SOCI 6400 Body & Society Spring 2003 Dr. Marc LaFountain
Office Pafford 228 770-836-4589 marcl@westga.edu
homepage: www.westga.edu/~marcl/
Hours M 9:30-12, 1:30-3:30; T & R 9:30-11, W 9:30-12 & 5-5:30; other times
Texts The Lived Body: Sociological Perspectives, Embodied issues - Bendelow & Williams 1998
The Body and Social Theory – Shilling 1993
Additional required readings are available in a coursepack that you can purchase
at Ditto’s.
Abstracts Prepare 2 500 word abstracts of journal articles, no older than 1995, dealing with the
social production of bodies. Attach copy of article to abstract (copies will be returned). These
will be discussed in class.
Class Presentations Each of you will be asked to make a presentation mid-semester
about a topic of your choice. Please have some sort of outline or schematic or “map”
to help others follow your presentation. More details in first class meeting. Presentations begin
approximately February 19
Your abstracts and the class presentation, ideally, could be related to your course research project, your thesis project or position paper, and/or a conference presentation or article you’re preparing for submission.
Project Complete a journal quality research paper. It should be at least 15 pp. (20 pages max), typed, double-spaced, with appropriate bibliography in ASA style. Your project can be on any topic relevant to this course’s subject matter. I encourage you to discuss your topic with me. The first version of your paper due Friday, April 4. This version is NOT a rough draft. It should be a final, completed paper – title page, page numbering, bibliography, carefully edited and proofread, etc. that you are sending to a journal for publication review. I will grade the first paper and return it with comments. Rewrite to be submitted on last day of class. The grade on the final paper will be based on how well you address the comments on the first version. The two grades will be averaged to arrive at the final project grade. Unless arrangements are made in advance, papers turned in later than the specified times will suffer a grade loss of 10% per day until received. When you submit the final version, attach the first version so I can see how you dealt with the initial set of comments. Failure to include the first paper with my comments will cost you 10 points off the final average, so please don’t forget. Completed final paper due date of last class, Wednesday, April 23
Grading Abstracts 20 pts (10 pts each)
Class presentation 20 pts
Project 70 pts
A = 99-110 B = 88-98 C = 77-87 F = below 87
Attendance is expected for every class. Each unexcused absence will result in loss of 3 points from the final grade average.
Course learning outcomes:
· To learn contemporary literature regarding the sociology of the body in both its disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts
· To explicitly identify, compare, and critique various theoretical and methodological strategies within this literature
· To write a journal quality article
· To articulate the ways in which the interplay of biological materiality and social constructions of the body impact your everyday life experiences and in turn how you contribute to the ways in which bodies and experience are produced in contemporary society
The above course learning outcomes are directly to the following Sociology Masters program learning outcomes: to understand and apply qualitative methodology, to understand and apply sociological theory, to think critically about sociology and issues of social inequality, and to communicate effectively orally and in writing.
We will consider some but not all of the following kinds of bodies: physical and emotional bodies, healthy, ill, disabled, and dying bodies, gendered bodies, slender bodies, media and consuming bodies, childhood and aging bodies, the body and social inequality, desiring, erotic, and pornographic bodies, cyborg and virtual bodies, transgressive and ethical bodies
Tentative sequence of topics and readings(* = in coursepack)
1. Introduction and overview
2. *“For a Sociology of the Body: An Analytical Review” – Frank
*“Body and Society: An Introduction” – Featherstone & Turner
3. Shilling chaps 1-4
4. Shilling chaps 5-9
5. Williams & Bendelow – Introduction, chaps 1-3 + *“Female Embodiment and Clinical Practice” – Connolly
6. Williams & Bendelow – chaps 4-5 + *“Bodily Dys-Order: Desire, Excess, and Transgression of Corporeal Boundaries” – Williams
7. Williams & Bendelow – chaps 6-7
8. *“Gender and the Transformation of Intimacy: A `Stalled Revolution’? – Williams
*“Ethical Bodies” – Russell
9. Williams & Bendelow – chap 8
Selective Bibliography
Aaron, M. (ed.). The Body’s Perilous Pleasures – Dangerous Desires and Contemporary
Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999
Abram, D. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage, 1996.
Bataille, Georges. Inner Experience. Trans. L. A. Boldt. Albany: SUNY Press, 1988.
Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939. Trans. A. Stoekl. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.
Bordo, S. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995
Csordas, T. J. Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994
Falk, P. The Consuming Body. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994
Featherstone, M., M. Hepworth & B. S. Turner (eds.). The Body: Social Process and
Cultural Theory. London: Sage, 1991
Foucault, M. The History of Sexuality, Vol I: An Introduction. New York: Random House,
1978.
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon, 1977
Frank, A. W. At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness. Boston: Houghton Miflin, 1991.
The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics. Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 1995
Hancock, P. et al. The Body, Culture and Society. Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000.
Harraway, D. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: the Reinvention of Nature. New York:
Routledge, 1991
Hatty, S. E. & Hatty, J. The Disordered Body: Epidemic Disease and Cultural Transformation.
Albany: SUNY Press, 1999
Helman, C. Culture, Health and Illness. London: Wright, 1990
Goffman, E. Gender Advertisements. New York: Macmillan, 1979
Grosz, E. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Sydney: Allen and Unwin,
1994
Grosz, E. and E. Probyn. Sexy Bodies – The Strange Carnalities of Feminism. New York:
Routledge, 1995
Kroker, A and M. Kroker. The Last Sex: Feminism and Outlaw Bodies. New York: St.
Martin’s 1993
Body Invaders – Panic Sex in America. New York: St. Martin’s, 1987
Leder, D. The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990
Love, D.M. The Body in Late Capitalist USA. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995
Lupton, D. The Emotional Self. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998.
Maffesoli, M. The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage, 1996
McNally, D. Bodies of Meaning – Studies on Language, Labor and Liberation. Albany: SUNY,
2001
Nettleton, S & J. Watson (eds). The Body in Everyday Life. New York: Routledge, 1998
O’Neill, J.
The Communicative Body. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1989
Five Bodies: The Shape of Modern Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985
Ostrow, J. Social Sensitivity: A Study of Habit and Experience. Albany: SUNY 1990
Polhemus, T. The Body Reader: Social Aspects of the Human Body. New York:
Pantheon, 1978
Prout, A. (ed). The Body, Childhood, and Society. Mew York: St. Martins Press, 1999
Richardson, J. & A. Shaw (eds.). The Body in Qualitative Research. Brookfield, Vt.:
Ashgate, 1998
Scott, S & D. Morgan (eds.). Body Matters: Essays on the Sociology of the Body.
London: The Falmer Press, 1993
Shilling, C. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage, 1993
Spurling, L. Phenomenology and the Social World: The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty
and its Relation to the Social Sciences. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977
Stratton, J. The Desirable Body: Cultural Fetishism and the Erotics of Consumption.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996
Synnott, A. The Body Social: Symbolism, Self and Society. New York: Routledge,
1993
Turner, B. S. Regulating Bodies: Essays in Medical Sociology. New York: Routledge, 1992
The Body & Society, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996
Williams, S. Emotion and Social Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001
SOCI 6400 Spring 2003 Dr. Marc LaFountain
770.836.4589 marcl@westga.edu
1. “For a Sociology of the Body: An Analytical Review” – Frank
2. “Body and Society: An Introduction” – Featherstone & Turner
3. “Female Embodiment and Clinical Practice” – Connolly
4. “Bodily Dys-Order: Desire, Excess, and Transgression of Corporeal Boundaries” – Williams
5. “Gender and the Transformation of Intimacy: A `Stalled Revolution’? – Williams
6. *“Ethical Bodies” – Russell