The Body and Social Theory Second Edition Chris Shilling §) SAGE Publications London * Thousand Oaks * New DelhiFirst edition published 1993 Reprinted 1954 (twice) 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2002 ‘This edition first published 2003 © Chris Shilling 2003 ‘Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or pavate study, or eriticiem or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs. and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, orby any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the ease of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. 6 Bonhill Street. London BCA 4PU SAGE Publications Inc 2495 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pt Ltd B-42, Panchsheel Enclave Post Bex 4109 New Delhi - 100 017 6 SAGE Publications Lad British Library Cataloguing in Publication data ‘A catalogue record For this book i available from the British Library SBN 0 7619 4284 X ISBN 07619 4285 8 (pbk) Library of Congress Control Number: 20021 18869 ‘Typeset by Mayhew Typesetting, Rhayader, Fowys Printed and bound in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press Trowbridge, Wiltshire‘The Body and Socal Theory very heart of family life, women who have never had sex are being given the chance to have a baby’ (Golden and Hope, 1991). Advances in such areas as transplant surgery and virtual reality exacer- bate this uncertainty about the body by threatening to collapse the boundaries which have traditionally existed between bodies, and between technology and the body (Bell and Kennedy, 2000). This has very real consequences. As Turner notes, in a future society where implants and transplants are widespread and highly developed, ‘the hypothetical puzzles in classical philosophy about identities and parts will be issues of major legal and political importance. Can I be held responsible for the actions of a body which is substantially not my own body? (Turner, 1992a: 37), These developments also promise to increase those dilemmas surrounding the ownership of bodies which have already been raised in relation to such issues as abortion and surrogacy (Diprose, 1994). In this time of uncertainty, knowledge about what bodies are increasingly takes the form of hypotheses ‘claims which may very well be true, but which are in principle always open to revision and may have at same point to be abandoned’ (Giddens, 1991: 3). This situation is not inconsequential for the modern individual's sense of self-identity — their sense of self as reflexively understood in terms of their own embodied biography. In the affluent West, there is a tendency for the body to be seen as an entity which is in the process of becoming; a project which should be worked at and accomplished as part of an individual's self-identity. We can trace indi- viduals’ attempts to shape and mould their bodies back to the early Christian era and even to Classical Antiquity (Brown, 1988; Foucault, 1988). However, body projects differ from how the flesh was decorated, inscribed and altered in traditional societies as they involve a reflexivity which is cut adrift from traditional models of socially acceptable bodies which were forged through rituals in communal ceremonies (Rudofsky, 1986 [1971]). Body projects still vary along social lines, especially in the case of gender, but there has in recent years been a proliferation of the ways in which both women and men have developed their bodies. Recognizing that the body has become a project for many modern per- sons entails accepting that its appearance, size, shape and even its contents, are potentially open to reconstruction in line with the designs of its owner. Treating the body as a project does not necessarily entail a full-time pre- occupation with its wholesale transformation, although it has the poten- tiality ta do sa. However, it does involve individuals being conscious of and actively concerned about the management, maintenance and appearance of their bodies. This involves a practical recognition of the significance of bodies; both as personal resources and as social symbols which give off 4Introduction messages about a person's self-identity. In this context, bodies become malleable entities which can be shaped and honed by the vigilance and hard work of their owners. Perhaps the mest common example of the body as a project can be found in the unprecedented amount of attention given to the personal construction of healthy bodies (Shilling, 2002a) At a time when our health is threatened increasingly by global dangers, we are exhorted ever more to take individual responsibility for our bodies by engaging in strict self-care regimes. Heart disease, cancer and a host of other diseases are increasingly portrayed as avoidable by individuals who eat the right foods, stop smoking and take sufficient quantities of exercise. Self-care regimes require individuals to take on board the notion that the body is a project whose interiors and exteriors can be monitored, nurtured and maintained as fully functioning. These regimes promote an image of the body as an island of security in a global system characterized by multiple and inescapable risks (Beck, 1992). Self-care regimes are not simply about preventing disease. They are also concerned with making us feel good about how our bodies appear to ourselves and others. Health has become increasingly associated with appearances and what Erving Goffman (1969) has termed the ‘presentation of self. These concems have been facilitated by the production of what appears to be an almost limitless number of self-help books, make-up guides, dietary supplements and exercise plans. Consumer goods battle with each other in their attempts to make people’s bodies look and feel reliable and sensuous, and provide programmes for people to achieve askin quality and muscle tone which give off messages about health by looking healthy and youthful (Banner, 1983). Indeed, the influence of this parti- cular body project is such that even those who smoke and drink heavily, and consume other diugs, find it difficult not to reflect on the effects such actions are having on the health and appearance of their bodies. In an era characterized by a political emphasis on ‘self-help’ and ‘personal respon- sibility’, and a cultural emphasis on the ‘body beautiful’, those who engage in such habits have become the new moral deviants. However, the per- vasive influence on us of what Robert Crawford (1987) refers to as ‘the new health consciousness’ is not the only way in which the bady has became a project to be moulded in line with people's self-identities. Plastic surgery has provided a much smaller, but fast growing number of individuals with the opportunity for a more radical and direct way of reconstructing their bodies in line with particular notions of youthfulness, femininity and masculinity. Face-lifts, liposuction, tummy tucks, nose and. chin ‘jobs’ are just a small selection of the operations and procedures open to people with money who want to reconstruct their bodies. Well over two million breast implant operations have been performed in the United States since the early 1960s on women seeking to achieve bodies that are more ‘feminine’. Increasing numbers of men have followed their example by having chest implants in search of a more muscular appearance. Penile 5.‘The Body and Socal Theay engorgement operations are also available for those willing to pay for a more ‘fully masculine’ bedy (Grant, 1992). Plastic surgery raises, in a particularly acute form, the question, ‘What is the body? by enabling people to add to or subtract from the fat, flesh and bones in their body. In this respect, newspapers and magazines have carried a number of articles about people who, by undergoing multiple operations, have become obsessed with changing the appearances and boundaries of their bodies in line with some idealized version of the self. Perhaps the most newsworthy imple of this can be found in the much altered features of pop singer Michael Jackson. For these not willing or able to undergo the risks involved in surgery, there is the increasingly popular activity of bodybuilding; an activity which used to reside on the deviant margins of the exercise industry. Bodybuilding is a good illustrative example of the body as a project precisely because the quality and sheer size of the muscles achieved by bodybuilders challenges accepted notions of what is natural about male and female bodies At atime when machines are increasingly taking over the manual work traditionally carried out by men in factories, and when women continue to challenge the limited roles of wife and mother available to them in society, the con- struction and display of ‘unnaturally’ large or highly defined bodies appears to allow people to make strong, public and personal statements about who and what they are (Fussell, 1991). As one of the women in Rosen's study of women bodybuilders remarked, “When I look in the mirror see somebody who's finding herself, who has said once and for all it doesn’t really matter what role society said I should play. | can do anything I want and feel proud about doing it’ (Rosen, 1983: 72). The projects of health, plastic surgery and bodybuilding are just three examples of how modern individuals are placing increasing emphasis on their bodies Nevertheless, they serve at least to illustrate some of the opportunities and limitations which accompany the tightening relation- ship between the body and self-identity. Investing in the body provides people with a means of self expression and a way of potentially feeling good and increasing the control they have over their bodies. If one feels unable to exert influence over an increasingly complex society, at least one can have some effect on the size, shape and appearance of one's body. The benefits of this opportunity may be qualihed in the absence of ultimate criteria for deciding how the body should be treated, or even what the body is, but it would be too easy to dismiss out of hand the advantages that can accrue to people asa result of the rise of the body as a project in modem society. Investment in the body also has its limitations. Indeed, in one sense the effort expended by individuals on the body is doomed to failure. Bodies age and decay, and the inescapable reality of death appears particularly disturbing to modern people wha are concerned with a self-identity which has at its centre the body. After all, what could signal to us more effectively the limitations of our concem with the young and fit, ideally feminine or e