With rapid developments in reproductive medicine, transplant ethics and bioethics, a new `ethic of parts' has emerged in which the body is increasingly seen as a commodity which can be bartered, sold or stolen. This book combines perspectives from anthropology and sociology to offer compelling new readings of the body.

Increasingly the body is a possession that does not belong to us. It is bought and sold, bartered and stolen, marketed wholesale or in parts. The professions - especially reproductive medicine, transplant surgery, and bioethics but also journalism and other cultural specialists - have been pliant partners in this accelerating commodification of live and dead human organisms. Under the guise of healing or research, they have contributed to a new ′ethic of parts′ for which the divisible body is severed from the self, torn from the social fabric, and thrust into commercial transactions -- as organs, secretions, reproductive capacities, and tissues -- responding to the dictates of an incipiently global marketplace. Breaking with established approaches which prioritize the body as ′text′, the chapters in this book examine not only images of the body-turned-merchandise but actually existing organisms considered at once as material entities, semi-magical tokens, symbolic vectors and founts of lived experience. The topics covered range from the cultural disposal and media treatment of corpses, the biopolitics of cells, sperm banks and eugenics, to the international trafficking of kidneys, the development of ′transplant tourism′, to the idioms of corporeal exploitation among prizefighters as a limiting case of fleshly commodity. This insightful and arresting volume combines perspectives from anthropology, law, medicine, and sociology to offer compelling analyses of the concrete ways in which the body is made into a commodity and how its marketization in turn remakes social relations and cultural meanings.

Commodified Bodies examines the social practice of organ transplantation and trafficking and scrutinises the increasingly neoliberal tendencies in the medical system. It analyses phenomena such as the denomination of human body parts as "raw materials" and "commodities," or the arguments used by the proponents for a free market solution. Moreover, it argues that modern medicine is still linked with its religious roots. The commodification of body parts is seen not as an imperialistic act of the market, but as the end of a historical process as the notion of "fetishism" links the market with the body. Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism and Sigmund Freud’s theory of the perverted use of objects are modified and adapted to the reconstruction of the joint beginnings of market and medicine.

Commodified Bodies examines the social practice of organ transplantation and trafficking and scrutinises the increasingly neoliberal tendencies in the medical system. It analyses phenomena such as the denomination of human body parts as "raw materials" and "commodities," or the arguments used by the proponents for a free market solution. Moreover, it argues that modern medicine is still linked with its religious roots. The commodification of body parts is seen not as an imperialistic act of the market, but as the end of a historical process as the notion of "fetishism" links the market with the body. Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism and Sigmund Freud’s theory of the perverted use of objects are modified and adapted to the reconstruction of the joint beginnings of market and medicine.

In this Very Short Introduction Chris Shilling considers the social significance of the human body, and the importance of the body to individual and collective identities. He examines how bodies not only shape but are shaped by the social, cultural, and material contexts in which humans live.

Ari Larissa Heinrich examines transnational Chinese aesthetic production--from the earliest appearance of Frankenstein in China to the more recent phenomenon of "cadaver art"-- to demonstrate how representations of the medically commodified body can illuminate the effects of biopolitical violence and postcolonialism in contemporary life.

Increasingly the body is a possession that does not belong to us. It is bought and sold, bartered and stolen, marketed wholesale or in parts. The professions - especially reproductive medicine, transplant surgery, and bioethics but also journalism and other cultural specialists - have been pliant partners in this accelerating commodification of live and dead human organisms. Under the guise of healing or research, they have contributed to a new 'ethic of parts' for which the divisible body is severed from the self, torn from the social fabric, and thrust into commercial transactions -- as organs, secretions, reproductive capacities, and tissues -- responding to the dictates of an incipiently global marketplace. Breaking with established approaches which prioritize the body as 'text', the chapters in this book examine not only images of the body-turned-merchandise but actually existing organisms considered at once as material entities, semi-magical tokens, symbolic vectors and founts of lived experience. The topics covered range from the cultural disposal and media treatment of corpses, the biopolitics of cells, sperm banks and eugenics, to the international trafficking of kidneys, the development of 'transplant tourism', to the idioms of corporeal exploitation among prizefighters as a limiting case of fleshly commodity. This insightful and arresting volume combines perspectives from anthropology, law, medicine, and sociology to offer compelling analyses of the concrete ways in which the body is made into a commodity and how its marketization in turn remakes social relations and cultural meanings.

Thanks to recent progress in biotechnology, surrogacy, transplantation of organs and tissues, blood products or stem-cell and gamete banks are now widely used throughout the world. These techniques improve the health and well-being of some human beings using products or functions that come from the body of others. Growth in demand and absence of an appropriate international legal framework have led to the development of a lucrative global trade in which victims are often people living in insecure conditions who have no other ways to survive than to rent or sell part of their body. This growing market, in which parts of the human body are bought and sold with little respect for the human person, displays a kind of dehumanization that looks like a new form of slavery. This book is the result of a collective and multidisciplinary reflection organized by a group of international researchers working in the field of medicine and social sciences. It helps better understand how the emergence of new health industries may contribute to the development of a global medical tourism. It opens new avenues for reflection on technologies that are based on appropriation of parts of the body of others for health purposes, a type of practice that can be metaphorically compared to cannibalism. Are these the fi rst steps towards a proletariat of men- and women-objects considered as a reservoir of products of human origin needed to improve the health or well-being of the better-off? The book raises the issue of the uncontrolled use of medical advances that can sometimes reach the anticipations of dystopian literature and science fiction.

This book proposes the introduction of a development-related perspective to scholarly critique of the human body’s commodification. Nahavandi contends that the commodification of human body parts reflects a modern form of such well-known historical phenomena as slavery and colonization, and can be considered a new and additional form of appropriation and extraction of resources from the Global South. What are the commonalities between hair trade, surrogacy, kidney sale and attraction of brains? The author argues that these all characterize a world where increasingly everything can be traded or is considered to be tradeable. A world where, similar to any other goods, body parts have entered the global market either legally or illegally. Through a series of multidisciplinary comparative studies, the book explores how forms commodification of the human body are fuelled by issues of poverty in the Global South, and inequality in transnational relations.

Commodified and Criminalized examines the centrality of sport to discussions of racial ideologies and racist practices in the 21st century. It disputes familiar refrains of racial progress, arguing that athletes sit in a contradictory position masked by the logics of new racism and dominant white racial frames. Contributors discuss athletes ranging from Tiger Woods and Serena Williams to Freddy Adu and Shani Davis. Through dynamic case studies, Commodified and Criminalized unpacks the conversation between black athletes and colorblind discourse, while challenging the assumptions of contemporary sports culture. The contributors in this provocative collection push the conversation beyond the playing field and beyond the racial landscape of sports culture to explore the connections between sports representations and a broader history of racialized violence.