Toward a Strong Cultural Sociology of the Body and Embodiment (original) (raw)

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