Bared breasts and body politics

Intentionality, Politics, And Religion

The idea that intentionality is the distinctive mark of the mental or that only mental phenomena have intentionality emerged in the philosophical tradition after Franz Brentano. Much of contemporary philosophy is dedicated to a rejection of the view that mental phenomena have original intentionality. In other words, main strands of contemporary philosophy seek to naturalize intentionality of th...

‘Fat Ethics’ – The Obesity Discourse and Body Politics

In recent years, significant attention has been given in the popular and academic press to an ‘obesity crisis’ that, purportedly, is both ever increasing and sweeping across the western world. In this paper, we raise a number of ethical issues about the ways in which discourses around this crisis have been socially constructed and publicly represented. We begin by outlining the ways in which th...

Sexing the Body Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality

In Sexing the Body. Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality FaustoSterling attempts to answer two questions: How is knowledge about the body gendered? And, how gender and sexuality become somatic facts? In other words, she passionately and with impressive intellectual clarity demonstrates how in regards to human sexuality the social becomes material. She takes a broad, interdisciplina...

The genetics of politics: Body politic | The Economist

The Politics and Analytics of Health Policy

Let us start with an example of health policy analysis in action. Within that category of countries loosely known as ‘the West’, quite basic differences exist in attitudes to health policy and also actual health policy. Comparing the US with mainland Europe and indeed Canada, for example, one perceives a difference in attitude on the part of the majority towards collectivism and individualism i...