Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory Hardcover - 2003 - 1st Edition

First line

The routes of a life spent in transit are inscribed on his skin.

From the rear cover

Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory is a unique collection that integrates two increasingly key areas of social and cultural research: the body and ethnography. "The body" continues to be a central theme of debate and research across the humanities and social sciences and in subjects such as gender, race, identity, and science and technology. However, existing literature on the body has taken a largely theoretical direction. Cultural Bodies breaks new ground by refusing to neglect the experiential and the empirical.

Bringing together an international and multidisciplinary team of scholars, Cultural Bodies draws on ethnography as a useful means of exploring our everyday social and cultural environments and, in doing so, demonstrates the constant need for researchers and their research to be made accountable to readers. In this way, ethnography reveals as much about the frameworks of social research as it does about the societies that they move in and out of. By focusing on the body and ethnography, Cultural Bodies constitutes an important step in developing these two key areas of study and the relationship between them.