An Introduction to Sociology and Bodies.

The sociological specialism of 'The Sociology of the Body' is a comparatively recent phenomenon. The impulse for this specialism emanates in large part from the work of the French social theorist, Michel Foucault. In the 1970s Foucault's work was becoming widely available, through translation, to an English speaking audience. All of Foucault's work is based upon the idea that it is 'the body' which is the primary focus and locus of power, particularly in modern societies. This thesis is made explicit in Foucault's book, 'Discipline & Punish' (1991)(Penguin)

Two British texts in particular can be seen as largely responsible for indicating the significance of Foucault's work to sociological enquiry in general and to a 'sociology of the body' in particular. In the early 1980s, Bryan Turner, then working at the University of Lancaster published his:

The Body and Society (Hutchinson)

whilst Paul Hirst, then Reader in Social Theory at Birkbeck College, University of London, wrote, along with Penny Woolley, the seminal:

Human Relations & Social Attributes (Tavistock)

Now in the 1990s the 'Sociology of the Body' has become an established part of the 'sociological imagination'. In many respects this is a development to the benefit of sociology. Yet it might be argued that a sociological analysis of bodies (rather than a 'Sociology of the Body') which underlies all sociological analysis might be an greater development.

Nonetheless any sociological analysis of human bodies is to be welcomed, but what might the broad parameters of such an analysis be?

3 THEMES

There are at least) three themes which must run like threads through any sociological analysis of bodies:

1. BODIES AND TECHNOLOGY

2. SCARIFICATION

3. BODIES AND BELIEF-SYSTEMS.

These general themes are at once both distinct and yet are interrelated with one another.

1. BODIES AND TECHNOLOGY

All too often we take for granted the body we possess and what it enables us to achieve as well as what that body can inhibit us from doing. It is worth while reflecting upon this fact so as to fully appreciate the 'work' our bodies do for us.

Franz Kafka, the Czech novelist, wrote a short story entitled 'Metamorphosis'. It tells the story of a man who awakes one morning to the 'nightmare' of inhabiting the body of a Dungbeetle. Now Kafka was no self-styled 'sociologist of the body' and yet the story tells a lot about the presumptions we all make with regard to the 'obviousness' of the body we inhabit. Such a simple series of acts such as 'getting up' from bed and answering the calls of his parents completely elude the story's hero.

Kafka's tale is of great import for us all. For what a sociology of bodies should learn from this tale is NOT that there is a relationship between human bodies and technology as if what we were discussing here were two discrete and opposed entities. No, on the contrary, what Kafka's story indicates is that the human body is our technology. We are not dealing here with two discrete entities but one and the same entity!

The social anthropologists and the palaeontologists know this fact well. Discussions of the origins of humanity have much still to dispute and much still discover about humanity. However all discussions of early humanity agree on the importance of the human body in shaping and constructing our history.

Such discussions might 'dissemble' the body into those parts of the body which were significant in the development of human sociality.

BIPEDALISM:

I once overheard a colleague explaining the fact that we walk on our hind limbs in teleological terms! To explain a phenomenon teleologically is to explain that phenomenon in the light of hindsight. This scientist simply asserted that 'we wouldn't be able to get around' if we didn't walk on our hind limbs. What my colleague 'forgets' is to explain why we humans 'chose' to go bipedal. Because the plain facts are that we could have moved much faster and more discretely if 'we' had stayed on all fours!! Yet the fact that humans 'chose' bipedalism was a contingency not a necessity. Yet such a contingency has serious and important consequences for the rest of human history.

HITCHING A LIFT!

One important consequence of becoming bipedal is that we 'free' up our fore limbs: which of course means that humans are the only species able to 'hitch-hike'! More seriously the freeing up of our fore limbs allowed us to achieve much. But to achieve this we needed an aspect of our physiology: the opposable thumb! Humans have prehensile hands with an opposable thumb which allows us to be a tool making and tool-using species. This point is of the greatest significance because it indicates the beginnings of human culture and technology as an integral aspect of the human body.

PLAIN SPEAKING!

Of course the contingencies of the 'move' to bipedalism were combined with other contingencies. One such contingency was the particular location of the human larynx. Biologists suggest that had the human larynx been ½ an inch higher or lower than it is in the human body then we would have been unable to produce the distinctions in sound so necessary for our complex languages. Without language humanity  and its social institutions might never have developed as it has.

SEEING DOUBLE?

Scholars such as Bateson have long since known and informed us of the intimate connection between perception and intellect. Thus there can be little doubt that the human possession of stereoscopic vision is a fundamental aspect of our ability to 'intellectualise' the world around us.

BODIES AS TECHNOLOGY

This brief discussion of the development of the early humans should be sufficient to demonstrate that we should be interpreting the human body as intricately bound up with technology.

2. SCARIFICATION

Scarification might be defined as the social process whereby human bodies are inscribed and marked or painted. A western woman applying her make-up of a morning might seem an obvious example of scarification. But the process of scarification would also point to the western male who shaves every morning or indeed who cultivates his facial hair. Tattooing would be another 'obvious' example of scarification. These examples point to the universal amongst humans to 'mark' their bodies and in particular their faces. But scarification must also be seen to include the human tendency to cover their bodies in clothing. Clothing cannot be seen as merely an attempt to keep warm since choices are made as to how that clothing is worn and what is worn.

We would be wrong to assume that scarification is a process which only affects the 'outside' of bodies. However scarification must be seen as a process which involves inscribing and marking the body internally. Such is the process of socialisation and enculturation. A process in which human bodies are shaped and constrained so as to become fully 'social'.  The most 'obvious' example of such a process is provided for us by Foucault. In his discussion of the 'mad' and modernity, Foucault indicates the extent to which the 'mad' were a social construction of modernity. It was not simply the case that all those hitherto known as 'mad' were 'rounded-up' and placed in asylums, but that the category of 'madness' had itself to be invented and invested with a 'regime of truth' (i.e. 'mad' people had to be seen to have determinate behavioural 'scars' and traits). Once invented and invested with these bodily then the 'mad' might even know themselves! All human bodies, whether labelled mad or not in order to become 'social beings' are products of these processes of scarification.

Thus the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss was one of the first to suggest the ways in which apparently 'biological' traits such as walking and talking are in large part shaped and determined by socio-cultural processes. Thus Dale Spender has argued that the fact women and men talk in different ways to one another is of social not biological significance. Equally, Robert Hertz suggested that the dominance of the 'right hand' was of little biological import but of the greatest social significance. To be made to write with your right hand is to undergo the scarification process.

Foucault's work generates a general framework which attempts to explain these processes of scarification. For Foucault suggests modernity to be based upon a BIOPOLITICS. A politics which seeks to order and shape bodies so as to make them PRODUCTIVE bodies and FUNCTIONAL bodies. Productive and functional to society! 'Mad' bodies. crippled bodies are to be placed outside the 'norms' of the social. Whilst the overbearing functionalism and determinism of Foucault's work is problematic there are many insights provided by this work.

3. BODIES AND BELIEF-SYSTEMS

This theme is prompted by some suggestive remarks made by Max Weber. As is well known Weber wrote a great deal on the subject of religions and their sociological significance. What is less well known is the observation he made, brief and cryptic though this was, on the connection between religions and concepts of the human body. We might extend this discussion to include all belief-systems, secular as well as religious. We might integrate such a discussion with ideas of representation and signification so as to be able to fully appreciate the role of bodies as symbols, icons and representations of social practices and beliefs. To fully appreciate this theme we need to utilise concepts of ideology, signification and representation. Nor should we preclude from our analysis the 'work' of social institutions such as the Media and the State in prescribing and proclaiming particularistic ideas on the body. In particular we might examine the recent trend towards 'body projects' which have become ubiquitous in society.