Ask of the carrying body: who may carry? how? when and with whom? with what consequences (constraints on and openings for further action)?
Ask of the carrier technologies used by the carrying body: what is being used? how are those produced and distributed?
two ways to carry a child while leaving the hands free | |||
allows one to do something in front | allows one to carry something on the back but may limit what can be done with the hands | ||
carrying the child on the hip without a carrier |
another way to carry the infant on the hip with a carrier that still requires one hand. Note that this is child who is carrying |
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on the back, with no other uses open for the hands (though the arm can be used to carry the bag) | on the shoulders leaving the hands free. In the west this carrying mode is strongly gendered: most pictures on a simple search are of men |
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And also ask: what about the body that is being carried?
As Margaret Mead once put it: "for the babies of each society wriggle in a slightly different way, and one learns from observing the differences" (Mead [1942] 2000: 2). By using the verb "wriggle" she suggests that she is not only talking about babies shaping their body but babies attempting to escape something uncomfortable (artificial, arbitrary, historically specific, etc.)