Ghostly Bodies in the Global City

Authors

  • Angel Martínez-Hernáez Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Keywords:

consumer culture, liquid society, globalization, body, modernity

Abstract

Liquidity has become a metaphor for a contemporary society in which, paradoxically, the only stability lies in the ephemeral; social forms and identities change too quickly to become sedimented. This article argues, however, that in the global city understood as a space of flows, certain social relations -for example, the link between consumer and commodity- have crystallized. This social, economic and political relation has favored the emergence of a corporeal subjectivity in which the body is not simply a means but an end in itself. The body is approached here as a dual entity that is at once both subjective (the consumer body) and objectified (the commodified body), a ghostly entity ideally adapted to and functional in consumer society.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Angel Martínez-Hernáez, Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Professor Titular de Antropologia médica da Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Espanha) (www.urv.cat) e Diretor de Pesquisa da Área da Saúde do Institut d´Infància i Món Urbà (www.ciimu.org). Antropólogo e mestre em Psiquiatria Social e Epidemiologia. Professor Associado na Universidade de Barcelona (1995-2001) e Professor Visitante nas seguintes universidades: Universidade da Califórnia em Berkeley, Universidade de Perugia e Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, entre outras. Atividade científica: metodologia etnográfica em saúde, saúde da infáncia e adolescência, saúde mental, teorias em antropologia médica, políticas sanitárias em Europa e América Latina e culturas amazônicas. Tem sido avaliador de diferentes programas, entre eles o VI Framework Programme da União Europea e AlBan de EuropeAid. Em sua produção acadêmica, destaca-se o livro What´s behind the symptom? London & New York, Routledge.

Downloads

Published

2009-09-16

How to Cite

MARTÍNEZ-HERNÁEZ, A. Ghostly Bodies in the Global City. Fractal: Journal of Psychology, v. 21, n. 2, p. 223-236, 16 Sep. 2009.

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 2 (2009)

Section

Dossiê Cidades

License

Authors publishing in this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License allowing sharing of the work with acknowledgement of authorship of the work and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are permitted to enter into additional contracts separately for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in this journal (e.g., publishing in an institutional repository or as a book chapter), with acknowledgment of authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

 

CC0

To the extent possible under the law, Fractal: Journal of Psychology has waived all copyright and related rights to the Reference Lists in research articles. This work is published in: Brazil.

To the extent possible under law,Fractal: Journal of Psychology has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Reference lists in research articles. This work is published from: Brazil.