Regulating Bodies : Essays in Medical Sociology

ISBN-13: 9780415069632 / Angielski / Twarda / 1992 / 280 str.

Professor Bryan S. Turner

Opis

Regulating Bodies provides a framework for the development of a new sub-field, namely the development of the body. Through an examination of various philosophical traditions (phenomenology, philosophical anthropology, structuralism and postmodernism) the author shows how the human body has been ignored or neglected by mainstream social theory. In integrating these different traditions, Turner demonstrates how the absent body has impoverished, not only the sociology of health and illness but the very foundations of sociology itself. In providing a general account of the problem of the body in modern society, this study, building on Turner's previous related works The Body and Society (1984) and Medical Power and Social Knowledge (1987), attempts to solve many of the existing epistemological and theoretical difficulties in social theories of the body. Turner has provided a major synthesis of his earlier work on the sociology of the body, established the idea of embodiment as fundamental to the sociology of health and illness, and pointed the way forward to new areas of cultural analysis.

Spis treści

Introduction; Part 1 Discovering bodies; Chapter 1 The body question; Chapter 2 The absent body in structuration theory; Chapter 3 Reflections on the epistemology of the hand; Part 2 Medical sociology; Chapter 4 The interdisciplinary curriculum; Chapter 5 The body and medical sociology; Part 3 Regimes of regulation; Chapter 6 The government of the body; Chapter 7 The anatomy lesson; Chapter 8 The talking disease; Conclusion;

O autorze

Bryan Turner is Professor of Sociology at Essex University.