The Body And Society: Explorations in Social Theory - Hardcover

TURNER

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0631126236 ISBN 13: 9780631126232

Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell, 1984

Synopsis

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. Complementing the introduction is a preface whose stress is lyrical and pictorial. Turner reflects on the cover images used in recent work on the body, recognizing that it is often through the history of art that we can dimly grasp the body metaphors which lie, no longer to hand, but at the foundation of thinking and feeling.

About this title

Review:

`This book provides a stimulating overview of social and sociological thinking, written in a way which helps in reassessing and critically comparing the kinds of accounts they provide of the body and bodily experience. This includes defining body boundaries and ownership and the links between body

metaphors and images of reproduction, sexual pleasure, disease and disorder, control and treatment. It also seeks to develop an understanding of social changes affecting the nature of embodiment in different social contexts....

This continues to be a valuable and thought-provoking book, but one with a greater emphasis on bodies as structured objects of thought than of experience' - Medical Sociology News

`His analysis remains compelling and relevant.... the book is interesting, well-written and relevant' - Health

About the Author:

Bryan S. Turner is Professor of Sociology in the Asian Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore. Previously he was Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge from 1998-2005. His research interests include globalization and religion, concentrating on such issues as religious conflict and the modern state, religious authority and electronic information, religious, consumerism and youth cultures, human rights and religion, the human body, medical change, and religious cosmologies. He is Joint Chief Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies and serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious journals.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 0631126236
• ISBN 13: 9780631126232
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272