Body/Embodiment

Symbolic Interaction and the Sociology of the Body

Phillip Vannini, Dennis Waskul, Dennis Waskul

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317173434
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Anthropologie

The body and experiences of embodiment have generated a rich and diverse sociological literature. This volume articulates and illustrates one major approach to the sociology of the body: symbolic interactionism, an increasingly prevalent theoretical base of contemporary sociology derived from the pragmatism of writers such as John Dewey, William James, Charles Peirce, Charles Cooley and George Herbert Mead. The authors argue that, from an interactionist perspective, the body is much more than a tangible, corporeal object - it is a vessel of great significance to the individual and society. From this perspective, body, self and social interaction are intimately interrelated and constantly reconfigured. The collection constitutes a unique anthology of empirical research on the body, from health and illness to sexuality, from beauty and imagery to bodily performance in sport and art, and from mediated communication to plastic surgery. The contributions are informed by innovative interactionist theory, offering fresh insights into one of the fastest growing sub-disciplines of sociology and cultural studies.

Chapter 1

Introduction: The Body in Symbolic Interaction

Dennis D. Waskul and Phillip Vannini

The body social is many things: the prime symbol of the self, but also of the society; it is something we have, yet also what we are; it is both subject and object at the same time; it is individual and personal, as unique as a fingerprint or odourplume, yet it is also common to all humanity…. The body is both an individual creation, physically and phenomenologically, and a cultural product; it is personal, and also state property.

Anthony Synnott, The Body Social (1993)

The body and experiences of embodiment have always been prominent in sociology. As Synnott (1993:4) suggests, we can “usefully reconsider the body at the heart of sociology, rather than peripheral to the discipline, and more importantly at the heart of our social lives and our sense of self.” From this standpoint, even a cursory review reveals the body and embodiment as fundamental to numerous esteemed sociological interests including gender, race and ethnicity, sexuality, health and medicine, disability, sport, aging, death and dying. Sociologists have long articulated strong and provocative statements about the body and experiences of embodiment. Nevertheless, as Shilling (2003:17) rightly suggests, “the body has historically been something of an ‘absent presence’ in sociology” – an object and subject of analysis that is both “at the very heart of the sociological imagination” and “absent in the sense that sociology has rarely focused in a sustained manner on the embodied human as an object of importance in its own right.”

However, since the early 1990s the body has come to bear a veritable bonanza of contemporary sociological interest. On the heels of significant social, cultural, political, and technological change, the body and experiences of embodiment appear substantially more visible than ever before – conditions that have stimulated sociological interests in a manner that is decidedly more direct, focused, and sustained compared to previous and legacy sociology. From the diffusion of plastic surgery to the mainstreaming of tattooing, from fashion to fitness, from shifting health practices to profound changes in the experience and treatment of illness, from continued preoccupations with youthfulness to the changing definitions of the aging body, from sexual to athletic performance, contemporary scholarly literatures reveal a steady flow of provocative new sociological investigations, speculations, and research inquiries on the body and experiences of embodiment.

The sheer volume and diversity of contemporary scholarly work that now characterize “the sociology of the body” is itself impressive. Simply considering a relatively small sample of published books, it is apparent that bodies are socially constructed (Crossley 2001; Featherstone, Hepworth, and Turner 1991; Shilling 2003; Synnott 1993; Turner 1984), gendered (Backett-Milburn and McKie 2001), sexed and sexualized (Fausto-Sterling 2000; Grosz, Probyn, and Grosz 1995; Laqueur 1992), customized (Demello 2000; Featherstone 2000; Gay and Whittington 2002; Hewitt 1997; Mifflin 2001; Pitts 2003; Sanders 1989) as well as fashioned (Calefato 2004; Entwistle 2000; Guy, Green, and Banim 2003; Virgili and Hodkinson 2002), electrified and digitized (Springer 1996), posthuman (Halberstam and Livingston 1995), objectified (Foster 1995; Tebbel 2003), overtaken by panic (Kroker and Kroker 1987), ascended to the heights of the mystical and sacred (Moore 1998; Newell 2002) as well as descended to the depths of the stigmatized and the freakish (Covino 2004; Elson 2004; Goffman 1963; Lebesco 2004; Thomson 1996), commodified (Falk 1994; Scheper-Hughes and Wacquant 2003), subject to the discipline of fitness, training, and diet (Moore 1997; Pronger 2002), fetishized (Stratton 2001) and, of course, subject to the politics of gender and sexual orientation (Atkins 1998; Birke 1999; Bordo 2000; Brook 1999; Burt 1995; Weitz 2002), and race and ethnicity (Mohanram 2004). Indeed, “there are many bodies social, and they are hard to count. Equally evident, the meanings imputed to the body are various: definitions are legion and there is little consensus” (Synnott 1993:228–229).

The “sociology of the body” is increasingly living up to its implicit promise: a specialized object and subject of analysis that reflects all the diversity one would expect of sociology. Thus, the bewildering array of sociologies of the body is, in fact, an encouraging sign: just as there is not a singular sociology, neither is there a singular sociology of the body. Various sociological traditions emphasize sundry dynamics and processes, a fact that is neither surprising nor alarming. After all, just as there is not a singular sociology of the body, nor is the body itself a singular object or subject of analysis. The body and experiences of embodiment are layered, nuanced, complex, and multifaceted – at the level of human subjective experience, interaction, social organization, institutional arrangements, cultural processes, society, and history.

While recognizing that the sociology of the body is, essentially, a dialogue among many diverse interests and points of view, this book concisely articulates and illustrates one major approach. Drawing exclusively from symbolic interactionism – an increasingly prevalent theoretical base of contemporary sociology (see Maines 2001) – we identify major interactionist frameworks for conceiving bodies and experiences of embodiment, exemplify the utility of those insights in empirically grounded contexts, and speculate about broader issues.

The Bodies of Symbolic Interaction

Symbolic interactionists utilize a constellation of related theoretical frameworks that are loosely bound by the pragmatist tradition. Owing primarily to the works of William James, John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles Horton Cooley, and George Herbert Mead the core assumptions of American pragmatism represent a nucleus of ideas that generally characterize the unique contributions of symbolic interaction. Although somewhat elusive, it is possible to identity several organizing assumptions of American pragmatism. Among the most important, pragmatism emphasizes human beings as active and creative agents; a human world that both shapes the doings of people and is fashioned by the doings of people; a determined emphasis on how subjectivity, meaning, and consciousness do not exist prior to experience, but are emergent in action and interaction; a grounded examination of practical problems; an approach that situates action as a primary conceptual and analytical focus (Reynolds 2003:45–46).

Pragmatism is not “a single unified body of philosophic ideas” (Martindale 1960:297), and it is even described “as a pseudo-philosophic formulation” (Mead 1936:97). Consequently, pragmatism has often shifted its fundamental formulations, direction, and form (Reynolds 2003). Thus, it is all the more understandable that, while bound by a generally shared pragmatic foundation, there remains ample diversity in the ways interactionists envisage, employ, and articulate those core assumptions. This diversity is often associated with familiar theoretical models that are commonly allied with and collectively comprise the interactionist tradition – symbolic interaction, social semiotics, dramaturgy, phenomenology, and narrative/life history.

For these reasons, we suggest that contemporary interactionism presents both a clear articulation of body/embodiment and a variety of approaches that uniquely emphasize particular characteristics. Thus, on one hand, we can identify a relatively coherent interactionist conceptual orientation to the body and embodiment. On the other hand, we can also identify nuances and particularities that are variously emphasized, largely in association with the assorted theoretical traditions of interactionism.

From a general interactionist perspective, the body is always more than a tangible, physical, corporeal object – infinitely more than “a mere skeleton wrapped in muscles and stuffed with organs” (Moore 1998:3) – the body is also an enormous vessel of meaning of utmost significance to both personhood and society. The body is a social object, which is to say that “the body as an object cannot be separated from the body as a subject; they are emergent from one another” (Waskul and van der Riet 2002:510). From this perspective, the term “embodiment” refers quite precisely to the process by which the object-body is actively experienced, produced, sustained, and/or transformed as a subject-body. As explained by Waskul and van der Riet (2002:488): “a person does not ‘inhabit’ a static object body but is subjectively embodied in a fluid, emergent, and negotiated process of being. In this process, body, self, and social interaction are interrelated to such an extent that distinctions between them are not only permeable and shifting but also actively manipulated and configured.”

In this way, interactionists generally emphasize that “the body (noun) is embodied (verb)” (Waskul and van der Riet 2002:488) – the question is how and by what means ? Various answers to these latter questions reveal the diversity of interactionism. Furthermore, the various traditions that comprise interactionism have related but slightly different orientations that emphasize related but slightly different dimensions of the body and embodiment. Thus, we can identify and detail the “bodies of symbolic interaction” with relative precision: the looking-glass body, the dramaturgical body, the phenomenological body, the socio-semiotic body, and the narrative body.

Before specifying these bodies of interactionism, it is essential that we make one point clear: while, conceptually, it may be useful to recognize the difference between various interactionist theoretical traditions, in practice interactionists rarely adhere to rigid distinctions between them. Interactionists are pragmatic and borrow freely from numerous conceptual frameworks to craft provocative analytical insights. For these reasons, the bodies of interactionism are not real in any inflexible empirical or conceptual sense. In fact, at one level there is no such thing as a “looking-glass body” or a “dramaturgical body” or any of the other bodies we shall detail. These words are abstractions – ways of thinking about, seeing, and understanding the body and experiences of embodiment. They are heuristic devices and, consequently, more or less useful depending on purposes and applications. Furthermore, there is considerable overlapping between these various bodies of interactionism and, as the chapters of this book illustrate, it is unusual for an interactionist to exclusively champion one or another. An interactionist is much more likely to borrow key ideas from many of these “bodies of interactionism” to fashion a more complete understanding. However, for our intents and purposes, it is helpful to begin by thinking about the bodies of interactionism independently.

The Looking-Glass Body: Reflexivity as Embodiment

What we call “me,” “mine,” or “myself” is, then, not something separate from the general life, but the most interesting part of it, a part whose interest arises from the very fact that it is both general and individual…. To think of it as apart from society is a palpable absurdity…. There is no sense of “I” … without its correlative sense of you, or he, or they…. A social self of this sort might be called the reflected or looking-glass self.

Charles Horton Cooley, Human Nature and Social Order (1902)

German sociologist Georg Simmel (1921:358) once wrote that “the eye has a uniquely sociological function. The union and interaction of individuals is based upon mutual glances.” Simmel describes this union as “the most direct and purest reciprocity which exists anywhere…. By the glance which reveals the other, one discloses himself. By the same act in which the observer seeks to know the observed, he surrenders himself to be understood by the observer. The eye cannot take unless at the same time it gives. The eye of a person discloses his own soul when he seeks to uncover that of another.” Simmel understood that the union of a glance is no mere action, but a nuanced form of inter action. Or, more tersely stated, “the eye creates the I” (Synnott 1993:225, emphasis in original) – an insight most commonly associated with Charles Horton Cooley, an early pioneer of what would come to be symbolic interaction.

The “looking-glass body” obviously and intentionally resonates with Cooley’s familiar “looking-glass self” (1902:151–152). As Cooley explains, one can only reflect and form images of one’s self from the imaginary perspective of others. In this basic process, Cooley identifies “three principal elements: the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the imagination of his judgment of that appearance; and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification.” For these reasons, Cooley (1902:87) argued, “the imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society,” self and, as we suggest, the body.

Bodies are seen and the act of seeing is reflexive in precisely the same way that Cooley identifies. When we gaze upon bodies of others we necessarily interpret what we observe. Similarly, others imagine what we may be seeing and feeling, thus completing the reflections of the looking-glass. Obviously, this looking-glass body is not a direct reflection of other’s judgments – it is an imagined reflection built of cues gleaned from others. Reflexivity is then to be understood as a necessary condition of embodiment, and embodiment must be understood as a form of reflexivity. For Mead (1934) it is precisely this tendency towards reflexivity that characterizes embodiment as a temporal process (see Crossley 2001, and Chapter Two): “the I and the me manifest two distinct forms of temporality: the I embodies and repeats its history in the form of the habit; the me, by contrast, is constructed in the web of narrative discourse and imaginative re-presentation which the I spins in its various reflexive activities and projects” (2001:148).

It is precisely to reflexive embodiment that Nick Crossley turns to in the opening chapter of Part One. Crossley argues that symbolic interactionism’s pragmatist tradition – and in particular the Cooley-Mead heritage – offers sociologists of the body a rich and nuanced understanding of embodiment; one that puts a premium on the role of social networks in constituting the meanings of the human body. Social networks and their place in the formation of the looking-glass body are also the focus of Chapter Three. In that chapter, Kathy Charmaz and Dana Rosenfeld explore how from the perspective of chronically ill and disabled people, images of self and the body in space and time become twisted, blurred, or magnified. As new, discomforting images of self arise from a changed bodily appearance, tensions between bodily feelings and views of its appearance to self and others emerge, prompting individuals to strategically manage the preservation of their self-concepts in spite of bodily decay. Finally, in Chapter Four, Douglas Schrock and Emily M. Boyd draw upon ethnographic data in order to understand how reflexivity shapes the lived experiences and instrumental strategies of transsexuals undergoing status passage. Reflexivity here is manifested in complex articulations of concealment and revelation – intrapersonal and interpersonal communication processes by way of which transsexuals retrain, reshape, and redefine their newly gendered bodies in manners that are perceived as authentic by themselves and others.

As these examples illustrate Cooley’s “looking-glass” reflects unto the body in an interpretive process that is, perhaps, the most elemental form by which bodies are interactively embodied. Even so, while the looking-glass body details an important basic process, it leaves many questions open and unanswered. How, exactly, are these reflections constructed? By what means? To what extent are those reflections manipulated? How is this looking-glass body related to broader interaction-, institutional-, social-, cultural-, and moral-order? The remaining bodies of interactionism, although generally sharing this basic looking-glass insight, provide a framework for more precisely handling these latter questions.

The Dramaturgical Body: Body as Performance

Critics sometimes fault Erving Goffman (1959:253) for boldly regarding the body as a “peg” on which a person’s self is “hung for a time.” Critics have a valid point – the body is seldom so inert; we are mistaken when we so casually dismiss the body as a mere “peg.” These criticisms, however, generally miss the point. Considering key works, especially Stigma (1963) and “Territories of the Self” (1971), it is apparent that Goffman was quite aware of the significance of the body to identity, social order, and emotional order – and in a manner that is personal and communal, private and political, confidential and public all at once. More than a mere “peg,” Goffman and the dramaturgical tradition supply a highly sophisticated framework for understanding the body and experiences of embodiment.

Stated simply, the dramaturgical body i...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Author Biographies
• 1 Introduction: The Body in Symbolic Interaction
• Part 1 The Looking-Glass Body: Reflexivity as Embodiment
• Part 2 The Dramaturgical Body: Body as Performance
• Part 3 The Phenomenological Body: Body as Province of Meaning
• Part 4 The Socio-Semiotic Body: Body as Trace of Culture
• Part 5 The Narrative Body: Body as Story
• Conclusion
• Index