Body & Society

Background & Theory

 Remember this
 Background
Types of Human Societies:
Hunting and Gathering
Horticultural (simple & advanced)
Agrarian (simple and advanced)
Industrial
Post-industrial
 Background
Surplus leads to:
Population growth
Larger cities
Development of money and trade
Larger governments and armies
Increased job specialization and
inequality
More leisure time and arts
 Background
Increasing levels of technology increases
the level of stratification within a society
Horticultural societies are more stratified than
hunting and gathering societies, agrarian
societies are more stratified than horticultural
societies, and so on and so forth
technology and industrialization led to more
surplus, greater job specialization and better well-
being (leisure) which in turn led to more stratified
societies
 Background
Sociology of the body is a relatively
new area of focus in the field of
sociology
Body & Society was launched in 1995
The aim is to show how the body in
modern society has become the
principal field of political and cultural
activity
The war on women
 Background
Modernity
Modes of social life and organization which
emerged in post feudal Europe, but which
have become increasingly global in the 20th
century
Industrialized world
Modernity has facilitated an increase in
the degree a nation state can exert
control over the bodies of its people
Reduction in the power of religion
 Background
We now have an unprecedented level of control
over bodies
Biological reproduction
Genetic engineering
Plastic surgery
Sports science
This level of control has led to a heightened
level of reflexivity about the body and how it
should be controlled
The uncertain body
What is and isn't natural
 Background
Historically sociology has taken a
disembodied approach to its subject matter
Cartesian thought
The concern of classic sociology with the
body has been implicit
Marx-the assimilation of the body into capitalist
technology
Simmel-what brought people together and how
they maintained relationships
Weber-the Protestant Ethic
 Background
The study of social mobility, racism,
social inequalities in health and
schooling, and globalization are all
concerned implicitly with the
movement, location, care, and
education of bodies
But the focus has been on the social
structure, prejudice, culture,
economics, and politics
 Background
Reasons for underdevelopment soc
of body:
Early sociologists were concerned
with the similarities between
industrial capitalist societies and
traditional societies; left the body to
biologists and psychologists
Sociology has tended to focus on the
conditions for order and control and
social change in society
 Background
Human agency was equated with the
mind rather than the management of
the body; the body was seen as a
passive container for the mind
The founding fathers were men; their
personal embodied experience were
not concerned with womens issues
of the time
 Background
Social research suffers when we fail
to take account of the body
Example: schools
 Background
What are the main functions of
schools?
 Background
Education:
Schools teach general skills, such as
reading, writing, and arithmetic, as
well as specific skills needed for the
workplace.
Human capital refers to the
knowledge and skills that make
someone more productive and
bankable.
 Background
Socialize:
Schools transmit values, beliefs, and
attitudes that are important to
society.
Schools are a very important agent
of socialization; they are generally
the first agent of socialization that
children encounter outside the
family.
 Background
Besides the two main functions
schools are a space children can be
inoculated against disease,
monitored for abuse, receive
nutritionally balanced meals, and
engage in physical education.
A large part of schooling is to
produce managed and disciplined
bodies
 Background
Late 19th and early 20th century
bodies began to be a concern of
governments; usually generated by
economic and military crises and/or
social change
Over-indulgence and fatness of the rich
Level of the fitness of the youth
 Background
Reasons for the rise of the body in
sociology:
The second wave of feminism
The need to control fertility and abortion
rights as a political issue
Control of women's bodies as a symbol
of the patriarchy
The development of men and
masculinity studies
 Background
The increase of the aged and elderly
in western societies
Increased elderly population has social
policy and economic implications
The rise of the consumer culture
linked to modern capitalism
Price of leisure; the body is fine tuned
machine
Increased control over our bodies
 Naturalistic Body
The naturalistic approach of the body
shapes popular contemporary
conceptions of the body
The capabilities and constraints of
the human body define individuals
and generate social, political, and
economic relationships
Women have weak and unstable bodies
 Naturalistic Body
Up until 1700s, the male body was
the norm and women had the same
parts just arranged in a different,
inferior way
The vagina was an interior penis
Womens bodies were ruled by
nature; pathological
Controlled by pregnancy, menses, etc.
Mens bodies were ruled by their
minds
 Naturalistic Body
Enlightenment egalitarianism
Universal, inalienable and equal rights
Womens troubles
Menstruation leading to kleptomania
Learning could hurt their ability to
reproduce
 Naturalistic Body
Reasons to classify the female body
as pathological:
Rapid economic change gave rise to
the fear that men would no longer be
in control of their destiny
As there became a greater
understanding of body differences,
womens bodies were seen as
dangerous
 Naturalistic Body
Sociobiology emerged in the 1970s
and attempted to establish a
biological basis for human behavior
The basic unit of explanation in
sociobiology is the gene
Blond hair=gene
Being a jerk=gene
 Naturalistic Body
Problems:
There is no way to quantify its claims; uses
unjustified generalizations and unwarranted
leaps between levels of analysis
Begins with an interpretation of current social
life and projects it back upon the history of
human societies
No accounting for social structures or social
change
All humans dont fit into the categories
XXY, XYY, XO
 Naturalistic Body
Much of the naturalistic view has strong
ties to religion, Christianity in particular
Protestant Reformation=personal piety,
individual judgement, self-control, and self-
scrutiny; fear of the flesh
Whites often used people from overseas
as social mirrors; the physical
manifestation of qualities they found
undesirable in themselves; savages or
dangerous others
 Naturalistic Body
Womens bodies were weak and
unstable
Blacks and other dangerous others
were uncivilized, uncontrollable
sexual beings who were a threat to
the moral order
Defining blacks through their bodies
allowed for their commodification;
i.e. slavery
Naturalistic views of the body have
 Socially Constructed Body
Social constructionist view claims
that the body is shaped, constrained,
and invented by society
The meanings attributed to the body
and the boundaries that exist
between the bodies of different
groups are social products
What makes a body a body?
 Socially Constructed Body
Douglas (1970)
The body is a receptor of social meaning
and a symbol of society
The human body is the most readily
available image of a social system
In times of crisis, bodily boundaries intensify;
islamophobia
The social body constrains how the
physical body is perceived and
experienced
 Socially Constructed Body
Foucault
A preoccupation with the body and
the institutions that control them
The body is produced by and existing
in discourse
Discourses-sets of deep principles
incorporating specific grids of meaning
which generate and establish relations
Power
 Socially Constructed Body
As we move into modernity the focus
of discourses shifted from the body
to the mind; mindful body
Punishment
Physical => mental
https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hce-Xvp1g
m8
Panopitcon
Socially Constructed Body
 Socially Constructed Body
Sexuality
The Christian confessional was the
space where sex was formulated; you
told the priest what you did
Protestant Reformation; priests
became concerned with intentions
 Socially Constructed Body
How discourse changed the social
space:
It made it easier for governments to
control individuals
How control was attained was
changed; from repression to
stimulation of desires
 Socially Constructed Body
Symbolic Interactionism
Social interaction is a dynamic
process in which people continually
modify their social behavior as a
result of the interaction itself
Doing gender
 Socially Constructed Body
Goffman
Focuses on how the body is integral to human
agency; how the body affects daily life
People can control how bodily performances
facilitate social interactions
The meanings attributed to bodies are
determined by our shared understandings
Bodies exist in dual locations
Linkage between self-identity and social
identity
 Body Projects
Body projects
The body is an entity in the process of becoming; a
project that should be worked at and accomplished
as a part of ones self-identity
Not a full time preoccupation but one has to
care about the management and appearance
of their body
Preventing disease
Caring about how we appear to ourselves and
others
Body projects vary along social lines
 Body Projects
Investment in the body gives people
a sense of control in an increasingly
complex society where they seem to
have no control
Investment in the body is doomed to
failure
Body projects are a way of
perpetuating pre-existing social
inequalities
 Civilized Bodies
The civilized body
Product of modern western society
that is separate from its natural
environment
Socialization-the hiding away of natural
functions; location for modes of
behavior
Rationalization-a body under control, a
moral body
Individualization-you are unique