Chapter 18 : The Sociology of the Body: Health and Illness and Sexuality

The Sociology of the Body

  The field of the sociology of the body studies how the social world affects our bodies and is particularly concerned with processes of social change. Modern social technologies have managed, for instance, to separate the body from nature; an example is the notion of dieting, which involves planned interventions in the functioning of our bodies in order to modify or regulate them in various ways.

  Food production in the modern world has been globalized: Technologies of transportation and of storage (refrigeration) have meant that now everyone in the developed world is on a diet in some sense, having to decide what to eat every day. Such decisions are influenced by social relations. Women especially are judged by physical appearance, but feelings of shame about the body can lead anyone to compulsive dieting, exercising, or bodybuilding to make the body conform to social expectations.

The Experience of Health and Illness

  Sociologists are interested in the experience of illness-how being sick, chronically ill, or disabled is experienced by the sick person and by those nearby. The idea of the sick role, developed by Talcott Parsons, suggests that a sick person adopts certain forms of behavior in order to minimize the disruptive impact of illness. A sick individual is granted certain privileges, such as the right to withdraw from normal responsibilities, but in return must work actively to regain health by agreeing to follow medical advice.

  Symbolic interactionists have investigated how people cope with disease and chronic illness in their daily lives. The experience of illness can provoke changes in individuals' self-identity and in their daily routines. This dimension of the sociology of the body is becoming increasingly relevant for many societies; people are now living longer than ever before and tend to suffer more from chronic debilitating conditions than from acute illnesses.

Social Factors and Disease

  Health and illness are connected to population issues as well as being strongly affected by social factors such as class, race, and gender. Modern Western medicine, which arose in the past two or three centuries, views illness as having physical origins and hence as being explicable in scientific terms. In spite of modern medicine's importance, public health measures, such as better sanitation and nutrition, were more important in reducing infant mortality rates.

  The expansion of the West was accompanied by the spread of infectious diseases in what is now the developing world. Moreover, the colonial system, with its stress on cash crops, negatively affected the nutrition of developing-world people.

Status and Illness

  Susceptibility to the major illnesses is strongly influenced by socioeconomic status. For example, people in the industrialized world tend to live longer than those in the developing world; the richer tend to be healthier, taller, and stronger than those from less privileged backgrounds.

Human Sexuality

  Researchers have examined both biological and cultural influences on human sexual behavior, concluding that sexuality, like gender, is mostly socially constructed. There is an extremely wide range of possible sexual practices, but in any given society only some will be approved and reflected in social norms. Because these norms also vary widely, however, we can be quite certain that most sexual responses are learned rather than innate.

Back to Top