Body praxis - illness as a biological weapon
Authors
Galvin, Anne
Issue Date
2001
Degree
BA (Hons) Anthropology
Publisher
Dublin Business School
Rights holder
Rights
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Abstract
This Final Year Project is an ethnographic account of how a particular section of society, in the town of Kilrush in the West of Ireland, have developed a very unusual, morbid attitude towards health and their own bodies and of how they use this attitude as a type of biological weapon against society and, ultimately, themselves. This work focuses, primarily, on the work of Professor Talcott Parsons and his notion of illness as a form of deviance. It attempts to discover whether these people are truly exhibiting signs of deviant behaviour or, in fact, complete compliance with societal expectations and mores. How this behaviour manifests itself, and the language used by these people, are central to this work. They can show us to what extent this morbid phenomenon has engulfed these people's lives and altered their notion of themselves and their bodies forever.