The Body and Society : Explorations in Social Theory

The very existence of the sociology of the body raises an important and perennial problem about the relationship between nature and culture. Although modern sociology has been prone to dismiss ‘nature’ as merely a construct or has treated it as a cultural system, the tension between the body as a living organism and as a cultural product continues to underpin the sociological understanding of, and debate about, the body and embodiment. There are, of course, strong political reasons for being anxious about the contrast because the nature/nurture divide has often been used to legitimate or to justify social inequality as a natural inequality, such as the (unequal) gender division of labour in society. The ideological justification of this division suggests that men belong to culture and are responsible for the public sphere, while women in their domestic roles fulfil natural functions such as child-rearing and family maintenance. While one can dismiss these claims relatively easily, this distinction needs to be constantly re-assessed since developments in the natural sciences have contributed to a profound change in the ways in which the human body is conceptualized, managed and produced. The contrast between nature and culture also therefore influences the ways in which we think of science itself. We should not take a caricature of the differences between men and women – between the public and the private – as the definitive case against a contrast between nature and culture.