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Related papers
Truly embodied sociology: marrying the social and the biological?
Sociological Review, 2003
This paper explores the relation between sociology and biology through an examination of issues relating to the sociology of the body, emotion and health. Arguments for a ‘biological’, and yet social, body are considered before developing a critique of work on the sociology of the biological body. It is argued that there are a number of difficulties with this latter project. Writers working in this area can be seen to have used rather emotional ploys to advance their promotion of a more ‘biologised’, or ‘material-corporeal’, account of the body, emotion and health. In addition though these writers eschew reductionist, naturalist, and dualist arguments, they nevertheless draw on studies that have some or all of these characteristics. Finally a variety of epistemological and methodological difficulties inherent in physiological analysis and in ‘interviewing’ the body are explored. It is concluded that we still remain near the ‘starting point’ of a sociology of the body that interrelates biology and sociology.
How useful is it to distinguish between the ‘social’ and the ‘physical’ body?
This essay is concerned with the utility of the influential distinction between ‘social’ and ‘physical’ body in outlining multiple roles of the body: as a physical object and a social agent, as a part of nature and creator/locos of culture. I will argue that the differentiation has been beneficial in its capacity of basic categorization that is to be questioned, criticized or improved. Due to this, an opportunity presents itself for more sophisticated and transcending explorations of the human body. First, I will critically examine the ‘two bodies’ concept of Mary Douglas as a basic instrumentalization in analyzing the body. Next, I will argue that the differentiation between physical-social body can be criticized as misleading; if used to divide and oppose its two complementary parts. Following this I will give the distinction credit for its utility as a ground for further developments that can be summarized under the term ‘body multiple’ (Sheper-Hughes- Lock, O’Neill) and as a topic of controversies in social theory. Examples of works aiming to transcend, or collapse the duality will be the theories of Elias, Bourdieu, Csordas, Lambert & McDonald, and the ethnography of Waquant. Finally I will argue that the analytical terms ‘physical’ and ‘social’ body will further be a part of the exploration of prevailing topics relevant to the social sciences.
The body in sociology: tension inside and outside sociological thought
Sociological Review, 2001
The human body has in recent years become a 'hot' topic in sociology, not just in empirical research but also in sociological theorizing. In the latter context, the body has been variously a resource for broadening the parameters of traditional sociological thought deriving from the nineteenth century, and for overturning that paradigm and fundamentally reorienting the assumptions and concepts of sociological thinking. Attempts to abandon the old paradigm and foster a new one through the means of thinking about bodies are many and manifold, and in this paper we trace out the intricate history of moves towards a 'corporeal sociology'. We identify the dilemmas that have attended these developments, especially as concerns the ways in which new modes of thinking sociologically have tended to founder over the classical sociological dichotomy between social structure and social action. Through tracing out the various moves and counter-moves within this field, we identify a central contradiction that affects all contemporary sociological practice, not just that dealing with the body: an oscillation between judging the utility of conceptual tools in terms of criteria derived from the discipline of Cultural Studies, and evaluating the arguments created by those tools on the basis of the incompatible criteria of classical sociology. The paper challenges sociologists to choose one set of criteria or the other, for sociological practice cannot be based on both such antagonistic paradigms.
The Body in Sociology: Tensions inside and outside Sociological Thought
The Sociological Review, 2001
The human body has in recent years become a ‘hot’ topic in sociology, not just in empirical research but also in sociological theorizing. In the latter context, the body has been variously a resource for broadening the parameters of traditional sociological thought deriving from the nineteenth century, and for overturning that paradigm and fundamentally reorienting the assumptions and concepts of sociological thinking. Attempts to abandon the old paradigm and foster a new one through the means of thinking about bodies are many and manifold, and in this paper we trace out the intricate history of moves towards a ‘corporeal sociology'. We identify the dilemmas that have attended these developments, especially as concerns the ways in which new modes of thinking sociologically have tended to founder over the classical sociological dichotomy between social structure and social action. Through tracing out the various moves and counter-moves within this field, we identify a central con...
Toward a Strong Cultural Sociology of the Body and Embodiment
Interpreting the Body: Between Meaning and Matter, 2023
Tracing the thematization of culture and the body across modern, postmodern, and neo-modern sociological thought, this chapter explores the possibility of developing a meaning-centered, strong cultural sociology of the body and embodiment, one that approaches body and embodiment as constituting a uniquely hermeneutic situation—a fusion of subject and object, ideality and materiality—structured by cultural codes and dependent upon interpretation for getting itself out into the social world. The development of a Strong Program cultural sociological perspective on the body is, author Anne Marie Champagne argues, uniquely suited to ferreting out and reconstructing the personal and collective representations, senses and sensibilities, and myths and motifs through which the physical body comes to embody self, society, and world. **** NOTE: This is a post-peer review, pre-edited version of a chapter published in Interpreting the Body: Between Meaning and Matter (Bristol University Press, 2023), edited by Anne Marie Champagne and Asia Friedman. It differs from the definitive publisher-authenticated version cited below. Definitive publisher version: Champagne, A. M. (2023). "1: Toward a Strong Cultural Sociology of the Body and Embodiment". In Interpreting the Body. Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press. Retrieved Mar 17, 2024, from https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529211580.ch001
Although classical sociology was not always oblivious or indifferent to the embodied dimensions of social relations, contemporary sociology has developed new perspectives and frameworks for understanding the body as a social and cultural construct and fundamental element in material and symbolic processes of power and conviviality. What do contemporary sociological approaches contribute to our understanding of corporeality and embodiment? What kind of changes does this represent in relation to classical perspectives? How do different theoretical approaches connect to contemporary interests and empirical research? The present article attempts to answer these questions, looking at the development and diversification of sociological approaches to the body, from Elias and Bourdieu to contemporary feminist, Foucauldian post-structuralism and queer theories. The authors highlight current research that is intersectional, international and path-breaking. They also pay particular attention to connections between the social, cultural and the political, as expressed in and through bodies, and point to the unresolved nature of the relationship between narrative, discourse and the materiality of the body.
2022
Note: This syllabus is suitable for a graduate course or honors/upper level undergraduate seminar. DESCRIPTION - This course provides an in-depth introduction to historical and contemporary understandings of the body and embodiment in society. Drawing on a broad range of interdisciplinary literature and theoretical traditions from the social sciences, human geography, cultural studies, media studies, philosophy and the humanities, this course explores the symbolic and material horizons along and out of which bodies fashion—and are fashioned by—worlds, myth, societies, and selves. Part I of the course considers the cosmological and organizing principles of the body in myth and enlightenment thinking, bringing each into conversation with understandings of the body in early sociology. Part II introduces the phenomenological, post-structural, postmodern, and cultural theoretical perspectives vital to the “bodily turn” and thematization of the body in social thought that occurred in the late 20th century. Part III examines body and embodiment in relation to issues of identity, place, and the boundaries of the embodied self. Topics from this section include sex, gender, race, and class; health, medicine, ageing and the life course; and posthumanism. Part IV attends to the public-facing social body, exploring the body at worship and play, the body that witnesses and protests, and the aesthetic politics embodied in art and the built environment.
Contemporary Sociology and the Body
Although classical sociology was not always oblivious or indifferent to the embodied dimensions of social relations, contemporary sociology has developed new perspectives and frameworks for understanding the body as a social and cultural construct and as a fundamental element in material and symbolic processes of power and conviviality. The present article sketches the development of sociological approaches to the body, with key contributions coming from diverse schools of thought, from Elias and Bourdieu to contemporary feminist, Foucauldian post-structuralism and queer theories.