HudsonMemo5

__Working Title__: Treating Time: Emerging Bodies and the Politics of Care
//**Keywords: the body, healthcare, neoliberalism, aging, pedagogy, feminism**//

__**Data Sets**__ -Fifteen semi-structured interviews with yoga students from three studios in Upstate NY, The Peaceful Center, Heartspace Holistic, and Sadhana Center for Yoga and Meditation -Fifteen semi-structured interviews with yoga instructors in Upstate NY, from various studios, including the three above -Fifteen semi-structured interviews with bodyworkers (massage therapists) in the Capital Region -Participant observation in yoga workshops; yoga teacher training; massage therapy sessions; massage therapy training; events by Saratoga Integrative Medicine Education Network -Textual analysis: US news stories on bodywork and CAM; US healthcare policy -Video, photograph, and sound files from participant observation in yoga and massage therapy sessions

How does neoliberalism shape the way people conceive of and purse possibilities for change?
 * __Social Theoretical Questions__**

How is healthcare imagined and practiced in and beyond contemporary medical settings?

How does learning happen through body relations?

How is aging gendered?

__**Research Questions**__ How does neoliberalism shift possibilities for change to the micro=micro-body level?

How is healthcare imagined and practiced through bodywork?

How does the body become a pedagogical tool? How does bodywork cultivate biological awareness?

There are both political and theoretical reasons for conducting a project on bodywork under neoliberalism. On the political front, there has been growing interest and use of yoga and massage therapy in the past few decades – it was revitalized in the 1970s and its use grew continually through the 80s and 90s. This trend has emerged alongside developments in the larger healthcare arena (developments that I need to pinpoint more carefully), and although some research has been conducted on the relationship between biomedicalization, the growing reliance on pharmaceuticals, concern over an aging population, the power of insurance companies, and complimentary and alternative medicine, this research has not focused on bodywork specifically or the affect of neoliberalism on healthcare in the US. (I wonder what, beyond dissatisfaction with the healthcare system, brings people to yoga and massage therapy? Is it something in neoliberalism? Or something else?) Furthermore, today’s headlines could not speak more clearly on the importance and centrality of the healthcare system, which is poised for reform and marked as one of the most reliable, recession-proof industries in the US (see the December 28, 2008 Newsweek article on “sick care” and preventative health). Questioning how bodywork is situated in the existing healthcare system and how it will be positioned under the new administration could not be more timely. Research and advocacy is needed to insure that healthcare reform includes a broader understanding of health, wellness, and care. Also it has been over 15 years since the first government office for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine was established; numerous studies and reports have been published on the prevalence of CAM. In some arenas CAM (and bodywork) seem to be battleground issues, where bitter fights ensue over validity, ethics, and medicine. In other arenas it seems bodywork and alternative medicine are quite normalized. Now may be a good time to look at parallel developments in biomedicalization and CAM.
 * __Why Now?__**

Theoretically, bodywork—as a mechanism for understanding and constructing change through the body; as a response to biomedicalization; as a pedagogical tool and vehicle for learning—would contribute much to the fields of Women’s Studies, Science and Technology Studies, and Anthropology. Additional iterations and analyses of neoliberalism are still needed in these three fields, and little work has been done on neoliberalism and the body (or healthcare).

Finally, STS and Women’s Studies often seem to be ready and waiting for some kind of methodological, textual or theoretical intervention, or interruption; something that pushes the field in new directions. I think this project could contribute to such a push by way of methodological and textual innovations, specifically through the use of media technologies, performance, and style.

__**How Prepared?**__ I am sufficiently prepared to undertake a project on bodywork and health practices in several ways. First, because of my own, personal involvement and experience with yoga and massage therapy. I already have a familiarity with the communities I intend to study. I regularly take yoga classes at the Peaceful Center and Heartspace Holistic, and keep a daily practice at home. I also receive various forms of bodywork to maintain my own health, and am in the process of training to become a Thai yoga therapist. My familiarity and sustained engagement with the communities and practices I seek to analyze sets me on firm ground for this project.

My prior research experience at the intersection of science, technology, health and the body has also prepared me for the proposed project. For the past two years I explored the topic of Alzheimer’s Disease and elderly care, and have published a peer-reviewed article in Surveillance & Society, titled “Securing the Elderly Body: Dementia, Surveillance, and the Politics of “Aging in Place”. This paper analyzed monitoring technologies for the elderly, highlighting sociopolitical responses to aging and dementia that raise critical questions about caregiving, quality of life, and the way technological design engages with everyday rights. In this paper I explored the ways in which the body and care of the body have become shaped by neoliberal trends and biomedicalization, political, economic and cultural shifts that reconfigure social relations and ethics in health and home.

My research on aging was grounded in graduate seminars that include Social Theory, Science Studies, Technology Studies, Discourse Analysis, Historical and Ethnographic Methods, Lifes and Languages, and Fieldwork as Art. In each of these seminars I used course materials and required seminar papers to reflect on healthcare systems and the body. Before coming to the RPI STS program, I earned a Master’s degree in Women’s Studies with a focus on women’s work, globalization, and media. Having a critical foundation in feminist theory and pedagogy will enable me to creatively engage the politics of health and body.

I wrestle with the questions of biases, but I think the first problem that this project presents is that it focuses on a largely privileged group of people who are able to afford and make time for health and wellness in their daily lives. I do think that this description needs to be complicated—for example, taking into account the number of single mothers, divorced women, and seniors who have come to bodywork. There are ways in which these standard social group designations just don’t fly in the real world—white middle-class woman or poor black man or elderly immigrant “do” particular things and are not able to do others. This is also a self-interested project. I would be a middle-class white woman studying my own privileged community. I’m invested socially, psychologically, and spiritually. [When are biases a good thing??] I would be interviewing and studying people I already know, in some cases. I think that yoga and bodywork are generally good and that there should be more of both in the world.
 * __Biases?__**

__**Fields of Work**__ I hope to enliven conversation in the fields of Women’s Studies, Science and Technology Studies, and Anthropology. “Women, health, and the body” has always been central to the Women’s Studies canon. The proposed project would contribute to this niche by exploring body to body (or hands-on) knowledge transfer, a process that often demands biological understandings. There will be a Women’s Studies audience interested in how scientific knowledge is communicated beyond the classroom, at theme that continues women’s community health research (such as the Boston Women’s Health Collective), asking, for example, how health information and biological awareness communicated beyond the doctor’s office. More work is also needed on pedagogies of the body. In recent years, feminist pedagogy scholarship has become focused on new media tools. Women’s studies scholars would also be interested in body-to-body learning, or manipulation of the body, the body as vehicle, for teaching purposes. If the project focuses on the labor aspects of bodywork, there will certainly be a Women’s Studies audience interested in how neoliberalism affects work practices.

This project will contribute to work in science and technology Studies that focuses on the politics of health and biology; one of the dynamics that this project aims to look at is how biology is learned through hands-on practices in yoga and massage therapy sessions. Complimentary and alternative medicine has been largely overlooked in STS, yet this project seeks to shows how different learning practices and knowledge systems cultivate biological awareness—as opposed to using CAM as a window into validity and scientific practice. This project will also be of interest to STS scholars concerned with the dynamics of neoliberalism, especially with regard to the politics and practices of healthcare.

Finally, the proposed project will be of interest to medical and cultural anthropologists.

__**Funders**__ National Women’s Studies Association – Graduate Student Fellowship http://nwsa.org/students/scholarships/index.php

NSF – SBE Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13453&org=NSF&sel_org=SBE&from=fund

Massage Therapy Association - http://www.massagetherapyfoundation.org/grants_research.html