The Lived Body: Sociological Themes, Embodied Issues

ISBN-13: 9780415194259 / Angielski / Twarda / 1998 / 272 str.

Simon J. Williams; Gillian A. Bendelow

Opis

This text critically examines the notion of human embodiment in both classical and contemporary thought. The ideas of a range of thinkers from Marx to Freud, Foucault to Giddens, Deleuze and Guattari to Irigary and Grosz are assessed in terms of the bodily themes and issues they address. By using the notion of embodiment to transcend the dualist legacies of the past this book argues that the body is not simply a textual effect or discursive construct. Rather, embodiment is the active basis of being in the world and the foundation of self, meaning, culture and society. It is not therefore a question of choosing between the experimental and representational aspects of the human body, but of exploring their dialectical relationship to one another. These issues are illustrated through a variety of themes, including the fate of embodiment in late modernity, sex, gender and the medicalization of the body, the sociology of emotions, pain, sleep and artistic images and representations of the body.

Spis treści

1.Sociology and the 'problem' of the body 2.Bodily 'order': cultural and historical perspectives on conformity and transgression 3.Bodily 'control': body techniques, intercorporeality and the embodiment of social action 4.The body in 'high' modernity and consumer culture 5.The 'libidinal' body: psychoanalysis, critical theory and the 'problem' of human desire 6.'Uncontainable' bodies: feminisms, boundaries and reconfigured identities 7.The emotionally 'expressive' body 8.Pain and the 'dys-appearing' body 9.The 'dormant body: sleep, night-time and dreams 10.Artistic bodies: representaion and resistance. Conclusions.

O autorze

Simon J Williams is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Research Fellow at the University of Warwick. He is also Co-Director of the new centre for Research in health, Medicine and Society. Gillian Bendelow is a Lecturer in medical sociology and social policy at the University of Warwick