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Title Purposeful pain : the bioarchaeology of intentional suffering / Susan Guise Sheridan, Lesley A. Gregoricka, editors
Published Cham, Switzerland : Springer, [2020]
©2020

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Description 1 online resource (281 pages)
Series Bioarchaeology and social theory
Bioarchaeology and social theory
Contents Foreword -- Chapter 1. A Bioarchaeology of Purposeful Pain -- Part 1. No Pain, No Gain: Ideals of Beauty and Success -- Chapter 2. Fashionable but Debilitating Diseases: Tuberculosis Past and Present -- Chapter 3. Bound to Please: The Shaping of Female Beauty, Gender Theory, Structural Violence, and Bioarchaeological Investigations -- Chapter 4. Meaningful Play, Meaningful Pain: Learning the Purpose of Injury in Sport -- Part 2. Rituals of Pain and Practice -- Chapter 5. Pious Pain: Repetitive Motion Disorders from Excessive Genuflection at a Byzantine Jerusalem Monastery -- Chapter 6. Bioarchaeology of Therapeutic Tattoos: The Case of the Iceman -- Chapter 7. Intentionally Modified Teeth Among the Vikings -- Was it Painful? -- Chapter 8. "I Thought I Was Going to Die": Examining Experiences of Childbirth Pain Through Bioarchaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives -- Chapter 9. The Purposeful Pain of Drug Addiction: A Biocultural Approach -- Part 3. The Politics of Pain: Power and Social Control -- Chapter 10. The Politics of Pain: Gaining Status and Maintaining Order Through Ritual Combat and Warfare -- Chapter 11. Pain as Power: Pain as a Mechanism for Social Control -- Chapter 12. Binding, Wrapping, Constricting, and Constraining the Head: A Consideration of Cranial Vault Modification and the Pain of Infants -- Chapter 13. Performing Identity and Revealing Structures of Violence Through Purposeful Pain -- Index
Summary Pain is an evolutionary and adaptive mechanism to prevent harm to an individual. Beyond this, how it is defined, expressed, and borne is dictated culturally. Thus, the study of pain requires a holistic approach crossing cultures, disciplines, and time. This volume explores how and why pain-inducing behaviors are selected, including their potential to demonstrate individuality, navigate social hierarchies, and express commitment to an ideal. It also explores how power dynamics affect individual choice, at times requiring self-induced suffering. Taking bioanthropological and bioarchaeological approaches, this volume focuses on those who purposefully seek pain to show that, while often viewed as "exotic," the pervasiveness of pain-inducing practices is more normative than expected. Theory and practice are employed to re-conceptualize pain as a strategic path towards achieving broader individual and societal goals. Past and present motivations for self-inflicted pain, its socio-political repercussions, and the physical manifestations of repetitive or long-term pain inducing behaviors are examined. Chapters span geographic and temporal boundaries and a wide variety of activities to illustrate how purposeful pain is used by individuals for personal expression and manipulated by political powers to maintain the status quo. This volume reveals how bioarchaeology illuminates paleopathology, how social theory enhances bioarchaeology, and how ethnography benefits from a longer temporal perspective
Bibliography Includes bibliographic references and index
Notes online version; title from ebook title page (EBSCOhost, viewed October 29, 2021)
Subject Pain -- Social aspects -- History
Human remains (Archaeology)
Human remains (Archaeology)
Pain -- Social aspects
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
Author Sheridan, Susan Guise. editor
Gregoricka, Lesley A., editor
Martin, Debra L. (Professor of Biological Anthropology), author of foreword
ISBN 9783030321819
3030321819
9783030321826
3030321827
9783030321833
3030321835