Surface Tensions: Surgery, Bodily Boundaries, and the Social Self ; Humanity 2.0: What it Means to be Human Past, Present and Future

Abstract

Reviews the books, Surface Tensions: Surgery, Bodily Boundaries, and the Social Self by L. Manderson (2011) and What It Means to Be Human Past, Present and Future by S. Humanity Fuller (2011). Sociology analyses illness, surgery and technologies of the self as properties of both population and person. But what about that most characteristically human of responses to suffering—humor? Are sociologists able to apprehend humor as a legitimate response to embodied suffering? Fuller's book is a series of provocations pointing towards the deeply significant role that early Christian narratives of salvation play in shaping science's quest for truth and humanity's investment therein. Fuller resists the allure of thrilling glimpses of the possibilities of humanity's technological development, in favour of reminding us of the continuities of current biotech innovations with the existing long-standing human drive for self-enhancement. Historically differential configurations notwithstanding, Fuller insists on the necessity of attending to the codevelopment of morality in the Abrahamic religions with scientific theories, in order to judge what we hold dear as features of humanity and what we are prepared to jettison. Manderson’s book 'Surface Tensions' draws on material from people who have experienced amputations, mastectomy, surgically created stoma, kidney disease and organ transplant in order ‘to illustrate how people negotiate bodily appearance and representation to minimize the impact of differences of normal and deviant, to live "normally" regardless of bodily diversity or deviation, and to work with bodies that inhibit mobility, function and action'. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)