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Key Words
medical anthropology, bioethics, technology
Abstract
The technological ability to alter biology, along with the social conditions and cultural expectations that enable such transformations, is spawning a variety of techniques that augment bodily forms and functions. These techniques, collectively known as enhancement technologies, aim to improve human characteristics, including appearance and mental or physical functioning, often beyond what is 'normal' or necessary for life and well-being. Humans have always modified their bodies. What distinguishes these techniques is that bodies and selves become the objects of improvement work, unlike previous efforts in modernity to achieve progress through social and political institutions. There are profound effects on sociality and subjectivity. This chapter reviews analytical approaches through which researchers have attempted to illuminate the practices, moral and economic reasoning, cultural assumptions and institutional contexts constituting enhancements, framing the discussion by examining the concept of the normal body. Examples from cosmetic, neurological and genetic enhancements will illustrate.
INTRODUCTION
Some scholars suggest bodies as they now exist are an arbitrary, evolutionary solution to issues of mobility, communication, and functioning in the environment (Hockenberry 2001). If this is true, the solution we have may not be the best one-bodies are imperfect, variable, and in a state of constant degeneration and needed repair. This state of affairs may be changing as innovations in biomedicine and bioengineering make it possible to alter biological form and function. A belief in the technological ability to improve on the body's natural capabilities along with cultural assumptions about what is considered to be "deficient," "normal," or "enhanced" have led to a variety of body-altering techniques that not only repair or replace functions, but may go beyond what is typically considered therapeutic medical intervention. In essence, the ability exists to redesign the human body according to particular needs and desires, altering or building in new features.
This review considers how anthropologists and others have viewed these so-named enhancement technologies. There is no coherent body of literature; rather, works from anthropological and feminist studies of the body, social studies of science, technology, and medicine, bioethics studies, and disability studies explore aspects of body alterations and the cultural assumptions that underlie them. Also, the array of technologies are not yet well represented. There are numerous examples of cosmetic...