The Body: The Key Concepts

Description

Questions around 'the body' are central to social theory. Our changing understanding of the body now challenges the ways we conceive power, ideology, subjectivity and social and cultural process. The Body: the key concepts highlights and analyses the debates which make the body central to current sociological, psychological, cultural and feminist thinking. Today, questions around the body are intrinsic to a wide range of debates - from technological developments in media and communications, to socio-cultural questions around representation, performance, class, race, gender and sexuality, to the more 'physical' concerns of health and illness, sleep, diet and eating disorders, body parts and the senses.The Body: the key concepts is the ideal introduction for any student seeking a concise and up-to-date analysis of the complex and influential debates around the body in contemporary culture.

Lisa Blackman is Senior Lecturer in the Dept of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, UK, and is author of Hearing Voices: Embodiment and Experience and co-author of Mass Hysteria: Critical Psychology and Media Studies.

'In accomplishing the important task of mapping where the body presently is in the field, Lisa Blackman also points the way forward in her explorations of embodiment as a multiplicity of networks, connections, operations and potentialities. A contribution that will be welcomed by those new to the area as well as by more established body scholars.' Chris Shilling, University of Kent 'A Comprehensive, incisive and sophisticated overview of the field. Highly recommended'. Tim Lawrence, University of East London