The Commodification of the Body and its Parts
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2969741 |
|---|---|
| Authors | L A Sharp (0000-0003-3262-1218, Barnard College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2000 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 287-328 |
| Publication date | 2000-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Annual Review of Anthropology (BOOK_SERIES) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0084-6570 • E-ISSN: 1545-4290 |
| Publisher | Annual Reviews (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1146/annurev.anthro.29.1.287 |
| PMID | 15977341 |
| OpenAlex | W2124577055 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 215 |
| References cited | 196 |
The human body-and its parts-has long been a target for commodification within myriad cultural settings. A discussion of commodification requires that one consider, first, the significance of the body within anthropology and, second, what defines a body "part." After exploring these initial questions, this article outlines dominant theoretical approaches to commodification within anthropology, with Mauss and Marx figuring prominently. The discussion then turns to historically well-documented forms of body commodification: These include slavery and other oppressive labor practices; female reproduction; and the realms of sorcery and endocannibalism. An analysis here uncovers dominant established approaches that continue to drive current studies. The remainder of this article concerns emergent biotechnologies, whose application in clinical and other related scientific arenas marks a paradigmatic shift in anthropological understandings of the commodified, fragmented body. The following contexts are explored with care: reproductive technologies; organ transplantation; cosmetic and transsexual surgeries; genetics and immunology; and, finally, the category of the cyborg. The article concludes with suggestions for an integrated theoretical vision, advocating greater cross-fertilization of analytical approaches and the inclusion of an ethics of body commodification within anthropology
Aesthetics · Art · Biology · Commodification · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Reproduction · Sociology · Anthropology · Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies · Ecology · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Reproductive Health and Technologies
Intimate Strangers
Unfree Labor
Phenomenological Approaches in Anthropology
Cuerpos bioconstruidos
Dilemas da masculinidade em comunidades de leitores da revista Men's Health
Black Pete, "Smug Ignorance," and the Value of the Black Body in Postcolonial Netherlands
Religion for Revolution
The Memory of Bones
Family Reunification Ideals and the Practice of Transnational Reproductive Life among Africans in Europe
A Sense of Absence
Commodification of Nature
The Social Production of Crisis
Renal Care in an Unequal World
Surrogacy
The Commodification of Women's Bodies in the Novel Maysuri by Nadjib Kartapati Z
Dis/Corporatization
Commercial Surrogacy
Violence
From hostile worlds to multiple spheres
Buried voices, hidden languages
Commodification of women’s breasts
Science Fiction as Critique of Science
Specialization in Action
Appropriated and Commodified Dance in the Post-2000 Zimbabwe Crisis Period as Represented in Petina Gappah’s “The Mupandawana Dancing Champion”
Desired Mothers, Discounted Mothers
Revigoramento, Rejuvenescimento E Aperfeiçoamento Do Corpo
Towards a virtual doctor-patient relationship
Globalisation of birth markets
Corporeidade e biotecnologias
Humans as Resources
The Anthropology of the Beginnings and Ends of Life
Kula revisited
Doing Bioethics
No Safe Space
Fake-talk, Side Effects and the Trouble with Hormonal Contraceptives among Women in Dar es Salaam
Relational anatomy
Accommodating care
Interview with Thomas Piketty
Health-Related Lifestyle
Gamification - the Way of Motivation or Way of Control over the Labor Process
Stray Thoughts on How It Might Go
Access to Modern Medical Technologies in Russia and Europe
Small is Beautiful
Relational Exchange and the Degree of Embeddedness
Is Industrial Agriculture Sustainable During Climate Change and Ecological Threats
Factors of Satisfaction with Work-Life Balance
Digital Labor and the Sharing Economy
Legitimation of Commercial Surrogacy in Russia
Social and Historic Analysis of Economic Knowledge
Consumer Choice of Retail Formats in Russian Grocery Sector
Social Networks and Fertility
After dispossession
The Representation of Cross-Border Surrogacy in Australian Surrogacy Events
“Nothing but…stuff being played with”
Giving, receiving … and forgetting? On the social conditions of receiving an anonymous face transplant
Quanto vale seu dedo mindinho? A monetarização do corpo e dos sentidos
Let's Get Back to Normal? Covid-19 and the Logic of Cure
Human Tissue and ‘the Public’
Shall we stop talking about egg donation? Transference of reproductive capacity in the Spanish Bioeconomy
Connective tissue
The Commodification of Emergence
Opening up Bodies for Harvest
Imagining 'Atlanta
Searching for meaningful aftermaths
From Cure to Governance
Car bumper stickers in Jordan as a site of carnivalesque transgression and degradation
Part 2
Gametes as embodied capital
Occult innovations in higher education
Freezing for love
Custodians of the dead
Organ transplantation in a globalised world
Ranking deaths in Israeli society
Organ donation
Telemedicine and the senses
They don't care about people; they only care about the money”
China doll snatched away my husband’
A Generational Approach to Somatic Cultures
Not Storing the Samples It’s Certainly Not a Good Service for Patients”
Spareparts.exchange
Manufacturing Life, What Life? Ethical Debates Around Biobanks and Social Robots
Organ Retention and Bereavement
Embryonic Economies
Person, Patent and Property
Paying for stories of impairment – parasitic or ethical? Reflections undertaking anthropological research in post-conflict Sierra Leone
Exploring the occupational injustices of human trafficking
The Portrayal of Beauty in Women's Fashion Magazines
Towards Transnational Feminisms
Mothers for life? Exploring emotional vulnerability of Indian commercial surrogate mothers
State-Sanctioned Structural Violence
The Legitimation of Commercial Surrogacy in Russia
Plasma donation at the border
After Novelty
I only need her uterus”
What is this “Physical” in Physical Cultural Studies
Commodification, datafication and smart cities
Koreografisanje tradicionalnih plesova u sistemu komodifikujućih praksi
On feminist engagements with bioethics
Population geography II
Legal geography II
Lessons from the intersexed
Reproductive rights and wrongs
Against our will
The making of the unborn patient
Medical power and social knowledge
Flexible Bodies
All Made Up
Argonauts of the Western Pacific
Embodied Progress
TWO A Surfeit of Bodies
EIGHTEEN Postmodern Procreation
EIGHT Early Childbearing
Medicine, Colonialism, and the Black Body
Seventeen The Normalization of Prenatal Diagnostic Screening
Experiencing the New Genetics
Refiguring Life
The Comforts of Home
Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions
Spare Parts
Sacred commodities
The cultural biography of things
Slavery in Africa
Reproducing the future
Sexual meanings, the cultural construction of gender and sexuality
Embodiment and experience
Modernity at large
The modernity of witchcraft
Pragmatic women and body politics
Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions
TWENTY-ONE The Body as Property
Ethnic and Tourist Arts
Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan
Genealogical Dis-Ease
The Social Life of Things
French DNA
Argonauts of the western Pacific
Homo Economicus Commercialization of Body Tissue in the Age of Biotechnology
Thinking about the Body
My Body, My Property
Gifts of the Body and the Needs of Strangers
Body, Self, and the Property Paradigm
The Ethics of Caring for Conjoined Twins
The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies
Steven Polgar Prize Essay (1991). Medicalization of Racial Features
Introduction
The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies
Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction
The Bodies of Women
Outline of a Theory of Practice
Third Sex, Third Gender
Culture, Society and Sexuality
Natural Symbols
Recovering the Nation's Body
Ethical Issues in Organ Procurement in Chinese Societies
Marxism and Surrogacy
Commodification or Compensation
Selling Babies and Selling Bodies
Women and the Knife
The Politics of Reproduction
The Manufacture of Bodies in Surgery
Sacrifice and the Transformation of the Animal Body into a Scientific Object
Women as wombs
Living laboratories
The Empire Strikes Back
On the Cutting Edge
Gender and Anthropology
Culture, Technology and the New Death
The texture of embodiment
An Essay on the Principle of Population
Conceiving the New World Order
Against Our Will. Men, Women and Rape
The birth of the clinic
Screening the Body
Disability Beyond Stigma
Slavery and Social Death
The Anatomy of Power
Recovering the Nation's Body
The cultural construction of gendered bodies
Bridewealth and Dowry Revisited
Bride-Price Reconsidered [and Comments]
Brain Death and Organ Transplantation
Technologies of Procreation
Phenomenology of Perception
Surrogate motherhood
Embodied Progress
Reification and the consciousness of the patient
Standardization across Non-standard Domains
At the Margins of Humanity
Representing Users' Bodies
The Problem of the Fetish, I
What is this thing called 'Brideprice
Can ethnography save the life of medical ethics
Fetal Images
The technocratic body
Organ transplantation
Ownership of genetic material and information
Feminist perspectives in medical ethics
Reproductive Futures
Cross-Cultural Cyborgs
Cars Out of Place
| Unique citing works | 215 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 8,27 |
| Citation span | 2000 - 2026 (27) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 208 |