GRADUATE COURSE
University of Toronto
Department of Geography
POLITICAL ECONOMY, THE BODY, AND HEALTH
Spring 2008
Professor: Mark Hunter
Office: 5058 Sid Smith Hall, St. George Campus
E-mail: mhunter@utsc.utoronto.ca
Class time: Monday 3-5, room SSH 5064
Office hours: Monday 5:00-6:00 or by appointment
Overview
How are social inequalities manifested in everyday lives and deaths? This course
explores the intersection between political economy, the body, and health and gives
particular attention to the ways that changing social and spatial processes rework and are
intersect with the body. The course is divided into two parts. We will begin by reviewing
some recent theoretical literature on the body. In the second part of the course we will
develop our understanding through reading several ethnographies. Some of the topics
covered by the course include: race, the body, and health; the body and sexuality; the
salience of the term ‘structural violence’; and the sexual economy. Examples will be
taken from Brazil, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, the UK, and the US. This course may
appeal to geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, and those interested in public health.
Specifically, we begin by exploring different paths through which the body has been
inserted into social theory over the last few decades. Paul Farmer, a medical
anthropologist, is perhaps most well known for using the concept of ‘structural violence’
to emphasize the underlying social causes of ill-health--we consider the salience of this
term. A further broadly Marxist perspective is represented in the work of the Italian
revolutionary Antonio Gramsci. His concept of ‘hegemony’ is now widely used but in
‘Americanism and Fordism’ Gramsci spelled out ways in which hegemony could be
embodied in everyday practices.
Pierre Bourdieu are Michel Foucault have been two of the most influential theorists since
the 1970s. Bourdieu made popular the concept of ‘habitus’ that is widely drawn upon
today when discussing the body. Foucault, in contrast, explores how new forms of power
discipline the body in the modern era.
Notions of ‘globalization’ have spawned a new literature that also touches on the body.
Increasingly adopting a global perspective, a major theorist on masculinities, Raewyn
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Connell, draws on the term ‘bodily reflexivity’ to show how gendered structures and the
body are intertwined. Geographers have also given increased attention to the body,
especially through feminist geography, and we look at some of these writings. Finally, we
develop these themes through some fantastic ethnographies and histories that combine
political economy, the body, and health in innovative ways and guide as we try to grapple
with ways to bring together global processes and the most local bodily practices.
All of the required article/chapter readings, and some of the recommended
readings, will be made available online in pdf format. Please go to gmail. The login
is: “politicaleconomybodyhealth” and the password is “structuralviolence”.
Course Requirements
Think pieces: No later than 4 pm on the day before the seminar, class-members must
circulate (to one another and myself) a one page, single spaced, reflection on the week’s
readings. This must be done for at least three of the classes.
Class presentation: Everyone taking this class must introduce one weekly seminar. This
involves a 15 minute presentation and the posing of some questions for the class to
consider.
Proposal: By week 7 of the course, a two page proposal (double spaced) and one page
bibliography should be submitted outlining the course paper.
Term paper: The final paper must be on an empirical or theoretical issue that directly
engages the materials covered in the course. It should be double spaced and 15-20 pages
long, including references (although these can be single spaced). The paper is due on 7th
April, the date of the final class.
Course Evaluation
The final grade will be based on the following criteria:
Class Presentation
Class Participation (including think pieces)
Paper Proposal
Term Paper
10%
20%
20%
50%
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Week-by-Week Breakdown
(all required readings in the first part of the course will be provided in pdf format)
Week 1 (7 Jan). Introduction
Week 2 (14 Jan). The Body in Theory and Society (1): Marxist Trajectories
Farmer, Paul. 2004. “An Anthropology of Structural Violence,” and “Comments and
Reply,” Current Anthropology, 45, 3: 304-324.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. “Americanism and Fordism”. In Selections from Prison
Notebooks, 279-81, 301-313.
Hall, Stuart, 1980. "Race, articulation and societies structured in dominance", reprinted in
[2001] Race Critical Theories, Eds P Essed and D Goldberg (Blackwell, Oxford) pp 38–
67.
Recommended
Farmer Paul et al. 2006. “Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine,” PLoS Med 3(10):
e449 doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0030449
Harvey, David. 2000. Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chapter
6. “The body as an accumulation strategy,” 97-116. [also in week 5 readings]
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 2001. Commodity Fetishism in Organs Trafficking. Body &
Society. 7, 2: 31-62.
Week 3 (21 Jan). The Body in Theory and Society (2): Bourdieu and Foucault
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1980. The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Chapter 3 “Structures, Habitus, Practice” & 4 “Belief and the Body,” 52-79.
Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality. An Introduction. Vol. 1. New York:
Vintage. Chapter 2 “The Perverse Implantation,” 135-159.
Foucault, Michel. 1985. The Use of Pleasure. The history of sexuality volume 2. New
York: Vintage. “A problematic relation,” 187-203.
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Recommended
Ortner, Sherry. 2006. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, power, and the acting
subject. Duke University Press.
Wilchins, Riki. 2004. Queer Theory, Gender Theory. Los Angeles: Alyson Books.
Week 4 (28 Jan). The Body in Theory and Society (3): Translocal Connections
Adams, Vincanne & Pigg, Stacy. 2005. Sex in Development: Science, Sexuality, and
Morality in Global Perspective. Durham: Duke University Press. “Introduction,” 1- 38.
Connell, R.W. 2001. The Men and the Boys. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chapter 3 “Masculinities and Globalization” & Chapter 4 “Globalization and Men’s
Bodies,” 39-66.
Enloe, Cynthia. 1993. The Morning After. Sexual Politics and the end of the Cold War.
Berkeley: University of California Press. “It takes more than two,” 142-160.
Week 5 (4 Feb). The Body in Theory and Society (4): Geographical Perspectives
Harvey, David. 2000. Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chapter
6. “The body as an accumulation strategy,” 97-116.
Rankin, Katharine. 2003. “Anthropologies and Geographies of Globalization,” Progress
in Human Geography, 27,6: 708-734.
Nagar, Richa; Lawson, Victoria; McDowell, Linda; Hanson, Susan. 2002. “Feminist (Re)
readings of the subjects and spaces of globalization,” Economic Geography. 78: 257-84.
Recommended
Nelson, Lise. 1999. Bodies (and Spaces) do Matter: The limits of Performativity. Gender,
Place and Culture, 6, 4: 331-353.
Richa Nagar. 2006. Playing With Fire. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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Week 6 (11 Feb). The Body in Theory and Society (5): Sex, Money and Gender
Brennan, Denise. 2004. What's Love Got to do with it?: Transnational Desires and Sex
Tourism in the Dominican Republic. Durham, N.C.; London: Duke University Press.
Chapter 3. “Performing Love,” 91-115.
Constable, Nicole. 2003. Romance on a Global Stage. Berkeley: University of California
Press. “Fairy Tales, Family Values,” 91-115.
Wardlow, Holly. 2006. Wayward Women : Sexuality and Agency in a New Guinea
Society. Berkeley, Calif.; London: University of California Press. Chapter 5. “’Eating her
own vagina’ Passenger Women and Sexuality,” 166-190.
Recommended
Hirsch, Jennifer & Wardlow, Holly. 2006. Modern Loves. The Anthropology of Romantic
Courtship and Companionate Marriage. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Hunter, Mark. 2007. “The Changing Political Economy of Sex in South Africa: the
Significance of Unemployment and Inequalities to the Scale of the Aids pandemic.”
Social Science & Medicine 64 (2007): 689-700.
18 Feb. No class (reading week)
Week 7 (25 Feb). The Politics of Life Itself
Braun B, 2007, "Biopolitics and the molecularization of life" Cultural Geographies
14(1): 6-28.
Rose, Nikolas. 2001. “The Politics of Life Itself,” Theory, Culture & Society 18 (1): 1-30.
Nguyen, Vinh Kim. 2004. “Antiretroviral Gobalism, Biopolitics, and Therapeutic
Citizenship,” in Ong, Aihwa & Collier, Stephen. Global Assemblages. London:
Blackwell.
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Part II: Ethnographies and histories of the Body (selected chapters in some cases)
Week 8 (3 March). Masculine Bodies and Working Class Jobs
Willis, Paul. 1977. Learning to Labour. How Working Class Kids Get Working Class
Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press.
Week 9 (10 March). Love and Economic Crisis in Brazil
Rebhun, Linda. 1999. The Heart is Unknown Country: Love in the Changing Economy of
Northeast Brazil. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Or
Gregg, Jessica. 2003. Virtually Virgins. Sexual Strategies and Cervical Cancer in Reciffe,
Brazil. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Week 10 (17 March). Addicted Bodies
Bourgois, Philippe. 2003. In Search Of Respect. Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Week 11 (24 March). The Urban and the Body in the US
Craddock, Susan. 2000. City of Plagues: Disease, poverty, and deviance in San
Francisco. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
or
Wailoo, Keith. 2001. Dying in the City of Blues. Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of
Race and Health. Chapel Hill: North Carolina Press.
Week 12 (31 March). Children, geography and Social Reproduction
Katz, Cindi. 2004. Growing Up Global. Economic Restructuring and Children’s
Everyday Lives. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press.
Week 13 (7 April). Final discussion
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