Читать книгу The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology - Группа авторов - Страница 89

This chapter has reviewed some of the key theoretical perspectives within the literature on the sociology of the body and the sociology of embodiment. Drawing on these approaches, it has discussed a number of substantive issues which are of interest to those working within medical sociology. Thus, it has attempted to show that a “sociology of the body” and an “embodied sociology” have made an important contribution to matters which have traditionally been of interest to this field of study. A key theme running through this chapter is that the more knowledge and information we have about bodies, the more uncertain we become as to what bodies actually are. Certainties about seemingly immutable processes associated with birth and death, for example, become questioned. Furthermore, how we experience and live our bodies has also become central to how we think about ourselves. Bodies are politicized both in terms of identities, and also in terms of how they are monitored and marginalized, regulated and relegated, empowered and excluded. Any comprehensive analysis of the experience of health, illness, or health care should take cognizance of the body (whatever that is!) itself.