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).