ABSTRACT
It is common enough to refer to the importance of developing theory ‘through the body’ (e.g. Braidotti 2002; Butler 2004; Grosz 1994), but the body in question is rarely anchored in matters of life and death. As noted in the introduction to this book, where health issues are considered, interest tends to turn to reproduction, or those matters that concern body image, such as weight and eating disorders (e.g. Aapola et al. 2005; Brook 1999; Frost 2001; Howson 2005; Whelehan 2000). These are important, of course, but here is a general failure to go beyond this to the experience of the material body as a whole in health and illness in a changing societal landscape. As Anne Fausto-Sterling writes, ‘our bodies physically imbibe our culture’ (2005: 1495). In this chapter I argue that women’s lives have become entangled in a social and political economy that offers them seemingly endless liberatory possibilities, but actually positions them in complex and contradictory ways with significant implications for their health, as witnessed in the shifts in life expectancies and major causes of morbidity and mortality that will be discussed in Chapter 7.
