Body issues: managing the body in purity and impurity

Body issues by Sue Scott ... If there is a subtitle for this book, it would be appropriate to be "Directions towards diversity," which reflects the diversity of current developments in what is called sociology of the body, and the variety of real topics and empirical research covered by the articles in this book. Such a subtitle also, as in the papers collected here, indicates the potential of sociology of the body, in pointing to the directions that can be presented in sociology and social theory in the future. This collection can be linked in its focus on embodying social actors, and the relationship between this embodiment and issues of both everyday life and sociological theory. While the core topics here range from dance, men, masculinity, marital and sexual counseling, prostitution, bodybuilding, images of homosexuality, management of children's bodies, and clear connections and common threads, which can be found through these chapters. One of these topics concerns the social construction of the body, and in various ways, aspects of the body that give new and diverse meanings, weakening or questioning what might traditionally be understood as natural. The other topic concerns social regulation and organization of the body, and the complex interactions between societal regulation and self-surveillance, and these topics will be present in a mixture passing through all these pages.