Suchergebnisse

"This article compares the responses to the declining birthrate by three very different regimes in Wilhelmine, Weimar and Nazi Germany. In their intent these policies were markedly different: just before and during the First World War a declining birthrate symbolized national decline, sapping national progress and military power and the central aim was to boost fertility almost at any price; eugenics was not yet a major influence on official Wilhelmine policy. In the wake of the devastation reaped by the lost war and also influenced by the depression at the end of the 1920s the democratically elected governments of the Weimar Republic attempted to 'rationalize' reproduction to suit the prevailing socio-economic circumstances and the belief in modernity in industry and everyday life. They favored 'fewer but better children' but their policies remained fragmented and heavily contested; lawmakers tried to balance individual rights and collective interests, welfarism and eugenic concerns. In contrast, Nazi leaders developed a comprehensive and sophisticated system of selective reproduction based on racial prejudice; legal safeguards to protect the rights of individuals were ruthlessly dismantled. Material and ideological inducements to boost the birthrate benefited only 'Aryans' and healthy Germans. A series of extremely repressive measures were introduced: on the one hand they were meant to curb the breeding of the 'unfit', like Jews, gypsies, or those considered congenitally diseased and, on the other, they aimed to curb individual birth control by those deemed 'fit'. But of course the picture is more complicated. If we compare official population programs with their implementation at the local level and also with the reproductive strategies employed by ordinary women and men, a more subtle picture emerges about the regimes which is marked by both fundamental changes but also striking continuities." (author's abstract)

I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller - to find out how they are. So they're dependent on me. I have to engage them. Otherwise there's nothing to photograph… And when the sitting is over … there's nothing left except the photograph and a kind of embarrassment.

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.

Thomas Hobbes once wrote that the body politic "is a fictitious body", thereby contrasting it with a natural body. In this essay I argue that a central purpose of Hobbes's political philosophy was to cast the fiction of the body politic upon the imaginations of his readers. I elucidate the role of the imagination in Hobbes's account of human nature, before examining two ways in which his political philosophy sought to transform the imaginations of his audience. The first involved effacing the false ideas that led to sedition by enlightening men from the kingdom of spiritual darkness. I thus advance an interpretation of Hobbes's eschatology focused upon his attempt to dislodge certain theological conceptions from the minds of men. The second involved replacing this religious imagery with the fiction of the body politic and the image of the mortal God, which, I argue, Hobbes developed in order to transform the way that men conceive of their relationship with the commonwealth. I conclude by adumbrating the implications of my reading for Hobbes's social contract theory and showing why the covenant that generates the commonwealth is best understood as imaginary.

Body Dissatisfaction
The author concentrates on the preference of the values of "the cult of the body" increasingly affecting the behaviour of young people and their position in the value system relating to generally recognized values. Too much emphasis on physical beauty and outward appearance significantly determines behaviour and can lead to a reduction in values relating to the body and body shape but also to unhealthy eating disorders such as bulimia or anorexia nervosa. The focus is on the pathological perception of the body, on how culture and cultural norms affect body dissatisfaction. A research questionnaire on universal values and the cult of the body (2006) was used. The research sample consisted of 508 respondents aged between 18 and 26 (292 women and 216 men).

Sociologist Janet Enke explores the challenges of teaching a course on the body. She discusses how to synthesize the subjective experience of the body with academic theory, and convey knowledge about the politics of the body.