Bodies bathing other bodies

(to accompany lectures on "culture" or Marcel Mauss's Techniques of the body ([1936])

four ways to bathe a small child (with screen shots from the ethnographic movie Four Families with comments by Margaret Mead

M. Mead asks that one notes that the mother and the child have a tussle over the washcloth

Bathing a child, somewhere in Canada, in 1950

M. Mead asks that one notices how the mother holds the child with one hand "as if made or rubber"

Bathing a child, somewhere in India, in 1950

Bathing a child, somewhere in Japan, in 1950

M. Mead asks that one notices one possibly unique practice that allows a naked child to be in full body control with the naked body of an elderly woman (the grandmother, not the mother)

M. Mead asks that one notices that the mother does have hold the child firmly with her hands but controls it by voice.

Bathing a child, somewhere in France, in 1950

WHAT TO ASK:

Of the adult bathing the baby:
- who may bathe a baby?
- where and how?
- when and with whom?
- with what consequences (constraints on and openings for further action)?
Of the child:
- what does the child do while being bathed
- any evidence of doubt, resistance, exploration
Of the bathing technologies:
- contact with other body
- possibility for communication
  - 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.)