Site 7: Anything is Possible

We humans are flawed. As much as we have evolved to be the intricate and well executed physical beings we are, there are flaws in all of us. Strength is something that varies greatly from person to person, some of it genetic and some of it malleable by lifestyle. With age and our individual lives, we will all face health problems and death is unavoidable. With the onset of medical technology and new drug patents, our culture has become health obsessed and is constantly looking for the fountain of youth, an answer to stave off old age and death. Advancements have allowed us to become much more proactive in our own bodily functions and gives power in things that used to be seen as inevitable or out of our hands. Vaccines help control diseases that used to plague our world and cancer is not a death sentence anymore but a treatable and manageable disease. In this same realm, plastic surgery has allowed people to take control over their physical appearance letting individuals shape themselves into the people they believe they should have looked like. All of this, it can be argued, is due to the reductionism of human life that is the base of science and biomedicine. Compartmentalized sections of the body are taken into consideration much the same as parts of a machine or departments of a factory. We have discussed previously how this shapes the way biomedicine “sees” patients and disease, but there is a worthy discussion at how this shapes our cultural understanding of ourselves.

In the past, science focused its gaze on the physical aspects of the human body, such as in terms of body mechanic and muscle tissue. With advancements in science, medicine has been able to direct its scope inward and look at bodily processes and chemical reactions within. With this came a focus on these reactions and posited them as identities for sufferers. Nikolas Rose’s chapter “Neurochemical Selves” delves into this reshaping of understanding with “the old regime the body of the patient had to be made legible to the physician interrogation, under the new regime the body produces its own truth” (194) where the malady is already in place and the physician’s role is merely to “uncover” this truth. This is highlighted in the discussion of mental disorders such as depression. Depression has been posited as an imbalance of neurochemicals, as almost a “molecular disorder” (Rose 198) as opposed to a mental disorder. Therefore a molecular disorder could be easily treated with molecular treatments such as Prozac that work agonistically or antagonistically on neurochemical receptors or the chemicals themselves. With this “molecular argumentation designed to emphasize simplicity of the neurochemical basis of the diagnosis and the mode of action of the drug” (Rose 199) mental disorders have become slowly stripped away of their stigma and allowed for open discussion and effective treatment. By removing the psychiatric and inherently loaded symptoms from say the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders the disease is taken for what it is, separate from personhood. A person suffering postpartum depression is not seen as a bad mother, but as someone with a under active serotonin receptor. This knowledge we have regarding our inner workings has really aided in treatment and allowed sufferers to take action against their disorders. With more answers being discovered about our weaknesses, at what point will anything be impossible or unattainable anymore? What are the implications of living in a society where “no” is not an option, and all we need is time to figure it out?

The above clip is for a movie that was just released titled “Limitless” about a down and out writer who is offered a secret drug that “unlocks” all of his potential and brain power. The trailer goes on to demonstrate his riches from this but also his inevitable downfall. If we know the chemical processes and our faults, how can we not seek to move towards “neuroenhancing”? The article “Brain Gain” chronicles this very phenomenon in the academia realm of Ivy League schools but also for working professionals. A big argument made by proponents for the use of these drugs is that it is merely focusing their own inherent intelligence and capacities. In the previous discussions of body as machinery, this argument is understandable. Just as a driver will put in better gas or oil to make their car run faster or a engineer will design a faster plane, how is someone taking a drug to simply make them work at a more productive any different? Talbot writes about a middle-aged lawyer who begins to see their mental capacity decline with old age who’s “not having any trouble at work. But she notices she’s having some problems…and want a bigger mental rev up” (Talbot 4) and this is precisely where reductionism has brought us. We are seen as completely modifiable and malleable creatures, no longer constrained by nature, due to the advancements we have been afforded. “Limitless” may be a dramatic representation of neuroenhancing but still is an accurate perspective on the practice. It allows us to become “better versions of ourselves” and what is wrong with that? We can already become prettier versions of ourselves or happier versions of ourselves. Why not aim to become smarter, more productive? How can we not blame ourselves for wanting this when we look at what science and our society says is possible?

An issue I would have hoped to see more discussed in Talbot’s article is the physical side effects and damage that comes with prescription drug abuse. Adderall abuse comes with high blood pressure and is damaging to the heart. In my opinion, prescription drugs have become so highly abused because of the mentality we have in our society regarding legal prescription drug use. So many drugs are out there and being prescribed for a number of things, making us immune to the huge presence it has in our lives. Prescription drug users often cite “It’s a prescription, so it’s okay. It isn’t cocaine or anything. A doctor prescribed it” and this is a valid argument when we look at the message biomedicine is saying: that there is a drug to cure you and to aid you. Why not a drug to enhance you? We are used to the side effects that come with legal prescription drugs, but is this enabling abusers to so easily dismiss the side effects of illegal prescription drug use? Overall I argue that our views on this neuroenhancing are deeply rooted in how science and medicine has posited our body and how it treats and cures us.

Works Cited

Margaret Talbot, "Brain Gain: The Underground World of 'Neuroenhancing' Drugs." The New Yorker, April 27, 2009.

Nikolas Rose, 2007. Neurochemical Selves, IN The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twety-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pp. 187-223.

"YouTube: "Limitless".YouTube.Web.Dec 21, 2010

Set #6: Disabling

The advancement of technology has brought with it ease of modern living that allows citizens to spend less time with menial tasks and focus on more important ones such as working. This has lead to a highly capitalistic society where production and a 40+ hour work week is highly regarded and praised. In our culture the “American Dream” of working hard for the big house and nice car creates workaholics and is based on consumerist values. It is safe to say that the general population regards their occupation and their time off as two very different experiences in terms of pleasure. There are those who are lucky enough to look forward to going to work everyday but for most work is a means to an end, a way to buy that new car and provide for your family. Technology and more time to focus on other things has become a trap itself for people because of how society structures what are appropriate ways to use one’s time. We seem to have become more stuck in the rat race and at what cost, physically, to us?

Dennis Wiedman’s article “Globalizing Chronicities of Modernity” deals with the topic of diabetes mellitus and the metabolic disorder Metabolic Syndrome (MetS). The arrival of MetS “shifted the theoretical paradigm that diabetes was the result of ‘sugar consumption” to…’obesity”” (Wiedman 39) and is an overarching term for a group of factors such as raised blood lipids, glucose intolerance, etc. that indicate someone who is at a higher risk for developing metabolic disorders. Wiedman goes forth to make the argument that “the persistence in time of limitations and suffering that results in disabilities” (38) termed chronicity as the common and primary causes of these disorders that afflict so much of our current population. Weidman’s article delved into many different topics about how our population’s health has declined so much but the one I want to focus on is the discussion of modernity. Although Weidman uses indigenous people to demonstrate how forced urbanization through reservations and modern tools dramatically changed the culture from one of “substinence agriculture to a cash economy” (42) he also discusses other research focusing on different populations with the same outcome. This disconnect from one’s primary cultural practices and the act of governments that “create, maintain, and impose chronicities” result in a community and its members who are lost. This is further perpetuated by “healthcare activities once associated with family, kin, and tribe become the role of professionalized healers where health care is converted into monetary activities” (Weidman 47). How I see our own society is that through modernity our culture has disconnected from the pleasure of leisure activity and been herded towards the ideology of work.

The clip above deals with how television has created a culture of aspiration but I found myself relating the ideas expressed to our culture of working. By becoming sucked into this cycle of always wanting we have become more involved in work and thereby distanced from our own cultural values and support structures. In this realm, occupation can be posited as disabling in that it pushes people into margins away from their cultural habitus. The modern lifestyle is fraught with the inability to make a personal connection (with the advent of the internet and social networking) and lack of leisure time because of the pressure felt to be working or doing related activities during this time. The unattainable “American Dream” is just one of the perpetuators of our work driven lifestyle and this mindset seems to have created a “reservation” effect in our population. Just as Native Americans began to forgo their customs and identity, turning to urbanization and falling into the black hole, so has modern man fallen into the workforce and lost the ability to leisure for pleasure. Huffington Post's article on stress relief is just one of the many examples of advice given to people regarding ways to “de-stress” their life and exemplifies how out of touch we have become with our own needs and desires. We seem to have replaced these traditional values and ideas with capitalism and science. Similar to the effect we see in biomedicine as stripping one’s autonomy to become dependent on science, work has stripped away one’s sense of identity to become dependent on career as self.

The article “Chronic Conditions, Health, and Well-Being in Global Contexts” looks into occupational therapy and how its ideology is much more focused on empowering those disabled. From the reading, the base of occupational therapy relies on “the belief that all people need to engage in occupation” and that the therapist’s role is to enable a person to participate in these activities. Medical anthropologists have worked to conceptualize “health as well being in the positive sense, not merely as the absence of disease or infirmity” (Frank 240) and I believe that occupational therapy positively aims to empower patients. There seems to be much individualized treatment and is seen as an independent living paradigm rather than simply rehabilitating the sufferer (Frank 238). Occupational therapy appears to try to begin rebuilding people’s broken autonomy and power in the world of their suffering especially among those with disabilities who have had a long history of oppression in the biomedical field. However, it is valid to point that ultimately the goal of occupational therapy is for sufferer to become a contributing, productive member of society, a worker in the factory of our society. And as has been laid out previously, occupation is another disabling paradigm.

Ultimately, from the readings our physical disorders are truly manifestations of our mental pressures and stresses. In our fast paced, modern life we have lost touch with nature due to urbanization, cuisine due to fast and processed food, and exercise due to cars. We lead lives in where we have every luxury available and constantly seek the latest thrill or gadget but at what cost to ourselves?

Works Cited

Charlie Broker- How TV Ruined Your Life.

Frank, Gelya, Baum, C., and Law, M, 2010. “Chronic Conditions, Health, and Well-Being in Global Contexts: Occupational Therapy in Conversation with Critical Medical Anthropology.” In Chronic Conditions, Fluid States: Chronicity and the Anthropology of Illness. Lenore Manderson and Carolyn Smith-Morris, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers university Press. Pp. 230-246.

Wiedman, Dennis, 2010. “Globalizing the Chronicities of Modernity: Diabetes and the New Metabolic Syndrome.” In Chronic Conditions, Fluid States: Chronicity and the Anthropology of Illness. Lenore Manderson and Carolyn Smith-Morris, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Pp.38-53.

Set 5: Sexing

The topic of sex is such a hotly debated issue since it taps into one of the most basal aspects of humanity. Even though the urge to procreate has been wired into our brains throughout our evolution, sexual desire and urges is still controversial and is greatly influenced on societal norms and rules. From society we learn what is considered sexually acceptable, what we are to consider appropriate objects of our desire, and even what are “normal” levels of pleasure and sexual acts. The two readings deal with the topics of homosexuality and the sexual disorders: sex addiction and inhibited sexual desire (ISD). Discussion of such taboo topics are focused on what happens when biomedicine attempts to quantify and explain something that is perceived as internally driven which leads to show how this structure of understanding has been the root of our prejudices and assumptions towards them

Homosexuality, in biomedicine, has had a rocky journey fraught with accusations of immorality and deviancy. Jenifer Terry’s chapter “Medicalizing Homosexuality” in her book American Obsession follows the historical understanding of studying homosexuality and the still current argument of whether it is inherent or acquired. This burning question led many people, scientific and non, such as Ulrichs, Freud, and others to construct different and sometimes conflicting explanations of the origin of homosexuality. Naturalists understand it to be a benign but inborn anomaly that was a condition of “sexual inversion, which caused homosexuals to be neither truly male nor truly female” (Terry 43). Freud believed that homosexuality was an individual’s inability to fully “castrate” from their Oedipus complex and their inappropriately directed sexual desire. All views of homosexuality attributed some hormonal/physical cause for homosexual but also posited it as a contamination of the body and ultimately the mind, that it was “a behavior or disposition confined to only particular types of people” (Terry 56). As Terry further goes on to explain the medicalization of homosexuality did not further its understanding but led to oppressing views that were/are culturally accepted. Homosexuality until 1973 was deemed a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) and its classification as a disease allowed for society’s Judo-Christian views to pervade into its being. It was something that doctors and those “afflicted” should seek to treat and ultimately cure. This point of view is not archaic but still prevalent in today’s society with countless camps and programs that promise to cure homosexuality. Homosexuals have been deemed abnormal and deviant from heterosexuality but where is this base of normalcy? The widely accepted notion that natural and normal is a man and a woman screams strong biblical influence. Alongside with this camp of beliefs are those that argue homosexuality is due to prenatal conditions or are currently searching for some sort of genetic marker. Is this a better understanding? My argument is that it is a different understanding but still one that is still oppressive.

In the above clip, the host draws attention to how homosexuals are stereotypically depicted in popular culture. Homosexuals are seen as outlandish, boisterous, and flamboyant. The way I see it is that instead of displaying overtly violent and negative emotions towards homosexuals, as we have done in the past, our homophobia has become subversive and this “third sex” is accepted in only culturally accepted ways. The culturally and scientifically accepted idea of “the model homosexual male” as effeminate and passive marginalizes homosexuals who do not fit this normal model of abnormality. Would a girl who enjoys makeup and “girly” activities lose her sense of identity as a lesbian just because she is not the “typical lesbian”? Homosexuality is still not seen as something normal but distinctly different within our heterosexually driven society. Again we run into the problem that we have encountered in the medicalization of many body experiences (mental disorders, diagnosing) that generality is cast over the whole. When complex and still not yet understood issues are cast in binary opposition, nuances are ultimately lost and hegemonic ideology purveys.

This structuring of sexual orientation can also be seen in how we interpret and accept sexual addiction in our culture. Janice Irvine’s article “Regulating Passions: The Invention of Inhibited Sexual Desire and Sexual Addiction” deals further with this analysis of how the medicalization of sexual disorders still find their place within cultural contexts. Irvine posits the medical belief that “sexual desire, resides in the body” (Irvine 320) and that “sexuality, although influenced by culture…[is] driven by an inner force or impulse” (Irvine 322). This correlates with the understanding of sex as primal instinct for humans and that one’s sexual drive is bodily manifested. However, the fact that outside referents are the diagnosing tools used for these disorders clearly places these disorders as formed outside of the body through societal interactions. An ISD partner’s frustration at insufficient amounts of sex is the driving force for the disorder, not the person’s own “suffering”. Those with ISD almost seem to think nothing of their disorder as one woman’s testimony regarding an interaction with her husband. The woman saw nothing extraordinarily pleasurable with sex as opposed to an ear scratch and it was the husband who deemed her as “sick” Early on in her work Irvine makes note that “More women than men are diagnosed with ISD, although many therapists report that the rate among males is rising” (Irvine 316) and I believe this points to the inadequacies of the cultural influence model used. A very plausible explanation for this may be that as sexual expectancies for males’ changes, they gain more power in voicing their lack of sexual desire. Males who have been long regarded as “sexual powerhouses” with “insatiable drives” may now feel comfortable with apathetic feelings towards sex. A recent skimming of celebrity sex addicts demonstrates a huge imbalance among those “afflicted” as they are all male. Like homosexuality, sexual deviancy such as sexual addiction is only presented and constructed on culturally accepted terms. Men are seen and accepted as being more sexually driven and in “less control” of their sexual urges. A man with a heavy sex drive is seen as virile and masculine. Therefore in this model, male sexual addiction makes medical sense, a sort of sex in overdrive explanation. A sexual addiction has become the male celebrity go to excuse for acts of infidelity or sordid stories and the public accepts and forgives these males. Women, on the other hand, are seen as promiscuous and morally loose when they commit the same acts and do not as readily use addiction as a fault. Is this because our society does not readily accept women with strong sex drives even though it constantly objectifies them? Even for a woman to engage in casual sex is seen as “having sex with a man”. The invention of these disorders has taken away power from persons that already lack most of their autonomy.

Biomedicine has sought to explain and deconstruct these sexual questions but have ultimately placed them further back into the dark closet. By allowing cultural influence into understanding, these issues have just been greater perpetuated as “abnormal” for homosexual or illnesses based on Judo-Christian ideologies. Although I see and understand the initial drivers to study these issues, researchers and biomedicine must be more mindful of what their knowledge can do for those they study.

Works Cited

Jennifer Terry. 1999. “Medicalizing Homosexuality.” IN An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pp 40-73.

Jannice M. Irvine. 1995. “Regulated Passions: The Invention of Inhibited Sexual Desire and Sexual Addiction.” In Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture.” Edited by Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla. Bloomington and Indianoplis: Indiana University Press.

Set #4: Let's Talk About Sex

Growing up as a teenager in 2011 is vastly different than when I was a teenager in 2004, less than a decade ago. I find myself becoming more and more disconnected from that age period and with that comes hindsight and self-reflection. The messages and media that target today’s youth are much stronger and sexual from the pressures and social cues I remember. With such shows as MTV’s “Teen Mom”, “16 and Pregnant” and ABC Family’s “Secret Life of an American Teenager” that prominently feature teenage sex and sexuality teenage culture as certainly changed. And is this for the better or for worse? In a world today that has terms such as “sexting” and readily available access to the Internet, what kind of implications does this have for our growing youth and in turn our future population?

Thomas Laquer’s chapter “New Science, One Flesh” goes into great detail of the historical perception of sexual anatomy and practices and how our cultural biases and ideologies are intertwined with science and our understanding of sexual physiology. Previously, female orgasm was believed to be as vital to conception as male orgasm and thereby great attention was focused on foreplay and “when pleasure is greater, the woman emits seed and suitable material for the formation of the foetus” (Laquer 101). This commonly held belief by anatomists and physicians tied orgasm with ejaculation and in time where “one in five children died before age one” (Laquer 101) reproduction and child bearing were high concerns, the female orgasm became pretty important. In the progression of years, science learned how conception actually happened and there seemed to be a shift away from the importance of female orgasm and one solely focused on the males’. With this women again got placed into the category of the “slower sex” and the more knowledge published on female anatomy seemed to perpetuate the complexity of the female orgasm and highlight the simplicity of the males’, almost creating a “Get out of Jail” card in dealing with female pleasure: you can’t orgasm? Well it’s really not my fault; your parts need a lot more attention than mine.

With the variety of feminist movements and so on, women have sought to reclaim their pleasure and sex. This can be attributed to science also in terms of the research being made public and the medicalization of an intimate topic. With anatomical terms and descriptions of orgasm devoid or any emotion, people seem to have become slightly more comfortable in talking about sex and pleasure. Just in comparing the past fifty years in terms of how our culture views and discusses sex is already a huge shift. Shows such as “Sex and The City” showcased women speaking frankly about their sexual experiences and researchers gave us messages that “more and more women are watching porn” and “70% of women need clitoral stimulation to achieve orgasm”, etc. Our society as a whole became a lot more open to talking about sexuality and previously taboo subjects. I feel that this really gave women the tools to gain power over their bodies in a way that was not present before. It also has allowed parents to engage in much more open discussions with their children regarding sex and teenagers seem much more mature about the topic than some adults. However, this power did not come without clauses and repercussions. For women, I feel that this sexualization of the feminine mystique is still very male dominated as we have seen in magazine examples in class. And even in television shows, the women are still seeking sexual satisfaction with men, not with themselves. This hegemonic sexuality is perpetuated in most of mainstream society and there are signs of its effects on youth.

New York: "They Know What Boys Like"

The social and sexual interactions of teenaged girls and boys are the topic of “They Know What Boys Like” with greater focus paid to girls. The article is especially interesting in that it addresses how technology has affected these interactions in that “sexual maturity is inextricably bound with technology” and many of the teenagers interviewed cite that everything they learned about sex they learned from the Internet. This subtle difference in how children today are now receiving and shaping their sexual knowledge is notable in that, as anyone who has perused the Internet can attest to, information on the Internet is certainly not scientifically accurate or medically neutral. The hyper sexualized information teenagers are receiving from television shows and from web pages, especially in regards to teenage boys as the article describes has lasting effect on their sexual expectations towards their partners. Although the images and metaphors that Laquer details are culturally charged medical texts, the information teenagers are currently receiving about sex are generally pornographic. As we have discussed in class, pornography has its own history of being almost entirely male-centric with very little regarding to female pleasure. This creates paradox of the teenage boy: “more aggressive sexually…less interested in…standard-issue…girls” and robs teenage females of any autonomy in their sexuality. The media echoes this point of view that teenagers are supposed to have sex on the brain and creates that as the norm. This seems to create another generation of “female as slower sex” under the guise of an openly sexual society (although it must be noted that America stands as one of the most overtly sexual yet puritanical culture).

A big question raised in class was “With all this talking we do about sex, is it for the better?” and I felt that the New York Magazine article brings at least one answer to the table. Our society is one that constantly talks about sex, in schools, in the radio, on the Internet and our younger generations who have access to all these outlets are listening and learning.

Works Cited

Morris, Alex. “They Know What Boys Want”. New York Magazine January 30, 2011.Web

Laquer, Thomas. Making Sex: Bods and Gender From The Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1990

Images from: http://www.mtv.com/onair/16_and_pregnant/images/logo//456x330.jpg, http://teenmom.maxupdates.tv/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Teen-Mom-Season-Summary-1.jpg