Paper short abstract:

Blood Donation, the Body and the Self, draws on the findings from my thesis as a whole to argue for a link between the bio-medicalisation of the body and the creation of a self-ascribed “hierarchy of the self”; an idea that explains a new or developing relationship between society and the individuated body/self and blood .

Paper long abstract:

Blood Donation, the Body and the Self

this ethnography presents evidence from my fieldwork which supports and exposits the argument that changes have taken place in the giving relationship in late modernity that highlight the impact and sequelae of risk society and the dominance of biomedicine in relation to the management of blood donors and blood donation and the role of citizenship in relation to ensuring a clean and safe blood supply. The research also served to illustrate changes in blood donation and donor's relationship to the wider society ..This paper extends the scope of changes in blood donation, which enable further understanding of the changes identified in blood donation . It presents a variety of scenarios, illustrating changes in relation to the self and blood as a body part, using data from the fieldwork suggests changes to the blood donation relationship in the UK. Blood donors in this study began to talk about what happens to their blood after donation; it is this change and the understanding of the new life blood has after donation which is entering the donor consciousness. Being duty-bound to engage in donating pieces of the body, either in life or after death has created areas of academic interest as to how this commoditisation influences the understanding of the self and communal identity.

It turnsthe host of the gift, i.e. the body, and examines this new relationship between the body, society, blood and the self.