AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

Surfacing the Body Interior

Janelle S. Taylor
Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

98195-3100; email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. Key Words

2005. 34:741–56
ethnography, anthropology of science, anthropology of the body,
First published online as a
Review in Advance on medical anthropology
June 28, 2005
Abstract
The Annual Review of
Anthropology is online at In the wake of critiques that have rendered problematic such famil-
anthro.annualreviews.org iar objects of study as culture and social structure, anthropologists
doi: 10.1146/ seeking ways to engage ethnographically with the complexities of the
annurev.anthro.33.070203.144004 contemporary world have fashioned new kinds of objects of study.
Copyright

c 2005 by These generally continue, however, to be framed as just that—as
Annual Reviews. All rights objects. Rather than pursue the “anthropology of” any particular
reserved
object that preexists ethnography, anthropologists should find ways
0084-6570/05/1021- of bringing the openness and creativity of ethnographic work more
0741$20.00
boldly into the theoretical framing of what it is that they study. I
propose here the notion of surfacing the body interior as one fram-
ing device that may help facilitate such ethnographic explorations
into bodies, their interiors, and their surfaces as contingent config-
urations made and unmade through practices that are at once social,
material, and representational.

741
AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

object in question. What ethnography as prac-

Contents tice and mode of analysis unsettles, in other
words, anthropology as discipline and profes-
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 742
sion restores. Anthropologists remains always
KNOWLEDGE OF BODIES,
“anthropologists of,” ambiguously positioned
BODIES OF KNOWLEDGE . . . . 743
as experts who specialize in research and writ-
PRACTICE MAKES SURFACE . . . . 744
ings that seek to dismantle and dissolve the
SURFACING THE BODY
very same objects on whose coherence and
INTERIOR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 746
persistence their professional identity and ex-
GIVING SURFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 748
pertise in some sense depends.
SURFACING STRUGGLES . . . . . . . 749
At the risk of slightly damaging such a
RUMORS THAT SURFACE . . . . . . . 750
beautifully dialectical structure, I urge an-
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 751
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

thropologists to embrace more decisively and

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

courageously its ethnographic moment. Do-

ing so will entail seeking out ways to frame
anthropology less as the “anthropology of”
INTRODUCTION any particular object that preexists ethnogra-
Anthropologists are carving out novel kinds of phy and more as the work of exploring ethno-
objects of study in response to the challenge graphically how objects—objects of study, as
of finding new ways to engage ethnographi- well as objects of other sorts—precipitate out
cally with the complexities of the contempo- of practices and processes that are at once so-
rary world. The central theoretical place once cial, material, and representational. What is
occupied by culture and social system now ac- needed, then, are more labile and refractory
commodates other objects of study, some of framing devices that can help guide ethno-
which are new (such as globalization or dias- graphic explorations to discover just what are
poras) and others newly annexed as suscepti- the relevant contours of that which we study,
ble to ethnographic study and anthropological the better to pursue “ethnography on an awk-
analysis (such as science, law, or the state). ward scale” (Comaroff & Comaroff 2003).
Analyses are limited in scope, however, be- I propose here one such framing device,
cause these objects of anthropological study which I hope will help anthropologists ex-
generally continue to be framed as just that— plore as “busy intersections” (Rosaldo 1989)
as objects. Acting collectively within the what tend too often to be regarded as objects.
profession, anthropologists tend to organize Specifically, I propose the notion of surfac-
knowledge-production practices in ways that ing the body interior as a way of framing ex-
serve to solidify and entrench the same ob- plorations into bodies as made and unmade
jects that individual anthropologists in their in and through practice. The term surfacing
ethnographic work seek to dismantle and con- can mean giving something a surface (as in
test. Consider, for example, the young scholar surfacing a road), but it can also mean com-
who devotes considerable time and talent to ing to the surface (as when a submarine sur-
calling into question a certain object by doc- faces) or bringing something to the surface
umenting ethnographically how said object is (as in mining when one brings gold to the
produced by and enmeshed with its social, cul- surface by washing away soil deposits). Em-
tural, historical, and political contexts. This bracing all these meanings, surfacing the body
same scholar, meanwhile, through his or her interior points toward the range of practices
professional organizations, reading habits, job and processes that both materialize bodily sur-
applications, course titles, choices of publica- faces as significant sites within broader orders,
tion venues and so forth, will work to develop and surface that which lies hidden beneath
and contribute to an “anthropology of” the them.

742 Taylor
AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

Thus, what follows is not a standard re- recent intervention, have named this new sub-
view of recent work in an established subfield field “an anthropology of the biosciences.”
of anthropology. Quite the contrary, I hope Thus to name and frame this new work makes
with this review to encourage and embolden very good sense, of course, because it legit-
anthropologists to, in some small way, help imates an anthropological claim and asserts
unsettle subfield boundaries currently taking an anthropological voice in the study of the
shape and facilitate those who wish to trespass biosciences as (exotic) cultures.
across them. At this juncture, however, the moment may
be ripe to consider whether there might not
(also) be other possible ways of framing ethno-
KNOWLEDGE OF BODIES, graphic studies that engage with biomedical
BODIES OF KNOWLEDGE technosciences. In this regard, the emergence
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

Among the most vibrant of new directions of medical anthropology may offer some cau-
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

recently taking shape has been the ethno- tionary lessons. Many remain critical of the
graphic study of what we might call the decision, made years ago, to name and to
biomedical technosciences, i.e., those rapidly frame this new subfield of anthropology in
emerging projects of knowledge-production terms borrowed from the more powerful in-
and intervention that are both intensively stitutionalized profession of medicine, thus
focused on delineating the (universal) body arguably missing the opportunity to reframe
and increasingly imposed on actual, particu- illness, health, and healing in ways more fun-
lar bodies and the subjects who inhabit them damentally challenging to the structures of
(Brodwin 2000, Casper 1998, Downey & power that ethnographers of illness, healing,
Dumit 1997, Martin 1994). Intrepid ethno- and medicine seek through their work to re-
graphers who creatively fuse questions, veal, critique, and change (Browner 1999).
methods, and insights from medical anthro- Also at stake, in the case of ethnographic stud-
pology with those drawn from the interdisci- ies of the biosciences, is the question of how
plinary field of science studies have in recent best to nourish and sustain the comparative
years provided ethnographic accounts of a impulse that has long distinguished anthro-
wide range of new sciences, technologies, and pological work. With some notable exceptions
procedures. We have thus far seen ethnogra- (Anderson 2003; Cohen 1998; Fullwiley 2004;
phies of, for example, genetics and genomics Gruenbaum 1998; Hayden 2003; Inhorn
(Goodman et al. 2003; Rabinow 1996, 1999, 2003; Kahn 2000; Langford 2002; Lock 1993,
2003; Rabinow & Dan-Cohen 2004; Reardon 1998; Morsy 1998), this emerging literature,
2005; Taussig 2004), medical imaging (Dumit like the biomedical technosciences that it crit-
2004; Mitchell 2001; Taylor 1998, 2000, ically examines and like the field of science
2004a), procreative technologies and arrange- studies on which it draws, has been focused
ments (Davis-Floyd & Dumit 1998, Franklin primarily in cosmopolitan North American
1997, Franklin & Ragone 1998, Morgan 1998, and northern European contexts. Precisely
Morgan & Michaels 1998, Ragone 1994, such problems with framing “science” as one’s
Ragone & Twine 2000, Thompson 2005), object of study have moved Lowe (2006) to
amniocentesis (Rapp 1999), tissue engineer- call for the forging of a new alliance between
ing (Hogle 2003; Landecker 2000, 2003), or- science studies and postcolonial theory.
gan transplantation (Hogle 1999, Joralemon How else, then, might one frame ethno-
2000, Lock 2002b, Scheper-Hughes & graphic explorations of such matters as genet-
Wacquant 2002, Sharp 2001), and others. ics, medical imaging, and tissue culture, if not
Some have hailed such work as heralding the as instances of an “anthropology of the bio-
emergence of a distinct new subfield. Franklin sciences”? Where could an interest in such
& Lock (2003), for example, in a compelling topics lead, if not deeper into the (usually

www.annualreviews.org • Surfacing the Body Interior 743

AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

cosmopolitan and North American or Euro- from our view by insistence on a “mod-
pean) “laboratory and the clinic, in order to ern West” different from all of the rest. . . .
create interpretations, descriptions, and ana- [T]echnoscience is only one of many ways
lytical accounts that document emergent cul- humans traffic with nonhumans. (Wiener
tural forms”? (Franklin & Lock 2003, p. 21). 2004, p. 10).
The field of science studies itself, which
ethnographers of the biosciences have helped
For this reason, Wiener suggested that an-
introduce into anthropology, offers encour-
thropologists should collapse magic, science,
agement for framing the study of science in
and religion together as “overlapping projects
ways that do not mirror its boundaries and
of world-making.” To this collapsed-together
indeed explicitly transgress them. Latour’s
mix one could also add other practices, such as
(1993) account of “the modern constitution,”
exchange and the creation of value (Appadurai
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

for example, argues that attending to prac-

1986a, Comaroff & Comaroff 1990, Mauss
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

tice shows how the “work of purification” that

2000, Munn 1992) or fetishism (Marx 1978;
distinguishes science (along with modernity
Pietz 1985, 1987; Spyer 1998), that impli-
and culture) from that to which these are op-
cate humans and nonhumans together in the
posed (nonscience, the primitive, and the non-
making of worlds.
human) both conceals and enables the “work
Rather than approach the biosciences as
of translation” that forges entities that cross-
a distinct domain, then, the boundaries of
cut and defy all such distinctions. Transla-
which we implicitly adopt as the parame-
tion forges impure alliances, networks, assem-
ters framing our own inquiries, it may (also)
blages, and hybrids, comprising human and
make sense to explore science as a “materi-
nonhuman actants, even as purification denies
alizing practice” (Wiener 2003) that ethno-
and defies them.
graphic inquiry may reveal to be both similar
Wiener (2003, 2004) drew on Latour’s
to and quite thoroughly enmeshed with oth-
argument to suggest that anthropologists
ers having little obvious place in the high-tech
should recognize similar dynamics at work in
laboratory and the clinic.
relations between (rational, Western) science
and (irrational, native) magic and religion. In
colonial Indonesia, as she showed, purifica-
tion efforts aimed at distinguishing natives PRACTICE MAKES SURFACE
and their magic from colonists and their To describe practice as materializing is, of
modernity were undermined at every turn by course, to emphasize that not only ideas but
the hybridity inherent in daily life. To the ex- also material realities, including bodies, are
tent that anthropologists writing about magic in fact made and continually remade through
have worked within a (purifying) scholarly tra- practice. This manner of drawing science
dition premised on distinguishing magic from studies into anthropology points in directions
science and religion, they are ill equipped to quite different from an “anthropology of rea-
grasp the complex and hybrid entanglements son.” Although it has thus far engaged rel-
with the material world—those of “others” atively little with forms of “reason” emerg-
but also their own: ing from beyond Europe and North America
(Lowe 2006), the “anthropology of reason”
What marks a once unthinkable anthro- emphasizes comparative studies of “rational-
pology of science is a stress on practice ity” (Rabinow 1996). Attention to material-
(pioneered in anthropology in studies of izing practices can direct us, instead, toward
ritual). . .. But arguably the most consequen- a creative fusion of science studies with per-
tial result of science studies is the atten- formative and practice-oriented approaches
tion it draws to a phenomenon obscured to the body emerging elsewhere within and

744 Taylor
AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

beyond anthropology (Morris 1995, Turner Practices that materialize need not always
1995, Herzig 2004). cohere so harmoniously, however. As Wiener
Thus Morgan, for example, analyzing the notes,
emergence of early twentieth-century embry-
ology, draws on Butler’s insight that “matter” By referring as he does to the work of me-
may be understood as “not a site or surface, diation and purification, Latour forces at-
but a process of materialization that stabilizes tention to the fact that such processes are
over time to produce the effect of boundary, neither automatic nor mechanical. Each en-
fixity, and surface we call matter” (Butler 1993, tails labor in and on the world, in specific
p. 9) to explain how and circumscribed circumstances. But this
need not imply that such labor is always en-
early embryologists helped to “materialize” tirely intentional or that its outcome may be
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

fetal bodies by collecting and studying them predicted. (Wiener 2003, p. 141)
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

under the rubric of scientific investigation. . .

(contributing) to our contemporary under- The outcome of materializing practices
standings of the fetal body as a real, bounded, remains unpredictable in part because, as
and continuous entity that develops from discussed below, they can entail bitter con-
fertilization through birth and beyond. . . . flicts, stark inequalities, and deadly serious
(Morgan 1998, p. 45) struggles.
The body, one might say, is not so much a
Similarly, Mol (2002), in an ethnographic thing as an -ing. That is, not simply the inert
study of atherosclerosis carried out in a hospi- objects on which mind and culture perform
tal in the Netherlands , shows how this disease their meaning making, bodies take shape and
is enacted across a wide range of specific sites: take place through practices of all sorts: feed-
ing, legislating, training, cutting, explaining,
If we no longer presume “disease” to be beating, loving, diagnosing, buying, selling,
a universal object hidden under the body’s dressing, and healing, among others. Thus,
skin, but make the praxiographic shift to for example, Lamb (1997) documents how
studying bodies and diseases while they are for South Indian widows, not only the emo-
being enacted in daily hospital practices, tional ties that constitute a relational self, but
multiplication follows. In practice a dis- its bodily linkages to others as well, are both
ease, atherosclerosis, is no longer one. Fol- made and unmade in social practice. Similarly,
lowed while being enacted atherosclerosis Farquhar (1994) writes that the practice of
multiplies. . . .(Mol 2002, p. 83) traditional Chinese medicine

Mol’s account reveals how atherosclero- somewhat recast[s] materiality itself. . . .

sis “is” one kind of entity as performed in Physical organs and painful lesions are cast
the pathology department, but at the same more as products than as substrates. The ma-
time “is” something quite different as en- terial bodiliness that we tend to think of as
acted in clinical encounters and elsewhere. stable and given (especially if we are young
She also details how this irreducible multi- and healthy) is therefore in these Chinese
plicity is managed. Although anthropologists discourses quite the opposite: the body is
have long recognized that “we all have and we historical and constructed, ever vulnerable
all are a body,” Mol’s work makes clear that to disorganization and in need of continued
bodies are also something that we do and do reinvention in the form of proper hygiene
in multiple different ways—which nonethe- of eating, washing, sleeping, sexual practice,
less “hang together even so” (Mol 2002, and feeling. Medicine as a technology of the
p. 116). temporal and contingent joins with forms

www.annualreviews.org • Surfacing the Body Interior 745

AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

of wholesome daily life to orchestrate what work together to stabilize or unsettle the fixity
Nathan Sivin has called the “ensemble of of bodily surfaces? Who, finally, is empowered
processes” that is the body. (p. 93) to direct such processes, and who is not?
It is here that (many) anthropologists and
That some of the practices through which (at least some versions of) science studies part
bodies are materialized may fall on one side ways. Talk of “actants” forming “alliances”
and some on the other of a magic line divid- and building “networks” and “assemblages” is
ing representations from realities need not— depoliticizing and echoes neoliberal ideolo-
indeed, should not—be construed, in the first gies to the extent that it imagines a world
instance, as a theoretical problem. Rather, composed of individuals freely transacting on
it invites ethnographic inquiry. Such inquiry their own behalf, “resembling all too closely a
may, indeed, reveal representations to be not Western businessman” (Martin 1998, p. 27).
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

things unto themselves so much as moments Until the world becomes a far more equitable
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

in a dialectic linking forms of activity through place than it has ever, thus far, shown itself
which bodies are materialized. As scholars in to be, anthropologists cannot afford to pur-
science studies have argued (Pickering 1995), sue “symmetry” of explanation to the point
practices of representation do not only in- at which it blinds us to the stark asymmetries
volve ideas; they also always entail working that force some outcomes and foreclose oth-
with and on bodily and other matter. By the ers, materializing some bodies with impressive
same token, such practices not only creatively solidity and others in ways far more contin-
reorder ideas and meanings, but can recon- gent, fragile, and vulnerable. To inquire into
figure matter in very consequential ways. As the ordering of materializing practices is to
Turner (1995) writes, ask how, in the same movement that bodies
are enacted, relations of power are forged.
the representational form of the Kayapo With these commitments and concerns in
body embodies the form of the material mind, I propose surfacing the body interior
activities through which the social body as an idea and an image that I hope might
is produced by embodied subjects. Bodily help guide ethnographic inquiry in fruitful
representations themselves serve as media directions.
through which this production is formally
coordinated and its products (the embodied
subjects) publicly circulated. . . . (p. 168) SURFACING THE BODY
INTERIOR
The interesting question—the very impor- It is perhaps worth noting that the term sur-
tant question that any careful use of the term face entered the English language only late
“discourse” should signal—is exactly how, in in the seventeenth century, at the same his-
any given instance, representational, social, torical moment as “the public.” This invites
material, and other practices may work to- us to consider surfaces as not simply given
gether to materialize bodies in very particu- in nature, but as cultural accomplishments,
lar ways and within specific kinds of relations. emerging along with the body, the private,
Such questions cannot be addressed through and the public, as the sites of both distinction
textual readings of representations alone; they and mediation between them. I suggest treat-
require historical and ethnographic investiga- ing surface as what Williams (1983) would
tion. Just how do particular ways of narrating have called a key word: a term emerging in
or imaging bodies relate to particular ways tandem with that which it names, which we
of materially intervening into them? How do must therefore regard not just as a concep-
both of these, in turn, relate to social mech- tual tool but also as a historical marker of
anisms? How do all these forms of practice sorts.

746 Taylor
AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

Indeed, historical studies suggest that sur- Accounts of “the making of the modern
faces emerged in tandem with new ways of body” (Gallagher & Laqueur 1987) some-
configuring subjects and objects, representa- times imply that, once made, its surfaces were
tions and realities, bodies and collectivities set and the process of its making finished.
in European modernity. Mitchell, writing of Even if bodies, along with the worlds they
nineteenth-century British colonial engage- inhabit, must be constantly made and re-
ments with Egypt, describes the modern colo- made anew, materializing practices may be
nial order as characterized by patterned nonetheless and ordered in ways
that create the effect of stability and solidity.
the techniques of enframing, of fixing an in- In this sense, the modern body is still very
terior and exterior, and of positioning the much with us indeed and its surfaces difficult
observing subject [which] create an appear- to budge.
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

ance of order, an order that works by appear- Thus, my choice of the term surfacing,
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

ance. The world is set up before an observ- rather than surface, is deliberate. Because sur-
ing subject as though it were the picture of facing is by far the less commonly used term,
something. . . .it follows that the appearance it may perhaps more easily be pressed to per-
of order is at the same time an order of ap- form new kinds of work. As the inflected ver-
pearance, a hierarchy. (Mitchell 1988, p. 60) bal form of a very familiar noun, moreover,
the term itself already implicitly enacts the
Duden, while also foregrounding the un- shift that we have discussed, from the thing to
evenness with which new ways of enacting the -ing. Surfacing, we might note, has many
bodies were taken up, stresses the novelty of senses. It can mean giving something a surface
what we might regard as the modern body, de- (whether by planing and making it smooth, or
fined by and wholly contained within its skin- by applying a surface layer, as for example a
covered surface: road), but it can also mean coming to the sur-
face (as when a submarine surfaces or a per-
At no time before the late modern pe- son suddenly comes out from hiding and into
riod did the Western imagination create public view) or bringing something to the sur-
that sharply delineated and fully articu- face. To surface that which lies submerged is,
lated female body which, through modern of course, to trouble and disrupt the body’s
anatomical-medical description, has become outer bounding—and, in so doing, to render
characteristic of our time, a body for which what was hidden a spectacle for public view.
the bones are the frame and the skin the The term thus signals a dynamic tension, sug-
outermost body. This modern body, a “re- gesting that the movements, productions, and
silient and bodily body,” “a compact and uni- performances that create surfaces also breach
fied visual image,” mirrors a reality of the them.
flesh that never before could be experienced. It is precisely this vigorous and productive
(Duden 1991, p. 48) instability that can make surfacing the body
interior a useful concept. It encourages us to
Giving the body surface also generated im- consider the body neither as an object nor as
pulses to surface its interior. Stafford (1991) a text, nor only as a locus of subjectivity, but
notes that the body emerging through the rather as a contingent configuration, a surface
visualization practices of Enlightenment art that is made but never in a static or permanent
and science “provided a surface for the play form. Indeed, the very fixing of the body’s sur-
of invisible yearnings and visible emotions” face virtually invites its own unsettling, insofar
(p. 16), whereas the interiors that this surface as it constructs both the interiors that surfaces
concealed demanded with new urgency to be hide and the publics from which they hide
surfaced and made visible. them. Precisely such instabilities are at play in

www.annualreviews.org • Surfacing the Body Interior 747

AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

cosmetic surgery (Gilman 1999, Woodroofe the National Library of Medicine, the bodies
2003) as well as other enhancement technolo- of at least two individuals have been “dissolved
gies (Elliott 2003) that seek to align the body’s as physical beings” so that they might surface
surfaces with a self coded as more real and au- on the Web as virtual cadavers, posted for all
thentic than mere surface appearance but at to see and explore (Cartwright 1998, Csordas
the same time requiring visible expression to 2000, Waldby 2000). Researchers and oth-
others on those same bodily surfaces. By the ers engaged in redefining death, meanwhile,
same token, scientific projects seeking to doc- increasingly constitute the body’s significant
ument racial differences at the DNA level may surfaces at sites within the organism, includ-
be understood as efforts to align bodily inte- ing cells (Landecker 2003) and brains (Lock
riors with their visible surfaces (Duster 2003, 2002b, 2003).
Kahn 2004, Reardon 2005). Rather than read such phenomena as the
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

Surfacing the body interior never simply signs of some deep and disturbing singu-
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

stops at the surface but always entails pro- lar shift in “the body” that has, for exam-
cesses of objectification, as that which has ple, rendered it cyborg (Haraway 1991), flex-
been wrested from hiding is shown to some ible (Martin 1994), or posthuman (Hayles
public. When revealed, the surfaced interior 1999), the notion of surfacing the body in-
is drawn into social and material circulation, terior, together with examples drawn from
acquiring new value and valences and en- a rich ethnographic and historical literature,
tering into circuits of commodification. Yet may allow us to (also) situate such biomedi-
there is no slippery slope here, no one-way cal technosciences as specific manners, among
road toward visibility and value. Surfacing re- many others, of giving the body surface. Thus
mains unstable, its resolution never entirely to frame matters is, of course, to leave open
predictable. Indeed, its very instability ren- the possibility that bodies may be surfaced
ders dynamics of revelation and concealment in ways quite different altogether from the
interesting and productive, for social actors modern body that the word surface implicitly
and social analysts alike, as Marilyn Strathern evokes. Thus Langford (2002), for example,
(1999) has detailed in reflections on the details how unlike the contours of the modern
knowledge-making practices of Melanesians body are the surfaces and interiors configured
and anthropologists. through the practices of Ayurveda in postcolo-
With this series of processes in mind, sev- nial India. According to Turner (1995), the
eral lines of investigation suggest themselves. Kayapo of Amazonia practice embodiment in
ways that surface parents and their children as
a single body:
GIVING SURFACE
To begin, one might ask, how are bodies sur- The bodily connection of both parents to the
faced in the first transitive sense of the word— fetus is maintained throughout pregnancy,
how are they given surfaces? since the father contributes to the growth
Within the contemporary biosciences, of the embryo with each infusion of semen,
of course, bodies are being given surface just as the mother continues to nourish it
in configurations quite different from the with her milk. This physical connection of
modern body of skin-bounded edges. Tissue- both parents continues in attenuated form
engineering techniques, for example, can pro- after birth. . . . A form of bodily participation
duce from “one postage-stamp-sized sample continues to connect their bodies through-
(of neonatal foreskin) . . . as many as 200,000 out life. (p. 159)
units of artificial skin—roughly equivalent to
six football fields” (Hogle 2003, p. 85). As part Similarly, in eighteenth-century Chinese
of the Visible Human Project sponsored by imperial sacrifice, according to Zito (1994),

748 Taylor
AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

bodies were given surface through ritual which an interiority is realized. (Mahmood
practice, at multiple nested sites: 2001, p. 214)

Each participant’s own body was not a closed One of the problems inherent in an “an-
container-thing but rather, like the altar- thropology of the body,” is the tendency to
spaces, a complex concatenation of ever presume, rather than ask, what a body is
more intimate boundaries. The body was and where its significant boundaries are lo-
an ensemble of focused fields whose shift- cated. Inquiring into how bodies are given
ing edges and surfaces provided sites for ar- surface may help ethnographers step back
ticulation between inner and outer. If the from such assumptions and become alert to
self could contain and develop an interi- an expanded range of possibilities for how
ority, it was because it could differenti- and in what configurations bodies may be
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

ate and bind. . . .Human consciousness as enacted.

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

agent constantly performed itself into being

through actions of (social) significance, the
set of practices called wen. These signify- SURFACING STRUGGLES
ing practices produce both bodies and texts As the bitter conflicts that surround veiling
simultaneously. (p. 120) (El Guindi 1999, Hoodfar 1997, Mahmood
2001, Shirazi 2001) remind us, however, prac-
In this perspective, clothing and decora- tice is not merely a matter of performing a
tion too may sometimes appear not as cov- script or acting out shared understandings and
erings placed over a body but as its real, sig- expectations; it is also a site of struggle and
nificant surfaces. Turner (1995) suggests that contestation.
body decoration plays such a role for the People may struggle to enact competing
Kayapo. Hay’s (1994) discussion of the ab- visions of what are desirable bodily surfaces—
sence of nudes in Chinese paintings suggests as when, for example, African women who
that in this tradition “clothes are a great deal seek to surface their daughters’ bodies in
more than assemblages of fabric, more than particular form through practices of gen-
even symbolic assemblages,” (p. 60). Surfaces ital cutting come into conflict with colo-
figured here not as “impenetrable faces of geo- nialists, activists, and public health officials
metric solids, but palpable interfaces through who seek to encourage or compel other
which the structural values of interiority in- practices (Shell-Duncan & Hernlund 2001).
teracted with the environment. . . . Bodies Similarly, activists in the intersex movement
themselves were such phenomena” (p. 66). who seek to assert the integrity of ambigu-
Similarly, one might regard the veil as consti- ously gendered bodies are engaged in a cam-
tuting the surface of a woman’s body in some paign to resist medical professionals’ prac-
real sense: tices of materializing infant bodies as clearly
male or female through surgical intervention
Bodily acts—like wearing the veil or con- (Fausto-Sterling 2000).
ducting oneself modestly in interactions In other cases, surfacing struggles impli-
with people (especially men)—do not serve cate both senses of the term surfacing, as
as manipulable masks in a game of public those who seek to give surface to bodies in
presentation, detachable from an essential particular ways are pitted against those who
interiorized self. . . . [There] is an entire con- seek to surface what lies beneath and behind
ceptualization of the role of the body in the such surfaces. Surfacing struggles are at is-
making of the self in which the outward sue, for example, in the practice of obstetrical
behavior of the body constitutes both the ultrasound in so far as the fetal images that
potentiality, as well as the means, through this technology surfaces are deployed within

www.annualreviews.org • Surfacing the Body Interior 749

AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

antiabortion efforts to give surface to the fetal sion commercials, “educational” videotapes,
body and surface it into public view, de- and congressional testimony (Taylor 2004a).
spite feminists’ struggles to defend existing Sharp (2001), meanwhile, details the struggles
modes of giving surface to women’s bodies to control the shape of such trajectories and
(Taylor 2004a). Nor do such struggles neces- their visibility. Surviving kin of organ donors
sarily implicate exclusively medical technolo- seek to link organs to the donors’ identities,
gies; also crucially important, as Casper & whereas organ procurement officials seek to
Morgan (2004) argue, are “new bureaucratic detach them.
technologies”: The trajectories linking that which circu-
lates and acquires value with its origins are,
State functionaries . . . use their own “re- of course, precisely what is at issue in any un-
productive technologies”—administrative derstanding of commodification. Asking how
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

rules, laws, and judicial rulings—to elevate material objects may be involved in processes
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

the status of the unborn by erecting a of surfacing the body interior is, thus, one path
legislative and judicial framework. . . .These toward the very general task of understanding
new bureaucratic technologies work in how bodies, as and through commodities, are
tandem with the scientific and biomedical made and remade and unmade in the world
developments that make fetuses increas- that we inhabit. As such, surfacing the body
ingly visible and accessible, and thus more interior can open out onto topics as varied as
available for public appropriation. (p. 17) the dynamics of singularization and commod-
ification in slavery (Kopytoff 1986), the cen-
Legal, social, and biomedical technologies trality of cattle in nineteenth-century Tswana
also come to bear together in the dramatic society (Comaroff & Comaroff 1990), the
surfacing struggles that accompany biomed- paradoxes of fetal personhood in cases of preg-
ical technosciences requiring the collection nancy loss in contemporary America (Layne
of human bodily substances, including organ 2003), and an epidemic of plastic teeth afflict-
transplantation, blood donation, and genetic ing Haya children in postcolonial Tanzania
research involving the collection of tissue (Weiss 1996).
samples (Lock 2002b).
One manner of approaching such phe-
nomena ethnographically is to trace the path RUMORS THAT SURFACE
of surfacing. One can work to document To embrace fully the idea of surfacing the
the social and legal as well as technologi- body interior will require, however, that we
cal and other mechanisms required to move also recognize surfacing struggles when these
what is surfaced past the body’s given sur- take forms less readily couched in terms of
faces into circulation within some public. the modern body and its boundaries. As sug-
Thus Scheper-Hughes and Cohen, for exam- gested above, one might frame as surfacing
ple, along with other anthropologists engaged struggles controversies surrounding veiling
in Organs Watch, have sought to follow to its practices. One might also discern surfacing
sources in various poor communities of the struggles in public rumors that tell of fright-
global South the trail of kidneys that even- ening and scandalous surfacing practices. Ex-
tually end up sustaining the bodies of recip- amples include rumors in North America
ients and consumers far away (Cohen 2002, in the 1950s that water fluoridation pro-
Lock 2002a, Scheper-Hughes 2002). Simi- grams enabled “soul stealing” (Toumey 1996),
larly, Taylor (2004a) traced the trajectory of stories circulating in the Andes of demons
one particular fetal ultrasound image named that suck people’s fat (Crandon-Malamud
“George” from its origins in medical practice 1991, Weismantel 2001), East African vam-
into the public sphere of antiabortion televi- pire stories of firemen who robbed people of

750 Taylor
AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

bodily fluids during colonial blood banking bodies, publics, sciences, and economies are
campaigns (White 2000), or rumors of zom- precipitated.
bies extracting labor and wealth from un-
witting victims in South Africa (Comaroff
& Comaroff 1999), as well as many CONCLUSION
others. Anthropologists have become very adept at
Surely it matters that such rumors so of- unsettling all kinds of objects in the world.
ten concern, very specifically, the illicit re- Can we learn to unsettle more effectively our
moval of substances from inside the body— own objects of study? Anthropology remains
and the question of whether these rumors lively and interesting in large part because
can be shown true in an ordinary sense, al- ethnography at its best always allows social
though important, does not exhaust their sig- life—in all its richness, its complexity, and
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

nificance. In tracing trajectories of power, its capacity to surprise—to “speak back” to

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

value, and substance to sources within bod- the scholarly literatures that inform it (Taylor
ies, such rumors speak an important truth 2004b). Perhaps it is time to speak back in a
about how materializing practices are or- more assertive voice. The categories that cur-
dered. That precisely this becomes the id- rently organize scholarly inquiry, including
iom in which such insights are cast suggests, the “anthropology of” the body and (more re-
perhaps, that the dynamics at work in sur- cently) the “anthropology of” the biosciences,
facing the body interior—integration entail- need not be our only guides to structuring the
ing dissolution, concealment inciting reve- knowledge-producing practices of anthropol-
lation, the making of surfaces inviting their ogy. I propose here the idea of surfacing the
violation—may resonate in particular ways body interior as a thought experiment of sorts,
with problems of transparency and conspir- an attempt to think through one possible way
acy at work in the world more broadly (West (among others) to bring the openness and
& Sanders 2003). A focus on surfacing the creativity of ethnographic work more boldly
body interior may help us situate bodies into the theoretical framing of what it is that
in relation to broader orders without pre- anthropologists study. In that spirit, I close
suming artificially to fix their parameters in with an exhortation borrowed from Traweek
advance, if we take it as a means to ex- (1999, p. 200): “We know how to make sense
plore the materializing practices out of which of the mess we are in; let’s do it.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sincere thanks go to the eighteen intrepid souls who enrolled in my fall 2003 course, “Surfacing
the Body Interior,” at the University of Washington (UW), especially Kesa Huey, ongoing
discussions with whom have helped me enormously. I am grateful to colleagues at UW and
beyond for generously offering thoughts, references, and encouragement. My thanks go to
Elizabeth Roberts, Lorna Rhodes, Ilana Gershon, Lynn Morgan, Mimi Kahn, Ann Anagnost,
Arzoo Osanloo, Celia Lowe, and especially Lesley Sharp. Most of all, I thank my husband,
Michael A. Rosenthal, whose love and intellectual companionship enabled this essay to surface.

LITERATURE CITED
Anderson W. 2003. The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia.
New York: Basic Books
Appadurai A. 1986a. Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. See Appadurai 1986b,
pp. 3–63

www.annualreviews.org • Surfacing the Body Interior 751

AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

Appadurai A, ed. 1986b. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
Brodwin P, ed. 2000. Biotechnology and Culture: Bodies, Anxieties, Ethics. Bloomington: Indiana
Univ. Press
Browner CH. 1999. On the medicalization of medical anthropology. Med. Anthropol. Q.
13(2):135–40
Butler J. 1993. Bodies that Matter. New York: Routledge
Cartwright L. 1998. A cultural anatomy of the visible human project. In The Visible Woman:
Imaging Technologies, Gender and Science, ed. PA Treichler, L Cartwright, C Penley, pp.
21–43. New York: New York Univ. Press
Casper MJ. 1998. The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery. New
York: Routledge
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

Casper MJ, Morgan LM. 2004. Constructing fetal citizens. Anthropol. Newsl. 45(9):17–18
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

Cohen L. 1998. No Aging in India: Alzheimer’s, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things. Berke-
ley: Univ. Calif. Press
Cohen L. 2002. The other kidney: biopolitics beyond recognition. See Scheper-Hughes &
Wacquant 2002, pp. 9–29
Comaroff J, Comaroff JL. 1990. Goodly beasts and beastly goods: cattle and commodities in a
South African context. Am. Ethnol. 17(2):195–216
Comaroff J, Comaroff JL. 1999. Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: notes from
the South African postcolony. Am. Ethnol. 26(2):279–303
Comaroff J, Comaroff JL. 2003. Ethnography on an awkward scale: postcolonial anthropology
and the violence of abstraction. Culture 4(2):147–79
Crandon-Malamud L. 1991. From the Fat of our Souls: Social Change, Political Process, and Medical
Pluralism in Bolivia. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
Csordas T. 2000. Computerized cadavers: shades of being and representation in virtual reality.
See Brodwin 2000, pp. 173–92
Davis-Floyd R, Dumit J, eds. 1998. Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots. New York:
Routledge
Downey GL, Dumit J, eds. 1997. Cyborgs and Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging
Sciences and Technologies. Santa Fe: SAR Press
Duden B. 1991. The Woman Beneath the Skin. Cambridge, UK: Harvard Univ. Press
Dumit J. 2004. Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Univ. Press
Duster T. 2003. Buried alive: the concept of race in science. In Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthro-
pology and Science Beyond the Two-Culture Divide, ed. AH Goodman, D Heath, MS Lindee,
pp. 258–77. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
El-Guindi F. 1999. Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance. Oxford: Berg
Elliott C. 2003. Better Than Well: American Medicine and the American Dream. New York: Norton
Farquhar J. 1994. Multiplicity, point of view, and responsibility in traditional Chinese healing.
See Zito & Barlow 1994, pp. 78–99
Fausto-Sterling A. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New
York: Basic Books
Franklin S. 1997. Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Procreation. New York:
Routledge
Franklin S, Lock M, eds. 2003. Remaking Life and Death: Toward an Anthropology of the Biosciences.
Santa Fe: SAR Press
Franklin S, Ragone H, eds. 1998. Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power and Technological
Innovation. Philadelphia: Univ. Penn. Press

752 Taylor
AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

Fullwiley D. 2004. Discriminate biopower and everyday biopolitics: views on sickle cell testing
in Dakar. Med. Anthropol. 23:157–94
Gallagher C, Laqueur T, eds. 1987. The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the
Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
Gilman S. 1999. Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton Univ. Press
Goodman AH, Heath D, Lindee SM, eds. 2003. Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science
Beyond the Two-Culture Divide. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
Gruenbaum E. 1998. Resistance and embrace: Sudanese rural women and systems of power.
In Pragmatic Women and Body Politics, ed. M Lock, P Kaufert, pp. 58–76. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge Univ. Press
Haraway D. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

Hay J. 1994. The body invisible in Chinese art? In Body, Subject and Power in China, ed. A Zito,
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

TE Barlow, pp. 42–77. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press

Hayden C. 2003. When Nature Goes Public: The Making and Unmaking of Bioprospecting in Mexico.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press
Hayles NK. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Infor-
matics. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press
Herzig R. 2004. On performance, productivity, and vocabularies of motive in recent studies of
science. Femin. Theory 5(2):127–47
Hogle L. 1999. Recovering the Nation’s Body: Cultural Memory, Medicine, and the Politics of Re-
demption. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press
Hogle L. 2003. Life/time warranty: rechargeable cells and extendable lives. See Franklin &
Lock 2003, pp. 61–96
Hoodfar H. 1997. The veil in their minds and on our heads: veiling practices and Muslim
women. In The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital, ed. L Lowe, D Lloyd, pp. 248–
79. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
Inhorn M. 2003. Local Babies, Global Science: Gender, Religion, and In Vitro Fertilization in Egypt.
New York: Routledge
Joralemon D. 2000. The ethics of the organ market: Lloyd R. Cohen and the free marketers.
See Brodwin 2000, pp. 224–37
Kahn J. 2004. How a drug becomes “ethnic”: law, commerce, and the production of racial
categories in medicine. Yale J. Health Policy Law Ethics 4:1–46
Kahn SM. 2000. Reproducing Jews: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception in Israel. Durham,
NC: Duke Univ. Press
Kopytoff I. 1986. The cultural biography of things: commoditization as a process. See Appadu-
rai 1986b, pp. 64–91
Lamb S. 1997. The making and unmaking of persons: notes on aging and gender in South
India. Ethos 25(3):279–302
Landecker H. 2000. Immortality, in vitro: a history of the HeLa cell line. See Brodwin 2000,
pp. 53–72
Landecker H. 2003. On beginning and ending with apoptosis: cell death and biomedicine. See
Franklin & Lock 2003, pp. 23–59
Langford J. 2002. Fluent Bodies: Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance. Durham, NC:
Duke Univ. Press
Latour B. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, UK: Harvard Univ. Press
Layne L. 2003. Motherhood Lost: A Feminist Account of Pregnancy Loss in America. New York:
New York Univ. Press

www.annualreviews.org • Surfacing the Body Interior 753

AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

Lock M. 1993. Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America.
Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
Lock M. 1998. Perfecting society: reproductive technologies, genetic testing, and the planned
family in Japan. In Pragmatic Women and Body Politics, ed. M Lock, P Kaufert, pp. 206–39.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
Lock M. 2002a. The alienation of body tissue and the biopolitics of immortalized cell lines.
See Scheper-Hughes & Wacquant 2002, pp. 63–92
Lock M. 2002b. Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death. Berkeley: Univ.
Calif. Press
Lock M. 2003. On making up the good-as-dead in a utilitarian world. See Franklin & Lock
2003, pp. 165–92
Lowe C. 2006. Wild Profusion: Biodiversity Conservation in an Indonesian Archipelago. Princeton,
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

NJ: Princeton Univ. Press

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

Martin E. 1994. Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to
the Age of AIDS. New York: Beacon
Martin E. 1998. Anthropology and the cultural study of science. Sci. Technol. Hum. Values
23(1):24–44
Mahmood S. 2001. Feminist theory, embodiment and the docile agent: some reflections on the
Egyptian Islamic revival. Cult. Anthropol. 6(2):202–36
Marx K. 1978. Capital. In The Marx-Engels Reader, Vol. 1, ed. R Tucker, pp. 294–438. New
York: Norton
Mauss M. 2000. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York:
Norton
Mitchell LM. 2001. Baby’s First Picture: Ultrasound and the Politics of Fetal Subjects. Toronto:
Univ. Toronto Press
Mitchell T. 1988. Colonizing Egypt. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
Mol A. 2002. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
Morgan LM. 1998. Materializing the fetal body, or, what are those corpses doing in biology’s
basement? In Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions, ed. LM Morgan, MW Michaels, pp. 43–60.
Philadelphia: Univ. Penn. Press
Morgan LM, Michaels MW, eds. 1998. Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions. Philadelphia: Univ.
Penn. Press
Morris R. 1995. All made up: performance theory and the new anthropology of sex and gender.
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 24:567–92
Morsy S. 1998. Not only women: science as resistance in open-door Egypt. In Pragmatic Women
and Body Politics, ed. M Lock, P Kaufert, pp. 77–97. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ.
Press
Munn N. 1992. The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua
New Guinea) Society. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
Pickering A. 1995. The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science. Chicago: Univ. Chicago
Press
Pietz W. 1985. The problem of the fetish, I. Res 9:5–17
Pietz W. 1987. The problem of the fetish, II. Res 13:23–46
Rabinow P. 2003. Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Univ. Press
Rabinow P. 1999. French DNA: Trouble in Purgatory. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press
Rabinow P. 1996. Essays on the Anthropology of Reason. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press
Rabinow P, Dan-Cohen T. 2004. A Machine to Make a Future: Biotech Chronicles. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton Univ. Press

754 Taylor
AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

Ragone H. 1994. Surrogate Motherhood: Conception in the Heart. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
Ragone H, Twine FW, eds. 2000. Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality,
Nationalism. New York: Routledge
Rapp R. 1999. Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis. New York:
Routledge
Reardon J. 2005. Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton Univ. Press
Rosaldo R. 1989. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon
Scheper-Hughes N. 2002. Commodity fetishism in organ trafficking. See Scheper-Hughes &
Wacquant 2002, pp. 31–62
Scheper-Hughes N, Wacquant L, eds. 2002. Commodifying Bodies. London: Sage
Sharp LA. 2000. The commodification of the body and its parts. Annu. Rev. Anthropol.
29(1):287–328
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

Sharp LA. 2001. Commodified kin: death, mourning, and competing claims on the bodies of
organ donors in the United States. Am. Anthropol. 103(1):112–33
Shell-Duncan B, Hernlund Y, eds. 2001. Female “Circumcision” in Africa: Culture, Controversy,
and Change. Boulder, CO: Lynne Riener
Shirazi F. 2001. The Veil Unveiled: The Hijab in Modern Culture. Gainesville: Univ. Press Fla.
Spyer P, ed. 1998. Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces. New York: Routledge
Stafford BM. 1991. Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Cam-
bridge, UK: MIT Press
Strathern M. 1999. Property, Substance and Effect. London/New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone
Taylor JS. 1998. Image of contradiction: obstetrical ultrasound in American culture. In Repro-
ducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power and Technological Innovation, ed. S Franklin, H Ragone,
pp. 15–45. Philadelphia: Univ. Penn. Press
Taylor JS. 2000. An all-consuming experience: obstetrical ultrasound and the commodification
of pregnancy. See Brodwin 2000, pp. 147–70
Taylor JS. 2004a. A fetish is born: sonographers and the making of the public fetus. In Consuming
Motherhood, ed. JS Taylor, LL Layne, DF Wozniak, pp. 187–210. New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers Univ. Press
Taylor JS. 2004b. Introduction. In Consuming Motherhood, ed. JS Taylor, LL Layne, DF Woz-
niak, pp. 1–16. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press
Taussig KS. 2004. Bovine abominations: genetic culture and politics in the Netherlands. Cult.
Anthropol. 19(3):305–36
Thompson C. 2005. Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies.
Cambridge, UK: MIT Press
Toumey CP. 1996. Conjuring Science: Scientific Symbols and Cultural Meanings in American Life.
New York: Routledge
Traweek S. 1999. Warning signs: acting on images. In Revisioning Women, Health and Healing:
Feminist, Cultural, and Technoscience Perspectives, ed. AE Clarke, VL Olesen, pp. 187–201.
New York: Routledge
Turner T. 1995. Social body and embodied subject: bodiliness, sociality and subjectivity among
the Kayapo. Cult. Anthropol. 10(2):143–70
Waldby C. 2000. The Visible Human Project: Informatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine. New
York: Routledge
Weismantel M. 2001. Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes. Chicago: Univ.
Chicago Press
Weiss B. 1996. The Making and Unmaking of the Haya Lived World: Consumption, Commoditization,
and Everyday Practice. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press

www.annualreviews.org • Surfacing the Body Interior 755

AR254-AN34-35 ARI 25 August 2005 15:17

West HG, Sanders T, eds. 2003. Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the
New World Order. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
White L. 2000. Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa. Berkeley: Univ.
Calif. Press
Wiener M. 2003. Hidden forces: colonialism and the politics of magic. In Magic and Modernity:
Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment, ed. B Meyer, P Pels, pp. 129–58. Stanford, CA:
Stanford Univ. Press
Wiener M. 2004. Making worlds through religion, science and magic. Anthropol. Newsl.
45(8):10–11
Williams R. 1983. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Rev. ed.
Woodroofe H. 2003. Patterns of carnage: cosmetic techniques and technological violence in the United
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

States between the wars. MA thesis. Univ. Chicago

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

Zito A. 1994. Silk and skin: significant boundaries. See Zito & Barlow 1994, pp. 103–30
Zito A, Barlow TE, eds. 1994. Body, Subject and Power in China. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press

756 Taylor
 Contents ARI 12 August 2005 20:29

Annual Review of
Anthropology

Volume 34, 2005

Contents
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

Frontispiece
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

Sally Falk Moore p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p xvi

Prefatory Chapter

Comparisons: Possible and Impossible

Sally Falk Moore p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 1

Archaeology

Archaeology, Ecological History, and Conservation

Frances M. Hayashida p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p43
Archaeology of the Body
Rosemary A. Joyce p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 139
Looting and the World’s Archaeological Heritage: The Inadequate
Response
Neil Brodie and Colin Renfrew p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 343
Through Wary Eyes: Indigenous Perspectives on Archaeology
Joe Watkins p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 429
The Archaeology of Black Americans in Recent Times
Mark P. Leone, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, and Jennifer J. Babiarz p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 575

Biological Anthropology

Early Modern Humans

Erik Trinkaus p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 207
Metabolic Adaptation in Indigenous Siberian Populations
William R. Leonard, J. Josh Snodgrass, and Mark V. Sorensen p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 451
The Ecologies of Human Immune Function
Thomas W. McDade p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 495

vii
Contents ARI 12 August 2005 20:29

Linguistics and Communicative Practices

New Directions in Pidgin and Creole Studies

Marlyse Baptista p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p33
Pierre Bourdieu and the Practices of Language
William F. Hanks p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p67
Areal Linguistics and Mainland Southeast Asia
N.J. Enfield p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 181
Communicability, Racial Discourse, and Disease
Charles L. Briggs p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 269
Will Indigenous Languages Survive?
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

Michael Walsh p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 293

Linguistic, Cultural, and Biological Diversity
Luisa Maffi p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 599

International Anthropology and Regional Studies

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System

Dipankar Gupta p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 409
Indigenous Movements in Australia
Francesca Merlan p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 473
Indigenous Movements in Latin America, 1992–2004: Controversies,
Ironies, New Directions
Jean E. Jackson and Kay B. Warren p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 549

Sociocultural Anthropology

The Cultural Politics of Body Size

Helen Gremillion p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p13
Too Much for Too Few: Problems of Indigenous Land Rights in Latin
America
Anthony Stocks p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p85
Intellectuals and Nationalism: Anthropological Engagements
Dominic Boyer and Claudio Lomnitz p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 105
The Effect of Market Economies on the Well-Being of Indigenous
Peoples and on Their Use of Renewable Natural Resources
Ricardo Godoy, Victoria Reyes-Garcı́a, Elizabeth Byron, William R. Leonard,
and Vincent Vadez p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 121

viii Contents
 Contents ARI 12 August 2005 20:29

An Excess of Description: Ethnography, Race, and Visual Technologies

Deborah Poole p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 159
Race and Ethnicity in Public Health Research: Models to Explain
Health Disparities
William W. Dressler, Kathryn S. Oths, and Clarence C. Gravlee p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 231
Recent Ethnographic Research on North American Indigenous
Peoples
Pauline Turner Strong p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 253
The Anthropology of the Beginnings and Ends of Life
Sharon R. Kaufman and Lynn M. Morgan p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 317
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

Immigrant Racialization and the New Savage Slot: Race, Migration,

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

and Immigration in the New Europe

Paul A. Silverstein p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 363
Autochthony: Local or Global? New Modes in the Struggle over
Citizenship and Belonging in Africa and Europe
Bambi Ceuppens and Peter Geschiere p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 385
Caste and Politics: Identity Over System
Dipankar Gupta p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 409
The Evolution of Human Physical Attractiveness
Steven W. Gangestad and Glenn J. Scheyd p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 523
Mapping Indigenous Lands
Mac Chapin, Zachary Lamb, and Bill Threlkeld p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 619
Human Rights, Biomedical Science, and Infectious Diseases Among
South American Indigenous Groups
A. Magdalena Hurtado, Carol A. Lambourne, Paul James, Kim Hill,
Karen Cheman, and Keely Baca p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 639
Interrogating Racism: Toward an Antiracist Anthropology
Leith Mullings p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 667
Enhancement Technologies and the Body
Linda F. Hogle p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 695
Social and Cultural Policies Toward Indigenous Peoples: Perspectives
from Latin America
Guillermo de la Peña p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 717
Surfacing the Body Interior
Janelle S. Taylor p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 741

Contents ix
Contents ARI 12 August 2005 20:29

Theme 1: Race and Racism

Race and Ethnicity in Public Health Research: Models to Explain

Health Disparities
William W. Dressler, Kathryn S. Oths, and Clarence C. Gravlee p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 231
Communicability, Racial Discourse, and Disease
Charles L. Briggs p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 269
Immigrant Racialization and the New Savage Slot: Race, Migration,
and Immigration in the New Europe
Paul A. Silverstein p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 363
The Archaeology of Black Americans in Recent Times
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.

Mark P. Leone, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, and Jennifer J. Babiarz p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 575

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

Interrogating Racism: Toward an Antiracist Anthropology

Leith Mullings p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 667

Theme 2: Indigenous Peoples

The Effect of Market Economies on the Well-Being of Indigenous

Peoples and on Their Use of Renewable Natural Resources
Ricardo Godoy, Victoria Reyes-Garcı́a, Elizabeth Byron, William R. Leonard,
and Vincent Vadez p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 121
Recent Ethnographic Research on North American Indigenous
Peoples
Pauline Turner Strong p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 253
Will Indigenous Languages Survive?
Michael Walsh p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 293
Autochthony: Local or Global? New Modes in the Struggle over
Citizenship and Belonging in Africa and Europe
Bambi Ceuppens and Peter Geschiere p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 385
Through Wary Eyes: Indigenous Perspectives on Archaeology
Joe Watkins p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 429
Metabolic Adaptation in Indigenous Siberian Populations
William R. Leonard, J. Josh Snodgrass, and Mark V. Sorensen p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 451
Indigenous Movements in Australia
Francesca Merlan p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 473
Indigenous Movements in Latin America, 1992–2004: Controversies,
Ironies, New Directions
Jean E. Jackson and Kay B. Warren p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 549

x Contents
 Contents ARI 12 August 2005 20:29

Linguistic, Cultural, and Biological Diversity

Luisa Maffi p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 599
Human Rights, Biomedical Science, and Infectious Diseases Among
South American Indigenous Groups
A. Magdalena Hurtado, Carol A. Lambourne, Paul James, Kim Hill,
Karen Cheman, and Keely Baca p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 639
Social and Cultural Policies Toward Indigenous Peoples: Perspectives
from Latin America
Guillermo de la Peña p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 717

Indexes
Access provided by Universidad Nacional de Colombia on 07/20/18. For personal use only.
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:741-756. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

Subject Index p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 757

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 26–34 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 771
Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 26–34 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 774

Errata

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Anthropology chapters

may be found at http://anthro.annualreviews.org/errata.shtml

Contents xi