Soon-Hee Whang - Routledge Handbook of Body Studies

Routledge Handbook of Body Studies

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 twenty-eight 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, ageing, 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 Handbooks clear, direct style will appeal to a wide undergraduate audience in the social sciences, particularly for those studying medical sociology, gender studies, or the sociology of religion. It will serve to consolidate the new field of body studies.

Bryan S. Turner is the Presidential Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York, USA, and the Professor of Social and Political Thought at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. His publications include The Body & Society (Sage, 2008) and he edited The Routledge Handbook of Globalization Studies (2010).

Routledge Handbook of Body Studies

Edited by
Bryan S. Turner

First published 2012

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2012 Bryan S. Turner; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Bryan S. Turner to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Routledge handbook of body studies / edited by Bryan S. Turner.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Human body Social aspects I. Turner, Bryan S.

HM636.R68 2012

306.4613 dc23 2011033709

ISBN: 978-0-415-59355-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-84209-6 (ebk)

Contents

Bryan S. Turner

Mary Evans

Richard Shusterman

Mike Atkinson

Bryan S. Turner

Ken Plummer

Patricia Ticineto Clough

Nikki Sullivan

Annemarie Mol

Nick Crossley

Darin Weinberg

Dr Stratos Nanoglou

Victoria Pitts-Taylor

Tulasi Srinivas

Sonja van Wichelen

Nurit Stadler

Lianna Hart and Stefan Timmermans

Susan Bordo

Christopher A. Faircloth

Kevin White

Jenny Hockey and Allison James

Travis S. K. Kong

JeffHearn

Maxine Leeds Craig

Heather Laine Talley

Paul Sweetman

Tiago Moreira and Paolo Palladino

Alex Dumas

Arthur W. Frank

Editorial Board

Kathy Davis, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Mary Evans, London School of Economics, UK

Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA

Darin Weinberg, University of Cambridge, UK

Contributors

Mike Atkinson is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Health at the University of Toronto, where he teaches sport, exercise and physical cultural studies policy and research methods. He is also Director of Sport Legacies Research. Obtaining a PhD in Sociology from the University of Calgary in 2001, he has taught at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, McMaster University, University of Western Ontario and Loughborough University. His central areas of teaching and research pertain to a figurationally-informed physical cultural studies, violence and aggression, human rights policies and biopedagogical practices in sport and physical activity contexts, issues in bioethics and body modification within sport cultures, masculinities and research methods. He is author/co-author of seven books, including Battleground Sport (2008, Greenwood Press); Deviance and Social Control in Sport (with Kevin Young, 2008, Human Kinetics); Tribal Play, Subcultural Journeys Through Sport (with Kevin Young, 2008, Elsevier); Tattooed: The Sociogenesis of a Body Art (2003, University of Toronto Press); Boys Bodies: Speaking the Unspoken (with Michael Kehler, 2010, Peter Lang); Key Concepts in Sport and Exercise Research Methods (2011, Sage); and Deconstructing Men and Masculinities (2010, Oxford University Press). In October of 2004, he was honoured by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada with their Aurora Award as the outstanding young scholar in the Canadian social sciences.

Susan Bordo holds the Otis A. Singletary Chair in Humanities at the University of Kentucky and is the author of many critically acclaimed, highly influential books and articles including Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body (described by the New York Times as a feminist classic), The Male Body. A New Look at Men in Public and Private and Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J. Bordos writing has been translated into many languages and assigned in disciplines throughout the academy. She is currently writing a book about Anne Boleyn (The Creation of Anne Boleyn) to be published by Houghton Mifflin.

Patricia Ticineto Clough is Professor of Sociology and Womens Studies at the Graduate Center and Queens College of the City University of New York. She is author of Autoaffection: Unconscious Thought in the Age of Teletechnology (2000); Feminist Thought: Desire, Power and Academic Discourse (1994) and The End(s) of Ethnography: From Realism to Social Criticism (1998). She is the editor of The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social (2007) and, with Craig Willse, editor of Beyond Biopolitics: Essays on the Governance of Life and Death (forthcoming, 2012). Cloughs work has drawn on theoretical traditions concerned with science, technology, affect, unconscious processes, time-space and political economy. She is currently working on