The Body in Culture, Technology and Society


Book Description

′Once in a while a manuscript stops you in your tracks... What we are offered here is no recovering of old ground but a step change in perspectives on "body matters" that is both innovative and of fundamental importance to anyone working on this sociological terrain...This text is groundbreaking and simply has to be read′ - Acta Sociologica ′This is Shilling at his creative best...these are seminal observations of the classical theories drawn together as never before. Moreover, as a framework [this monograph] provides a genuinely new and fertile way of reconsidering not just classical sociology but contemporary forms as well′ - Sport, Education & Society ′This is a comprehensive, theoretically sophisticated, and ambitious treatise on the body that draws from, and applies, both classical and contemporary sociological theory in a manner that is innovative and thought-provoking. This book is engaging and thought-provoking, but Shilling′s greatest achievement is his ability to illustrate the importance and continued relevance of classical and contemporary sociological theory to real world concerns. It is a book worthy of widespread attention. It reinvigorated my interest in the sociological classics and contained countless nuggets of interesting information that led me to conclude that it would be a worthy book to recommend to a broad sociological audience′ - Teaching Sociology ′Shilling′s book (like his earlier The Body and Social Theory) is crucial reading...a further valuable contribution in a field where he has provided so much′ - Theory & Psychology ′This is an impressive book by one of the leading social theorists working in the field of body studies. It provides a critical summation of theoretical and substantive work in the field to date, while also presenting a powerful argument for a corporeal realism in which the body is both generative of the emergent properties of social structure and a location of their effects. Its scope and originality make it a key point of reference for students and academics in body studies and in the social and cultural sciences more generally′ - Ian Burkitt, Reader in Social Science, University of Bradford ′Chris Shilling is as always a lucid guide through the dense thickets of the "sociology of the body", and his chapters on the fields of work, sport, eating, music and technology brilliantly show how abstract theoretical debates relate to the real world of people′s lives′ - Professor Stephen Mennell, University College Dublin ′What I find very useful and without any doubt valuable, not only in Shilling′s The Body in Culture, Technology and Society but in his work in general, is the breadth and profoundness of his discussion about the body...the style Shilling maintains is crucial for further development of the sociology of the body as a discipline, for it provides us with a rich intellectual environment about the body′ - Sociology ′For any colleague wanting to have a clear idea of how studies of the body can be empirically grounded as well as theoretically ′rich′, Chris Shilling′s The Body in Culture, Technology and Society , is the book to read. To my mind it offers the best account thus far of not only how social action is embodied and must be recognised as such but also of how social structures condition and shape embodied subjects in a variety of social arenas... This is wonderful insightful ′stuff′ - the ideas and intricate thoughts of a scholar such as Shilling who has been immersed in thinking about the complexities of the body in society as well as sociology for a number of years′ - Sociology of Health and Illness This is a milestone in the sociology of the body. The book offers the most comprehensive overview of the field to date and an innovative framework for the analysis of embodiment. It is founded on a revised view of the relation of classical works to the body. It argues that the body should be read as a multi-dimensional medium for the constitution of society. Upon this foundation, the author constructs a series of analyses of the body and the economy, culture, sociality, work, sport, music, food and technology.




The Body, Culture and Society


Book Description

"Academics and undergraduates alike will welcome this accessible guide to a rich variety of body-related matters. . . an informed and stimulating introduction to the subject." - Chris Shilling, University of Portsmouth * How and why has the body come to the forefront of sociology? * How is the body conceptualized in relation to issues of culture and identity? * What are the limitations of current work on the sociology of the body? Over the past two decades, a concern with the human body has grown steadily within the social sciences. This timely volume, written by a team of lecturers actively researching and teaching in the field, provides a clear introduction to the significance of the corporeal dimension of life within contemporary sociological thought. It outlines many of the reasons behind this increased sociological fascination with the body, identifying it with a series of broader developments within the current cultural sensibility. Succeeding chapters, each individually authored, examine the place of the body within a range of substantive areas of sociological research - for example disability, consumption, work and old age - developing, in turn, a critical analysis of current research in these areas. With the use of jargon kept to a minimum, and with each chapter providing suggestions for further reading, The Body, Culture and Society is an accessible and lively introduction to the body from a sociological perspective.




Culture, Bodies and the Sociology of Health


Book Description

Culture, Bodies and the Sociology of Health explores the boundaries between bodies and society with special reference to uncovering the cultural components of health and the ways in which bodies are categorized according to a form of culturally embedded 'health orthodoxy'. Illustrating the importance of contextualizing the body as a cultural entity, this book demonstrates that the spaces and boundaries between healthy bodies are becoming more diverse than ever before. The volumes international team of scholars engage with a range of issues surrounding the cultural construction of the body as a site of health and illness. As such, it will be of interest not only to sociologists, especially sociologists of health, but also to scholars of media and communication studies as well as cultural theorists.




Corporeality and Culture


Book Description

Presenting a multi- and interdisciplinary consideration of current research on the cultural relationship to living (and non-living) bodies, Corporeality and Culture puts the body in focus. From performance and body modification to film, literature and other cultural technologies, this volume undertakes a significant speculative mapping of the current possibilities for engagement, transformation and variance of embodied movement in relation to scientifically-situated corporealities and materialities in cultural and artistic practices. Time and time again, it finds these ever-shifting modes of being to be inextricably interdependent and coextensive: movement requires embodiment; and embodiment is a form of movement.




Culture, Body, and Language


Book Description

One of the central themes in cognitive linguistics is the uniquely human development of some higher potential called the "mind" and, more particularly, the intertwining of body and mind, which has come to be known as embodiment. Several books and volumes have explored this theme in length. However, the interaction between culture, body and language has not received the due attention that it deserves. Naturally, any serious exploration of the interface between body, language and culture would require an analytical tool that would capture the ways in which different cultural groups conceptualize their feelings, thinking, and other experiences in relation to body and language. A well-established notion that appears to be promising in this direction is that of cultural models, constituting the building blocks of a group's cultural cognition. The volume results from an attempt to bring together a group of scholars from various language backgrounds to make a collective attempt to explore the relationship between body, language and culture by focusing on conceptualizations of the heart and other internal body organs across a number of languages. The general aim of this venture is to explore (a) the ways in which internal body organs have been employed in different languages to conceptualize human experiences such as emotions and/or workings of the mind, and (b) the cultural models that appear to account for the observed similarities as well as differences of the various conceptualizations of internal body organs. The volume as a whole engages not only with linguistic analyses of terms that refer to internal body organs across different languages but also with the origin of the cultural models that are associated with internal body organs in different cultural systems, such as ethnomedical and religious traditions. Some contributions also discuss their findings in relations to some philosophical doctrines that have addressed the relationship between mind, body, and language, such as that of Descartes.




The Body as Material Culture


Book Description

Bodies intrigue us. They promise windows into the past that other archaeological finds cannot by bringing us literally face to face with history. Yet 'the body' is also highly contested. Archaeological bodies are studied through two contrasting perspectives that sit on different sides of a disciplinary divide. On one hand lie science-based osteoarchaeological approaches. On the other lie understandings derived from recent developments in social theory that increasingly view the body as a social construction. Through a close examination of disciplinary practice, Joanna Sofaer highlights the tensions and possibilities offered by one particular kind of archaeological body, the human skeleton, with particular regard to the study of gender and age. Using a range of examples, she argues for reassessment of the role of the skeletal body in archaeological practice, and develops a theoretical framework for bioarchaeology based on the materiality and historicity of human remains.




The Body of Nature and Culture


Book Description

This book explores the relationship of human bodies with natural and cultural environments, arguing that these categories are linked and intertwined. It argues for an environmentally sustainable and healthy relationship between the body and the earth.




Work That Body


Book Description

Work That Body: Male Bodies in Digital Culture explores the recent rise in different types of men using digital media to sexualise their bodies. It argues that the male body has become a key site in contemporary culture where neoliberalism’s hegemony has been both secured and contested since 2008. It does this by looking at four different case studies: the celebrity male nude leak; the rise of young men sharing images of their muscular bodies on social media; RuPaul's Drag Race body transformational tutorial, and the rise of chemsex. It finds that on the one hand digital media has enabled men to transform their bodies into tools of value-creation in economic contexts where the historical means they have relied on to create value have diminished. On the other it has also allowed them to use their bodies to form intimate collective bonds during a moment when competitive individualism continued to be the privileged mode of being in the world. It therefore offers a unique contribution not only to the field of digital cultural studies but also to the growing cultural studies literature attempting to map the historical contradictions of the austerity moment.




Physical Culture, Power, and the Body


Book Description

During the past decade, there has been an outpouring of books on 'the body' in society, but none has focused as specifically on physical culture - that is, cultural practices such as sport and dance within which the moving physical body is central. Questions are raised about the character of the body, specifically the relation between the ‘natural’ body, the ‘constructed’ body and the ‘alien’ or ‘virtual’ body. The themes of the book are wide in scope, including: physical culture and the fascist body sport and the racialised body sport medicine, health and the culture of risk the female Muslim sporting body, power, and politics experiencing the disabled sporting body embodied exhibitions of striptease and sport the social logic of sparring sport, girls and the neoliberal body. Physical Culture, Power, and the Body aims to break down disciplinary boundaries in its theoretical approaches and its readership. The author’s muli-disciplinary backgrounds, demonstrate the widespread topicality of physical culture and the body.




Body in Medical Culture, The


Book Description

2010 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title How do concepts and constructions of the body shape people's experiences of agency and objectification within medical culture? As an object of scrutiny, the medicalized body occupies center stage in the work of doctors, nurses, medical examiners, and other medical professionals who mediate broader cultural understandings of pathology, illness, and the various physical transformations associated with life and death. The Body in Medical Culture explores how the body functions within medical culture and examines the metaphors and models of the body used to understand medical phenomena, including disease, diagnostic practices, wellness, anatomy, surgery, and medical research. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines engage representations of bodies, including polio and masculinity, sex reassignment surgery, drug marketing, endography, "designer vaginas," and hospital humor in order to challenge the normalcy of the passively objectified medicalized body.