Routledge Handbook of Body Studies

Bryan Turner, Bryan S Turner, Bryan Turner, Bryan S Turner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136903311
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

In the last three decades, the human body has gained increasing prominence in contemporary political debates, and it has become a central topic of modern social sciences and humanities. Modern technologies – such as organ transplants, stem-cell research, nanotechnology, cosmetic surgery and cryonics – have changed how we think about the body.

In this collection of thirty original essays by leading figures in the field, these issues are explored across a number of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives, including pragmatism, feminism, queer theory, post-modernism, post-humanism, cultural sociology, philosophy and anthropology. A wide range of case studies, which include cosmetics, diet, organ transplants, racial bodies, masculinity and sexuality, eating disorders, religion and the sacred body, and disability, are used to appraise these different perspectives.

In addition, this Handbook explores various epistemological approaches to the basic question: what is a body? It also offers a strongly themed range of chapters on empirical topics that are organized around religion, medicine, gender, technology and consumption. It also contributes to the debate over the globalization of the body: how have military technology, modern medicine, sport and consumption led to this contemporary obsession with matters corporeal?

The Handbook 's clear, direct style will appeal to a wide undergraduate audience in the social sciences, particularly for those studying medical sociology, gender studies, sports studies, disability studies, social gerontology, or the sociology of religion. It will serve to consolidate the new field of body studies.

Index

• abolition of men 316-17
• Aboriginal body painting 350
• Abraham, T. 252
• Abrahamsson, S. 127n4
• Abramovitch, H. 220, 221
• Abramovitz, B. and Birch, L. 248
• Abrams, J.J. 45, 47n23
• absolute certainty, Archimedean point of 130
• Abu-Lughod, L. 208, 209
• Abu-Rabia, A. 207
• Achenbaum, A.W. 363
• action re-worked, personal example: 'shower of my life' 87-88
• Actor Network Theory (ANT) 83
• Adamson, P. and Zavod, D. 343
• Addelson, K.P. 90
• Adkins, L. 211
• The Adonis Complex (Pope, H., Phillips, K. and Olivardia, R.) 252
• aesthetics: aesthetic reconstruction, first record of 335
  • experience and, critique of Bourdieu 70-71
• affect: affect neutrality 140
  • energy and affect 99
  • experience and machinic assemblages 102-4
  • sexuality and 139-40
• Agamben, G. 158, 202n26
• Age Grading Tables 385
• ageing: death and, Weismann and biology of 363, 365-69
  • embodied experiences of 276-78, 284
  • molecular biology of 364-68
  • 'new' biology of 363-64
  • pathologization of 382
  • varieties ofmy body and 393-94
• Ageing: the Biology of Senescence (Comfort, A.) 366
• ageing body, rejection of 375-85
  • Age Grading Tables 385
  • ageing populations, sociological importance of study of 375
  • ageism 375
  • American Association for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 379
  • anti-ageing 376-78, 378-79
  • anti-ageing institutions, convergence of 377
  • Anti-Ageing Medicine World Congress 379
  • bio-ethics 382-83
  • bodies, women's perception of 380
  • body as sy...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Editorial Board
• List of contributors
• Introduction: The Turn of the Body
• Body, Self and Society
• What is a Body?
• Religion and the Body
• Medical Regimes and the Body
• Gender, Sexualities and Race
• Technologies and Body Modification
• Index