The body in sociology: tension inside and outside sociological thought

The body in sociology: tensions inside andoutside sociological thought

Alexandra Howson and David Inglis

Abstract

The human body has in recent years become a 'hot' topic in sociology, not just inempirical research but also in sociological theorizing. In the latter context, the bodyhas been variously a resource for broadening the parameters of traditionalsociological thought deriving from the nineteenth century, and for overturning thatparadigm and fundamentally reorienting the assumptions and concepts of socio-logical thinking. Attempts to abandon the old paradigm and foster a new onethrough the means of thinking about bodies are many and manifold, and in thispaper we trace out the intricate history of moves towards a 'corporeal sociology'. Weidentify the dilemmas that have attended these developments, especially as concernsthe ways in which new modes of thinking sociologically have tended to founder overthe classical sociological dichotomy between social structure and social action.Through tracing out the various moves and counter-moves within this field, weidentify a central contradiction that affects all contemporary sociological practice,not just that dealing with the body: an oscillation between judging the utility ofconceptual tools in terms of criteria derived from the discipline of Cultural Studies,and evaluating the arguments created by those tools on the basis of the incompatiblecriteria of classical sociology. The paper challenges sociologists to choose one setof criteria or the other, for sociological practice cannot be based on both suchantagonistic paradigms.

Introduction

The sociology of the body is now a well-established field within the discipline ofsociology and there has been a discernible shift towards thinking about 'bodymatters' more generally. For instance, the British Sociological Associationdesignated its annual conference to 'Making Sense of the Body' in 1998, andthe number of publications which purport to address body issues hasexpanded. Sociological interest in the body has typically been explained asthe discipline's response to social change: the impact of feminism on theacademy (Shilling, 1993); new patterns of disease such as AIDS which raise newand challenging political questions concerning social control (Scott andMorgan, 1993); new forms of biotechnology which raise ethical issues (Turner,

© The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 2001. Published by Blackwell Publishers,108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 lJF, UK and 350 Main Street, Maiden, MA 02148, USA.


1984) and issues concerning boundaries between the natural and the social(Haraway, 1991); and the rise of consumer culture and its impact on themanagement of health and daily living (Featherstone, 1982). Other disciplinesin the humanities and social sciences have also begun to 'take the bodyseriously' and there is often conspicuous overlap between sociologicalstatements about the body and those within for instance, cultural anthro-pology, geography and philosophy.

In part, such overlap stems from the emergence of interdiscipiinarity withinthe academy and the importance attached to examining points of convergencebetween disciplines. A particular point of convergence between these disciplinesis a concern with the transcendence of dualisms, especially those pertainingbetween subject/object and mind/body, which are seen to place limits on theadequacy of accounts of the human body. Increasingly within sociology, aswithin other disciplines, the transcendence of such duahsms is deemed a pre-requisite both for a reformulation of the fundamental assumptions underlyingthe discipline, and for a reconceptualisation of the practice of doing sociology.

This paper addresses a conundrum within the sociology of the body whichreflects a more general process within sociological theorising. Our particularfocus is on work which seeks to redirect the sociological focus from the body asan object of scrutiny towards the body as a thinking and doing subject, yetlocated within and shaped by social and historical contexts and processes. Suchwork presupposes the necessity of transforming sociology from a discipline inwhich the practitioner is disembodied to one which encourages and requiresembodied practice. This presupposition is encapsulated in a vision of sociologyas 'embodied' (Williams, 1998: 113), 'carnal' (Crossley, 1995: 23) and 'corporeal'(Burkitt, 1999: 93).

The 'corporealising' of sociology requires conceptual tools which bothenable practitioners to account for the experience of the body-subject and thesocial location of the body-object; and allow practitioners to be reflexive abouttheir sociological practice. In pursuit of such a toolkit, many sociologists of thebody have moved away from theoretical frameworks which privilege social-structural accounts of the body towards those which privilege the body as the'ground' of experience. Such a 'move' generally makes use of the phenomen-ological philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and furthermore entails adegree of engagement with the work of feminist philosophers who haveadopted a phenomenological perspective (such as Grosz, 1994; Young, 1990:Diprose, 1994) to address the lived experience of female embodiment which hasbeen pushed to the margins of mainstream analysis.

While we are broadly sympathetic to the kind of move being made towards a'corporeal' sociology, we discern certain dilemmas as being involved in theimportation of philosophical solutions to the 'problem' of the body insociology. In particular, we contend that whilst the move towards phenom-enology comprises a move away from grand theorising (and objectifying) of thebody, the problems that sociological reasoning discerns within phenomenologynecessarily entail a move back towards those theoretical frameworks of which

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The body in sociology

corporeal sociologists are critical. The most pressing problem for sociologistsinclined towards a phenomenology of the body is the absence of a means toincorporate an adequate account of social structure. This absence invariably,albeit unintentionally, brings phenomenologically-inclined sociologists backtowards perspectives and frameworks which privilege social structure.

As such, the 'problem' of body within sociology represents a more generalconundrum within the discipline, and the aim of this paper is to describe theconundrum and note its imphcations for the practice of sociology in general. Inorder to demonstrate how this is so we will first describe the key issues withinthe sociology of the body. Second, we will identify the moves that have beenmade towards an 'embodied' or 'corporeal' sociology, especially attempts totranscend the dualistic modes of thought alleged to be inherent within theWestern philosophical tradition. Third, as such moves are greatly dependent onMerleau-Ponty's phenomenological understanding of bodies, we then describethis system before showing how, if evaluated from the viewpoint of certainarchetypically 'sociologicar criteria of adequacy, it fails to provide an accountof the social structural contexts in which bodies are constrained to operate.Fourth, through setting out Pierre Bourdieu's attempt to make Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of bodies 'more sociological', we identify the ways inwhich sociological criteria of adequacy demand a shift towards structuraldeterminism, in terms of how sociology deals not only with bodies but otherphenomena more generally. Fifth, we consider how these criteria have beenchallenged in recent years by modes of thought deriving from the discipline ofCultural Studies. We conclude by arguing that tensions between sociologicaland Cultural Studies criteria of argumentative adequacy have led not only tothe tensions we have described within the study of the human body, but alsopose profound questions as to how sociological practice is to be oriented in thefuture.


The human body has been retrieved for sociology and for other disciplines inthe social sciences and humanities. It has had to be 'retrieved', first, because thehistorical and conceptual development of sociology has in large part beenpremised on the Cartesian legacy, which claimed an ontological distinctionbetween mind and body, and which privileged the former over the latter (eg.Turner, 1984). Second, the autonomy of the discipline was initially dependenton this distinction as it sought to distance itself intellectually from psychologyand anthropology (see Freund, 1988). The subject of sociology, the rationalactor, was disembodied in the sense that rational thought was located in a mindalready disconnected from the body (Morgan, 1993; Burkitt, 1999). Hence, theover-rationahsation of social hfe which has characterised sociology (Mellorand Shilling, 1998) has meant that the body was neither perceived as a source ofpersonal knowledge or understanding, nor deemed relevant to the production

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of sociological knowledge. Third, the body's association with nature and,concomitantly, with femininity (Sydie, 1987) further distanced it fromsociological analysis.

In more recent times, however, the body has acquired greater significancewithin sociology. At the beginning of the 1990s, Arthur Frank (1991) was ableto provide an overview of the body in sociology, which mapped its acquisitionof new status across the preceding decade. While the body's new significancewithin sociology has largely been explained in relation to perceptible socialchanges to which the disciphne has been responsive, its visibility can also beattributed to the conceptual and theoretical challenges associated with thecontradictory impulses of modemity and postmodernity (Frank, 1991). Theseimpulses, as they are textually played out on the pages of journals and books,both detach and observe the body as an object of scrutiny and render itunstable (Scott and Morgan, 1993). Therefore the body, in a context ofcontrasting forces, has become a 'reference point in a world of flux and theepitome of that same flux' (Frank, 1991: 40) or to put it another way, aphysical and conceptual space in which the recurring issues and tensions ofsociology are revisited and reworked. Moreover, sociological interest in thebody has not only moved from a marginal location within the discipline to onewhich is more central, but has done so in quite distinct ways, which thefollowing section now describes.

'Moves' in the sociology of the body

In retrospect, it has often been possible to map the entry of new concepts orways of thinking into sociology. The diffusion of gender in sociology is a casein point (see Finch, 1993, for instance) and there are some parallels betweenthis diffusion and that of the body. The pattern of diffusion we discern anddescribe here should not necessarily be taken as chronological. As is often thecase in relation to the introduction of new foci or ways of thinking, several'moves' may occur simultaneously, rather than as progression from previouspositions. We can identify three moves of particular relevance in the conceptualdevelopment of the body in sociology: a move to 'bring the body in' to thesociological frame; a move to rediscover the body in classical theory; and amove to establish the body as the conceptual centre-piece of sociology in aneffort to achieve integration between 'troublesome' duahsms.

First, just as gender was initially treated as an 'add-on' in sociology, the bodywas brought into sociological analysis as the 'additional' object of theory. Forinstance, Bryan Turner's classic The Body and Society (1984) can be seen as apoint of departure which moved towards 'theorising the body' as a problem oforder. In short. Turner's aim, using the conceptual tools of social theory, was todemonstrate how societies were oriented towards containing and managing thehuman body. His framework emphasised several key processes which workedupon and within the body across time and space. In an attempt to create a



conceptual bridge across foundationalist and anti-foundationalist accounts ofthe body, his elaboration of the four 'R's' - reproduction, representation,regulation and restraint - provided a means of addressing the body as both amaterial and discursively constructed object. Turner has not been without hiscritics (such as Williams and Bendelow, 1998), who point to the way in whichsuch a framework reinforces the body as the object of theory, through a focus onwhat society does to and with the body, obscuring the ways in which the bodymight be understood as the basis of action and the ground of experience.

However, Turner has not been alone in the pursuit of theoreticalframeworks which would grant the body its proper place. Frank (1991) forinstance, created a 'bottom-up' analysis of the body which might grasp notonly the various ways in which society works upon the body, but also howsociety is built up from and created through bodies in action. Frank eschewedthe imphcit linearity of the four 'R's' for the geometric elegance of a triangularmodel which emphasised the relative roles of institutions, discourses andcorporeality in the construction of relations between body, self and society.While these two models can be contrasted with each other in terms ofbeginning from different points in a spatial hierarchy (Turner's 'top-down' toFrank's 'bottom-up'), or in terms of their relative emphasis on the materiahtyor discursivity of the body, their similarity to each other lies in theircommitment to locating the 'problem' of the body within the core concerns ofaction, agency and structure.

The second 'move' we discern within the sociology of the body is one whichseeks to rediscover the body in the work of classical theorists, or as Williamsand Bendelow (1998: 23) put it, to re-read the classics in 'corporeal terms'.Again, this move clearly has parallels with the diffusion of gender and theretrieval of 'herstory' from the vaults of the founding fathers (for instance, seeSydie, 1987; Bologh, 1990). This move challenges the view that sociology has'neglected' the body and seeks to show the 'absent presence' (Shilling, 1993)occupied by the body in the discipline. A key claim associated with this move isthat corporeal concerns underlie the writings of the 'founding fathers' and,moreover, lie at the heart of traditional sociological concerns (Wilhams andBendelow, 1998; Scott and Morgan, 1993). Goffman, for instance, is identifiedby many scholars as a key proponent of the corporeality of social interactionand order (Shilling, 1997), and of the fundamental importance of the body inestablishing society (eg, Crossley, 1995a). The relevance of Goffman's workand the implicit corporeality embedded within it has most recently beenmanifest by Mellor and Shilling (1998) and by Burkitt (1999). This move inparticular is one shared by other disciphnes. In social psychology for instance,Radley (1991) literally reformulates key themes and concepts in relation to thehuman body, and similarly Csordas (1994) provides extensive argumentconcerning the implications of reorienting cultural anthropology towardsembodiment as a key concept.

The third and final move with which we are concerned here should be seenas a critical response to what its advocates view as the intransigence of



abstraction in accounts of the body and the persistent privileging of structurewithin those accounts. The move away from structural accounts of the body iscritical of the way in which such accounts tend to reify the body as a pre-discursive object, intentionally or otherwise. Hence the move away from theabstractions of theoretical accounts of the body entails a move towardsexperience, action and intention. This is a move which supports the notion ofinterdisciplinarity and which works creatively with feminism, continentalphilosophy, cultural anthropology and psychoanalysis. As a consequence ofbeing open to the influence of other disciplines, this move emphasises thetranscendence of conceptual dualisms as the core problem for a sociology ofthe body and assumes a 'mapping' between dichotomies of mind/body,subject/object and action/structure. Specifically, criticisms of the persistence ofabstract body theorising can be discerned in Scott and Morgan's collection ofessays (1993), and the more recent work of Williams and Bendelow (1998),Nettleton and Watson (1998), Frank (1995), Crossley (1995b), Hughes andWitz (1997) and others.

Though the substantive emphases of these authors vary, they share asympathy towards phenomenological philosophy and in particular the work ofMerleau-Ponty. For instance, transcending duahsms requires an analytic focuson 'lived experience' as a contrast to what they view as abstract accounts of thebody-object. This entails a repositioning of the body as a site of knowledge-/experience and of intention/action, shaped (never determined) by socialstructure (seldom defined). This move seeks to redirect sociological attentionfrom the body as a reified object (of processes, forces, theory) towards the waysin which the body is lived (Nettleton and Watson, 1998; Watson, 2000). Theshift is described as one towards an 'experientially grounded view of humanembodiment as the existential basis of our being-in-the-world' (Williams andBendelow, 1998: 8, italics in original). The concepts deployed in the movetowards lived experience include corporeality, materiality and physicality, andemphasise the body as a physical place/location from and through which aperson knows and speaks. The body is viewed as a grounding of knowledgewhich may stand in contrast or 'talk back' to other forms of knowledge (forinteresting accounts of this position see Stacey, 1997; Game, 1991).

However, as others have noted (Young, 1990; Scott, 1992; Burkitt, 1999)any appeal to 'experience' is contentious in terms of the degree to which it isconsidered pre-social and pre-reflective, beyond discursivity and representa-tion, or to use Merleau-Ponty's term, 'open' to social influence. Hence,attempts to avoid essentialising lived experience also place emphasis onconsciousness, reflexivity and language. As Frank (1995) notes, bodies may bematter, and may 'talk back' in unanticipated and irreproducible ways, butpeople are more than matter and materiality is always open to interpretation.However, to avoid criticisms of reducing experience to language, Frank (andothers) uses language to provide an opening into embodied experience, ratherthan view it as determining. This represents an attempt to challenge thedichotomous relationship pertaining between the body as a universal (material)



object and the body as a variable (and therefore constructed) system of, andresource for, representation. This re-emphasis addresses the way in whichsociological approaches to the body appear to privilege either representational/discursive understandings or material/foundationalist understandings. Itmoves against the reduction of the body to a sign or a resource and againstthe separation of the knowing/speaking subject from the body.

A final, and crucial, element of the move from 'theory' to 'experience' entailsa shift away from accounts of the body which privilege social structure towardsmore 'phenomenological' approaches. The latter involve a focus on 'what thebody does' as well as how the body is experienced, on the acquisition of habit,practical consciousness and body techniques. In this regard, Crossley (1995b)has produced the fullest and most widely cited account of the body as object(passive, acted on by society) and as subject (active, constituting andreconstituting the social). This particular brand of corporeal sociology (or'carnal' sociology as he puts it) draws heavily on the phenomenology ofMerleau-Ponty. This position has been partially embraced in recent times byother sociologists (such as Burkitt, 1999) who see in his conceptualisation ofmind/body as ontologically indivisible and relational, a means of transcendingconceptual dualisms, by estabhshing an account of the body which attends toexperience (as it is lived and interpreted) and practical engagement with theworld (action and intention). This 'phenomenological shift' to a degreeconsolidates affinities between sociology and other disciplines. In particular, itis notable that much of the sociology moving towards phenomenology doesso via feminist philosophers' readings of Merleau-Ponty, especially those ofYoung (1990) (but see also Grosz, 1994; Diprose, 1994, and for a moresociologically inclined account, Hughes and Witz, 1997). However, we contendthat in its attempt to generate solutions to mind/body and other forms ofphilosophical dualism, the move towards phenomenology leaves the coreproblems for sociological analysis of the body relatively untouched. That is,whilst the experience and action side of the action-agency/ structure antinomyis addressed, the move fails to account adequately for social structure, the issueto which we now turn.

Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body

Merleau-Ponty was concerned to mount his framework for understanding therelations between the human body and the world on foundations thatsuperseded the ancient philosophical divide, stimulated most forcefully inrecent centuries by Cartesianism, between the active mind on the one hand, andthe inert body on the other (Schmidt, 1985). He held that the solution to thisquandary was to show that human beings were neither purely 'minds' or'subjects', or conversely mere 'bodies', but that the total nature of their beingwas best grasped if one referred to them as body-subjects (Merleau-Ponty,1996). This is not merely to assert that subjects possess bodies, but rather is



to indicate a fundamental existential condition whereby subjectivity andcorporeality are wholly intertwined and indissociable, elements of the sameelementary substance. In effect, the body is the subject and the subject is thebody. The distinction between body and subjectivity is merely the product ofan abstract, theoretical refiection upon the nature of human being (Crossley,1995b: 46). But if one recognises the fundamentally practical nature of humanlife, its essential condition can be seen as consisting of a 'pre-objective levelof lived ongoing experience ... [where] mind and body, reason and emotion,can only arbitrarily be separated by an act of conscious refiection andobjectification' (Williams and Bendelow, 1998: 209).

The notion of body-subject therefore is part of an attempt to rethink quiteradically the relationships that pertain between the human mind/body and theworld it encounters. As subjectivity is inherently intermingled with corpore-ality, then on Merleau-Ponty's account the world the body-subject operateswithin is of its essence 'intercorporeal'. Crossley (1995b: 57) defines the latteras a 'primordial carnal bond between human beings'. A body-subject aware ofits own nature can grasp in its perceptions of other bodies that these otherbodies are like itself, that is, body-subjects. Thus the body-subject can grasp thesituation that the world as perceived by other body-subjects is the same worldas perceived by itself (Ahumada, 1979: 182). If different body-subjects arebound together at this primordial level, equally well are they individuallyjoined to the intercorporeal world thus created. This notion can be graspedwith particular ease if we turn to one of Merleau-Ponty's (1965: 168-9) earheststatements of his approach to such matters. He puts his case in terms of anexample of a soccer player moving around the pitch:

For the player in action the soccer field is not an 'object', that is, the idealterm which can give rise to an indefinite multiplicity of perspectival viewsand remain equivalent under its apparent transformations. It is pervadedwith lines of force (the 'yard hnes'; those which demarcate the 'penalty area')and is articulated into sectors (for example, the 'openings' between theadversaries) which call for a certain mode of action and which initiate andguide the action as if the player were unaware of it. The field itself is notgiven to him, but present as the immanent term of his practical intentions;the player becomes one with it and feels the direction of the goal forexample, just as immediately as the vertical and the horizontal planes of hisown body. It would not be sufficient to say that consciousness inhabits thismiheu. At this moment consciousness is nothing other than the dialectic ofmilieu and action. Each manoeuvre undertaken by the player modifies thecharacter of the field and establishes new lines of force in which the action inturn unfolds and is accomplished, again altering the phenomenal field.

By this statement, Merleau-Ponty wished to illustrate how the player(emblematic of the body-subject in general) does not in its embodied actionsproduce refiective 'strategies', but instead practically and unrefiectively creates



moves', which are elicited by the perceived spatial contours of the field(emblematic of the world in general). Moreover, since the moves of the playerare constantly reorienting the spatial contours of the field, the player's practicalconsciousness is constantly engaged in making its environment - the soccerfield - whilst simultaneously being remade by it. It is for this reason that theplayer feels 'at one with' the field whilst in play, for the bodily-subjectivedispositions he or she manifests are constituted by the field whilstsimultaneously constituting the latter. This is why Merleau-Ponty can saythat the player 'feels' the trajectory towards the goal area as much as he or shefeels the dispositions of his or her own body. For the player, the spatialelements of the field, such as the penalty or goal areas, are in a sense of the samesubstance as his or her bodily-subjective dispositions, for each of these factorsare intermarried components of an indivisible whole. Thus to translate thegeneral point from the terms of the soccer metaphor, the body-subject and theworld it operates within constantly constitute and reconstitute each other.Indeed, there is such a great degree of mutual interpenetration of body-subjectand world, they should be seen each as part of the same primordial material.

Advocates of corporeal sociology claim that this ontological position hasvarious benefits if adopted as the basis for sociological thinking, not only aboutthe body but more generally. As we see it, this process of recasting sociologicalthinking into a framework based on Merleau-Pontian assumptions involvestwo main aspects. First, in Merleau-Ponty's philosophical account, the body-subject is active in its relations to the world: 'It does not passively receivemessages from the world but actively interrogates the world, in terms of thecultural schemas which it has acquired' (Crossley, 1995b: 47). Merleau-Ponty'sposition thus seems to allow us to orient sociological thought around theunderstanding that 'the perceiving body ... is ... an agent of cultural praxes,and conversely, cultural praxes are ... the work of an active body-subject'(Crossley, 1995b: 48). In sociological terms, then, the body-subject is under-stood as both active and passive, in that it acts on the basis of culturally-generated schema, and in turn these schema are created by body-subjects(Crossley, 1995b: 60). Thus the embodied agent is both a producer of societyand yet society creates the embodied agent. This is essentially Arthur Frank's(1991) position on the structuration relationship between body and society, butposed in the terminology of body-subjects.

The second aspect involved in refounding sociological thought on aMerleau-Pontian base involves the translation of Merleau-Ponty's phenomen-ological account of 'the world' into the terms sociology is accustomed touse, namely 'society', or 'social world' or 'social relations'. For Crossley, thereorientation of sociology in a Merleau-Pontian direction means that the socialworld is seen as primordially intersubjective. The realm of the social is a'concrete intersubjective structure, reproduced through embodied action; itconsists in sites of shared meaning and mutual (if confiictual) interaction,where bodies act and are acted upon' (Crossley, 1995b: 61). He then adds thatsuch a realm is also where bodies 'are agents and targets of power' (Crossley,



1995b: 61). How successful are these redefinitions of the relations betweenbody-subjects and the social world?

Sociology and philosophy as separate fields

For advocates of corporeal sociology, the notion of 'body-subject' has, as itwere, use-value in both philosophical and sociological fields. The assumptionhere is that the particular sociological problem of the body is one form of thegeneral philosophical problem of corporeality, bequeathed by the history ofdualistic Western metaphysics in general, and the legacy of Cartesianism inparticular. Sociological thinking has inherited Western philosophy's tendencyto split the mind and the body into two separate essences. Merleau-Ponty'sphilosophy is explicitly aimed at overcoming the dualism reinforced byDescartes, by claiming that in actuality, mind and body are of the onesubstance, with this substance being divided only by the misleadingabstractions of Westem philosophy. As Merleau-Ponty effects an anti-dualistrevolution in the philosophical field, and as sociological thought is an offspringof that field, then his system is regarded as being the necessary basis for afundamental overhauhng of sociological thought in a non-duahst direction.

But what if the fields of philosophical and sociological inquiry are not in factidentical? If one accepts that sociology involves both a form of intellectualendeavour concerned with particular problems, and attempts to solve thoseproblems in particular ways, then one cannot accept the assertion that there is adirect equivalence of philosophical quandaries and sociological problems. Abroad-stroked definition of Westem philosophy might regard it as beingcentrally concerned with the problem of the relations between 'subject' and'object', and the nature of objectness itself. Certainly sociology also deals with,respectively, epistemological and ontological issues, but to assume that sociologywholesale and without mediation imports its problems from the manner in whichthey are formulated in the philosophic field is to deny the possibility thatsociology is anything other than a series of philosophical inquiries. Thus thedifferent criteria of adequacy that sociological and philosophical thought requireare downgraded or ignored (Mouzelis, 1995: 62), and the distinctiveness ofsociology as an intellectual endeavour is lost.

In place of viewing sociology as merely pursuing a set of philosophical issues,we might better characterise the discipline as a field of thought broadlyconcemed with issues of subject/object relations, but one in which such issuestake on a particularity and concreteness when formulated sociologically(Alexander, 1982). That is, the fundamental problematic of sociologicaltheorising concems the relations between 'social action' and 'social structure'(Alexander, 1982: 114; Mouzelis, 1995:60; Sharrock, 1987: 154). At a verygeneral level, the sociological term 'action' corresponds to notions clusteredaround the more general philosophical category of 'subject', and the sociologicalterm 'stmcture' corresponds to issues concerning the 'object' world. But the



distinctiveness of the sociological notions of action and structure inheres in thefact that sociology deals with social action and social structure (however the'social' element is more concretely defined in competing forms of theorisation).'Subject' and 'object' in philosophy are both much more general terms than, andalso in crucial ways different from, the sociological categories of 'structure' and'action'. Thus the fundamental action/structure problem of sociology should beseen as a distinctive problem, rather than a mere offshoot of the philosophicalone of subject/object to which it bears certain family resemblances.

Therefore the 'problem' of the body in sociology is neither purely a result ofa philosophic inheritance, nor are the solutions to the sociological problemmerely a matter either of resolving problems at the philosophical level or offounding sociology on a particular philosophical system, such as Merleau-Ponty's. At the risk of sounding tautologous, we would like to argue that thesociological problem of the body is a problem inherent within the discipline ofsociology, that is, within sociology's characteristic modes of thought. Giventhis definition of sociological thinking, the problem of the body thus becomespart of the set of issues ranged around the master problematic of action andstructure (Berthelot, 1991). Furthermore, any solution to this problem must beliterally sociological in character, and not purely philosophical. This problemof translating philosophical resolutions into sociological ones is sometimesrecognised by those advocating corporeal sociology (eg, Williams andBendelow, 1998: 55). But the predominant aspect of their theoreticalorientation when positing solutions to the sociological problem of the bodyis to proffer philosophical models. From the perspective of specificallysociological criteria of argumentative adequacy (see below), these solutionsare abstract and lacking in the particularities that would make them of directutility in sociological thought.

The limitations of phenomenology

Given these considerations, we may now more fully evaluate the claim thatMerleau-Ponty's philosophical system should be the basis for sociologicalthinking about bodies and other issues, and that the notion of 'body-subject',taken from the philosophical field, can be translated into the terminology ofthe sociological field. If there is indeed a difference between philosophic andsociological modes of thought, then it is possible to claim that the notion of'body-subject' may overcome the philosophical problem of subject/objectdualism, but that it does not therefore necessarily also solve the specificallysociological dualism of structure and action, for the problems of each field arenot identical. It does not follow by necessity that a concept overcomes asociological problem by virtue of the fact that it solves a philosophical problemto which the sociological problem bears some family resemblance.

This can be seen particularly acutely if we consider the attempt of Crossleyset out above to translate the notion of 'body-subject' into a basis for

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sociological thinking. If the Merleau-Pontian system is to be translated, thenthe phenomenological-philosophical category of 'the world', the arena which isdesignated by Merleau-Ponty as that in which the body-subject operates, mustbe rendered, into the sociological terms of 'society', 'social relations' and so on.Crossley (1995b: 61) carries out the translation from 'world' to 'society' byformulating the latter as a 'concrete intersubjective structure, reproducedthrough embodied action; it consists in sites of shared meaning and mutual (ifconfiictual) interaction, where bodies act and are acted upon'. This seems onthe face of it a fairly convincing way of delineating the relations between bodiesand society. But it is when he adds that such a realm is also where bodies 'areagents and targets of power' (Crossley, 1995b: 61) that the dilemmas oftranslation from philosophical to sociological terms fully show themselves.

This is because, as a number of commentators have noted, Merleau-Ponty'ssystem lacks a convincing account of power relations. Perhaps the most seriouscomplaint that can be made - from a sociological perspective - aboutMerleau-Ponty's philosophy is that it has an acute awareness of the materialityof the human body, while having a lot less to say about other factors thatsociologists (rather than philosophers) might wish to call 'material', that is,power relations and social structural configurations. Whilst his position mayhave successfully overcome at the philosophical level the subject-objectdistinction through the notion of body-subject, he has nonetheless failedto do sufficient justice to the more 'objective' structures of power thatsociologically are crucial in understanding any phenomenon (see Fontana,1980) including bodies and bodily actions.

This is essentially the verdict that Pierre Bourdieu arrives at in his appraisalfrom a sociological point of view of the overall tenor of Merleau-Ponty'sphilosophy. Bourdieu's collaborator, Loic Wacquant (1996), refiecting uponMerleau-Ponty's use of the image of the soccer field as an emblem of his moregeneral position, argues that while there is a great deal of attention devoted tohow players play, there is a complete omission of questions such as whoenforces the rules on the pitch, who polices the stadium, in whose interests thegame is being staged, and so on. In other words, if the image of the soccerplayer is representative of Merleau-Ponty's thought in toto, then his philosophylacks an adequate theorisation of the forces of power acting upon the body-subject. The ways in which power shapes and constrains bodily action is notaccounted for in Merleau-Ponty's schema. The Marxist social thinker HenriLefebvre (1991: note to 183) similarly identified this occlusion of whatsociologists might generally dub 'structural factors' in Merleau-Ponty's work.Lefebvre argued that in some ways despite his intentions, Merleau-Pontyremained attached to the 'philosophical' (rather than more 'sociological')categories of 'subject' and 'object', which 'have no relation to social practice',that is, to the creation of power relations in the historical processes of classstruggle. Both Bourdieu and Lefebvre therefore take Merleau-Ponty to task forremaining 'too phenomenological', and for failing to come to some synthesiswith more 'sociological' perspectives on the nature of human life.



While it is hardly surprising that a neo-Marxist such as Lefebvre, andsomeone with obvious debts to certain variants of Marxism, such as Bourdieu,should identify Merleau-Ponty's shortcomings in this way, they do nonethelessindicate that we cannot accept Merleau-Ponty completely in his own(philosophical) terms if we wish to use his thought to think productively aboutbodies in sociologically informed ways. Of course, an advocate of Merleau-Ponty's utiiity for sociological thought might admit that it is not enough merelyto take his system verbatim, for it has to be made 'more sociological'. But that isto admit that Merleau-Pontian thought could not in and of itself become thebasis for sociological thought per se, as its lack of an account of power seriouslyundercuts its capacity for being the foundation of all modes of sociologicalunderstanding. In response to that criticism, the advocate of Merleau-Pontycould reply that what has to be done is to 'add' an account of social structuraland power factors to the philosophical system. But such an 'adding' of these twoelements would have certain unintended effects for the admixture thus produced,and it is to these consequences that we now turn.

Bourdieu, habitus, determination

If Merleau-Pontian thought lacks an adequate account of social structures andpower, surely the gaining of a properly embodied paradigm for sociology liessimply in the act of uniting the notion of body-subject and its attendantcategories with the terms of structuralist sociology? One attempt to do preciselythis, in effect to render 'sociological' Merleau-Pontian phenomenology, hasbeen made by Bourdieu himself, within the context of trying to conceptualisethe relations between embodied agency and social structures. His attempt tomate phenomenology, not only in its Merleau-Pontian form but also in theterms of the systems of Husserl (1982, 1989) and Heidegger ([1927] 1988), witha sociological interest in social structures and power relations has proven to bean infiuential model within sociology. Wacquant (1996: 20) sees Bourdieu asMerleau-Ponty's 'sociological heir', albeit 'one who innovates in ways that aresometimes incompatible with both the spirit and the letter' of Merleau-Ponty'swork. Our argument is that it is Bourdieu's focus on power and socialstructural configurations which are at the root of such incompatibilities.

Bourdieu's reworking of Merleau-Ponty's philosophical concepts into amodel which conjoins them with structural sociology is based around thenotion of 'habitus'. Bourdieu (1992a: 172) defines this concept as:

... a system of practice-generating schemes which expresses systematicallythe necessity and freedom inherent in [a] ... class condition and thedifference [from other classes and fractions] constituting that condition ...

The system of practice-generating schemes of a particular habitus generatespractices, with Bourdieu's account of practices being rooted in a conceptualisation



of these as fundamentally corporeal in nature. The practices of the body -ways of doing and being - are characteristic of a class's or class fraction'sfundamental conditions of life (Bourdieu, 1992a: 190, 468). The schemes of ahabitus therefore inculcate the characteristics of the group in the corporeal lifeof each individual member by '... embed[ding] ... the most automatic gesturesor the most apparently insignificant techniques of the body - ways of walkingor blowing one's nose, ways of eating or talking ...' (Bourdieu, 1992a: 466).

The notion of'habitus' therefore illustrates quite clearly the debt Bourdieu'sposition on corporeality owes to Merleau-Ponty. Wacquant argues (1996: 20)that in particular Bourdieu builds upon Merleau-Ponty's account of thefundamental continuity between 'subject' and 'object' world through themedium of the body. This is because a habitus is seen to orient the socializedsubject towards the social world through the logics of practical action(Bourdieu, 1992b). Just as Merleau-Ponty's soccer player was intrinsically partof the 'field', so too as a result of occupying a habitus is Bourdieu's embodiedsocial actor at a very fundamental level part of the social order he or sheoperates within.

Bourdieu thus believes that the notion of habitus resolves variousantinomies that have hitherto plagued sociological thinking. First, habitusfurnishes Bourdieu with a way of overcoming the legacy of Cartesian dualismin sociological thought. This is because he has adopted within the notion ofhabitus Merleau-Ponty's postulates of the unity of body and subject, and theintimate connection between body-subject and outer world, with the Merleau-Pontian notion of 'world' translated into the sociological idea of a social orderthoroughly inscribed with structurally-rooted power relations. Thus, secondly,the concept of habitus provides a way out of the non-sociological arena inwhich Merleau-Pontian thought languishes, as it connects an account of socialstructural and power relations with a phenomenological account of corporealbeing and doing. Thus the fundamental unity of the 'structural' aspects of thesocial world, with the 'phenomenal' world of embodied experience, is capturedin the epistemological strategy of habitus as a concept, uniting as it does astructural sociology with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Third, habitusallows an overcoming of the chasm between structure and action by showingthat the socialised body is not merely acted on by society, but is itself possessedof a set of structuring capacities, to change (or at least to reproduce) socialconditions. In this sense, habitus is the means whereby Bourdieu can claim tohave developed a structurationist model which accounts simultaneously forboth social determination of action and individual agency.

For our purposes, Bourdieu's working of Merleau-Ponty's philosophicalconcepts into sociological parameters illustrates the unintended consequencesof any attempt to mate a system of phenomenological philosophy withstructuralist sociology. Bourdieu claims that he has successfully overcome theduahsm of structure and action by theorising habitus as a system of practicegenerating schemes which both derive from the social structural patterns of agiven society, and yet which also produce actions which in turn act upon social



Structures. But as many commentators have noted (eg, Jenkins, 1992: 96-7;Shilling, 1997), despite Bourdieu's claims, the idea of habitus seems in actualityto favour an account of embodied actions which emphasises their determina-tion by social structural factors. For example, the bodily dispositions andactivities of someone who occupies a lower middle class habitus seem, onBourdieu's account of them, to be both produced and determined in advanceby that habitus. The 'typical' individual in the lower rungs of white collar workis compelled by his or her habitus to enjoy 'typically' lower middle classpursuits such as aerobics, and to have tastes in food 'typical' of that classposition. Reading Bourdieu's (1992a) now classic work Distinction, one is notstruck by a concem to show how individuals may be atypical of their classposition, or how class tastes could be changed by conscious forms of action.Socio-cultural change seems only to arrive when deep social structuralconfigurations change, and eventually make their presence felt at the level oflived, embodied experience. In essence, then, despite Bourdieu's intentions,habitus may be a concept that inadvertently privileges the structuralcomponents of social life over the lived elements, and epistemologically thussacrifices the autonomy of the phenomenological account to the primacy ofstructuralist sociology.

Sociology's criteria of adequacy

In one way, this result of the combining of structuralist sociology andphenomenology could be seen as a failure on Bourdieu's part to live up to theclaims he makes for his position. It could be argued that his lack of success inthis regard could be put down to the peculiarities of Bourdieu's intellectualinheritance, for example, the remnants in his thinking of Althusser's (1965;Althusser and Balibar, 1970) highly structurally determinist form of Marxism.Certainly the success or failure of any thinker to meet his or her own objectivesdepends in large part on his or her predecessors and infiuences. But we wouldlike to suggest that the trajectory towards social structural determinism withinthe concept of habitus is not primarily due to the particularities of Bourdieu'ssociology, but rather is a result of the tendency of all forms of sociologicalthought to move in the direction of structural determinism once a structuralcomponent is built into them.

We submit that there is an inexorable logic of development of sociologicaltheorising. Once a sociological position moves away from a 'pure' phenom-enological position, and has built into it an account of social structure andpower relations, there is an unavoidable shift towards privileging the latter,both in general terms, and in particular cases where the theory is called upon toexplain a concrete phenomenon. Once the structural component is built intothe system it exerts an inexorable 'pull' on both the theorist and the elementsin the system of thought s/he creates, that results in a lessening or even acomplete dismissal of the importance of the non-structural factors in that



system. In a specific case, such as Bourdieu's, of a mating between aphenomenological account with a structural one, once the latter is in place, itwill tend to destroy the 'purity' of the former. The phenomenological and thestructural cannot be combined as equal partners in the system, for the power ofthe latter will always be greater.

This is because sociology as a discipline, as part and parcel of its very nature,looks towards the totality of the 'social' realm, however conceived, anddownplays what it regards as 'particulars' - individual actors, their actions andexperiences and so on. The emphasis within sociological thought on totalityover particulars derives, at least in part, from Hegel's conception of socio-cultural systems as mediated by Marx (Jay, 1984), and from Durkheim's([1893] 1984, [1895] 1982, [1912] 1915) holistic account of social systems.* As wehave noted, sociology is built around and sustained by the tension between'structure' and 'action'. But for a theory to be recognised as even minimallycompelling, it must meet the criteria of adequacy embedded within thediscipline of sociology itself - that is to say, embedded within both thetraditions of thought sociologists adhere to, and their commonsense recogni-tions of what makes a 'good' argument. Those criteria are based around thefundamental assumption that a theory must account for the totahty, and notaddress itself exclusively to particulars, for the omission of Society per se wouldbe equivalent to admitting not only that the theory was inadequate, but that itwas not really 'sociological' at all.

When Bourdieu identifies the shortcomings of Merleau-Ponty's phenomen-ology by saying that it lacks 'structural' elements, he is not exercising anidiosyncratic judgement. Rather, he is evaluating that system by the criteria hisdiscipline compels him to use, or, to say the same thing from another angle,he is viewing Merleau-Ponty's work from a perspective shared with othermembers of the sociological conmiunity. If our argument is correct, thenBourdieu's next move, which involved taking the 'inadequate' phenomenolo-gical system and placing it in a supposedly equal partnership with a structuralsociology deriving from Durkheim and Marx, was doomed from the start.-̂ Thetwo components could not exist in an equal relationship, for the form ofthought Bourdieu was concerned to operate with, and the criteria of theoreticaladequacy he was forced to employ in his role as a sociologist, meant that theone element would have to submit to the authority of the other. Despite hisbest structurationist intentions, for Bourdieu to create a properly 'sociological'system, and for himself and other sociologists to recognise it as, at the veryleast, a theory to be given serious attention, the phenomenological element wasbound to be brought under the yoke of its structural counterpart.

If we are correct in our characterisation of the compelling force of the logicof sociological theory construction, then we can begin to explain the fraughtnature of moves made towards a corporeal sociology, by reconstructing themin this fashion. Dissatisfaction with what is initially seen as the overlydeterminist schema of a thinker such as Turner (1984), leads to calls for movestowards more 'phenomenological' models of understanding how the body



Operates in society. But once that move has been made, purely phenomen-ological accounts of bodily movement and so on are themselves seen to beinadequate. This is because they are being evaluated from the perspective ofsome of the fundamental criteria that underpin sociological thought, namelythat an absence of 'Society' (ie, social structures and power configurations) insuch accounts makes them untenable. Thus a further move is made, basedupon an appeal to reconcile the structural and the phenomenological elementsalready posited. In this regard, Bourdieu's structurationist theorising seems toprovide an adequate synthesis of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology with themore structural concems expressed by Turner (1984) and others.

But this appeal must inevitably founder, for the phenomenological elementwill be subsumed under the structural component. Bourdieu's work dramatisesvery acutely what will occur when there is a mating of a phenomenologicalsystem, in this case the Merleau-Pontian variety, with the concepts ofstructuralist sociology: an unintended shift from a balance of phenomenolo-gical and structural factors in the direction ofthe predominance ofthe latter. Ineffect, an appeal to utilise Bourdieu's thought for corporeal sociologicalpurposes would mean a shift back to the structural determinism that corporealsociology was formed as a reaction against. Nor is this situation anidiosyncratic failure on Bourdieu's part. Any such attempt to unite aphenomenological system such as Merleau-Ponty's with structuralist sociologywill tend towards the same outcome. Once corporeal sociology rejects a 'pure'phenomenology as lacking structural components, it is compelled to embracethose components as the dominant partners in a synthesis of phenomenologyand structuralism.

If corporeal sociology's stated aims are to avoid such a form of determinism,then either an appeal to the work of Bourdieu, or attempts at new modes ofsynthesis between phenomenological and structural elements, will result in asituation whereby its intentions have been subverted by the criteria thatsociological thought demands. These are that totality be elevated aboveparticulars, and that Society be understood as a more crucial factor thanexperience, the 'hved' body and other relatively 'epiphenomenal' factors. Thusmoves towards either a Bourdieusian paradigm, or a Merleau-Pontianismmated with the legacy of Durkheim and Marx, will result in a paradoxicaloutcome: a return to that very mode of thought, the sociology ofthe body, withits alleged overemphasis on social determinism, that corporeal sociologyinitially rebelled against.

Conclusion: sociology or cultural studies?

The debates as to the status of the body in sociology, important as they are intheir own right, are indicative not just of dynamics in that sub-field, but oftrends in the discipline as a whole. The shifts back and forth between thesociology of the body (where the body is treated primarily as an object created



and determined by Society), and 'embodied' or 'corporeal' sociology (where aninitial privileging of 'experience' over 'structure' tends to tumble back into anemphasis on the latter) are emblematic of the dilemmas of contemporarysociology tout court, a discipline caught between an adherence to tradition andan impulse towards innovation. Most crucially, the debates around the bodyare a representation in embryo of the fraught relations between sociology astraditionally conceived, and the 'upstart' disciphne of Cultural Studies.

Our definition of the criteria of adequacy in sociological analysis applies tothe mainstream of sociological thought that has pertained within the disciplinesince its inception up until very recently. However, recent years have witnessedthe emergence of a rival paradigm of what constitutes argumentative adequacy.This is a result of the so-called 'cultural turn', whereby sociology's relation toCultural Studies methods and assumptions has been redefined. Within thisparadigm, the core concern of the theorist is, roughly speaking, the terrain ofthe socio-cultural rather than the social structural (and its counterpoint inaction terms) (Chaney, 1994; McLennan, 1998). This position allows for amuch wider set of conceptual tools to be deployed in the comprehension of theworld than hitherto was the case, hence the adoption of models firstadumbrated in the realms of philosophy, feminist thought, cultural anthro-pology, linguistics and psychoanalysis.

It could be argued that a change in the nature of available tools for analysisalso shifts the focus in terms of potential objects of analysis. That is to say, wheresociological thought in the traditional sense dealt centrally with the dilemmas ofstructure and action, the new paradigm of 'social theory' adopts a wider range ofproblematics (a key one being the nature and roles of 'identity'). Traditionalconcerns as to structure and agency are foregone in favour of comprehension ofa unidimensional field of the 'cultural', rather than the dualistic field of thestructure and action problematic (Mouzelis, 1995). Critics of the approachesderiving from the 'cultural turn' certainly charge the multiple orientations withinthis overall rubric with failing to deal with issues of social structure (as'traditionally' conceived) and thus by implication of relinquishing (or havinginadequate conceptions of) forms of action (Long, 1997; McLennan, 1998).

These developments have worked themselves out in the terms of corporealsociology in a contradictory fashion. A tool of analysis, in this casephenomenological philosophy, has been taken up as it was deemed adequateas a means of theorising by 'cultural turn' criteria of adequacy. But this toolwas subsequently judged by the more traditional criteria based around notionsof social structure as creating inadequate accounts of the phenomena inquestion. This condemnation then effected a search for making thephenomenological accounts produced by Merleau-Pontian conceptual tools'more sociological'. But as we have seen, if the adequacy of an account is beingevaluated by the traditional sociological criteria based around a focus on socialstructure, then there will be a tendency to lapse back into a structurally-determinist position, the very starting point against which 'embodied' or'corporeal' sociology was defined.



Thus the various twists and turns of the debates as to the status of the bodyin sociology dramatise acutely the paradigmatic crisis contemporary sociologyfinds itself facing. Modes of analysis and ways of thinking that are deemedappropriate by one set of criteria and one faction within the community ofsociologists, are condemned by another faction operating on the basis of verydifferent ideas both as to what constitutes the appropriate problems forsociologists to set themselves, and as to what are the right tools for the job.Sociology today is truly at a crossroads, and sociologists must decide whichway they will turn: onto the path that leads them into the terra incognita ofcultural studies, or onto a more famihar road, the scenery of which echoes thatof the history of the discipline. This is a decision that must be taken, forsociology cannot operate on the basis of two mutually incompatible sets ofassumptions. The dilemmas demonstrated by the history of sociologicalthinking about the body testify to the epistemological muddles that arise if weare not clear as to precisely what our most fundamental assumptions are.Whichever road is taken, this decision perhaps more than any other willprofoundly influence the nature of the discipline in the twenty-first century.

University of Aberdeen Received 5 September 2000Accepted 16 January 2001

Notes

1 Dawe (1970) argues that the fundamental source of this form of thought was the philosophicalexpression of the conservative reaction to the individuahsm of the French Revolution, whereby itwas asserted that the individual was merely part of the overall social totality. From these rootssprang the classical sociological 'problem of order'. The source of the contending paradigm insociology, the 'problem of control', whereby individual action is focused upon as the centralelement of concern, derives from the early nineteenth century Romantic focus on individuahsticwill and agency. Our contention is that there is a tendency within sociology for the latterparadigm to be brought under the yoke of the former. Dawe (1970: 215) himself argues that thistrajectory is particularly well dramatised in the work of Parsons, with the focus in the early work(Parsons, 1937) on a Weberian action-theoretical conception of the 'creative relation of men [sic]to norms' being usurped in the later work (Parsons, 1951) with a systems-theoretical emphasis on'passive, adaptive' relations between actors and social systems. We would argue that Parsons'developing ideas as to what made a 'good' sociological argument tended increasingly towards thecriteria deriving from the 'problem of order' and that this was not merely a personalidiosyncrasy, but is indicative of a general tendency within the logic of sociological thoughtper se.

2 Giddens' (1984) attempt at a structurationist position balancing the claims of accounts ofstructure and agency is often characterised as tending in the other direction, towards an over-emphasis on the agency side of the equation (see Held and Thompson, 1989). But such anevaluation is based on the criteria of argumentative adequacy that dominates mainstreamsociological thought, namely that an account that focuses on agency at the expense of anawareness of structural determinants is a flawed one. Thus even when a major theorist such asGiddens apparently departs in a direction away from structural determinism, the sociologicalcommunity at large, drawing upon the customary criteria of adequacy, evaluate that thinker'sposition in terms of the logic of thought we have identified.



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The body in sociology: tension inside and outside sociological thought

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