The Lived Body

Sociological Themes, Embodied Issues

Gillian A. Bendelow, Simon J. Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134649495
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery
• Index: Social Sciences

The Lived Body takes a fresh look at the notion of human embodiment and provides an ideal textbook for undergraduates on the growing number of courses on the sociology of the body.
The authors propose a new approach - an 'Embodied Sociology' - one which makes embodiment central rather than peripheral. They critically examine the dualist legacies of the past, assessing the ideas of a range of key thinkers, from Marx to Freud, Foucault to Giddens, Deleuze to Guattari and Irigary to Grosz, in terms of the bodily themes and issues they address.
They also explore new areas of research, including the 'fate' of embodiment in late modernity, sex, gender, medical technology and the body, the sociology of emotions, pain, sleep and artistic representations of the body.
The Lived Body will provide students and researchers in medical sociology, health sciences, cultural studies and philosophy with clear, accessible coverage of the major theories and debates in the sociology of the body and a challenging new way of thinking.

1 Sociology and the ‘problem’ of the body

A standard criticism in many texts on the body is that, until quite recently, sociologists have been reluctant to bring their ‘skeletons out of the cupboard’, so to speak, and give corporeal matters the proper airing they deserve. In this respect, it is claimed that the body, as an ‘absent-presence’, has stalked the sociological landscape in a largely ethereal fashion. Whilst the past history of the body may indeed be a ‘secret’ one, this is clearly not the case today. The deafening chorus of cries to ‘bring the body back in’ has now most surely been silenced by the recent upsurge of interest in the human body within the social sciences. In this chapter we take a closer look at these issues through a preliminary examination of the nature and status of the body in classical and contemporary sociology, together with a selective review of some of the areas and issues where recent sociological engagement with bodily themes appears most promising to date. In this respect, we build upon and extend previous discussions, ‘incorporating’ new material and insights along the way.¹ As we shall see, whilst there is certainly some truth in the ‘absent-presence’ thesis, the body can nevertheless be ‘recovered’ through a critical re-reading in a new, corporeal light, of much of the classical and contemporary sociological literature. Despite this promising start, however, much still remains to be done in order to develop a truly integrated sociological approach to the relationship between body and society and the ‘problem’ of human embodiment. It is this opportunity and challenge which informs the book as whole.

The body in classical sociology

As suggested above, a common point of departure in much of the contemporary literature on the body to date has been to highlight its neglected status in classical and, until quite recently, contemporary sociological theory. In this respect, sociology is said to compare unfavourably with other disciplines such as anthropology, where the human body has occupied a central place since the nineteenth century. Thus in philosophical anthropology (Gehlen 1988), for example, the body is considered in relation to the ‘unchanging conditions of human changeableness’ (Honneth and Joas 1988). From this viewpoint, one in which the Nietzschean ontology of Man as an ‘unfinished’ creature is central, human embodiment is never simply a constraint. Rather, it constitutes a set of opportunities which are endlessly elaborated through sociocultural and historical development (Honneth and Joas 1988). A concern with the human body has also been evident in physical anthropology, whereby social difference is seemingly ‘naturalised’ through appeals to its physical foundations. During the nineteenth century, for example, anthropologists and craniologists devoted great efforts to measuring, classifying and comparing almost every part of the human body, debating the social and political implications of the ‘differences’ they found, and assessing their significance for the ‘equality’ of the human species (Synnott 1993). Gradually, however, anthropology shifted from a nineteenth-century concern with ‘measurement’, to a twentieth-century concern with ‘meaning’ (Synnott and Howes 1992). Here, a view of the body as a ‘surface’ upon which the marks of culture and social structure are inscribed through ritual, symbolism, decoration, tattooing and scarification has been central (Polhemus 1978). More generally, anthropologists, from Hertz to Douglas, have emphasised the body as a potent natural symbol of society, including divisions such as the sacred and profane, good and evil, purity and danger, risk and taboo. Underlying many of these issues has been a broader set of debates within anthropology concerning the nature/culture divide, and the question of how so-called ‘natural’ facts, including the human body itself, are experienced differently according to culture, time and space.

Despite these anthropological legacies, the ontological status of social actors, and consequently the problem of human embodiment has, traditionally speaking, been a neglected theme within sociological discourse. To the extent that classical social theorists turned their attention to such issues, they have tended to define human actors in disembodied terms as rational agents who make choices through means/ends formulae, based on ‘utility’ criteria or ‘general value’ orientations (Turner 1991). Conscious ratiocination rather than the biological conditions of action was therefore seen as most important, with little room left for the ‘lived’ body as the primordial basis of human agency in the social world. In short, whilst the body entered anthropology at the fundamental level of ontology, the sociological stress upon rational economic action resulted in a failure to elaborate a fully sustained theoretical account of the body/society relationship. The body, in effect, became external to the actor who appeared, so to speak, as a rational, disembodied, decision-making agent (Turner 1991:9).

Bodies then, at least according to standard accounts of their history, have tended to enjoy a rather ethereal, implicit existence within sociology. Reasons given for this apparent sociological neglect are manifold, including the predominant emphasis, by the founding fathers of the discipline, on social systems, their problems and their interrelationships rather than the ontological status or historical evolution of human beings; the suspicion of biological reductionism and its essentialist baggage; a conceptualisation of human agency linked with the capacities of the (rational) mind rather than the management of the body as a whole, and finally; the fact that these so-called ‘founding fathers’ were, of course, all men—the grand-Masters of their craft (Shilling 1993; Morgan and Scott 1993). Locating themselves amongst the geisteswissenschaften, sociologists have, in short, tended to perpetuate rather than challenge the dualistic legacies of Western thought stretching back to antiquity; legacies in which mind and body, nature and culture, reason and emotion, public and private have been artificially separated and rigidly reinforced.

Certainly sociologists, in the past, have greeted so-called ‘naturalistic’ accounts of the body—approaches which stress the unchanging pre-social or biological body as the foundation upon which social relations, hierarchies and inequalities are built—with a great deal of caution or scepticism, if not downright rejection; raising in their minds if not their bodies, the spectre of biological reductionism, not to mention racism and sexism.²,³ None the less, despite their ideological associations and political biases, what ‘naturalistic’ views do at least take seriously, as Shilling (1993) rightly notes, is that human bodies not only form the basis for, but also contribute to social relationships. In contrast to many classical and contemporary sociologists, in other words, the human body and its biological constitution is accorded a central place in ‘naturalistic’ forms of inquiry. In this respect, shorn of its ideological and pseudoscientific baggage, the message of sociobiology and its legacy for sociology is that organic bodies do indeed make a significant contribution to social relations (Shilling 1993:40).

To leave things here, however, would be to do both classical and contemporary sociology a gross injustice. As we shall see, bodily matters have their own (secret) history within sociology itself. Indeed, for some thinkers, bodily matters have been explicitly addressed, leading either to an acceptance or rejection of their sociological importance. For others, however, they remain largely implicit. In this respect, as with so much sociological inquiry, the work is ‘already there’, waiting to be mined through a corporeally sensitive re-reading (Morgan and Scott 1993). It is, therefore, to a fuller discussion of the vicissitudes of bodily matters in classical sociology that we now turn through a critical re-examination of corporeal themes in the writings of key thinkers such as Marx, Durkheim, Weber and Simmel. What then, did these ‘founding fathers’ have to say about the human body and emotions?

Marx’s work, as Turner (1984) notes, is a constant reminder that, in order to exist, (capitalist) societies depend upon the continual (re)production of bodies across time and their allocation in social space. From this perspective, bodies become both the means and the object of human labour. For Marx, universal human nature is related to the fact that men, in the generic sense of the word, labour collectively on nature in order to satisfy their (organic) needs. In doing so, they thereby transform themselves into practical, conscious, sensuous agents (Turner 1984). Whilst nature exists as an independent reality, it is constantly appropriated and transformed through human labour and social praxis. Consequently, nature itself becomes a human product as the inorganic body of nature fuses with the organic body of the labourer. This is perhaps nowhere more clearly captured than in the following passage from Marx’s 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts:

The universality of man is in practice manifested precisely in the universality which makes all nature his (sic) inorganic body—nature, that is, in so far as it is not itself the human body. Man lives on nature—means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous intercourse if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is part of nature.

(Marx 1959[1884]:74)

Here, the convergence with philosophical anthropology is readily apparent. Man, as an ‘unfinished creature’, relates to the world on the basis of (organic) human need and the transformative potential of embodied social praxis. In doing so, Men, as social beings who enter into definite social relations of production with others, thereby ‘complete’ themselves. Marx’s concern with social praxis and the dialectic arose from a critical reading of Feuerbach’s sensualist materialism. Unfortunately, however, his commitment to historical materialism meant that ultimately Marx lost much of Feuerbach’s original emphasis upon the sensual and emotional aspects of embodied human being (Turner 1984). None the less, Marx’s views on capitalist bodies and the transformative potential of social praxis remain an important foundation upon which to build a truly sociological approach to embodied human agency within the material, social, political and economic world.

Perhaps the most direct and obvious illustration of the links between capitalism and the body, however, comes not from Marx, but from his lifelong friend and associate Engels. In a bold statement Engels likens The Conditions of the Working Class in England (1987/[1845]) to ‘social murder’ by the bourgeoisie. The combination of poor sanitary and environmental conditions, together with poor nutrition and long, arduous, health-risking forms of labour, resulted in a general ‘enfeeblement’ of the working-class body, which aged prematurely and died early. In Liverpool, for instance, in 1840, the average life span of the upper classes, gentry and professional men was 35 years; that of the business men and better-placed handicraftsmen, 22 years; and that of the operatives, day-labourers and serviceable class in general, just 15 years. As Engels points out, these chilling statistics were not uncommon. Indeed, Chadwick’s The Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain: Report 1842 (1965) contained a wealth of similar facts and figures.

In addition to sanitary and environmental conditions, Engels also provides graphic evidence of the bodily insults and injuries which capitalism inflicted upon the proletariat classes through poor working conditions and long arduous hours of repetitive work and laborious toil. For example, the lungs, hearts and digestive organs of men, women and children who worked in the mines were irrevocably damaged. Similarly, factory work had a number of detrimental consequences to the working-class body. In mill hands, for instance, malformations of the spine were common, some consequenr upon mere overwork, others due to the effect of long work upon constitutions already feeble or weakened by bad food. Other common complaints and physical deformities included knees bent inwards and backwards, deformities and thickening of the ankles, bending of the spinal column either forward or to one side, flattening of the foot, pain in the back, hips and legs, swollen joints, varicose veins and large, persistent ulcers in the thighs and calves—conditions which were ‘almost universal’ amongst the operatives. As a consequence, most men were unfit for work by the age of 40, a few holding out until 45, with almost none by the age of 50 (Engels 1987 [1845]:174–9).

The influence of factory work upon the female physique was also marked. Here, protracted work frequently led to deformities of the pelvis, partly through abnormal development of the hip bones and partly through malformations of the lower position of the spinal column. Consequently, female factory workers were more likely to suffer miscarriages or to undergo difficult confinements. Indeed, many pregnant women continued to labour up until the hour of birth for fear of lost earnings or a loss of employment, and the case was none too rare of children being delivered in the factory amongst the machinery. Children, too, were made to work long hours amongst dangerous machinery, thus giving rise to a ‘multitude of accidents’. All in all:

A pretty list of diseases engendered purely by the hateful greed of the manufacturers! Women made unfit for childbearing, children deformed, men enfeebled, limbs crushed, whole generations wrecked, afflicted with disease and infirmity, purely to fill the purses of the bourgeoisie.

(Engels 1987 [1845]:183–4)

Durkheim, too, paid greater attention to bodily matters than might first appear. Certainly his emphasis upon ‘social facts’ and society as a reality sui generis would seem, at first sight, to negate any such interest. Nevertheless, in an insightful essay entitled: ‘The dualism of human nature and its social conditions’, Durkheim does explicitly consider the nature of the human body and soul, their relationship to one another, and to the sacred and profane. As he states in classic Platonic style:

It can even be said that although the body and soul are closely associated they do not belong to the same world. The body is an integral part of the material universe as it is made known to us by sensory experience; the abode of the soul is elsewhere, and the soul tends ceaselessly to return to it. This abode is the world of the sacred. Therefore, the soul is invested with a dignity that has always been denied the body which is considered essentially profane, and it inspires those feelings that are elsewhere reserved for that which is divine. It is made of the same substance as are the sacred beings: it differs from them only in degree.

(Durkheim 1960 [1914]:326, our emphasis)

The dual nature of human beings, what Durkheim refers to as homo duplex, stems directly from these fundamental divisions of body and soul, sacred and profane. Indeed, for Durkheim, our inner life had something like a ‘double centre of gravity’. From this perspective, a ‘true antagonism’ exists between, on the one hand, our individuality and the body in which it is based, and, on the other, everything in us which expresses something over and above ourselves. The result, for Durkheim, was that we are never completely at peace with ourselves, for we cannot follow one of our two natures—one rooted in morality, the other in the instincts and penchants of the body—without throwing the other one out of kilter. Our ‘joys’, in other words, can ‘never be pure’ (Durkheim 1960 [1914]:328–30). The traditional division of body and soul is, therefore, no mere flight of fancy for Durkheim. Rather, we are the direct realisation of this fundamental antinomy. Indeed, in a manner directly echoing Freud, Durkheim predicted that the struggle between these ‘two beings’ would increase rather than decrease with the growth of civilisation: the rationalist Enlightenment project, in short, will never achieve total control over the ‘extra-rational’ senses and sensualities of embodied human beings.⁴

If the body is central to Marx’s and Engels’s work, yet ambiguous for Durkheim, it certainly does not require too much re-writing to bring it ‘back in’ to Weberian sociology. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, for example, is predicated upon the notion of the ascetic body in which the pleasures of the flesh are denied through thrift and hard work in one’s ‘calling’ as a sign of God’s grace. Certainly, as Weber shows, Protestant writings at this time were dominated by the continual, passionately preached, virtues of hard work and unrelenting mental and physical labour (Weber 1974:158). Here, loss of time through sociability, idle talk or luxury was considered worthy of utter condemnation. Indeed, every hour wasted was considered labour lost for the glory of God. In this respect, the denials of the flesh and the sexual asceticism of Puritanism differed in degree only, not in principle, from that of monasticism:

Sexual intercourse is permitted, even within marriage, only as the means willed by God for the increase of His glory according to the commandment ‘Be fruitful and multiply’. Along with moderate vegetable diet and cold baths, the same prescription is given for sexual temptations as is used against religious doubts and a sense of moral unworthiness: ‘Work hard in your calling’.

(Weber 1974:158–9)

Whilst it was acceptable to labour to be rich for God, one could not do so for the flesh or sin. Asceticism therefore turned with all its force against one thing: the spontaneous enjoyment of life and all it had to offer. For Weber, this religious valuation of relentless work in a worldly calling as the surest proof of genuine faith and spiritual salvation, served as the most ‘powerful conceivable lever’ for the expansion of that attitude toward life he termed the ‘spirit of capitalism’ (Weber 1974:172).

Once capitalism developed, however, its prioritisation of formal rationality left little room for human feelings and sentiments. Capitalism, both past and present, requires the rational management and control of the body and emotions: if and when the latter are experienced, they are to be kept in private spheres of the individual’s life or else manipulated for commercial ends (see Chapter 7). This, in turn, contributes to the ‘disenchantment’ of the modern Western world as rationality infuses organisations, bureaucracies, and the routinised structures of everyday life.

As Turner (1992) rightly argues, there are important points of theoretical convergence here between Weber’s analysis of the rationalisation and Foucault’s work on disciplinary technologies of power/knowledge. Certainly, it is clear that much of Weber’s writing is about the rationalisation of bodies across time and space and the management of emotions; even religion and emotionality were subject to the pressures of rationality and science (Weber 1948:286–97). Bureaucracies, for example, are embodied institutions, predicated on the rational control of official as well as ‘client’ bodies and emotions. Certainly the rationale of most, if not all, state bureaucracies, is ultimately to do with the surveillance and control of individual and collective social bodies. In this sense, bureaucratic bodies both derive from and give o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Lived Body
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1: Sociology and the ‘problem’ of the body
• 2: Bodily ‘order’: Cultural and historical perspectives on conformity and transgression
• 3: Bodily ‘control’: Body techniques, intercorporeality and the embodiment of social action
• 4: The body in ‘high’ modernity and consumer culture
• 5: The ‘libidinal’ body: Psychoanalysis, critical theory and the ‘problem’ of human desire
• 6: ‘Uncontainable’ bodies?: Feminisms, boundaries and reconfigured identities
• 7: The emotionally ‘expressive’ body
• 8: Pain and the ‘dys-appearing’ body
• 9: The ‘dormant’ body: Sleep, night-time and dreams
• 10: ‘Artistic’ bodies: Representation and resistance
• Conclusions
• Notes
• References