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The Rise of Body Studies and the Embodiment of Society: A Review of

the Field

Chris Shilling
University of Kent
C.Shilling@kent.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: During the last few decades there has been a pro-
nounced ‘turn to the body’ within sociology and social thought. Ex-
ploring the background to and the parameters of this development, this
paper explores how this focus on embodiment has been used to de-
velop new perspectives within social and cultural analysis, and can be
assessed as an essential means of avoiding the Cartesian bias within
much Western thought. Revisiting sociology’s heritage, it then identi-
fies important resources for this project within classical writings, be-
fore analyzing why the body has become such a contested phenome-
non within social analysis and society. As developments in science,
medicine and technology have made the body increasingly malleable,
so too have they made it subject to debates and disagreements about
what is normal, desirable and even sacred about the physical identities
and capacities of embodied subjects.

Keywords: the body, embodiment, sociology, structures/agency, social

inequalities.

Introduction

There has, since the 1980s, been an increasing focus within academic re-
search and writing on the social significance of the body. This developing recogni-
tion represented an attempt to advance the explanatory power of social, cultural and
historical analysis, while also seeking to recover from the Cartesian legacy of West-
ern thought a subject that had become marginalized within academic writings (e.g.
Freund, 1982; Turner, 1984; O’Neill, 1985). Interested in examining how societies
managed populations through the structural objectification of the body as Körper
(the fleshy physical shell), and the individual significance of the experiencing, act-
ing and interacting Lieb (the lived body), this trend spread across the social sciences
and humanities. Culminating in the establishment of the interdisciplinary field of
‘body studies’, it is no exaggeration to suggest that this concern with embodiment -
alongside associated interests in the senses, affect and what has become known as
the ‘new materialism’ - has been one of the most influential developments within
social thought in recent decades (Shilling, 2005; 2012; Coole and Frost, 2010).
During this time a distinctive theoretical and substantive terrain has been
carved out that includes histories and archaeologies of the body (e.g. Feher, et al.,
1989; Boric and Robb, 2008; Sawday, 1995); urban studies of the body (e.g. Sen-

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nett, 1994); feminist theories of the body (e.g. Butler, 1990, 1993; Diprose, 1994;
Grosz, 1994; Connell, 1987; Kirby, 1997; Frost, 2001); excavations of religious
bodies (e.g. Mahmood 2005; Coakley, 2010), working bodies (e.g. Wolkowitz,
2006) and sporting bodies (e.g. Thorpe, 2011; Maguire et al., 2016); analyses of
health, disability and embodiment (e.g. Turner, 1987; 1992; Frank, 1995; Williams,
2003; Freund, 2011); studies of embodied emotions and affect (Blackman 2012;
Howes and Classen 2013); diverse readers, reviews and collections of essays on the
subject (e.g. Frank, 1990; Featherstone et al., 1991; Scott and Morgan, 1993; Fraser
and Greco, 2004; Malacrida and Low 2008); a growing number of texts (e.g.
Cregan, 2006; Howson, 2012); special editions of journals including Sociology of
Health and Illness, and Societies; and the launch in 1995 of the international refe-
reed journal Body & Society. The fact that this sample only scratches the surface of
the proliferation and reach of body studies helps illustrate the significance of this
field.
For all its influence, however, there is something deeply counterintuitive
about the move towards physicality within social thought. Sociology, the discipline
that has arguably played the leading role in this development, is after all concerned
with studying society. As Durkheim (1938) insisted in his explication of ‘social
facts’, this is generally judged to involve the methodological analysis of trends and
processes that extend beyond, but nevertheless shape, the horizons and actions of
individuals. In this context, the discipline would appear best suited to studying phe-
nomena such as crime or suicide rates, or global patterns of inequality. Surely the
body is a property of individuals, not society, best studied by the biological sciences,
not the social sciences or humanities?
In opposing such a conclusion, and highlighting the utility of focusing upon
the body as a means of enhancing our social understanding, I want to begin by refer-
encing recent developments in the natural sciences. This point of departure has been
chosen not because their methods or standing deserve more credence. It is because
they reveal particularly clearly how taking the body seriously as a vehicle of investi-
gation can highlight social and economic relationships, and political events. Bioar-
chaeology (the study of biological remains from archaeological sites), for example,
has extended our knowledge of gender inequalities, migration, and the effects of po-
litical oppression and conflict. Scientists working in this field have shown how the
chemical composition of skeletal remains reveals major differences in past female
and male diets, suggestive of socially structured inequalities in access to foodstocks.
More impressive still is their capacity to reveal how political events - such as the
Dutch famine of 1944–5, a period in which Germany stopped food supplies to the
Netherlands - affected the health of those developing in utero (Gowland and Thomp-
son, 2013).
Developments within what has been referred to as the ‘new’ biology, associ-
ated with the Human Genome Project and a series of other initiatives, also highlight
how the body can reveal important information about the operation of societies. The
field of epigenetics, for example, has demonstrated how the regulation and expres-
sion of genes is shaped by the social relationships, inequalities and environmental
conditions characteristic of individuals’ lives. Many diseases and patterns of obesity
are now commonly traced not to the workings of single genes, but to multiple condi-
tions that include social and cultural circumstances (Atkinson, et al., 2009). Findings
such as these provide compelling reasons why the body should be important to so-
cial science. Alive or even, in the case of bioarchaeology, dead, the embodied basis

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of what it is to be human is both deeply affected by social and cultural processes and
can also provide us with means of investigating these phenomena.

Developments within the physical and biological sciences thus suggest that
focusing on embodiment may be profitable for sociology and cognate disciplines,
but recent social and cultural developments have themselves highlighted the impor-
tance of body matters for understanding what is going on in society today. Cultural
images of ‘slim and sexy’ bodies have become pervasive within consumer culture -
spreading from Anglo-American societies to become an increasingly global phe-
nomenon - providing a visual backdrop to advertising, television and social media.
While images of the body have become a vehicle for marketing, a growing amount
of energy and attention has also been devoted to people’s pursuit of the ‘body beau-
tiful’. In the USA alone 15.9 million cosmetic procedures were performed in 2015
(American Society for Plastic Surgeons, 2016). The concern to sculpt the body
through breast modification, liposuction and tummy tucks, rhinoplasty, skin bleach-
ing and a large range of other techniques is also evident across a growing range of
societies (Gilman, 2000), while the concern with bodily perfection has been associ-
ated with serious social problems, including eating disorders (among young women
in particular), and muscle dysmorphia (among young men obsessed with developing
hyper-muscular bodies).
If social trends have brought the body to the attention of academics in recent
decades, the interrogation of matters related to embodiment has also been used as a
means for addressing unresolved theoretical issues. Expanding on how the ‘rise of
the body’ has been associated with theoretical advances in sociology, I turn now to
the issues that have prompted these developments before examining the classical
foundations that continue to inform them. I then focus on those eight conditions and
trends that have resulted in the body becoming increasingly contested both concep-
tually, within academic discourse, and also socially, as a means for the pursuit of
competing political and economic agendas, before identifying a ninth emergent fac-
tor that has arguably taken this conflict to a new level. It is this broad context that
provides us with the means to understand some of the major contemporary trajecto-
ries of debate and discussion in the field. Throughout this review I focus on the most
influential classical and contemporary thinkers who have assisted our understanding
of the embodiment of society and shaped the field of body studies.

Theoretical Issues

Sociology and the social sciences have from their origins been concerned
with seeking to analyze a range of issues central to both the organization and opera-
tion of societies, and to those patterned forms of interaction that involve yet extend
beyond the horizons of individuals. Body studies have added important dimensions
to these considerations - as illustrated in conceptualizations of structure, agency, ac-
culturation, social inequalities and solidarities – and in so doing have drawn on and
sought to develop the work of an eclectic range of authors.
A major theoretical issue informing the academic turn to the body involved
dissatisfaction with the discipline’s emphasis on the cognitive and ideological ef-
fects of social structures, and its relative neglect of how societies impinged upon the
surfaces, feelings, habits and physical capacities of embodied subjects. One of the
reasons Michel Foucault’s writings on power, punishment and the ‘care of the self’
became so popular, indeed, was because their focus on disciplining the body ad-

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dressed a number of these issues. In this respect, Foucault’s (1975) analysis of the
broad changes that took place within the European penal system during the late
early-modern period provided for many a compelling account of how structures op-
erate through forms of bio-power that imprint themselves on and within bodies.
In the medieval and first period of the early-modern era in Europe, the focus
of governance was on highly visible displays of monarchical power that damaged or
destroyed the bodies of offenders. Foucault illustrates this in a gruesome opening
passage to his book Discipline and Punish in which he details the 1757 torture and
execution of Damiens (convicted of attempting to assassinate King Louis XV of
France). Tied to a scaffold, Damiens had lumps of flesh torn from his body with red-
hot pincers before a ‘boiling potion’ was poured over each wound. Screaming from
this torment, his limbs were then wrenched and ultimately separated from his body.
Finally, while still alive, his trunk was thrown on to a stake and consumed by fire.
This execution occurred in plain view of, and was a source of entertainment for,
spectators: it was a show to be enjoyed and an education in the destructive power of
the monarchy.
In the space of just a few decades, however, there emerged a new ‘art of pe-
nal government’ in which disciplining the body and ‘soul’ (or the inner desires, hab-
its, and actions of the individual) became more important than destroying it. This art
was focused upon improving the quality of the population’s ‘human capital’, its pro-
ductive potential, and was exemplified by the English philosopher Jeremy Ben-
tham’s design for a ‘panopticon’. The panopticon involved a central watch tower
from which prisoners could be monitored. With their every action open to scrutiny,
this visibility was meant to encourage prisoners to reflect on their behavior, from the
perspective of the warden, to improve their self-control, and prepare to become pro-
ductive members of society (Foucault, 1975). For Foucault, these changing orienta-
tions to the body were part of a much larger transformation in how power was exer-
cised and populations conceptualized. Structures did not exist ‘above’, ‘beyond’ and
‘out of reach’ of those affected, but intruded into the very fibers, dispositions and
habits of their being.
If focusing on the body can help us understand how social structures operate,
it can also help us understand people’s capacity for agency - our ability to act, inter-
vene in and make a meaningful difference to the flow of life. At its most basic this
entails asking how the morphology and sensory capacities of the body affect what
we can do, and our use of metaphor. Lakoff and Johnson’s (1999) work on the utili-
zation of language to think, express ourselves and construct interpersonal meaning,
for example, demonstrates how bodily states and possibilities/limitations (e.g. feel-
ing ‘sick’ of someone or being unable to physically occupy two places simultane-
ously) are crucial to the processes that inform our reasoning and understanding. Fo-
cusing on the body in relation to issues regarding agency also raises the issue of how
we learn to extend ourselves into and recruit the environment to our plans; a theme
developed by theorists of digital media who highlight the various ways in which the
senses can be extended as a consequence of the assemblages they forge with new
technologies (Hansen, 2006).
With regard to how bodies learn to extend themselves in different ways
through contrasting patterns of acculturation, it is worth looking back to a lecture on
‘techniques of the body’, made in 1934, by the sociologist and anthropologist Mar-
cel Mauss. Mauss discussed the methods of breathing practiced by Daoist priests
and Yogic mystics. Far from being instinctive, these techniques required a lengthy
apprenticeship, exemplifying how the development of people’s physical abilities in-

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volves an interweaving of social and psychological processes within the biological

foundations of human being. The consequences of such techniques of breathing,
moreover, can be profound. Promoting positive flows of energy within the body,
they help harmonize individuals with the world around them, and can even facilitate
communication with the divine (see Mellor and Shilling, 2010). Lest anyone think
that this example is irrelevant to contemporary life, these Eastern methods of breath-
ing (alongside their associated disciplines of movement such as Tai Chi Chuan)
have been used in hospitals and prisons as methods of lowering blood pressure, re-
ducing anxiety, and helping physical and psychological stability. Breathing does not
just keep us alive, it is also fundamental to how we relate to and act in our environ-
ment.
Mauss’s lecture remains insightful for anyone interested in how individuals
acquire knowledge. In contrast to conventional Western philosophical conceptions
of a brain-bound mind trapped within the confines of an irrational body, he shows
how knowledge of the world is intimately related to how we are able to unfold our
senses and movements onto the environment. It follows that learning occurs not only
as a result of our capacity to manipulate abstract symbols via thought, but also
through constant culturally mediated transactions with our environment; taking our
surroundings into our bodies through breath, sight, hearing, etc., while also acting
upon and indeed transforming it through our actions.
Methods of breathing may facilitate transcendent experiences, but the wide-
spread practical importance of other body techniques to our agentic capacities can
even become matters of this-worldly life and death. The British tourist Tony Cal-
laghan, who in 2015 found himself caught up in a terrorist attack in Tunisia, illus-
trates this in the case of hearing. Having served in the armed forces, he alerted those
around him at the hotel pool to the significance of what they had just heard: ‘I know
the sound of gunfire. I shouted to everyone, “This isn’t a firework display, you need
to get yourself to safety, now”’ (Bchir and Trew, 2015: 4). What seemed like the
sound of fireworks to those without a military sensibility, prompted an adrenaline-
rushed sense of urgency to the one individual present whose aural training taught
him to recognize (distinctive types of) gunfire.
Techniques such as these are not, of course, relevant to only particular senses
or actions, or particular occupations. Any culturally structured set of practices can be
assessed as possessing their own set of ‘body pedagogics’, modes of embodied edu-
cation that organize people’s senses, dispositions and thoughts in ways that are pro-
ductive of particular types of knowledge (Shilling, 2016). There is no guarantee that
individuals will learn and incorporate the particular body pedagogics to which they
are exposed during socialization or occupation training. Nevertheless, as studies of
medical, military, religious, sporting and other forms of training have shown, the
successful coordination of sense and reflection, thought and action is essential to
people’s capacities to act effectively in relation to specific goals and also to the re-
production or change of these culturally structured practices (e.g. see Watling, 2005;
Roepstorff, 2007; Saunders, 2007; Hockey, 2009; Andersson, Östman and Ohman,
2013).
Body matters are central not only to our understanding of social structures
and human agency, however, but also to our comprehension of other social proc-
esses. Social inequalities have long been articulated through various features of the
body. Racism is a prominent example, with studies highlighting potential correla-
tions between skin color and earnings in the US, and color and graduate earnings in
the UK (Hersch, 2006; Zwysen and Longhi, 2016). Previously, in the early decades

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of the 20th century, one of the pioneers of modern rhinoplasty, Jacques Joseph,
helped German Jews avoid persecution by becoming ‘ethnically invisible’. Else-
where, following World War II, ‘double eyelid surgery’ grew in popularity among
Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Asian Americans (Gilman, 2000). Examples such
as these suggest that while international relations may operate at the level of trade
deals, military conflicts and political negotiations - and be underpinned by the long-
term effects of colonial oppression - they are also manifest in terms of corporeal im-
perialism.
If the body is key to the construction and maintenance of inequalities, so too
is it for the forging of social solidarities. Tattoos marked the common identities of
early Christian pilgrims, and have signified solidarities among prisoners, and the
armed forces. In contrast, what we consume or keep from our bodies is also signifi-
cant. The fasting that takes place during Ramadam, for instance, can promote vis-
ceral experiences of commonality among Muslims. The same can also be said for
Yom Kippur amongst Jews. Such examples suggest, as Mary Douglas (1970) ar-
gues, that the body is perhaps our most natural symbol. It is often experienced in-
tensely as a sign and vehicle of identity and belonging that can also signal deep dif-
ferences between peoples. This is reinforced by Ebaugh’s (1988) research into peo-
ple’s entry into and exit from particular roles; processes that were often accompa-
nied by corporeal ‘cuing’ in which the body would reflect broader life changes. Ex-
nuns, for example, would often grow their hair, don new styles of clothing, and ex-
periment with new ways of carrying their bodies in order not to appear ‘nunnish’
(Ebaugh, 1988). The significance of bodily habits, techniques and experiences for
people’s conception of reality, indeed, should give pause for thought to those who
think Hambermas’s (1981) notion of ‘ideal speech’ provides a realistic route to-
wards the resolution of conflicts.

Classical Sociology

Having emphasized the salience of body matters to theoretical problems and

social processes, it is important to note that some of the most influential classical
sociologists placed embodiment at the centre of their conceptions of society, shaped
the contributions that have been made by body relevant scholars noted in the previ-
ous section, and continue to influence the trajectory of contemporary discussions.
Despite his determination to separate the subject matter and methods of sociology
from those of the physical and biological sciences, for example, Durkheim’s (1995
[1912]) last major work, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, developed a the-
ory of religion and society based on a concern with the body’s social and moral po-
tential. Durkheim argued that while bodies generated egoistic appetites, the collec-
tive effervescence circulating in social assemblies demonstrated they were also the
source of sacred values. The body ‘conceals in its depth a sacred principle that
erupts onto the surface’ via markings/adornments that affirmed membership of a
moral whole (Durkheim, 1995 [1912]: 138, 233). This enabled individual bodies to
become attached to and emboldened by entities greater than themselves, insights de-
veloped later by Mauss and other scholars of body techniques and pedagogics, and
also in terms of symbolism by Mary Douglas. From sporting events, to remem-
brance services, to the French people’s collective defiance against the November
2015 Terrorist attacks in Paris, Durkheim’s work remains relevant.
The German sociologist Max Weber’s (1991 [1904-05]) writings on the Pro-
testant ethic and the spirit of capitalism constitute another core, albeit underappreci-

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ated, contribution to sociology’s capacity to explore the social significance of em-

bodiment. Weber analyzed how religious beliefs shaped the bodily identities and
behavior of individuals. Eschewing sinful pleasure, and immersing themselves in
long hours of labor searching for worldly signs of election, the physical habits
stimulated by the Reformers provided a corporeal basis for rational capitalism.
Long interpreted as a defense of the importance of ideas in the historical process,
The Protestant Ethic can actually be read as an investigation into the emergence of
an early modern form of rational habitus as the thoughts, beliefs, feelings, disposi-
tions and actions of the Puritans become redirected along a particular template in-
formed by a new theology and possessed of qualities suited to the advance of market
society. This analysis can be seen as a precursor to Foucault’s writings on discipline.
Perhaps the most provocative sociologist to have made human embodiment
central to his conception of social and historical change, however, is Norbert Elias.
His writings on long-term civilizing processes seek to understand the minutia of
people’s most intimate habits through an analysis of historical changes in etiquette
books, while linking these to broader structural changes in the pursuit of status, the
division of labor, and governmental monopolies of violence (Elias, 2000 [1939]).
Elias begins by showing us how much distance there is between socially ac-
ceptable habits and behavior contemporarily compared with that which was preva-
lent in and after the medieval era. Interrogating etiquette books from the past, he
reasons that if these texts sought to prohibit particular behaviors, this is evidence
that they existed. In the 13th century, for example, advice included ‘You should not
poke your teeth with your knife’ (Elias, 2000 [1939]: 75). In the C16th, Erasmus
advised people that ‘It is impolite to greet people who are urinating or defecating’,
and goes onto instruct individuals suffering from flatulence on proper behavior
(Elias, 2000 [1939]: 110, 130). Elsewhere Della Casa’s Galateo sought to change the
blasé yet intimate attitude people displayed towards bodily waste expelled in bed.
‘It is not a refined habit, when coming across something disgusting in the
sheet, as sometimes happens, to turn to one's companion and point it out to
him. It is far from proper to hold out the stinking thing for the other to smell,
as some are want…lifting the foul smelling thing to his nostrils and saying 'I
should like to know how much that stinks’’ (cited in Elias, 2000 [1939]:
111).
Co-existing with these attempts to prohibit certain behaviors, however, broader so-
cial changes were taking place that gradually impacted upon standards of acceptable
behavior. Elias (1983) traces these to the development of Court societies, which
gained increasing importance in almost every European country from the Renais-
sance onwards. Court societies institutionalized detailed codes of body management
that were used to differentiate between people as a measure of their relative worth.
Sanctions were levied against those who refused to follow court etiquette and this
promoted a heightened tendency among people to monitor and mould themselves in
relation to these criteria. As people faced pressure to take more note of the appear-
ances and reactions of those with whom they interacted, so too did the levels of em-
pathy that developed between individuals.
These developments were assisted by the wider social contexts in which
people lived. In contrast to earlier periods in which violence was less regulated,
court societies did not require individuals to be constantly ready to display a high
level of aggression: physical battles were replaced frequently by courtly intrigues
and survival depended on adherence to behavioral codes and skills of impression
management. Increasingly, the body became a location for social codes – a vehicle

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through which individuals differentiated themselves from others. It became embar-

rassing to share a bed with strangers, bodily functions such as defecating were sub-
ject to greater taboos, and nakedness and sexuality was moved to the back regions of
social life. For example, while total nakedness when preparing to go to bed was the
rule in Germany up to the C16th, the nightdress came into fashion thereafter. What
used to be seen as natural became associated with shame (Elias, 2000 [1939]).
Elias’s work has major implications for a wide range of issues in body studies and
continues to inspire contemporary work in the area on diverse subjects including
violence and aggression, and the habitus necessary for what Wilbert van Vree
(2011) refers to as the ‘meetingization of society.’
Durkheim, Weber and Elias constitute just a small, if exceptionally impor-
tant, sample of those classical sociological thinkers who have contributed to the ter-
rain on which body studies developed. Marx’s (1970) interest in how humans re-
made themselves and their environment through the social relationships entered into,
and the tools utilized, in securing the means of subsistence could easily be added to
our list (see also Marx and Engels, 1970). So too could Simmel’s (1971 [1918]) in-
terest in the significance of bodily drives and human vitalism to the creation and
transcendence of social and cultural forms; embodied qualities that ensured indi-
viduals could never be subsumed entirely within society. An exhaustive survey of
such figures is beyond the remit of this article, but it would be remiss to avoid men-
tion of the sociological influence exerted by pragmatism.
John Dewey, G.H. Mead, William James and C. S. Peirce did much to iden-
tify embodiment as the central mediator of the external and internal environments of
human action. As Dewey (1980 [1934]: 13) argues, no creature lives within the con-
fines of its skin; our senses are a ‘means of connection’ with ‘what lies beyond [our]
bodily frame’, facilitating action and being ‘called out’ by the environments in
which we seek to fulfill our needs in conjunction with others. It was in this analyti-
cal context that pragmatism explored the embodied cycles of habit, crisis and crea-
tivity that characterized individual action (Faris, 1967; Shilling, 2008). The main
sociological influence of pragmatism was the influence it had on the development of
a range of body-relevant studies in the early twentieth century (on the city, sexuality,
immigrant groups and hobos) at the University of Chicago (e.g. Thomas, 1907; An-
derson 1961 [1923]; Cressey, 1929; Heap, 2003: 459). However, it continues to in-
form Shusterman’s philosophical work on the body, and underpins the growing in-
terest in those body pedagogic techniques through which people learn social, cul-
tural and technical competencies (e.g. Andersson and Garrison, 2016).

The Rise of the Body

Having noted how classical sociologists provided visions of social develop-

ment that incorporated a concern with embodiment, I want now to return to those
diverse factors prompting the current gaze on, and interrogation of, the body. These
not only help us understand some of the factors that contributed towards the estab-
lishment of the inter-disciplinary field of body studies, but also facilitate an explana-
tion of why the body remains such a thoroughly contested phenomenon, both ana-
lytically and in terms of its social status.
The rise of ‘second wave’ feminism in Europe and the USA during the 1960s
and 1970s was one of the first developments to place embodiment on the sociologi-
cal agenda as a result of its insistence that the treatment of women’s bodies was not
just a private issue but also a public and political concern. Focusing on women’s

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health issues, domestic violence, and the objectification of women’s bodies in por-
nography, the gendered body was placed centre stage (Davis, 2007). This feminist
focus on women’s embodied existence did more than simply highlight the multiple
ways in which bodies were implicated in social relations of inequality and oppres-
sion. Analysis of the sex/gender, nature/culture and biology/society divisions began
to break down, or at least reduce the strength of, the corporeal boundaries that popu-
lar and academic thought posited between women and men (e.g. Oakley, 1972). In-
deed, feminist scholarship problematized the very nature of the terms ‘woman’ and
‘man’, ‘female’ and ‘male’, and ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ by questioning the
ontological bases of sexual difference (Butler, 1993).
The second factor to contribute towards an increased focus on the body in-
volved rising ecological concerns about global sustainability, and critiques of one-
dimensional commercial human lifestyles that drew on methods of somatic im-
provement involving yoga, meditation and a host of bodily practices and disciplines
associated with elements of Oriental spirituality such as Zen, Taoism or Tantra
(Marcuse, 1964; Shusterman, 1997: 43; 2000; 2008: 17). The concerns about envi-
ronmental sustainability evident in these criticisms were reinforced by the Club of
Rome’s 1972 report Limits to Growth. This global think tank highlighted the risks to
future life on earth by exploring trends in population growth, food production, pollu-
tion, and the industrial consumption of non-renewable natural resources.
The third and partly related factor to have stimulated interest in the body in-
volves the ‘ageing’ of societies in the Global North, as well as in areas of the Global
South. The spread and improvement of basic amenities and health care has raised
life expectancy for many, and the United Nations predicts that there is likely to be a
doubling of the percentage of the world’s population over the age of 60 (from 10 per
cent to 21 per cent) between 2000 and 2050. In addition to the increased costs of
caring for such a population - the ‘burden’ of caring for the ageing has also been as-
sociated with the possibility of generational conflict over the distribution of re-
sources in welfare systems (Gilleard and Higgs, 2002) - the very process of growing
old, and becoming dependent, has been stigmatized in the most economically influ-
ential regions of the world. Anglo-American films, media, and advertising prize the
young and independent body. Again, it is bodies that become the medium through
which social relations are constructed.
Involving a very different set of circumstances, the rise in the mid-1980s of
robotics, or what its proponents referred to as embodied AI, also increased the social
significance attributed to the body. In responding to the limitations of conventional
cognitive artificial intelligence, the cry from researchers at this time was ‘intelli-
gence needs a body’ and one of the results of this development has been a prolifera-
tion of quasi-social interactions between robots and humans (Pfeifer and Bongard,
2007). Companionate robots have been introduced in the field of health and social
care for those suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Elsewhere,
developments including iRobot’s ‘my real baby' doll and the proliferation of robotic
toys, musical robots that can accompany singers during performances, the Honda
robot ASIMO that can recognize human faces as well as respond to simply voice
commands, and the speaking sex dolls produced by the American RealDoll company
have stimulated much debate about the ethics of human-robot interaction and about
the borders between human and non-human bodies. Perhaps most controversially,
the expanded use of drones and other robots in surveillance and conflict has raised
all manner of questions about responsibility and ethics in warfare (Shaw and Akhter,
2014).

" "
*+" Shilling: THE RISE OF BODY STUDIES AND THE EMBODIMENT

Commodification processes have also highlighted the significance of embod-

ied subjects, parts and processes, and constitute the fifth factor to have encouraged
academic interest in the body. David Harvey (2004) has suggested that we are living
through a period of primitive accumulation, evidenced not only by the numbers of
people still subjected to slavery, but also by the growth of ‘transplant trafficking’ in
which value is extracted through ‘a global billion-dollar criminal industry involved
in the transfer of fresh kidneys (and half-livers) from living and dead providers to
the seriously… ill and affluent or medically insured mobile transplant patients’
(Scheper-Hughes 2011:58). Extracting bodily processes for value, the biotechno-
logical exploitation of DNA has been associated with potential medical advances
that have attracted billions of dollars of capital investment in an attempt to sell ‘sur-
plus health’ to the ‘worried well’ (Dumit, 2012). A related development that illus-
trates how even the wealthy have failed to escape the commodification of the body
concerns the intensification of the body’s appearance as a form of physical capital; a
visual signification of style, class and status that carries value within social fields
(Bourdieu, 1984).
The sixth factor to have directed academic interest towards the body con-
cerns the rise of what has been referred to as biological and neurological citizenship
(Rose and Abi-Rached, 2013). These notions contain the implication that to be a
morally acceptable citizen one needs to monitor, evaluate, and work on oneself us-
ing expert knowledge from the ‘received facts’ of science and medicine. Knowing
one’s chances of inheriting particular diseases, as well as being aware of the risks
associated with lifestyle choices related to diet, exercise, and alcohol, can prompt
individuals to become what the anthropologist Rajan (2006) terms ‘patients in wait-
ing’. The patient in waiting governs him/herself on the basis of a medical paradigm
that highlights the economic value of physical and mental health to the individual, to
the health service, and to national productivity.
Developments in bodily governance have also become important to raising
the sociological prominence of this subject. Post 9/11 there has been intensified
scrutiny of ‘alien’ bodies. Passports, identity cards, fingerprint and voice recognition
devices, and the gathering of other biometric data show that our bodies have become
passwords (Davis, 1997). Such technologies have in particular been employed as
means of dealing with immigration and the threat of terrorism, with iris recognition
devices being used to process Syrian refugees in holding camps, and now comple-
ment more traditional means of observing and tracking bodies including CCTV and
also undercover police operations (Marx, 1988).
The eighth factor I want to mention here to have stimulated academic interest
in embodiment during the last few decades concerns the rise of the body as a project.
In traditional societies the body used to be seen as something natural, determined by
the parameters of nature and subject to only limited cultural interventions involving
such methods as tattooing and scarification. With advances in science, medicine and
transplant as well as cosmetic surgery during the modern era, however, the size,
shape and even contents of the body have become increasingly open to human de-
sign. In these circumstances, there has been a tendency to view the body as a malle-
able raw material open to the designs of its owners. Increasingly incorporated into
the sphere of culture as it has been, however, the options and choices individuals and
groups face in terms of how to manage and mould the field of embodiment have
been subject to contestation and conflict and it is to this issue that I turn in conclud-
ing this article.

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 HORIZONS IN HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 2 (1), 1-14, 2016 **"

Contested Bodies

The developments that brought body matters to the attention of sociology

and academic analyses more generally highlighted very different aspects of the
body. From its gendered, robotic, governmental and exchange values, to name but
four of these emphases, the body slips and slides, metamorphosing in terms of its
meaning and status. Indeed, at a time when scientific and technological interventions
into the body have increased our capacity to alter its appearances and capacities to
unprecedented levels, body matters have perhaps become more contested than ever
before. In this context, if we consider the current relevance of Durkheim’s work, it is
reasonable to explore whether bodies are now prized and even rendered sacred on
the basis of varied, and opposing factors. These secular and religious modes of sac-
ralization can be seen as an emergent development that has increased further what is
at stake in current concerns with embodiment. They include the youth, ethnicity,
skills and capacities of bodies, and their value as commodities. Such variations,
however, also highlight potentially deadly conflicts and disagreements, and this can
be exemplified by contrasting religious conceptions of the body as sacred including
the ‘holy rage’ visited by fundamentalist groups upon people who treat bodies in
ways that are seen as violating core principles (see Mellor and Shilling, 2014).
The manner in which bodies are conceptualized, experienced, and treated
provides us with more than a topic of interest restricted to the biological sciences.
Instead, these issues provide key means of approaching social relationships, cultural
ideas, technological developments, and historical change.

NOTES

This article is based on a talk delivered to the Edinburgh Science Festival on 6 April
2016.

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