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In times like these, a new ethico-political ideal is required to contest the adequacy of dominant understandings of social interaction as matters of choice and rational decision-making and in contesting these understandings encourage us to imagine social alternatives. We wish to make a contribution to this project of expanding the universe of political discourse as a means to invigorating ethico-political debate. A range of existing vocabularies — the languages of trust (and relatedly respect), care and associated concepts, including corporeal generosity — are currently put forward as the means to contest the dominance of neo-liberal premises about `atomistic individualism'. While many of these accounts focus on nation-states, others attend to an emerging global community. Nevertheless, we have some reservations about these languages and their premises. In our view they tend frequently to locate the `problem' in the character of citizens. We also make the case that such languages and their associated political agendas reinstate aspects of social hierarchy that mimic neo-liberal conceptions of autonomous individualism. Central to our critique is the claim that the problematic aspects of these existing languages of (inter)connection are due to an attenuated understanding of embodiment and an inadequate dialogue between the socio-political and embodiment. It is this inadequate dialogue we wish to redress. In this paper we offer a new ethical ideal called `social flesh' to ground an alternative politics for reconfiguring exploitative social relations. As an ethico-political starting point, `social flesh' highlights human embodied interdependence and in the process configures a new, more transformative political vision. It draws attention to shared embodied reliance, mutual reliance, of people across the globe on social space, infrastructure and resources. Insistence upon this shared reliance underpins a profoundly levelling perspective, a radical politics.

This article explores the relationship between netizens and the Chinese Communist Party by investigating examples of "flesh searches" targeting corrupt officials. Case studies link the initiative of netizens and the reaction of the Chinese state to the pattern of management of social space in contemporary China.

The past decades have witnessed a surge of sociological interest in the body. From the focal point of aesthetic investment, political regulation and moral anxiety, to a means of redefining traditional conceptions of agency and identity, the body has been cast in a wide variety of sociological roles. However, there is one topic that proves conspicuously absent from this burgeoning literature on the body, namely its role in the everyday (re)production of class-boundaries. Distinctions in the Flesh aims to fill that void by showing that the way individuals perceive, use and manage their bodies is fundamentally intertwined with their social position and trajectory. Drawing on a wide array of survey-data - from food-preferences to sporting-practices and from weight-concern to tastes in clothing - this book shows how bodies not only function as key markers of class-differences, but also help to naturalize and legitimize such differences. Along the way, it scrutinizes popular notions like the obesity epidemic', questions the role of the media' in shaping the way people judge their bodies and sheds doubt on sociological narratives that cast the body as a malleable object that is increasingly open to individual control and reflexive management. This book will be of interest to scholars of class, lifestyle and identity, but also to social epidemiologists, health professionals and anyone interested in the way that social inequalities become, quite literally, inscribed in the body.

Drawing on contemporary trans* scholarship, I highlight an incorporeal, affective dimension of trans* embodiment, which I argue operates nonlinearly, enmeshing a past-present-future becoming. I show that the dynamic movement underlying both trans* and matter suggests their mutual imbrication—a mutual imbrication that trans*es materiality. Through the concept of autopoiesis, or the ability of systems to self-organise, I link trans*ed materiality at the micro level (cellular and quantum) to the social processes of trans* assemblages. Autopoiesis emerges as an affective realm, a dimension of trans*ed materiality and a process of trans* assemblages, all of which are integral in the production of space and time. As trans* bodies materialise, they create unique temporal embodiments that challenge universal frameworks of chronological time, highlight the nonlinear resonation of matter and enmesh past-present-future in open-ended becomings. The resulting ontogenetic, 'involutionary' processes of creative evolution produce unique temporalities that form the basis of new embodiments, new subjectivities, and new potentials for existence. As autopoietic processes produce new entities, the uniqueness of each becoming-trans* transforms the spatial and temporal context in which the becomings occur. Keeping in mind that becoming is never complete, I conclude that trans* temporalities are nonlinear, affective processes involved in the production of becoming-trans*. Trans* temporalities are, thus, entangled in an open-ended past-present-future.

Racism, collective violence, sickness, environmental catastrophe, body obsession, greed, and accelerated life concern everyone. They are also the subject matter of this book. Here, however, they are not viewed as social problems to be solved by technical experts. Instead, they are viewed as products of the joint transference of aspects of ourselves onto objects independent of ourselves

This article investigates the role of state-nationalist discourse in the rise of online nationalism by looking at case studies of nationalist flesh searches. Nationalist flesh searches target those seen as traitorous, anti-China or anti-government, and expose the victims' private information as well as their alleged crimes, to the online public. Through examination of this activity, the study contextualizes the rise of online nationalism within the historical and political context of the Party's renewed emphasis on nationalism in education and state media, and the role that this state-nationalism plays in social management. Case studies follow the development of nationalist flesh searches, examining the motivations, language and goals of these online nationalists, as well as the actions of those targeted and the role, if any, of the state and the state media. (J Contemp China /GIGA)

9781479891405-fm -- 9781479891405-toc -- 9781479891405-001 -- 9781479891405-002 -- 9781479891405-003 -- 9781479891405-004 -- 9781479891405-005 -- 9781479891405-006 -- 9781479891405-007 -- 9781479891405-008 -- 9781479891405-009 -- 9781479891405-010 -- 9781479891405-011

Introduction: Flash Data: Semiotics, Information, and the Body / Robert Mitchell and Phillip Thurtle ; 1. LSDNA: Consciousness Expansion and the Emergence of Biotechnology / Richard Doyle ; Response / Steven Shaviro ; 2. The Virtual Surgeon: Operating on the Data in an Age of Medialization /Timothy Lenoir ; Response / Peter Oppenheimer ; 3. Flesh and Metal: Reconfiguring the Mindbody in Virtual Environments / N. Katharine Hayles ; Response / Kathleen Woodward.

Reber believes he has simplified Chalmers's "hard problem" of consciousness by arguing that subjectivity is an inherent feature of biological forms. His argument rests on the related notions of continuity of mind and gradual accretion of capacities across evolutionary time. These notions need to be defended, not just asserted. Because Reber minimizes the differences in mental faculties among species across evolutionary time, it becomes easier to assert, and perhaps believe, that sentience is already present in early biological forms. The more explicit we are about the differences among these mental faculties and the differences across species, the less persuasive is Reber's claim of the mental unity of species. The further claim that mental faculties develop gradually across evolutionary time is not empirically justified. How sentience can be "inherent" in biological forms is still not an "easy problem."