Summary
Contents
Subject index
Praise for the First Edition: `Essential to any collection of work on the body, health and illness, or social theory' - Choice `Sophisticated … and acutely perceptive of the importance of the complex dialectic between social institutions, culture and biological conditions' - Times Higher Education Supplement `Chris Shilling has done us all a splendid service in bringing together and illustrating the tremendous diversity and richness of sociological thinking on the topic of human embodiment and its implications' - Sociological Review This updated edition of the bestselling text retains all the strengths of the first edition. Chris Shilling: provides a critical survey of the field; demonstrates how developments in diet, sexuality, reproductive technology, genetic engineering and sports science have made the body a site for social alternatives and individual choices; and elucidates the practical uses of theory in striking and accessible ways. In addition, new, original material: explores the latest feminist, phenomenological and action-oriented approaches to the body; examines the latest work on `body projects' and the relationship between the body and self-identity; and outlines a compelling theoretical framework that provides a radical basis for the consolidation of body studies.
The Socially Constructed Body
The Socially Constructed Body
The naturalistic approach continues to exert a considerable influence on popular images of the human body. However, contemporary social theorists have generally found more attractive ideas and theories that are based on the premiss that the body is a receptor, rather than a generator, of social meanings. In this respect, social constructionism has been used as an umbrella term to denote those views which suggest that the body is somehow shaped, constrained and even invented by society.
Social constructionist views are united in their opposition to the notion that the body can be analysed adequately purely as a biological phenomenon. They also share an approach which holds that instead of being the foundation of society, the character and meanings ...
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