In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification

Very interesting read. I recommend it for people interested in some Body Mod history

Great book on body modification.

Just what we needed. Thanks,

The general tone of this book is very much like a second rate graduate thesis. It manages to be blandly academic in terms of style yet with none of the rigor one would associate with a decent sociology text. For example the author appears to have interviewed a grand total of about five people. Also none of the people interviewed are particularly interesting characters; the focus seems to be people recovering from sexual abuse or people affirming their sexuality by getting branded.Now I don't have a problem with this phenomenon, I think its pretty interesting but If you want to read that kind of thing you can find tons of it free on Bmezine. Bmezine, has tones of experience stories like this, actual pictures and a means to contact people actually involved.If you scrape away the interviews all you have left are the authors opinions about modification and a few cheap sudo cyberpunk photo's.If you want a good read about body modification read the modern primitives re search title and the industrial culture handbook. I don't really have any good academic recommendations but I bet with a bit of research you can find something a lot better than this.

This book does a great job of opening up the lives of body modifiers and situating them clearly in a complex cultural context. Victoria Pitts beautifully balances her own qualitative analysis with the voices of those she interviewed. This book is accessible while still delving deeply into social theory. Pitts neither romanticizes nor objectifies body modifiers. Instead she honestly explores their narratives, from "reclaiming," to "queer," to "modern primitive" to "cyberpunk." I'd recommend this book to any reader interested in cultural studies, body modification, social theory, deviance, the construction of identity, or the politics of bodies.

This claims to be an academic study of body modification. When I started reading it, I thought I was reading something published by The Onion. As I read more, it seemed as though it was really an academic study. Reading even more, I began to see that this was due only to its form, which is accurately patterned after the learned writings of academe. I still can't decide whether this book is a very clever parody of academic work, or a real report of very un-clever academic activity.After 20-30 minutes of reading this potentially interesting book, I gave up in boredom and disbelief. It has nice pictures of cutting-edge "far out" people with interesting tattoos, piercings, etc., but other than being good for a few chuckles, the text is a near-total waste.

poor quality printing with very few photo's and what they were was not up to today's standards

Have only just received this book, so still reading it. Very intelligent and well approached.