Five Bodies: Re-figuring RelationshipsFive Bodies offers an introduction to some of the most urgent contemporary concerns within the sociology of the body. The book was first published in 1985 in the USA by Cornell University Press, and was nominated for the John Porter Award (sponsored by the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association). A path breaking book, it offered a framework for the growing field of the sociology of the body and opened up ′the body′ for sociological research. This new edition (the previous edition was published by Cornell University Press (1985) has been substantially revised and updated to address today′s issues of the body in modern life, community and politics. John O′Neill examines how embodied selves and relationships are being re-shaped and re-figured and how the embodied figures of the polity, economy and society represent the contested notions of identity, desire, wholeness and fragmentation. He focuses upon those cultural practices through which we map our macro-micro worlds: · articulating a cosmology · a body politic · a productivensumptive economy · a bio-technological frontier of human design and transplantation |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 16
... require the abandonment of an anthropocentric or human-centered world-view – a proposition I do not seriously challenge. It has become clear, however, that in the process people have lost the power to give a civic shape to human ...
... require us to rethink their procedures: witness the reinvention of holistic medicine. In any case, we cannot treat the anatomy and physiology of the body as paradigmatic of what persons are required to know about bodily conduct and ...
... requires otherwise weight-conscious people to eat and drink on behalf of others, with mild protests, more than is good for themselves. If the body is the instrument of our commitment to various types of social engagements and tasks, it ...
... require a psychoanalysis – stands as our first world, the measure of all our other worldly engagements. What Cooley called the 'looking glass self' is actually part of the complex acquisition of what is now called the body image, which ...
... requires on our part. In particular, we are now much more aware of the sexual contract (Pateman, 1988; 1989) which codes families within patriarchal society (Turner, 1984) and restricts women's citizenship. Thus there has been a ...
Contents
1 | |
9 | |
Social Bodies | 22 |
The Body Politic | 37 |
Consumer Bodies | 54 |
Medical Bodies | 66 |
Conclusion The Future Shape of Human Beings | 79 |
Bibliography | 89 |
Index | 95 |