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| In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification | 
 enlarge | Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
Category: EBooks
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $11.96 (54%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 15019
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Dewey Decimal Number: 391.65
ASIN: B000VI6Y8I
Publication Date: May 16, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
TThe 1990s saw the dramatic rise of spectacular forms of body modification, which included the tattoo renaissance and the rise in body piercing, the emergence of neo-tribal practices like scarification and flesh hanging, and the invention of new, high-tech forms of body art like subdermal implants. This book, based on years of interviews with body modifiers throughout the United States, is both sympathetic and critical and provides the most comprehensive look at this phenomenon. From punk rock to "modern primitives," from queer sadomasochism to cyberpunks, sociologist Victoria Pitts provides insight into the full range of body modification subcultures. Whether by turning themselves into female punks, neo-tribal "primitives" or science fiction cyborgs, body modifiers are engaged in the project of "reclaiming" their bodies from the machine of modern life. Pitts explores the connections between body modification and contemporary struggles over sex and gender, and widespread attitudes about identity, consumption, and the body.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 A fascinating look at a freaky world October 28, 2003
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
This book is an engrossing and well-crafted analysis of a sub-culture which moves beyond the radar of our nation's more austere population. In showing and telling this seamy and sadistic underbelly (with all its diverse accoutrements and experiments) Victoria Pitts manages to achieve a very difficult balance: she gives the members of a distinct sub-culture the right to tell their own stories in their own distinct voices, yet she also provides erudite and elucidating commentary on that sub-culture. Her insights prove as interesting as the strange stories her subjects tell, stories which, suprisingly enough, have relevance to the reactions many of us experience toward contemporary culture, though we may often respond through less extreme measures. I reccomend this book as a fine example of the interesting work being done in academic scholarship and the pleasures such work can offer, even to non-specialists.
Excellent Qualitative Research! December 2, 2003
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book does a great job of opening up the lives of body modifiers and situating them clearly in a complex cultural context. Victoria Pitts beautifully balances her own qualitative analysis with the voices of those she interviewed. This book is accessible while still delving deeply into social theory. Pitts neither romanticizes nor objectifies body modifiers. Instead she honestly explores their narratives, from "reclaiming," to "queer," to "modern primitive" to "cyberpunk." I'd recommend this book to any reader interested in cultural studies, body modification, social theory, deviance, the construction of identity, or the politics of bodies.
Modifying the Medical Line January 9, 2004
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
In the Flesh is an insightful examination of the more extreme body modification subculture, one that invites the reader to re-examine his or her expectations about bodies, body politics, and medical technologies. A generous writer, Pitts presents her research to the reader and offers a framework for investigating how some bodily alterations are medicalized or accepted because they enforce normative expectations about health and beauty, and how others are pathologized. In lively and lucid prose, the author provides us with a useful look at an important issue, and does so (much to her credit) without confining her research participants or her readers to a specific political camp. There may be bright political lines between circumcision, botox injections, Michael Jackson, and flesh hangings -- or then again, maybe there are not. In the Flesh gives us new tools with which to draw those lines for ourselves.
 It reads like a parody August 16, 2003
6 out of 14 found this review helpful
This claims to be an academic study of body modification. When I started reading it, I thought I was reading something published by The Onion. As I read more, it seemed as though it was really an academic study. Reading even more, I began to see that this was due only to its form, which is accurately patterned after the learned writings of academe. I still can't decide whether this book is a very clever parody of academic work, or a real report of very un-clever academic activity. After 20-30 minutes of reading this potentially interesting book, I gave up in boredom and disbelief. It has nice pictures of cutting-edge "far out" people with interesting tattoos, piercings, etc., but other than being good for a few chuckles, the text is a near-total waste.
 Body modification-let the truth be told! June 11, 2004
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
The book deals with a myriad of social issues pertaning to the body and its modification to show both resistance and conformaty to mainstreem and subculture respectively. And indeed the book was interesting to read once and maybe twice if one is writing their masters thesis or doctoral dissertaion. However, I felt that the book would someteimes just drag on and on. What was however interesting was the course that included the book in its uses. The work is very academic, professional and worth the time to read.
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