Читать книгу The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology - Группа авторов - Страница 80

Sociological theorists have argued that a key feature of such late modern societies is risk (Beck 1992; Douglas 1986; Giddens 1991). Doubt, Giddens argues, is a pervasive feature which permeates into everyday life. Our self and identity are a continuous embodied reflexive process (Crossley 2006) where we continually revise our biographical narratives. The reflexive self is one that relies on a vast array of advice and information provided by a myriad of sources.

What has all this got to do with the body? Well, a number of theorists have suggested that the body has come to form one of the main sites through which people develop their social identities. Whilst the environment and the social world seem to be “out of control,” the body becomes something of an anchor. Giddens points out that the self is embodied and so the regularized control of the body is a fundamental means whereby a biography of self – identity is maintained. Giddens (1991: 218) states:

The body used to be one aspect of nature, governed in a fundamental way by processes only marginally subject to human intervention. The body was a “given,” the often inconvenient and inadequate seat of the self. With the increasing invasion of the body by abstract systems all this becomes altered. The body, like the self, becomes a site of interaction, appropriation and re-appropriation, linking reflexively organised processes and systematically ordered expert knowledge. […] Once thought to be the locus of the soul … the body has become fully available to be “worked upon by the influences of high modernity” […]. In the conceptual space between these, we find more and more guidebooks and practical manuals to do with health, diet, appearance, exercise, lovemaking and many other things.

According to this thesis, therefore, we are more uncertain about our bodies; we perceive them to be more pliable and are actively seeking to alter, improve, and refine them.