for the management of emotions. Drawing on participant observation from one repertory theater, three university productions, and interviews with stage actors, directors, and acting instructors, I conceptualize actors as privileged emotion managers. Actors access structural resources that enable their ability to manage feelings onstage. Theatre's division of labor, the rehearsal process, and formal training give actors important advantages in managing emotions compared to many other social settings, and demonstrate structural recognition of and support for feeling management. These structures outsource some of an actor's emotion management and provide a set of institutionally prescribed strategies that actors use to manage feelings during a production.
Abstract Symbolic meaning and representational and reflexive perspectives remain dominant orientations in the analysis of ritual. While these must be crucial, this essay argues that a focus on the perceptual dynamics of rite, especially as these are located in ritual aesthetics, may expand an understanding of the force of rite. The discussion develops critically upon Victor Turner's seminal work, suggesting ways in which ritual analyses may be redirected. The related concepts of dynamics and virtuality (distinguished from the cyber-technological kind) are developed, indicating that these may be critical for understanding how rites change or transform the situations to which they are directed. Ritual as a dynamic in virtuality that has no essential or necessary relation to the ordinary realities that surround it may, because of this fact, be greatly empowered as a force that can pragmatically intervene in ordinary realities.
The psychological experiences of combat training may be understood as having three interlocking components: the acceptance of psychological control, the equation of masculine identity with military performance, and the equation of the entire military mission with raw agression. These processes produce individuals with a well-honed emotional edge. The consequences both immediate and delayed of placing such individuals in a situation as ambiguous and frustrating as the Vietnam War are cause for grave concern.
Following Hochschild's The Managed Heart, which emphasized the problematic features that emotional labour had for women flight attendants, a critical literature emerged which focused on the more enjoyable aspects of emotional labour in service employee experience. This article draws on this literature and analyses emotional labour as a gendered cultural performance but takes issue with the individualizing and pluralistic tenor in the post-Hochschild discussions. Using a qualitative and quantitative study of nearly 3000 Australian flight attendants, it focuses on organizational and occupational health and safety variables, as well as sexual harass-ment and passenger abuse — factors barely discussed by Hochschild's critics. The qualitative data indicate that emotional labour is both pleasurable and difficult at different times for the same individual. Gender is still pivotal, as Hochschild suggested, linking emotional labour with sexual harassment. At the same time, the most significant predictors from the quantitative study of whether emotional labour would be costly were organizational. Variables such as whether flight attendants felt valued by the company show that the airline management context is highly influential in the way in which emotional labour is experienced. As a means of understanding the complex relations in this important and eroticized area of service work where flight attendants, airline crews, airline management and passengers have convergent and conflicting interests, the article also deploys a new concept: ‘demanding publics’, to refer to trangressions of the legitimate boundaries of the service worker.
Breathing appears to be so natural and organic that it hardly seems worth analyzing. Yet to inhabit an institution can mean having to learn to breathe in culturally distinct ways. This chapter presents the findings of an ethnographic study of ‘learning to breath like a soldier’ in the army. I focus on the processes by which the body is transformed and new disciplinary techniques are developed, and present the body as an alternative category of cultural analysis to a vision of military culture as the internalization of norms, values and beliefs that shape identities and provide cognitive frames for social action. Cultural patterning in the army is not an abstract intellectual process, but takes place at the level of the body as it engages in practical activity in the training environment, and becomes adapted to the military milieu.
