Summary
Contents
Subject index
Originally published in 1984, The Body and Society flew against prevailing trends which asked sociologists to understand society in terms of abstractions such as structure, class and function. Instead, in a series of dazzling chapters, Bryan S Turner argued that the body should be the axis of sociological analysis. The Second Edition of this ground-breaking book includes a new introduction which analyzes the social changes which have given a special prominence to the body in contemporary social theory, and develops Turner's own notion of a ‘somatic society’, a society within which major political and personal problems are both problematized in the body and expressed through it.
Bodily Order
Bodily Order
Hobbesian Materialism
It has been argued that the problem of order (namely the question ‘how is society possible?') is fundamental to any social theory. The question has traditionally divided sociology into two distinctive branches of enquiry. Conflict theory argues that social order is deeply problematic and, in so far as it exists at all, is brought about by coercive circumstances, political constraint, legal force and the threat of violence. Consensus theory treats social conflict as abnormal by arguing that social stability is brought about by fundamental agreements over social values and norms which are instilled in social members by the process of socialization which rewards conformity to existing arrangements. This clear-cut analytical division rarely occurs in a ‘pure’ form, since social theories tend ...
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