Abstract
This chapter draws out larger themes of the volume, demonstrating that one mechanism for constructing identity is through the experience, performance, and/or witnessing of pain. Gender identity, social status, power, and dedication to a principle can be expressed by the willing acceptance of pain as a marker of commitment. Indeed, many pain-inflicting practices are public, indicating the shared nature of the ordeal. These include the use of pain to express ideals of beauty and success, painful rituals associated with group membership, and the use of pain for social control. Self-improvement at the cost of considerable pain is examined in the early chapters, used by participants in the pursuit of increased intelligence, beauty, and status. The chapters that follow explore rituals of pain and practice to demonstrate religious devotion and piety, group inclusion, a marker of transition, and as a means of escape. The final chapters look at the politics of pain, with the desire to maintain status and exercise social control using the performance of self-inflicted pain and/or forced witnessing of said suffering. Throughout the volume, bioarchaeological, ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and paleopathological data in combination with synthetic social theories are used to address the biocultural and social costs and benefits of purposeful pain.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References Cited
Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture, and the body. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Brubaker, S. J., & Dillaway, H. E. (2009). Medicalization, natural childbirth and birthing experiences. Sociology Compass, 3(1), 31–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00183.x.
Cahill, H. A. (2001). Male appropriation and medicalization of childbirth: An historical analysis. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 33(3), 334–342. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2648.2001.01669.x.
Carty, V. (2005). Textual portrayals of female athletes: Liberation or nuanced forms of patriarchy? Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 26(2), 132–155.
Cummings, S. R., Ling, X., & Stone, K. (1997). Consequences of foot binding among older women in Beijing, China. American Journal of Public Health, 87(10), 1677–1679. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.87.10.1677.
Dunlop, D. G., McCabe, M., Evans, R., & Richmond, P. (1994). Ear piercing and children’s rights. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 308(6944), 1636–1637.
Farmer, P. (2004). An anthropology of structural violence. Current Anthropology, 45(3), 305–325.
Foucault, M. (1994[1973]). The birth of the clinic: An archaeology of medical perception. New York: Vintage Books.
Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191.
Gill, L. (1997). Creating citizens, making men: The military and masculinity in Bolivia. Cultural Anthropology, 12(4), 527–550. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1997.12.4.527.
Hunt, n. R. (1999). A colonial lexicon: Of birth ritual, medicalization, and mobility in the Congo. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kaw, E. (1993). Medicalization of racial features: Asian American women and cosmetic surgery. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 7(1), 74–89. https://doi.org/10.1525/maq.1993.7.1.02a00050.
Markusen, A. R. (1991). The rise of the gunbelt: The military remapping of industrial America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mendoza, Z. S. (2015). Exploring the Andean sensory model: Knowledge, memory, and the experience of pilgrimage. In M. Bull & J. P. Mitchell (Eds.), Ritual, performance and the senses (pp. 137–152). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Mendoza, Z. S. (2017). The musical walk to Qoyllor Rit’i: The senses and the concept of forgiveness in Cuzco, Peru. Latin American Music Review, 38(2), 128–149. https://doi.org/10.7560/lamr38202.
Parry, D. C. (2008). “We wanted a birth experience, not a medical experience”: Exploring Canadian Women’s Use of Midwifery. Health Care for Women International, 29(8–9), 784–806. https://doi.org/10.1080/07399330802269451.
Perlmutter, D. (2000). Miss America: Whose ideal? In P. Z. Brand (Ed.), Beauty matters (pp. 155–168). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Shaw, J. C. A. (2013). The medicalization of birth and midwifery as resistance. Health Care for Women International, 34(6), 522–536. https://doi.org/10.1080/07399332.2012.736569.
Stone, P. K. (2009). A history of western medicine, labor, and birth. In H. Selin (Ed.), Childbirth across cultures: Ideas and practices of pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum (pp. 41–53). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
Tung, T. A. (2014a). Agency: ‘Til death do us part? Inquiring about the agency of dead bodies from the ancient Andes. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 24(3), 437–452.
Tung, T. A. (2014b). Making warriors, making war: Violence and militarism in the Wari empire. In A. K. Scherer & J. Verano (Eds.), Embattled bodies, embattled places: War in pre-Columbian America (pp. 227–256). Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.
Werner, A., Isaksen, L. W., & Malterud, K. (2004). ‘I am not the kind of woman who complains of everything’: Illness stories on self and shame in women with chronic pain. Social Science & Medicine, 59(5), 1035–1045. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2003.12.001.
Whitehead, N. L. (2004). On the poetics of violence. In N. L. Whitehead (Ed.), Violence (pp. 55–77). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Young, K., White, P., & McTeer, W. (1994). Body talk: Male athletes reflect on sport, injury, and pain. Sociology of Sport Journal, 11(2), 175–194. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.11.2.175.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tung, T.A. (2020). Performing Identity and Revealing Structures of Violence Through Purposeful Pain. In: Sheridan, S.G., Gregoricka, L.A. (eds) Purposeful Pain. Bioarchaeology and Social Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32181-9_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32181-9_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-32180-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-32181-9
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)