Chris Shilling The Body in Culture, Technology & Society shilling prelims.qxd 01/09/2004 10:42 Page i The Body in Culture, Technology and Society i shilling prelims.qxd 01/09/2004 10:42 Page ii Theory, Culture & Society Theory, Culture & Society caters for the resurgence of interest in culture within contemporary social science and the humanities. Building on the her- itage of classical social theory, the book series examines ways in which this tradition has been reshaped by a new generation of theorists. It also pub- lishes theoretically informed analyses of everyday life, popular culture, and new intellectual movements. EDITOR: Mike Featherstone, Nottingham Trent University SERIES EDITORIAL BOARD Roy Boyne, University of Durham Mike Hepworth, University of Aberdeen Scott Lash, Goldsmiths College, University of London Roland Robertson, University of Aberdeen Bryan S. Turner, University of Cambridge THE TCS CENTRE The Theory, Culture & Society book series, the journals Theory, Culture & Society and Body & Society, and related conference, seminar and postgradu- ate programmes operate from the TCS Centre at Nottingham Trent University. For further details of the TCS Centre's activities please contact: Centre Administrator The TCS Centre, Room 175 Faculty of Humanities Nottingham Trent University Clifton Lane, Nottingham, NG11 8NS, UK e-mail: [email protected] web: http://tcs.ntu.ac.uk Recent volumes include: Critique of Information Scott Lash Liberal Democracy 3.0 Stephen P. Turner French Social Theory Mike Gane Sex and Manners Cas Wouters ii shilling prelims.qxd 01/09/2004 10:42 Page iii The Body in Culture, Technology and Society Chris Shilling SAGE Publicati ons London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi iii shilling prelims.qxd 01/09/2004 10:42 Page iv © 2005 Chris Shilling First published 2005 Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society, Nottingham Trent University Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licenses issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B-42 Panchsheel Enclave Post Box 4109 New Delhi – 100 017 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7619 7123 8 ISBN 0 7619 7124 6 Library of Congress Control Number Available Printed in India at Gopsons Paper Ltd, Noida iv shilling prelims.qxd 01/09/2004 10:42 Page v Contents Acknowledgements vi 1 Introduction 1 2 Classical Bodies 24 3 Contemporary Bodies 47 4 Working Bodies 73 5 Sporting Bodies 101 6 Musical Bodies 127 7 Sociable Bodies 148 8 Technological Bodies 173 9 Conclusion 198 Bibliography 210 Author Index 235 Subject Index 242 v shilling prelims.qxd 01/09/2004 10:42 Page vi Acknowledgements Philip A. Mellor and Keith Tester have been valuable sources of support and critical insight, while this study has also been improved by the comments of Ian Burkitt, Mike Hardey, Caroline New and Pauline Leonard. At Sage Publications, Chris Rojek provides all the encourage- ment and good advice one would want from an editor, and thanks also to Ian Antcliff and and Kay Bridger for their assistance during the pro- duction process. The Theory, Culture & Society editorial group continue to provide valued support for my work, while the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Portsmouth grant- ed to me a period of sabbatical leave so that I could complete this book. The support that I have received since starting this project, which has been several years in the making, also came in other guises. I am extremely grateful to Xulong Lee for his ongoing help and expertise, and thanks also to Richard Gulliver for his assistance. Max and Katie made this period of time so much more fun than it would otherwise have been, while I want to dedicate this book to my wife, Debbie, for her love, friendship and support. vi Ch1.qxd 01/09/2004 10:43 Page 1 1 Introduction Social theories of the body have exerted an enormous influence on the social sciences and humanities in the past two decades. From being a subject of marginal academic interest, the intellectual significance of the body is now such that no study can lay claim to being comprehensive unless it takes at least some account of the embodied preconditions of agency and the physical effects of social structures. In sociology, discussions of embodiment pervade general theoretical works and specialist sub-disciplinary studies. Indeed, a recognition that its subject matter includes thinking, feeling bod- ies, rather than disembodied minds unaffected by their senses and habits, has become central to the sociological imagination. Despite these advances, however, clear portraits of the body’s status, generative capacities, and receptivity to structural forces, remain frustratingly elusive within most accounts of contemporary society. It is against this background that this book is intended to be a theoreti- cal and substantive contribution to the study of the body, as well as to social theory and sociological research more generally, and is addressed to the problems that still confront this area. In what follows, I aim to do the fol- lowing: (a) account for the enigmatic nature of embodiment in social the- ory; (b) suggest that classical sociological writings converged around a hitherto neglected view of the body as a multi-dimensional medium for the constitution of society; (c) critically examine recent approaches to the subject; and (d) undertake a series of substantive analyses of the body and the econ- omy, culture, sociality and technology. These four aims are related in that this classical convergence, that I characterize as a form of corporeal realism, provides us with a framework that can be used to reduce the analytical elu- siveness of the body and overcome some of the theoretical limitations of recent approaches. It also allows us to investigate the strongly held concerns about the subjugation of the embodied subject that characterize these recent approaches. This opening chapter is designed to explore in more detail the enigmatic nature of the body in social theory, before outlining the framework adopted in this study and introducing the reader to the main themes informing the rest of the book. The Rise of the Enigmatic Body In accounting for the ubiquitous yet elusive nature of the body in modern thought, the first aim of this book is to examine how the physical subject has come to possess an exceptional academic popularity, yet still seems to fade away when we ask the question ‘What is the body?’. In terms of its pop- ularity, there has been a breathtaking explosion of interest in the subject of Ch1.qxd 01/09/2004 10:43 Page 2 The Body in Culture, Technology and Society the body since the early 1980s. However, academic interest was stimulated initially by social trends and analyses which helped position the body as sig- nificant to a range of other subjects of established intellectual significance. Several strands of social thought and analytical perspectives assisted this early rise of the body, and it is important to revisit and re-examine the most important of them here as they help explain why embodiment became so ubiquitous yet remains such a contested and slippery subject. This rise of interest in the body represents the centrifugal stage in the recent develop- ment of the area as it attaches the subject to a wide variety of disparate agendas. It contrasts with the somewhat more centripetal trend that has emerged in recent years (when several broad perspectives emerged as dom- inant resources for examining embodiment) that I examine later in this Introduction, but has not yet receded completely and continues to inform developments in the area. First, analysts of consumer culture highlighted the commercialized body as increasingly central to people’s sense of self-identity, a shift that was asso- ciated with a corresponding change in the structure of advanced capitalist societies in the second half of the twentieth century. During this period, there was a move away from the focus on hard work in the sphere of pro- duction coupled with frugality in the sphere of consumption, towards an ethos which encouraged hard work and hedonistic consumption (Featherstone, 1982). The body’s status as ubiquitous sign in advertising cul- ture, and the proliferation of production oriented toward leisure, helped promote an emphasis on the achievement of an appearance and a degree of physical control commensurate with the display of a hyper-efficient ‘per- forming self’. Theorists of consumer culture analysed these developments through the related prisms provided by Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft distinction and Durkheim’s mechanical/organic solidarity distinction. Pasi Falk (1994: 12–13, 36), for example, argued that the boundaries of the late modern self had become detached from the bonds of collective physical rituals, and cen- tred around individualizing consumption acts focused on the ‘bodily surface and its sensory openings’; a development clearly associated with the rising influence of consumerism. This distinction between the collectively deter- mined body of the pre-modern era, and the individualized body of the late modern era, also underpinned the studies of Giddens (1991) and Turner (1984); analyses which focus in very different ways on the socio-political contexts in which consumer culture developed.