Gender and Health Consumerism among Enslaved Virginians

Summary

This paper explores health consumerism of enslaved laborers in antebellum central Virginia. Health consumerism incorporates the modern sense of patients’ involvement in their own health care decisions and the degree of access enslaved African Americans had to resources that shaped their health and well-being experiences. To emphasize the multilayered nature of health and illness, this analysis engages Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes "three bodies model." The three elements comprising this model consist of 1. The individual body—the physical body and personal experience of the body, including the mind; 2. The social body— the body as it is socially represented in various symbolic and metaphorical forms; and 3) the body politic—regulation, surveillance, and control of bodies (both individual and collective) in reproduction and sexuality, work and leisure, and sickness.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Material Worlds: Archaeology, Consumption, and the Road to Modernity   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 162