The body has become an increasingly significant concept in recent years and this Reader offers a stimulating overview of the main topics, perspectives and theories surrounding the issue. This broad consideration of the body presents an engagement with a range of social concerns, from the processes of racialization to the vagaries of fashion and performance art, enacted as surgery on the body. Individual sections cover issues such as:

• the body and social (dis)order
• bodies and identities
• bodily norms
• bodies in health and dis-ease
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