My apologies for cross posting. Much to my dismay, I have missed the deadline
for the Cooperation Column in the Anthropological Newsletter for March so I
am asking for help on the lists:

Ken Colson of West Valley College and Adrienne DeArmas of the National
Firearms Museum are planning to submit a proposal for a panel on The Body and
Policy (title but not topic subject to change) for the American
Anthropological Association (AAA) meetings in November 1996 in San Francisco.


At this time, we are looking for papers which address one of the themes for
the conference: new identities and new boundaries through the study of the
body. Policy can mean institutional policy: i.e. what determines psychotic
mutilations or culturally sanctioned mutilations (self cutting vs.
scarification, for instance); colonial policy (outlawing practices which mark
the body - the subject of Dr. Colson's research); governmental policy, school
policies, religious policy (as when religion is used as the justification for
body markings), etc. We would like to cover a wide range of policies (social,
economical, political, ideological) and hopefully a wide range of body
marking practices: tattooing, scarification, footbinding, genital
mutilations, labretifery, cranial deformations, branding, piercing, cosmetic
and dental surgeries. We are interested in a varied approach and as we feel
that much research in this subject area is being conducted outside of
anthropology, non-anthropologists are welcome too!

Please reply to Adrienne DeArmas offlist at [log in to unmask] with a paper
idea (abstract needed by March 15).