The Book of Touch

This book puts a finger on the nerve of culture by delving into the social life of touch, our most elusive yet most vital sense. From the tortures of the Inquisition to the corporeal comforts of modernity, and from the tactile therapies of Asian medicine to the virtual tactility of cyberspace, The Book of Touch offers excursions into a sensory territory both foreign and familiar. How are masculine and feminine identities shaped by touch? What are the tactile experiences of the blind, or the autistic? How is touch developed differently across cultures? What are the boundaries of pain and pleasure? Is there a politics of touch? Bringing together classic writings and new work, this is an essential guide for anyone interested in the body, the senses and the experiential world.

Constance Classen is in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal.

Fingerprints: Writing About Touch--Constance Classen * Contact--Constance Classen * Tactile Communication--Ruth Finnegan * The Social Skin: Culture and Tactility--David Howes * Handling Children: To Touch or Not to Touch?--Anthony Synnott * The American Touch: Tactile Imagery in American Religion and Politics--David Chidester * Pleasure--Constance Classen* The Pleasures of Touch--Yi Fu Tuan * Homely Pleasures: The Pursuit of Comfort in the Eighteenth Century--John E. Crowley * Bourgeois Love: Mabel Loomis Todd--Peter Gay * Desiring Touch in Sartre and Beavoir--Penelope Deutscher * Pain--Constance Classen * The Language of Pain in India--Judy Pugh * The Tortures of the Inquisition and the Invention of Modern Guilt--Ariel Glucklich * Sex, Pain and the Marquis de Sade--David B. Morris * Primate Experiments: Harry Harlow and the Technology of Love--Donna Harraway * Male Bonding--Constance Classen * The Men's House: Touching and Wrestling Among Mehinaku Men--Thomas Gregor * The Imperial Touch: Schooling Male Bodies in Colonial India--E.D. Tyndale-Biscoe and Satadru Sen * Sexuality and the Drill: The Body Reconstructed in the Military Academy--Klaus Theweleit * The Dying Kiss: Intimacy and Gender in the Trenches of World War I--Santanu Das * Women's Touch--Constance Classen * Nu Shu: Female Writing in China--Wang Ping * Sarak's Crisis: Childbirth and Weaning Among the Inuit--Jean Briggs * Feminine Tactics: Designing Women in the Eighteenth Century--Constance Classen * Lacemaker and Laundress: Working Women in Early-Twentieth-Century Paris--Madeleine Henrey * Control--Constance Classen * Biblical Touchstones--Elizabeth Sauer * On Medieval Manners--Norbert Elias * Touch in the Museum--Constance Classen * Bourgeois Perception: The Gaze and the Contaminating Touch--Peter Stallybrass * In a Victorian Prison: Privations of the Flesh--Philip Priestly * Uncommon Touch--Constance Classen * Phantom Touch in "The Case of George Dedlow"--S. Weir Mitchell * Autistic Touch and the Squeeze Machine--Temple Grandin * Rainfall and the Blind Body--John Hull * Tactilism--F.T. Marinetti * Visceral Perception--Drew Leder* Touch Therapies--Constance Classen * Magical Healing: The King's Touch--Keith Thomas * A Touch of Danger: The Bedside Manners of the Eighteenth-Century Physician--Roy Porter * Ayurvedic Medicine and the History of Massage--S.V. Govindan * Breathing Spaces: Quijong and Healing--Nancy Chen * The Golden Age of Electrotherapy--Carolyn Thomas de la Pena * Tactile Technologies--Constance Classen * Modernist Fictions of Speed--Sara Danius * Make it Snuggle in the Palm: The Commodification of Touch--Roy Sheldon and Egmont Arens * Grasping the Image: How Photographs are Handled--Elizabeth Edwards * Digital Touch--Mark Paterson * Spacemaking: Experiences of a Virtual Body--Susan Kozel
Fingerprints: Writing About Touch--Constance Classen * Contact--Constance Classen * Tactile Communication--Ruth Finnegan * The Social Skin: Culture and Tactility--David Howes * Handling Children: To Touch or Not to Touch?--Anthony Synnott * The American Touch: Tactile Imagery in American Religion and Politics--David Chidester * Pleasure--Constance Classen* The Pleasures of Touch--Yi Fu Tuan * Homely Pleasures: The Pursuit of Comfort in the Eighteenth Century--John E. Crowley * Bourgeois Love: Mabel Loomis Todd--Peter Gay * Desiring Touch in Sartre and Beavoir--Penelope Deutscher * Pain--Constance Classen * The Language of Pain in India--Judy Pugh * The Tortures of the Inquisition and the Invention of Modern Guilt--Ariel Glucklich * Sex, Pain and the Marquis de Sade--David B. Morris * Primate Experiments: Harry Harlow and the Technology of Love--Donna Harraway * Male Bonding--Constance Classen * The Men's House: Touching and Wrestling Among Mehinaku Men--Thomas Gregor * The Imperial Touch: Schooling Male Bodies in Colonial India--E.D. Tyndale-Biscoe and Satadru Sen * Sexuality and the Drill: The Body Reconstructed in the Military Academy--Klaus Theweleit * The Dying Kiss: Intimacy and Gender in the Trenches of World War I--Santanu Das * Women's Touch--Constance Classen * Nu Shu: Female Writing in China--Wang Ping * Sarak's Crisis: Childbirth and Weaning Among the Inuit--Jean Briggs * Feminine Tactics: Designing Women in the Eighteenth Century--Constance Classen * Lacemaker and Laundress: Working Women in Early-Twentieth-Century Paris--Madeleine Henrey * Control--Constance Classen * Biblical Touchstones--Elizabeth Sauer * On Medieval Manners--Norbert Elias * Touch in the Museum--Constance Classen * Bourgeois Perception: The Gaze and the Contaminating Touch--Peter Stallybrass * In a Victorian Prison: Privations of the Flesh--Philip Priestly * Uncommon Touch--Constance Classen * Phantom Touch in "The Case of George Dedlow"--S. Weir Mitchell * Autistic Touch and the Squeeze Machine--Temple Grandin * Rainfall and the Blind Body--John Hull * Tactilism--F.T. Marinetti * Visceral Perception--Drew Leder* Touch Therapies--Constance Classen * Magical Healing: The King's Touch--Keith Thomas * A Touch of Danger: The Bedside Manners of the Eighteenth-Century Physician--Roy Porter * Ayurvedic Medicine and the History of Massage--S.V. Govindan * Breathing Spaces: Quijong and Healing--Nancy Chen * The Golden Age of Electrotherapy--Carolyn Thomas de la Pena * Tactile Technologies--Constance Classen * Modernist Fictions of Speed--Sara Danius * Make it Snuggle in the Palm: The Commodification of Touch--Roy Sheldon and Egmont Arens * Grasping the Image: How Photographs are Handled--Elizabeth Edwards * Digital Touch--Mark Paterson * Spacemaking: Experiences of a Virtual Body--Susan Kozel