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In this paper we move from considering the chair as an (inanimate) object, to exploring its vitality through a more vibrant and active reading of this inescapable everyday item. We are inspired by feminist new materialism and how affect shapes our understanding of matter. Reading matter in this way surfaces our orientations toward everyday items that show embodied practices of mattering. This, in turn, shines light on how we imbue objects with meaning, and how objects exceed these designations and categorisations to form new unbounded relations with the world. We focus on affective and symbolic meanings to consider different types of chairs, the spaces they occupy, and who comes to sit in them. For example, the empty chair expects an arrival; the occupied chair raises questions related to place and hospitality. Exploring whose bodies occupy an academic chair enables us to understand our embodied relationships with objects and work. We use personal experiences to engage in acts of experimental writing, reflecting on our lived experiences, and combining philosophical musings that bring the chair to life. By re-thinking our relationships to chairs, we invite the reader to resist the urge to dismiss them as mundane pieces of furniture worthy of only function or dismissal, and instead foster an openness that expands consideration of the material relations that travel across bodies and nonhuman kin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist theories have broadly delved into the discourse surrounding bodies (Grosz, Elizabeth. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Their contributions have subverted the idea that bodies are merely passive matter, opening up new ways of conceptualizing the world in corporeal terms. Their insights have been useful in understanding that human bodies emerge in situated-historical encounters, and cannot be separated from mind. This holds significant implications for the field of education (hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Abingdon: Routledge). In this article, we depart from the project ‘TRAY-AP: Learning trajectories of undergraduate students: conceptions, strategies, technologies, and contexts'. Reading from ‘posts’ perspectives such as feminist new materialisms, the affective turn or posthumanisms, helps us to think through relational ontologies, beyond dualisms, embracing a commitment to the human and morethan-human bodies. Through these perspectives, the project helps us to deepen into how Spanish higher education students conceive their bodies and the role of bodies in their learning trajectories. The paper concludes by shedding light on how bodies are still considered inert beings, but students see their learning processes as corporeal and embodied, intersected by gender struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their 2015 article on stuntwomen, Miranda J. Banks and Lauren Steimer argue that the figure of the stunt double is subjected to a process of erasure throughout the production of the action film or series, and most certainly in popular press accounts that promote the idea of stars (both male and female) as the performers of their own stunts. This erasure is also evident in the comparative lack of scholarly work on the labour-intensive – and often life-threatening – contributions made by stunt performers to the on-screen fantasy of the kick-ass action star. The Bond franchise has seen its female characters increasingly defined by their all-action credentials and, consequently, the size of the stunt team has grown with a higher number of female stunt performers being included. This article looks at how stuntwomen have contributed to the spectacle of the Bond franchise, including driver Jessica Hawkins and the much in demand Marie Mouroum, both of whom worked on No Time to Die (2021). As behind-the-scenes footage of most action franchises becomes more available and often forms part of the marketing of franchise cinema, including the Bond films, the concept of erasure will be examined in relation to these contemporary contexts of production. The increased diversity of action heroines also opens up sites of exploration around women of colour as part of these production processes, both on-screen and behind the scenes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microbes have consistently coexisted with humans and have profoundly influenced their daily practices. Accompanied by the new materialists' rethinking of the ontology and epistemology of nonhuman matter, and based on the 'Object Oriented Ontology' proposed by Harman, this paper attempt to reinterpret the dynamic relationship between viruses, human bodies, and cities in the process of movement. By reinterpreting the communication patterns between human bodies and viruses, as well as the topological networks between human bodies and cities, this study aimed to reveal the biosocial attributes of cities from the perspective of transcending anthropocentrism. "The findings indicate that (1) symptoms and attitudes towards viruses are embodied communication processes between the human body and the virus and that the outcome of embodied communication is influenced by temporal and spatial dimensions. This finding contributes to the reshaping of the humanity-virus relationship, prompting humanity to value the agency of viruses and to confront how viruses coexist and cohabit in the human body and urban spaces; (2) The mobilities of viruses cross boundaries and scales between a human body and cities. By focusing on the mobilities of viruses between extended bodies to explore the interactions between bodies and cities, this study reveals the mobilities and biosocial properties of the city; that is, the city is viewed as a topological biosocial network that transcends boundaries. Using the mask as an example, this study reveals how the extended body affects and alters material connections-that is, how social, policy, and cultural meanings are embedded in the construction and reconstruction of urban topological networks -and how the network of relationships attached to the body creates connections to better cope with the impacts of viral mobilities. Overall, based on the concepts of embodied communication' and an extended body, the results of this study provide new perspectives on micro-mobilities in human geography, enriching the dynamics of the relationship between cities and bodies. First, it re-examines the dichotomy between health and disease as a dynamic relational process by understanding the relationship between humans and viruses from a geographic perspective so that health study pays attention to the dynamics of other elements in the relational network. Second, the findings also expand the connotation and application of the concept of the 'extended body,' enriching the understanding of the dynamic relationship between the body and the city, and revealing the interactions between macro-socio-cultural politics and micro-body behavioral practices in the context of viral pandemics. Viewing the relational nature and attributes of the city through the prism of microbial mobility, draws our attention towards how a city is formed through connections between human and nonhuman matter and exhibits that this relational space is constantly fluid. This turn of thinking, which reflects the connotations and extents of space in a network-nested manner, has inspired geographers to pay attention to the complex network of relationships between people and spaces, where humans, microbes, and cities are seen as a collection of complex relationships. Therefore, the object of urban governance is not limited to humanity but should also be concerned with other nonhuman matters, and the relationships generated between people and nonhuman matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microbes have consistently coexisted with humans and have profoundly influenced their daily practices. Accompanied by the new materialists' rethinking of the ontology and epistemology of nonhuman matter, and based on the 'Object Oriented Ontology' proposed by Harman, this paper attempt to reinterpret the dynamic relationship between viruses, human bodies, and cities in the process of movement. By reinterpreting the communication patterns between human bodies and viruses, as well as the topological networks between human bodies and cities, this study aimed to reveal the biosocial attributes of cities from the perspective of transcending anthropocentrism." The findings indicate that (1) symptoms and attitudes towards viruses are embodied communication processes between the human body and the virus and that the outcome of embodied communication is influenced by temporal and spatial dimensions. This finding contributes to the reshaping of the humanity-virus relationship, prompting humanity to value the agency of viruses and to confront how viruses coexist and cohabit in the human body and urban spaces; (2) The mobilities of viruses cross boundaries and scales between a human body and cities. By focusing on the mobilities of viruses between extended bodies to explore the interactions between bodies and cities, this study reveals the mobilities and biosocial properties of the city; that is, the city is viewed as a topological biosocial network that transcends boundaries. Using the mask as an example, this study reveals how the extended body affects and alters material connections–that is, how social, policy, and cultural meanings are embedded in the construction and reconstruction of urban topological networks–and how the network of relationships attached to the body creates connections to better cope with the impacts of viral mobilities. Overall, based on the concepts of embodied communication' and an extended body, the results of this study provide new perspectives on micro-mobilities in human geography, enriching the dynamics of the relationship between cities and bodies. First, it re-examines the dichotomy between health and disease as a dynamic relational process by understanding the relationship between humans and viruses from a geographic perspective so that health study pays attention to the dynamics of other elements in the relational network. Second, the findings also expand the connotation and application of the concept of the 'extended body,' enriching the understanding of the dynamic relationship between the body and the city, and revealing the interactions between macro-socio-cultural politics and micro-body behavioral practices in the context of viral pandemics. Viewing the relational nature and attributes of the city through the prism of microbial mobility, draws our attention towards how a city is formed through connections between human and nonhuman matter and exhibits that this relational space is constantly fluid. This turn of thinking, which reflects the connotations and extents of space in a network-nested manner, has inspired geographers to pay attention to the complex network of relationships between people and spaces, where humans, microbes, and cities are seen as a collection of complex relationships. Therefore, the object of urban governance is not limited to humanity but should also be concerned with other nonhuman matters, and the relationships generated between people and nonhuman matters.

In this paper, we foreground the bodies of students and academics in studies of the internationalisation of higher education (IHE) and consider how internationalisation processes are shaped by embodiment and the geographies of (em)placement. Over the past 20 years, IHE has been extensively discussed within academic and policy circles. Such accounts have often been dominated by macro-level concerns. Within these discourses, the international mobility of students and academics have been a central focus. Although scholars within the social sciences are increasingly attentive to the social, cultural, and political dimensions of IHE, there has been little explicit discussion of bodies and the ways in which international mobilities are corporeal, involving in place/out of placeness and the politics and policies governing embodied (im)mobilities. This paper has two main objectives mapping on to two substantive sections. The first is to highlight the importance of the body within recent geographical scholarship and to juxtapose this with a notable absence within IHE research. The second is to consider where the body is present (explicitly or otherwise) in the bountiful literature on IHE and to draw out the meanings of this, arguing that paying attention to bodies exposes the (re)production of exclusionary hierarchies. The paper contributes to a growing corpus of work on the body within geography and extends critical geographies of the internationalisation of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we build on Adey, Budd and Hubbard's 2007 'Flying Lessons' paper by proposing four trajectories – bodies, infrastructures, technologies and disruptions – along which future research may follow for aeromobility studies. Since 'Flying Lessons', concerns for aviation have spread and developed into new areas beyond the experience of the individual air-passenger, but they have also remained somewhat disparate. Our article seeks to synthesise, trace and evaluate these shifts, and to draw out their interconnections, inter-referentialisms and contradictions. We envision a future geographies of flying that is far more entangled and attuned to aeromobilities' ambiguous relations, both human and more-than-human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the gendered dynamics of revolutionary movements through a focus on women's bodies as tools of resistance and protest. In the Myanmar Spring Revolution, gendered relations of power articulate with military authority to engender both women's activism and military responses. To maintain power, the Myanmar military have sought to regulate women's behaviour – and quell the protest – through attention to women's bodies, sexuality, and reproductive potential. In response, women activists have mobilised against both state control and the violation of women's bodies in imaginative and transgressive ways, using their bodies as well as gendered artefacts to subvert patriarchal and military norms. This analysis shows how women's bodies constitute both the material object of protest – in the virtual and physical spheres – and the subject of resistance, aiming to challenge gendered logics. It means that the gendered body must be taken seriously in studies on revolutions and protests. The integral yet historically overlooked role of women in Myanmar's revolutionary movements necessitates a gender-conscious analytical lens to fully comprehend the transformative potential and the power dynamics of such upheavals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Often seen as the ushers of modernization in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. company California-Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC), which became Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) in 1944 used a well-crafted public relations programme to present itself as a ‘partner’ in Saudi Arabia. Through archival and published material, this paper uses three lenses (environment; minds and bodies; homes) to unpack the different policies implemented by CASOC/Aramco towards its Saudi hosts and employees. First, the active greening of the Saudi desert extended a form of environmental determinism in which the making of a productive landscape at the hands of U.S. experts would create a hospitable environment. This productive landscape would supposedly influence and shape the Saudi man. Secondly, the Saudi man’s mind and body were targeted through training programmes which aimed to shape the Saudi employee into an ideal worker. Lastly, the modern Saudi house, funded by Aramco, was crafted as the ultimate symbol of development and progress. Establishing the Home Ownership Program (HOP) in 1951, Aramco sought to use housing as a tool for development in the same manner that it did with the environment. Thus, using these lenses, the narrative below unravels Aramco’s carefully curated but fraught narrative of ‘partnership’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boujemâa Hebaz (1943–1981), a Black and Amazigh professor at Mohammed V University, was forcibly disappeared in 1981. This article reads the irresolution of his case against the background of exclusion and amnesia that surrounds the fate of Black and Amazigh people in southeast/southwest Morocco. I argue that Hebaz's case reflects a wider history of absence, disappearance, and discrimination that impacts Black Amazigh Moroccans. Hebaz straddled identities that were simply disregarded throughout the Years of Lead (1956–1999). When the Moroccan police kidnapped Hebaz in April 1981, they were aware that he was from the southeast, an area that is not only predominantly Amazigh and Black but a region that had already been turned into a large prison for political detainees. The presence of several notorious secret prisons further exacerbated the region's territorial marginalization and disconnection from the rest of Morocco. This fact would later be officially acknowledged in the final Equity and Reconciliation Commission's (ERC) report and recommendations. Drawing on interviews, authentic materials, ERC reports, and other sources, the article demonstrates how Hebaz's absence is enmeshed in racism, territorial marginalization, and historical amnesia in Morocco. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Contemporary diet culture is detrimental to many Western men and women, though women are disproportionately impacted. This results in poor body image, low self‐esteem, and unhealthy lifestyles. Christian discourse is not immune to the influence of diet culture, with many popular Christian pastors and authors adopting this paradigm and seeking to align it with a Christian worldview. When an understanding of a human being as an anthropological duality is brought to bear on the issue of diet culture, a more consistently Christian anthropology can resource a healthier view of the embodied self and provide resources for a robust Christian response to diet culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ethical value of artistic artifacts in challenging the unequal valuation of working bodies with a focus on the contemporary art exhibition 'Useless bodies?' by Danish artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. Drawing on Judith Butler's work and posthuman theory, particularly Braidotti's contributions, the paper argues that this exhibition exemplifies how art can foster an ethics of interdependency, one that both critiques dynamics of misrecognition and imagines alternative futures. Furthermore, the paper proposes that this affirmative and critical ethics provides theoretical and methodological foundations for work and organization studies, prompting new questions about the significance of embodiment, esthetics, and artifacts for conducting (ethical) research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to clarify law enforcement functions, the article analyzes the provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine, Laws of Ukraine: «On National Security of Ukraine», «On the Legal Regime of Martial Law», «On the Defense of Ukraine», «On Military-Civil Administrations», Decree of the President of Ukraine. About the Comprehensive strategic plan for the reform of law enforcement agencies as part of the security and defense sector of Ukraine for 2023-2027 and scientific opinions, the category «law enforcement function of the state» was investigated. It was established that in the Ukrainian state there is a significant number of law enforcement agencies, as well as other state agencies, which, in addition to the performance of the main tasks, are entrusted with the performance of certain law enforcement functions. Attention is drawn to the fact that legislative acts in general do not provide a final idea of which bodies should be considered law enforcement. Attention is drawn to the fact that after February 24, 2022, Ukraine was subjected to full-scale military aggression by the Russian Federation, as a result of which a martial law regime was introduced in the country, which provides for a special legal regime and which limited the constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens, and the law enforcement functions of the state, its law enforcement officers bodies was significantly expanded in order to ensure national security, territorial integrity of the state. It was established that under the influence of an external factor, namely military aggression, the law enforcement internal function of the state underwent significant changes, which in turn affected the activities of all state bodies, including law enforcement agencies. The conclusions emphasize that the lack of a normative definition of the system of law enforcement bodies affects the implementation of law enforcement functions, inhibits the activity of law enforcement bodies, which in general negatively affects the law enforcement function of the state, and therefore the state needs to define the system of law enforcement bodies, which in general will have a positive effect on the implementation of law enforcement functions of the state. Thus, the author's vision of the law enforcement function is given in the article and the author's recognition of the concept of «law enforcement function of the state» is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pornography organizes bodies in ways that reproduce, challenge, or possibly even change norms of gender and sexuality. In this paper, we explore the gendered organization of pornography, responding to a lack of research on this issue. The study engages in rhetorical and queer listening to investigate feminist pornography, analyzing audio stories produced by an all-female sex-tech company that creates pornography for women through a female gaze. Drawing on literature on gendered organizing, the study shows how the female gaze in feminist pornography organizes bodies in sexual scripts. Furthermore, an application of the concept of happy objects illuminates the complex embodied and entangled relations between sexual subjects and objects of desire. Finally, we demonstrate how, despite a shift from a male to a female gaze, feminist pornography is still prone to the reproduction of heteronormative gender stereotypes. The paper thereby outlines potentials as well as challenges for the (re)organization of bodies in feminist pornography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the everyday policing processes surrounding men's bodily grooming and white-collar masculinities in Japan. Amidst increasing scrutiny of men's bodies, research has highlighted how men understand their grooming in relation to masculinities privileged by class, race, and sexuality. Less is understood, however, about men's experiences of everyday policing processes surrounding grooming. Japanese white-collar cultures where good grooming stands for professionalism provide fruitful contexts to address these gaps. Interviews with 33 socially privileged white-collar men in Tokyo demonstrate how participants understand grooming vis-à-vis masculine ideals of professional competency. Participants are particularly conscious of scrutiny from superiors, colleagues, and subordinates. While past scholarship has often overlooked the vulnerability of privileged men's positions, for white-collar men in Japan, being subject to often cruel policing processes threatens their place on gendered hierarchies. Thus, I argue that even for privileged men, policing of their grooming presents real costs to their hegemonic status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singapore's labor-migration regime has come under much scrutiny for the ways in which it unequally positions employers vis-à-vis their migrant "workers." One domestic worker, Rosamie, described the work permit she was issued as a "curse," as it bound her to her employers as property, leaving her vulnerable to exploitation and violence. Drawing on ethnographic research, this article argues that multiscalar geographies of bodily (dis)possession are produced by Singapore's labor-migration regime, which shape migrant domestic workers' everyday lives. By engaging directly with the concepts of possession and dispossession, this article reveals the ways in which migrant domestic workers are themselves rendered bodily possessions in Singapore; with the state, employers, employment agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and ghosts all involved in creating this dynamic. Indeed, as I demonstrate, the permanence, freedoms, and authority of both employers and (shelter-based) ghosts stood in stark contrast to the disposability, unfreedom, and powerlessness that domestic workers (particularly those residing in shelters) often experienced and felt. I also explain how domestic workers' lack of autonomy and bodily (dis)possession was (re)produced at different geographic scales: within the nation, individual dwelling spaces, and the body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the emergence of ideas about corporeal hechos [facts] in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Caribbean. The establishment of facts around the human flesh in the early modern Caribbean and their circulation occurred in multiple social and cultural spaces but was prominent in the world of slave trading. This development depended on the creation of categories for the fixation of the flesh in the public discourse that appeared in governmental, judicial, and private records in locales in Europe and the Americas. At the same time, the development of this Caribbean tradition of facts required the circulation of these ideas and categories as inscribed in procedures of tacit knowledge related to bodies, practices that were evident in the work of slave-trading communities in the region. The creation of bodily facts emerged, in the end, from techniques that inscribed human bodies in accounts and transactions of all sorts moving across the Atlantic.

Special issue 'The Immune System, Immunity and Immune Logics: Troubling Fixed Boundaries and (Re)conceptualizing Relations', guest edited by Andrea Ford and Julia Swallow.

This perspective considers the forensic examination of deceased bodies via the medico‐legal autopsy. It is argued that the decisions we make about what we do with, and to, deceased bodies and body parts is, and should be, limited by the need to treat bodies with dignity and respect. The treatment of parts of bodies has been explored in bioethics, substantially due to organ retention scandals bringing this to the public and political attention. But these cases—although important—represent extremes. This perspective therefore focuses on routine death investigations and the extent to which scientific method should be limited because of the competing interests in the deceased body and its treatment. It is argued that how we treat bodies/body parts matters because they represent once‐living people with contexts, histories, and relationships. They had, and perhaps still have, value as human persons. As humans, we share complex relationships and have different views and interpretations of what our duties are to each other. Dignity and respect aid by providing baseline standards, and are reflected as such in professional codes and regulations. However, the system is imbued with sufficient discretion that it is impossible to achieve consistency of standards or practice. This means that the treatment of deceased bodies in forensic science will differ substantially depending on both context and the practitioners involved. This article is categorized under:Forensic Medicine > Medicolegal Death Investigation Systems [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]