Consuming Bodies

Our bodies reveal the values, priorities, anxieties, and material realities of the society in which we are situated, and in contemporary consumer societies, human bodies both reflect the defining characteristics of our time and carry the markers of social hierarchies based on categories such as gender, race, and class.

Consuming Bodies: Body Commodification and Embodiment in Late Capitalist Societies explores the ways our bodies are increasingly commodified, from before birth to after death, through both long-standing forms of commodification (captive labor, sex work, and spectator sports) and newer forms (commercial surrogacy, the thriving trade in human biomaterials, female genital “rejuvenation” surgery, global romance tourism, and green burial practices, among others). As this diverse range of topics demonstrates, body commodification reaches increasingly into every realm of our lives, from our most intimate experiences to encounters with pop culture, the “beauty” industries, the medical-industrial complex, and the state.

This volume takes a critical perspective on body commodification and embodiment both in the US and across the globe, making an important contribution to social scientific understandings of the body, both by going beyond the Eurocentric approach that typifies much of the extant scholarly literature, and by addressing newly emerging practices that are growing out of techno-scientific and social changes.