The Body and Society
Theory, Culture & Society
The Body and Society: Theory, Culture & Society caters for the resurgence of interest in culture
within contemporary social science and the humanities. Building on the
heritage of classical social theory, The Body and Society book series examines ways in which
this tradition has been reshaped by a new generation of theorists. It also
publishes theoretically informed analyses of everyday life, popular culture,
and new intellectual movements.
EDITOR: Mike Featherstone, Nottingham Trent University
SERIES EDITORIAL BOARD
Roy Boyne, University of Durham
Scott Lash, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Roland Robertson, University of Aberdeen
Bryan S. Turner, National University of Singapore
THE TCS CENTRE
The Theory, Culture & Society book series, the journals Theory, Culture &
Society and Body & Society, and related conferences, seminars and postgraduate
programmes operate from the TCS Centre at Nottingham Trent University.
For further details of the TCS Centre’s activities please contact:
The TCS Centre
School of Arts and Humanities
Nottingham Trent University
Clifton Lane, Nottingham, NG11 8NS, UK
e-mail: tcs@ntu.ac.uk
web: http://sagepub.net/tcs
Recent volumes include:
The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space
Scott McQuire
The Dressed Society: Clothing, the Body and Some Meanings of the World
Peter Corrigan
Informalization: Manners and Emotions Since 1890
Cas Wouters
The Culture of Speed: The Coming of Immediacy
John Tomlinson
Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, Second Edition
Mike Featherston
This attempt to provide an ontological grounding for sociological theory
is part of a broader project which is to establish the notion of human
embodiment as a necessary precondition for any theory of action. Some
of these issues were considered in Society and Culture (2001) with Chris
Rojek, in which we attempted to develop a three-dimensional view of the
social, involving embodiment, en selfment and emplacement.
The Body and Society was written in part as a response to the work of
Michel Foucault. While many of the issues explored in the first edition –
religion, medicine and sexuality – are still relevant, it appears necessary
radically to revisit those concerns and perspectives. In this edition of the
book, I have become increasingly interested in time and the body, and
this issue of the temporality of the body with respect to illness, ageing and
death necessarily leads one to the philosophy of being and the time of Martin
Heidegger. His preoccupation with boredom provides a stimulating context
for thinking sociologically about age and life expectancy.