SOC 448 HW
arnoldob
Module1-Whatisabodytx3.potxSOCIOLOGY OF THE BODY
MODULE 1: WHAT IS A BODY?
In this module we will learn:
Different philosophical positions towards the body and how these positions have changed throughout history.
Learn about social changes that have brought about an interest on the body.
Two main ontological approaches to the body: the foundationalists and the anti-foundationalists.
How our body images and bodily controls are socially and historically contingent.
2
Readings
The body in everyday life – Sarah Nettleton and Jonathan Watson
Theoretical concepts
Historically Contingent
Foundationalists
Anti-Foundationalists
Phenomenology
Embodiment
Bodily Controls
Body Image
What is a body?
Throughout this course we will investigate various topics regarding the body. But before we do that, we need to ask ourselves, what is a body?
How do philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists theorize the body?
How do we experience our bodies on a day-to-day basis?
Let’s go to our first reading.
The body in everyday life
One thing is for certain: we all have a body.
Everything that we do is with our bodies. I am typing this sentence with my fingers right now.
We laugh, we cry, we think, we speak, we eat, and we sleep with our bodies. (I say with but there is no separation between “I” and my body).
The body in everyday Life
Sometimes we are more conscious about our bodies. For instance, in the case of disease or when we want to impress a crush.
Other times, we are less conscious about our bodies. This is because the body is such a great part of our daily lives ( we really cannot experience anything outside of the body), that we take it for granted.
However, for centuries, the body has been an object of philosophical and theological inquiry.
Let’s sidetrack and take a look on different conceptualizations of the body in western philosophy.
What is the body?
The Greeks believed that there was separation between the soul and the body.
In this view, the body is matter without thoughts, and fundamentally different from souls and minds.
Body—for the Greek was—a thing without comprehension, choice, or judgment, contrary to the self-determination and free will.
This idea continues to this day, and it is embedded in our language. Thing for instance, the difficulty to talk about the body without making a separation between the ”I” and the “body”.
In reality, I am thinking and talking with my body.
What is the body?
In the 15th century, the philosopher Descartes stated that there is a close interaction between the mind and the body.
Yet, he maintained that they have: separate essences.
The body stands for contingency and uncertainty, whereas the mind represents sense, truth, sensibility, and certainty.
What is the body?
In the 19th Century, Nietzsche re-explored the relationship between human body and spirit.
Nietzsche analyzed how operations of power produced knowledge and subjectivity by taking the body as an object.
But what does this mean? This takes us to our last theorist, I promise.
What is the body?
Expanding on Nietzsche’s ideas, Foucault elaborated how body conditions and modes of activity are shaped by social systems and regulations.
This means that the body is historically contingent.
This means that how we think about our bodies and how we experience them varies across history and is depended on society (more on this later).
This also means that power and domination marks our bodies ( more on this later).
Now let’s go back to our reading.
The body in everyday life
Since the 1980’s there has been a proliferation of research that takes the body as an object of study.
The increasing attention to the body can be attributed to a number of factors happening in our social worlds.
The authors explore five: demographic factors, change nature of disease burden, consumer culture, new technologies and late modernity.
Social change and the body
Politization of the body: feminists and activists revealed the political status of the body.
The body has come to form a central field of political and cultural activity.
Major concerns for governments revolve around the regulation of bodies.
Think about social movements today that revolve around the body.
Social change and the body
Demographic factors: the changing nature of bodies. Such changes raise moral and ethical debates on issues such as euthanasia, drawing attention to tricky questions which pertain to the “ownership of bodies.”
Social change and the body
Consumer Culture: The proliferation of commercial goods and services which are consumed by those who want to keep fit, retain their youthful appearance or simply maintain their bodies.
Appearance in the contemporary period becomes central to a person’s social acceptability.
Social change and the body
New Technologies: The boundaries between our physical and technological bodies are shifting more rapidly.
We are becoming cyborgs.
Cyborg: a hybrid of machine and organism (more on this later).
Social Change and the Body
Late or high modernity: A key feature of contemporary societies is risk.
Within our post-traditional societies, our identities and our sense of self are not givens.
Our self and identity becomes a reflexively organized endeavor.
The reflexive self is one which relies on a vast array of advice and information provided in a myriad of sources.
We are more uncertain about our bodies, we perceive them to be more pliable and are actively seeking to alter, improve and refine them.
Approaches to the study of the body
As our brief history of the body and philosophy revealed, there are various orientations towards the ontological status of the body?
What is ontological?
Ontology is concerned with the ‘nature of being’ of things, the material world that we observe is ontology, how we perceive that world and the meaning we attribute to the world is epistemology.
Going back, there is a debate on what the the body is, what is its ontological status. There are two main approaches.
Approaches to the study of the body
There are two main approaches towards the body, the foundationalists and the anti-foundationalists.
Foundationalists: Assume the biological basis of the body is a universal given. The body exists independently of its social context and is a universal physical entity.
In other words, the foundationalists believe that the body is universal and has remained the same throughout history.
What is important is the biological basis of the body exists independent of its social context.
Approaches to the study of the body
The anti-foundationalists on the other hand,
The anti-foundationalists maintain that the body is simply an effect of discursive processes or contexts.
In other words, for the anti-foundationalists the body does not exist outside of society as the body is socially-constructed.
In other words, we cannot think of the body outside of already socially established conceptions of the body.
What do you think? Are you a foundationalist or an anti-foundationalist?
Approaches to the study of the body
There is a synthesis between those two approaches, a medium-point it goes something like this:
The body has a material biological basis that is altered and modified within different social contexts.
In other words, even though the body has a biological basis—how the body is experiences will vary according to how, where, and when one is located and the nature of the social relations that prevail.
How do you think that poor people from medieval times experienced their body? How about rich people in medieval times? Now how do you think that people experience/perceive their body today vs in medieval times?
Phenomenology: The lived body and embodiment
The phenomenological perspective focuses on the ‘lived body’, the idea that human beings and their consciousness is invariably within the body.
All human perception s embodied we cannot perceive anything without our senses, our senses cannot function independently of our bodies.
This differs from past philosophical approaches to the body. It rejects the cartesian notion of the body that states that the mind can exist outside of the body.
In the cartesian notion of the body, body and mind are separate from each other.
Phenomenology: The Lived Body and Embodiment
For phenomenological perspective the body is not one thing in the world but a way in which the world comes to be.
This leads us to the concept of embodiment.
Embodiment: the idea not of having a body but being a body. The self and the body are not separate.
The body is not an external entity but is experienced in practical ways when coping with external events and situations.
What does this mean?
Phenomenology: The Lived Body and Embodiment
That means that we handle our bodies in social situations.
In other words, we are capable of sustaining bodily control through day-to-day social situations ( more on this later).
For now, think: How do you control your body in a hospital? How about a school? How does this differ from how you experience your body at a party?
Let’s go to our last two concepts of this module: bodily controls and body image.
Bodily controls
Maintaining body control is crucial for the presentation of self in everyday life.
The ability to be perceived and be accepted as a competent social actor requires certain level of bodily competence.
A feature of high modernity is there is a proliferation and diversification of knowledge, of advice and of information from which people are able to draw and make choices about their bodily regimes and practices.
In this way, the body becomes a reflexive project.
Think for instance, of today’s obsession with vitamins, high brain efficiency, etc.
Body image
The image we hold of our bodies will to a grater or lesser extent impact upon how we experiences our bodies in everyday life.
Our body image is shaped not just by what we perceive our body to look like, but what we see and how we interpret our vision of our body is mediated by our social and cultural context.
In other words, the act of perception is a socially constructed process.
Our body image and our social relations constructed processes.
Our body image and our social relations impact upon each other.
Conclusion
In this module we learned different philosophical approaches to the body, and particularly about the prominence of the cartesian model which separates body and soul.
We learn about how the body is historically contingent-–meaning that how we think about the body and how we experience the body, varies throughout history.
We learn about two main ontological approaches to the body: the foundationalist approach that emphasizes the biological basis of the body, and the anti-foundationalist approach which emphasizes how the body is socially constructed.
We learn about the concept of bodily controls and bodily image—two mechanisms that interact
