ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways that modified bodies are subject to social control by claims makers in the medical, psychiatric and media arenas and the counter claims making activities of body modification practitioners who resist the way that their bodies and practices have been negatively framed. Using frame analysis and drawing on data from an ethnographic study of practitioners of flesh hook pulling, the chapter highlights a few of the myriad ways in which bodies are a communicative resource in social problems work and the relationship among bodies, deviance, social control and society more generally. Framing is a useful theoretical concept in that it illustrates how claims makers encourage a particular perspective or moral vision of an issue. Body modifications have been interpreted by practitioners in terms of self-actualization; self-expression; identity construction, personal status passage, spirituality and healing; lifestyle choice; and self-help.
