published_or_final_version / abstract / Humanities / Master / Master of Philosophy

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This thesis is an analysis as to whether or not Subcultural Theory may be utilized to understand how self-identification is configured within a subculture such as rave. Typically, subcultural membership requires various performative rites that express and maintain a group sensibility and identity. Rave, however, is a subculture that involves a relationship to space and technology that changes the nature of group affiliation within the subculture. This thesis focuses on how a body immersed in subcultural practices, and organized around varying technologies, must look toward an analysis of individual and subjective adaptations of those technologies. In essence, rave allows for identification that is shaped and altered by the participant, but only at each moment of interaction with the technologies of the club. Highly individualistic, dynamic, and technology-driven, the rave subculture offers the potential to examine the body as the site for identification, and escape, within an abstracting technological world.

I create opportunities for nourishment that are physical, emotional and spiritual with my functional porcelain vessels. They reference the human body's sensual curves, dimples, and bulges, establishing the experience of eating as a metaphor for the sensual experience of human interaction. The tactility is heightened by the variety of glazes dancing around the vessels, from satiny smooth and skin-like, to wet and dripping. Handmade vessels connect the users not only more deeply to the food that provides them nourishment, but also connects them more deeply to one another, and to the maker of the work. The slow, deliberate work of making one-of-a-kind objects is similar to the act of carefully preparing a homemade meal, and in turn, dedicating time to the ritual of sitting down together to enjoy that meal. Whether I'm working in my studio creating vessels, or in my kitchen creating a meal, I derive the same experience of spiritual wellbeing. In these moments I am completely present and mindful. / by Alexandria Schwartz. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

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In affluent western societies, digital communication and information technologies increasingly reshape our social relations and identities, the way we perceive our selves and others. Given that we are all communicative and relational bodies in complex webs of power, the media of communication are central to the ways we are socially structured and relate to one another. The purpose of my thesis is to sketch a framework which can account critically for the dangers and benefits of embodying digital technologies while rethinking the gendered body politics of the everyday world. In this thesis, I develop a set of theoretical abstractions through which to think our bodies. With these theories, I paint images of modern body politics and of the micro- and macro-politics of power over life in larger socio-historical processes. M y textual analysis of Tampax's TRoom (http://www.troom.com), a corporate website exemplifies thinking these broader historical and social issues of embodiment. I focus on this website as a discursive frame that calls girls as free and subjugated subjects into digital texts of feminine protection. Thinking girl bodies through and against the 'civilizing' and disciplinary dimension of digital and sanitary technologies provides us with both liberating and confining images of what it may be like to be or become a girl. In the conclusion, I present the image of cyborgs, as hybrids of human organism and technology, to think our selves through everyday life techniques and technologies. Tamponed cyborgs provide realities that reformulate a bodily unity, capture contemporary issues of "girls" embodiment and incorporation of technology, and contribute to an understanding of the possibilities for discursive remappings of girls' social relations and selves.

This thesis explores attitudes to the body, illness and healing in contemporary rural China through the prism of Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus. It is divided in two parts. Part 1 aims to situate attitudes to the body in the specific social, cultural and political economic settings which have engendered them. I show that bodily dispositions articulate ways of engaging with one's surroundings and claims to authority and status. Past experiences equip different generations with different habitus (Bourdieu, 1977; 1990). At the same time, habitus is revised in light of engagements with new environments. As such, this section shows that habitus is made through daily practices, and that attitudes to the body are contingent and contested. Hierarchies with regard to what constitutes a desirable body or a healthy diet are not stable but always disputed. Negotiations surrounding them are informative of wider social processes and serve to reproduce or challenge social relations and values. Part 2 examines bodily practices at times of illness through the case of oesophagus cancer, an illness prevalent in the area, and with specific reference to one case and brief comparisons to others (including some discussion of stomach cancer). This section aims to show that family relationships are produced and contested through various practices of care, and that such relations engender particular bodily attitudes. These practices are not enactments of an already given reality or relationship, but rather vital to producing them. Closer attention to practices during illness are therefore important for understanding how illness is experienced by all involved, but also how it intersects with family relations, attitudes to resources, strategies to secure them and invest them, and perceptions of the state and welfare provision. It shows that a study of social change and reproduction is central to understanding cancer. Conversely, practices surrounding cancer, such as decisions not to undergo surgery, also present ways in which social reproduction and change take place. Employing habitus allows a closer grasp of the intricate processes through which family relations are formed, why families opt for particular forms of treatment and how the effectiveness of therapy is produced.

In affluent western societies, digital communication and information technologies increasingly reshape our social relations and identities, the way we perceive our selves and others. Given that we are all communicative and relational bodies in complex webs of power, the media of communication are central to the ways we are socially structured and relate to one another. The purpose of my thesis is to sketch a framework which can account critically for the dangers and benefits of embodying digital technologies while rethinking the gendered body politics of the everyday world. In this thesis, I develop a set of theoretical abstractions through which to think our bodies. With these theories, I paint images of modern body politics and of the micro- and macro-politics of power over life in larger socio-historical processes. M y textual analysis of Tampax's TRoom (http://www.troom.com), a corporate website exemplifies thinking these broader historical and social issues of embodiment. I focus on this website as a discursive frame that calls girls as free and subjugated subjects into digital texts of feminine protection. Thinking girl bodies through and against the 'civilizing' and disciplinary dimension of digital and sanitary technologies provides us with both liberating and confining images of what it may be like to be or become a girl. In the conclusion, I present the image of cyborgs, as hybrids of human organism and technology, to think our selves through everyday life techniques and technologies. Tamponed cyborgs provide realities that reformulate a bodily unity, capture contemporary issues of "girls" embodiment and incorporation of technology, and contribute to an understanding of the possibilities for discursive remappings of girls' social relations and selves. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

<p>This study explored the perceptions of black South African women residing in Khayelitsha, Site B, about thinness, HIV./AIDS and body image. Obesity is a major public health problem in developed as well as developing countries. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has been escalating in Sub-Saharan Africa and has been said to be the leading cause of death in South Africa.</p>