Perceptions Of Bodies Research Articles

Places of urban disorder? Exposing the hidden nature and values of an English private urban allotment landscape

Increasing urbanisation is placing significant development pressure upon our urban spaces and green infrastructure. Allotments have strong cultural roots in the urban domain with emerging evidence of multiple health and quality of life benefits associated with their existence, use and management. However, they represent a remnant landscape; out of order and unproductive according to conventional economic and market assessments of urban land use. Consequently, allotments represent highly contested spaces; as opportunity spaces for redevelopment to meet housing demands or as growing spaces for escape and socialisation. This paper employs a phenomenological approach to explore the values and perceptions of plotholders, residents, planning managers and allotment bodies relating to one privately owned allotment site in Dudley, West Midlands, UK. Our focus on private allotments fills an important research (lack of information on ownership and spatial extent) and policy (treated differently to public allotments as open space in planning policy) gap. Semi-structured interviews reveal that the allotment site is valued by plotholders and nearby residents on a wide range of ecosystem services and community benefits with only minor concerns evident about modern allotment infrastructure and bonfires. This positive picture reflected strong local governance and community relationships. However, there was a misunderstanding among residents that this private allotment had the same level of protection as a municipal site. It is recommended that planning policy treats both municipal and private sites equally and that more research is conducted on the ownership, distribution and governance of private allotment sites given their importance a in urban planning and placemaking.

People watching: The perception of the relative body proportions of the self and others

We have an abundance of perceptual information from multiple modalities specifying our body proportions. Consequently, it seems reasonable for researchers to assume that we have an accurate perception of our body proportions. In contrast to this intuition, recent research has shown large, striking distortions in people's perceptions of the relative proportions of their own bodies. Specifically, individuals show large distortions when estimating the length of their body parts with a corporal metric, such as the hand, but not with a non-corporal object of the same length (Linkenauger et al., 2015). However, it remains unclear whether these distortions are specific to the perception of the relative proportions of one's own body or whether they generalize to the perception of the relative proportions of all human bodies. To assess this, individuals judged the relative lengths of either their own body parts or the body parts of another individual. We found that people have distorted perceptions of relative body proportions even when viewing the bodies of others. These distortions were greater when estimating the relative body parts of someone of the same gender. These results suggest our implicit full body representation is distorted and influences our perceptions of other people's bodies, especially if the other person's body is similar to our own.

Beauty in the eye of the beholder: Using facial electromyography to examine the association between eating disorder symptoms and perceptions of emaciation among undergraduate women

Thin-ideal internalization, drive for thinness, and over-evaluation of the importance of thinness are associated with eating disorders (EDs). However, little research has examined to what extent perceptions of emaciation are also associated with ED symptoms. In the present study, 80 undergraduate women self-reported on ED symptomatology and perceptions of emaciated, thin, and overweight female bodies. While participants viewed images of these different body types, facial electromyography was used to measure activation of facial muscles associated with disgust reactions. Emaciated and overweight bodies were rated negatively and elicited facial responses consistent with disgust. Further, ED symptomatology was associated with pronounced aversion to overweight bodies (assessed via self-report pleasantness ratings), and attenuated negative affect to emaciated bodies (assessed via facial electromyography). The latter association was significant even when controlling for self-reported perceptions of emaciation, suggesting that psychophysiological methods in ED research may provide valuable information unavailable via self-report.

Replaying and Rediscovering The Octoroon

Replaying and Rediscovering The Octoroon Lisa Merrill (bio) and Theresa Saxon (bio) "[W]hen one is considering the crimes of slavery, the popular theater is as central as the courthouse." —Saidiya Hartman1 For over 150 years, productions and adaptations of Irish playwright Dion Boucicault's explosive 1859 melodrama The Octoroon have reflected differing and sometimes contentious meanings and messages about race and enslavement in a range of geographic locations and historical moments. In this melodrama, set on a plantation in Louisiana, audiences witness the drama of Zoe Peyton, a mixed-race, white-appearing heroine who learns after the sudden death of her owner/father that she has been relegated to the condition of "chattel property" belonging to the estate, since she was born of a mother who had herself been enslaved.2 Rather than submit to a new master after having been sold at auction, Zoe poisons herself and dies, graphically, onstage. [End Page 127] The play is famous in the annals of theatre and performance history for reactions to its depiction of slavery in antebellum America, and for the various rewrites to which the script was subjected in a Britain that had already abolished the slave trade. In London, in 1861 Boucicault famously rewrote the ending, allowing the heroine to survive and be united with her white lover in another (presumably more just) country, ostensibly England. Critical accounts of this adaptation have relied upon newspaper reports, as the playscript itself was never published. Within a short time Boucicault changed the ending again, this time leaving Zoe silent in the arms of her lover as both witnessed the burning of the steamboat Magnolia. This four-act edition was published widely, and it and the original US version have formed the basis for most critical assessments of The Octoroon. A key assumption so far has been that this four-act version became an authoritative text for UK productions and thus Zoe died no more on British stages. But we have found this not to be the case. Here, we discuss our archival discoveries of Octoroon promptbooks and playbills that reveal previously unknown aspects of the play's stage history and critically illuminate the ways that the transatlantic theatre of the mid-nineteenth century portrayed enslaved mixed-race figures and interracial relationships. Although theatre historians have known about Boucicault's original adaptation for over 150 years, no extant script for that original "British" version has heretofore been discovered. Now, however, our recent archival discoveries reveal portions of that long-missing script. At the University of Canterbury Kent we have discovered promptbooks of a later 1871 production of The Octoroon that provide specific textual evidence and blocking details that represent the first amended version as witnessed by London audiences a decade earlier, and described at the time in the London press. In addition, in the same archive we have uncovered evidence, which we discuss below, establishing that multiple versions of The Octoroon were being staged simultaneously, thereby further decentering nineteenth-century perceptions of both mixed-race bodies and contemporaneous binary definitions of race, thus complicating the received narratives of race and reception regarding this play. Moreover, in other archives we have found evidence that The Octoroon appeared on the colonial stages of Australia a full ten months before it was staged in London and therefore before Boucicault changed the ending. Our exploration of the performance history of The Octoroon in Australia further illustrates the potential shifting meanings of racial categories and representations of enslavement in nations whose colonial histories were built on differing constructions of racist oppression, genocide, and slavery. Thus we discuss the ways that productions of The Octoroon have served as a unique vehicle for depicting the transatlantic and colonial cultural attitudes that surrounded, and tensions that emerged from, antebellum representations of racialization, racial hybridity, interracial desire, and enslavement on both sides of the Atlantic and across British colonies in Australia. Furthermore, the actors' promptbooks we have located contain several different endings written into the same script. Such promptbooks demonstrate the tensions between archive and repertoire so powerfully articulated by Diana Taylor.3 Although constructed in the form of printed scripts, these objects were used repeatedly by a number of...

'Elderly years cause a Total dispaire of Conception': Old Age, Sex and Infertility in Early Modern England.

Although the history of old age has been studied in much greater detail in recent years, the subject of sexuality in old age remains relatively under-explored. This article examines early modern ideas about old bodies and sex in relation to fertility, to argue that because old bodies were understood as either infertile (post-menopausal women) or sub-fertile (old men) they were therefore characterised as unsuitable, undesirable and inappropriate sexual partners. Perceptions of old bodies, their sexual abilities, desirability and behaviour were remarkably consistent from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth century. The ridiculing of old men and women's sexual behaviour that permeated contemporary culture in stories, ballads and jokes, alongside medical literature that characterised old bodies as sexually unappetising as well as unreproductive, carried the message that sexual activity was not for the old, and in large part because they were infertile.

Impact of Derivatives on Spot Market Volatility : A Case of Indian Agriculture Commodity

In this research study, an attempt has been made to validate the market perceptions of different bodies on the usefulness and suitability of futures contract in developing the underlying agricultural commodity market in agricultural based Indian economy. The daily price information in spot and futures markets, for a period of 10 years (2004 - 2014), for 7 major agricultural commodities is extracted from NCDEX data base and incorporated into various econometric models, such as ADF Test, GARCH model, Dunkin Watson Statistic etc., to test the concerned objective. The effect of commodity futures trading in stabilizing the underlying agricultural commodity market for 7 major commodities, taken from different categories (Spices, Pulses, Oil and Oil Seeds) of Agri-products, are examined to throw some light on the rising inflation in Indian agricultural sector. Like other studies undertaken in world on Indian commodity market, the present study has also exhibited that even though the inflationary pressure on commodity, especially agricultural commodity, prices have gone up sharply after the introduction of commodity futures contracts, the destabilizing effect of the futures contract is casual in nature and tends to vary over a long period of time. The empirical findings significantly shows that comparative advantage of futures market in disseminating information, leading to a significant price discovery and risk management, can help to successfully develop the underlying commodity market in India.

Regulatory Bodies Perceived Retailing Ethics

The paper aims to explore empirically the perceptions of regulatory bodies about the ethical behavior of retailers. In the modern competitive and globalized business unfair ethical practices as highlighted by media are common. In this context need arises to examine the ethical behavior of retailer as well. In fact, the retailers are expected to follow the ethical virtues in their dealings with all the stakeholders in retail business. This initiates an investigation of perceptions of regulatory bodies about the extent to which retailers are being ethical in their conduct. The study is based upon the data obtained from regulatory bodies of a northern Indian city with a specific designed schedule. The exploratory factor analysis was carried out for data summarization along with ANOVA to extract the mean difference in the perceptions of various regulatory bodies. The retailers are respectful but the hide some facts about retail business. They often criticize their competitors with regulatory bodies officials and corruption also prevails to some extent in the relationship between retailers and regulatory bodies.

Assessment of Regulatory Norms in Retail Marketing

This paper aims to explore empirically the perceptions of regulatory bodies about the legal norms followed in retail sector. Retailers are required to follow the various legal norms in their business practices but in the extant literature there is dearth of research on the topic under consideration. The study is based upon the data obtained from regulatory bodies from a northern Indian city through a self designed schedule based upon five point Likert scale. It was found that retailers do not prepare books of accounts fairly as they disclose low sales and profit. In fact, the retailers fill the tax return but at the same time, they evade the taxes by manipulating facts regarding sales and profit. However, the study is confined to retail sector and the future study can cover other areas as well.

Food Insecurity and Body Norms among Rural Guatemalan Schoolchildren

ABSTRACTThe predominant hypothesis regarding the ecology of body image suggests that contexts of food insecurity foster positive evaluations of and preferences for fat bodies as they symbolize wealth, social and reproductive success, strength, beauty, and fertility. Yet, there are few studies that empirically test this relationship or examine how experiences of food insecurity influence perceptions of thin bodies. In this study, we examine the ecology of body norms among a group of primary schoolchildren in a semirural community in the Central Highlands of Guatemala. Specifically, we test the hypotheses that food insecurity predicts fat‐positive or thin‐negative evaluations of children's body size or, conversely, that food security predicts thin‐positive or fat‐negative evaluations. Utilizing a characteristic attribution task to measure positive and negative evaluations of average, thin, and fat bodies, we measure the strength of preference and prejudice for each body size. While we find a strong preference for average bodies and prejudice against both thin and fat bodies overall, food insecurity predicts children having very negative evaluations of thin bodies. These results suggest a different interpretation of the ecology of body norms as, rather than fostering fat‐positive evaluations, food insecurity exaggerates biases toward thin bodies.

Sequins, Sass, and Sisterhood: An Exploration of Older Women's Belly Dancing

Disempowering stereotypes plague public perceptions of older women's bodies, particularly within Western contemporary societies. Consequently, as women age, their bodies often become sources of shame, discomfort, and ridicule. Belly dance, as a form of recreative leisure, provides a unique and somewhat unexpected space for women to subvert such perceptions. Based on qualitative interviews with older American women who belly dance, this article examines the ways in which this form of recreation provides participants a means of (re)gaining mobility, (re)claiming social space, (re)building social support, and (re)defining what it means to be sensual later in life.

Embodied encounters between humans and gators

Animal geographies have complicated our understanding of human/nonhuman animal relationships by positioning other animals as recipients of human culture and, more recently, by applying theories of embodiment to illustrate the co-constitution of human–animal worlds. This paper addresses human–alligator relationships in Louisiana by illustrating the history and culture of alligator hide production alongside an analysis of human–alligator encounters through tourism. Alligators have played all sorts of instrumental and symbolic roles in the Atchafalaya River Basin where populations here have been managed as a corollary to the exotic hide industry. More recently, gators have been positioned as the star attractions on swamp tours. Guides, tourists, and alligators share encounters where the nonhumans are anthropomorphized and empowered to shape human perceptions of other bodies. By jumping out of the water for food or simply allowing the tourists' gaze, alligators are positioned both as an exotic body and as a capable agent in the experience of space. Guides take part in hybridizing the two groups of actors by individuating gators, enticing them to interact with tourists and negotiating the fears of gators and tourists alike to produce what they see as a mutually beneficial experience. These encounters allow for meaningful interactions between distinct yet similar bodies and highlight the animals' power to influence people.

A Multidimensional Scaling Analysis of Male Body Perception in Men With Muscle Dysmorphia: "The Adonis Complex"

Men with muscle dysmorphia (MD) are preoccupied with the idea that their bodies are insufficiently lean or muscular. This study used multidimensional scaling analysis to explore distortions in male body perception associated with MD. Men aged 18- 46 were grouped into 41 low- and 16 high-MD samples using the Muscle Dysmorphia Inventory (Rhea, Lantz, & Cornelius, 2004). Participants judged similarities among photos of 27 male bodies (including icons representing Actual and Ideal Selves) and rated the bodies on nine attribute dimensions. MDS analysis found that both low- and high-MD men used the same dimensions in organizing their perceptions of male bodies, but high-MD men displayed significantly greater distance between Actual and Ideal Selves than did low-MD men on several dimensions. MDS is described as a useful tool for understanding the perceptual and cognitive distortions of MD that may have value in diagnosing MD, initiating therapeutic discussions, and evaluating outcomes.

Examining the Role of Relationships, Body Image, Closeness to HIV/AIDS, and HIV Optimism in the Sexual Risks of Young Men Who Have Sex With Men

In this study, the authors examined the effects of HIV optimism, closeness to someone with HIV/AIDS, self-esteem, and body image on sexual risk behavior of men who have sex with men (MSM) who reached sexual maturity after the advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy. Online survey responses from 139 sexually active male participants were considered as a whole and for the subpopulation of males not in steady, monogamous relationships. Knowing someone with HIV/AIDS was related to lower levels of sexual risk taking. The aspect of body image related to weight was also an important factor in safer sex behavior, with perceptions of heavier bodies related to higher sexual risk taking. For single participants only, higher HIV optimism was related to greater sexual risk taking although likely as a function of retrospective justification. The findings from this unique exploratory study of young MSM are discussed in the context of implications for policy around current and future health campaigns.

Believing Not Seeing: A Blind Phenomenology of Sexed Bodies

Vision plays a privileged role in social interaction and the construction of intersubjective reality. Given that one of sociology's tasks is to problematize the taken for granted, research that examines rarely foregrounded non‐visual modes of sensory perception is a powerful resource. This article draws on twenty‐seven interviews that explore blind people's perceptions of male and female bodies. I highlight several distinctive features of non‐visual sex attribution (salience, speed, and diachronicity), and argue that conceptions of sex as “self‐evident” primarily reflect visual perception. These findings suggest the need to explore the sociology of perception as a new approach to the sociology of the body, and more broadly highlight the role of sensory perception in the social construction of reality.

PERCEPTIONS OF JEWISH FEMALE BODIES THROUGH GUSTAV KLIMT AND PETER ALTENBERG

Gustav Klimt and Peter Altenberg are two figures within Viennese fin-de-siècle cultural production whose art may reveal a perception of local Jewish culture through their different foci on the non-European female body image. Both men have moments in their career, when their attention turns to non-European cultures, through which they inadvertently represent and interpret their own. A selection of these two artists’ most well-known works demonstrate two frameworks in which Viennese Jewishness can be read through an alignment of the female body with Asian and African cultures.

Fiction, Fashion, and Function Finale: An Introduction and Conclusion to the Special Issue on Gendered Body Image, Part III

Culture specifies standards for women' sa nd men's body appearance and display. In Western cultures, these standards are both concentrated and ubiquitous in the media, represented as gendered body ideals for citizens to aspire toward. Because gendered body ideals are revered, individuals try to construct and portray their body consis- tently with these ideals. Furthermore, because gendered body ideals are narrowly defined and restrictive, individuals constrict their behavior, relationships, and perceptions of themselves and others to fall within the parameters of these ideals. The third and final issue of this series showcases innovative studies within two streams. The first stream investigates the many ways individuals invest effort into constructing and/or portraying their body to fit the gendered body ideal. The second stream addresses the diverse ways internalization of these ideals constrict individuals' relation- ships, freedoms, and perceptions of others' bodies and lifestyles. We discuss the empirical articles alongside points raised in films by Jhally (2009) and Clark (2009) that emphasize how media portrayals of gendered body ideals foster body-related constructions and constrictions in view- ers. We emphasize intersectionality when presenting the articles, recognizing that gender combines with multiple identities (e.g., sexual orientation, race, political affiliation, and age) as well as individual difference variables to mold the degree to which individuals construct and constrict themselves and others to fit gendered body ideals. We end with a discussion of how these articles can be used to generate social change by deconstructing and delegitimiz- ing gendered body ideals.

Constructions and Experiences of Authenticity in Medical Tourism: The Performances of Places, Spaces, Practices, Objects and Bodies

Using the concepts of constructivist authenticity and existential authenticity, I will analyse how claims to, and experiences and understandings of authenticity, are central to medical tourism. This is achieved by examining the interplay of places, spaces, objects, practices and bodies that create this cultural phenomenon. This includes a concern with how medical tourism is constructed around and performed through the perceptions of bodies, and the experiences of being a body. It is these complexities and their interdependencies that provide medical tourism its dynamism. This theorizing of medical tourism goes beyond existing studies that primarily seek to define it or restrict it to typologies, by analysing the practices and experiences that actually constitute this significant social phenomenon.

Visible and invisible ageing: beauty work as a response to ageism

ABSTRACTThis paper examines how older women experience and respond to ageism in relation to their changing physical appearances and within the context of their personal relationships and places of employment. We elucidate the two definitions of ageism that emerged in in-depth interviews with 44 women aged 50 to 70 years: the social obsession with youthfulness and discrimination against older adults. We examine the women's arguments that their ageing appearances were pivotal to their experience of ageism and underscored their engagement in beauty work such as hair dye, make-up, cosmetic surgery, and non-surgical cosmetic procedures. The women suggested that they engaged in beauty work for the following underlying motivations: the fight against invisibility, a life-long investment in appearance, the desire to attract or retain a romantic partner, and employment related-ageism. We contend that the women's experiences highlight a tension between being physically and socially visible by virtue of looking youthful, and the realities of growing older. In other words, social invisibility arises from the acquisition of visible signs of ageing and compels women to make their chronological ages imperceptible through the use of beauty work. The study extends the research and theorising on gendered ageism and provides an example of how women's experiences of ageing and ageism are deeply rooted in their appearances and in the ageist, sexist perceptions of older women's bodies.

Some Natural Phenomena and Celestial Bodies in the Yezidi Folk Beliefs

AbstractThe article deals with the folk interpretations of some natural phenomena (the lunar eclipse, earthquake, rainbow, thunderstorm, hail, etc.), and the popular perceptions of some celestial bodies among the Yezidis.

Freakery and Prosthetic Actuality in Joseph Chaikin's Body Pieces

Whereas his early exploration of disability issues addressed impairment as a point of departure for non-standard theater, Joseph Chaikin's Body Pieces in 2001 made disability the standard frame of reference. In this workshop production, amputee characters and actors mitigated audience alienation and fear of dismemberment by attaching and detaching their prosthetic limbs both on and off the stage. Chaikin combined humor with actuality in these moments, inviting spectators to contemplate their relation to disability. In his post-stroke aphasic direction of this piece, Chaikin necessitated a similar reconception of mental wholeness. His disabled actors provided a physical model for reassessing ability where cognitive and physical fragmentation replaced wholeness as new actualities: they exposed and detached their prosthetic legs in order to revise audience perceptions of fragmented bodies. Chaikin and his actors used comedy to familiarize the unfamiliarity of amputee bodies and to critique non-disabled responses to disabled difference. Appropriating the traditional freak show premise, Chaikin and disabled playwright John Belluso forged a contemporary meditation on freakery that played with and against sideshow stereotypes.