SO4025: Body Work and Body Workers

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SO4025 Body Work and Body Workers

• Lecture 1 The Body in Sociology

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First things first

• Debra Gimlin Office Edward Wright F20 phone
  x2771 email d.gimlin_at_abdn.ac.uk
• Tutorials
• Course guide
• Readings
• Lecture outlines email option??

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Outline

• Reintroduce Sociology of the Body
• The body as an absent presence in classical
  sociology
• Anthropologys attention to the body
• Topics covered in level two
• Overview of this semesters themes

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The Body in Sociology

• An absent presence in early sociology
• Emergence of the discipline
• Marks out a sociological domain
• Differentiates social from biological and
  individual
• Largely disregards genetic and psychological
  factors

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The Body in Sociology

• An absent presence in early sociology
• Concerns of the early sociologists
• Character of industrial urban societies
• Social order
• Rational action
• Social structure (rather than nature)

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The Body in Sociology

• The body was still relevant to early sociological
  analyses
• The ascetic body of Puritanism (Weber)
• Warns against the move towards rationalisation
• Human bodily labour in industrial capitalism
  (Marx)
• Capitalism requires the continual production and
  reproduction of human bodies

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The Body in Anthropology

• The body is an key concern for this discipline
• Focus on human universals
• Importance of body in rites of passage
• Debate concerning social Darwinism
• e.g., emotional expression

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The Social Body

• Central to notions of the self (Mead)
• Mediates the relationship between self and other
  (Goffman)
• Reflects the social system (Douglas, Elias)
• Provides for social classification
• Conveys social role
• Can undermine performances
• Speaks to gender inequalities
• Prominence within consumer culture
• Social life/interaction is mediated through the
  body

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Body Work

• Transforms the natural body into a social
  entity
• Involves numerous industries and organisations
• Beauty/fashion
• Food
• Entertainment
• Education
• Medicine
• Sports/leisure
• Social inequalities are always relevant

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Body Work

• Running 90 mins
• Bathing 20 mins
• Hair 20 mins
• Food prep 90 mins
• Eating 90 mins
• Teeth 10 mins
• Other 30 mins
• 6 hours

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Body Work and Body Workers

• Focus on the work done to make natural bodies
  into social products
• Attention to social structure (without ignoring
  culture)
• Also to individual agency
• Theoretical perspectives
• Bodily development and social location
• The commodified body
• The body as physical capital

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Body Work and Body Workers

• The body as project reflects an individual
  identity
• Related to conditions of high modernity
• Decline in traditional sources of identity
• Generalised sense of risk
• Increasing ability to rationalise the body
• Intensified focus on consumption
• The body remains open to control
• Also an individual responsibility
• But that control is far from absolute
• Ethical questions biotechnology, genetic
  engineering, sports medicine

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Summary

• The body in sociology (more and less)
• Anthropology and the body
• The social body
• Body Work Body Workers
• Relevant industries
• The role of agency
• Bodily development/commodification
• Physical capital
• The body as project