Gili Hammer

Hammer, Gili. 2017. Blind Women See Gender: Interpretive Tactics within the Consumer Culture. In Gender and Capitalism: An Anthology. Olmert, Dana, Rona. Brayer-Garb, Orna Kazin, and Yofi Tirosh, eds. Pp. 208-231. Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute Press and Hakibbutz Hameuchad. (Hebrew)

Hammer, Gili. 2017. Performing the Sensory Body within a Tandem Cycling Group: Social Dialogues between Blindness and Sight. In Seeking the Senses in Physical Cultures: Sensual Scholarship in Action. Andrew C. Sparkes, ed. Pp. 101-119. New York; London: Routledge.

Hammer, Gili. 2015. Ethnographies of Blindness: The Method of Sensory Knowledge. In Disability and Qualitative Inquiry: Methods for Rethinking an Ableist World. Ronald J. Berger, and Laura Lorenz, eds. Pp. 63-77. Burlington: Ashgate.
*Review: Loseke, Donileen R. 2017. Disability and Qualitative Inquiry: Methods for Rethinking an Ableist World. Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 46 (1):
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0094306116681813e

This article focuses on blind women’s negotiation of their hyper-visibility and invisibility, and their encounters with the gaze operated upon them as blind and women. Based on interviews made with blind women in Israel, the essay employs the anthropological methodology of life history/life story narrative, focusing on the stories derived from three women’s narratives, aiming at providing a close reading of blind women’s experience of the visual. Addressing the ways blind women verbalize their seemingly “Panoptic” condition of living in a state of permanent, heightened visibility absent the ability to return the gaze, I argue for blind women’s awareness of and active responses to the gaze, analyzing the ways they do not simply serve as passive spectacles, but rather “talk” (or stare) back at the gaze they encounter, manipulating “staring relations” (Garland-Thomson 2009). Presenting the complexities inherent in the intersections of gender, disability, and the visual field, the essay integrates the scholarships of feminist disability studies and feminist analysis of the gaze, offering an opportunity to examine the similarities and differences between the terms “gaze” and “staring,” contemplating visuality as a human condition, and enriching feminist “theory of agency” (McNay 2000).

This article examines the contradictions inherent in blind women’s appearance management. Based on an anthropological analysis of interviews with 40 blind women in Israel, the article argues that while serving as a valuable tool within stigma management, appearance management operates simultaneously as a site of rigorous discipline of the body in an effort to comply with feminine visual norms, and as a vehicle for the expression and reception of sensory pleasure. It argues for the significant role of blind women’s appearance in negotiating normalcy and rejecting the normative, stigmatizing script writ- ten for them as disabled-blind-women. By studying the role of appearance in the lives of women who do not rely on sight as a central mode of perception, the article addresses the complicated position of blind women in visual culture and challenges the traditional ocular focus of the study of feminine identity and gender performance

Power relations and the researcher's gaze are extremely relevant to the research of blind people, yet rarely documented. Based on three years of anthropological research with blind women in Israel, this paper discusses the methodological considerations raised by the ethnography of blindness and the position of a sighted-woman-researcher in the field. Employing a "reflexive interpretation," the analysis explores the ways in which research with blind participants raises specific questions regarding researcher- researched power relations and social interactions, offering a fresh approach to the discussion of the researcher's "gaze" and knowledge gathered in the field. Focusing on sight and blindness within the research process, the article addresses "sensory knowledge" raised in the field, offering a nuanced account of the ethnographic inquiry as a sensory endeavor, promoting a dialogue among disability studies, anthropology of the senses, feminist disability studies, and qualitative methodology

Focusing on social dialogue and the sensory body within a tandem cycling group pairing blind and sighted riders, this article addresses the creation of a “dialogical performance” (Conquergood, 1985), arguing for the ways integrated tandem cycling challenges distinct binary categories, bodily hierarchies, and constructs of social otherness. Based on one year of fieldwork conducted during cycling, I examine the form of “togetherness” this activity creates, as well as the “intersensory” aspects of this activity, discussing the ways it allows group members to critically reflect upon their bodily and sensory identities, and to re-embody sight as an active and somatic sense. Contributing to and integrating disability ethnography, anthropology of the senses, and the sociology of sporting bodies, I examine the ways this mutual experience enriches the meanings of both blindness and sight, and challenges rigid definitions of and boundaries around the senses, social identities, and bodily functions.

Examining the mechanisms of medical knowledge transfer, this article addresses the ways nonvisual senses are employed within medical training, asking about the role of sound, touch, and movement in transmitting knowledge of the body. Based on a 10-month ethnography in a medical massage training course for blind students, the article examines the ways sensory medical knowledge is transferred in this setting. I discuss the multisensory characteristics of medical knowledge transfer, and the dual process inherent in this sensory pedagogy, in which senses such as touch and hearing undergo medicalization and scientification, while medicine enters the realm of the sensorial. Contributing to emerging research of nonvisual senses in medical training, this case study allows rethinking larger processes of medical knowing, challenging the dominancy of vision as the means of scientific knowledge transmission, and exposing the multisensorial elements of medical perception, and learning in general.

This article (based on a paper presented at the NADP 2018 conference) discusses the social encounters taking place within the context of integrated dance education programs partnering students with and without disabilities, taught by teachers with and without disabilities. The paper is based on a larger anthropological research focusing on teachers’ and students’ practices, knowledge, and attitudes towards disability and bodily difference in integrated dance and is based on fieldwork conducted in projects of integrated dance in Israel and the US.
The activities I discuss here require participants with and without disabilities having a shared understanding and implementation of concepts such as rhythm, partnering, and pacing, which, in this context, are taught, learned and expressed through multiple modes. These encounters challenge the taken-for-grantedness of the ways in which one performs with his/her body, creating performances that provoke a critical understanding of what a body can do and what disability is. The research reveals the ways integrated dance delivers complicated messages about disability, embodiment, and dance, and its unique capacity to embrace and include cultural binaries and differences within the same social and physical encounter. In other words, integrated dance education is a context that enhances disability experience, and can be considered as an inclusive educational practice. This enhancement is expressed by 1. Practices of study and exploration 2. A development of participants’ kinaesthetic awareness, and 3. A change in perspectives regarding the meaning of disability.