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Body organ trafficking

As a result of consumerism, the media, the tourist industry and global migration, people in most societies have changed the way they think about the body. The vulnerability of bodies is apparent within the context of globalization, illustrated by a rise in global organ-trafficking in which the human body is viewed as a pure commodity. It is mostly the poorest and the most disadvantaged people of the global South who sell their organs and other body tissues to affluent people in First World countries. In the UK, tens of thousands of people are on the waiting list for organ transplantation. Organ procurement is based on a voluntary system, where individuals choose to donate organs. There is more demand for the organs than supply in this process, and many people never receive the organ they need in order to survive. This has led to an increase in transplant tourism, where buyers from the UK, the USA and Europe travel to developing countries in search of affordable kidneys and other body parts.

Virtual bodies

Cyber-culture and new media technologies have expanded and extended the way the body looks and functions in the boundary between the real and virtual, as the human and the machine overlap and merge (this is explored more fully in Chapter 11). Since the internet has become a common public sphere of social interaction, networking and recreation, the constitution and definition of the body has become even more fluid in cyberspace. Interaction in the virtual world does not require physical presence. Through the mediated image of the self, humans communicate and create versions of their own bodies in this cyberspace. Virtual places, such as Second Life, free the body from its physical limitations, as it can be rewritten through an avatar or a visual representation of the user. In real life, humans encounter characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity and age, but in the virtual world the avatars transcend biological and social status variables. The global capitalist economy has also fuelled female sexual slavery, sexual tourism and the trafficking of women and children, especially from undeveloped countries. These exploited people provide examples of how bodies are shaped through technological, political, economic and cultural traditions in the modern global world.