The Social Body

Habit, Identity and Desire

Nick Crossley

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN:
  9780761966401
  9780761966395
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781446225738
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores both the embodied nature of social life and the social nature of human bodily life. It provides an accessible review of the contemporary social science debates on the body, and develops a coherent new perspective.

Nick Crossley critically reviews the literature on mind and body, and also on the body and society. He draws on theoretical insights from the work of Gilbert Ryle, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, George Herbert Mead and Pierre Bourdieu, and shows how the work of these writers overlaps in interesting and important ways which, when combined, provide the basis for a persuasive and robust account of human embodiment.

The Social Body provides a timely review of the theoretical approaches to the sociology of the body. It offers new insights, and a coherent new perspective on the body.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Mind-Body Dualism: Investigating Descartes’ Ghost
• 3 All in the Brain? A Popular False Start
• 4 Beyond Dualism: Exorcising Descartes’ Ghost
• 5 Meaning, Action and Desire: A Preliminary Sketch of Embodied Agency
• 6 Habitus, Capital and Field: Embodiment in Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice
• 7 Habit, Incorporation and the Corporeal Schema
• 8 Reflexive Embodiment: Being, Having and Difference
• Afterword: Embodied Agency and the Theory of Practice
• Bibliography
• Index