The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society) - Hardcover

metaphors and images of reproduction, sexual pleasure, disease and disorder, control and treatment. It also seeks to develop an understanding of social changes affecting the nature of embodiment in different social contexts....

This continues to be a valuable and thought-provoking book, but one with a greater emphasis on bodies as structured objects of thought than of experience' - Medical Sociology News

`His analysis remains compelling and relevant.... the book is interesting, well-written and relevant' - Health

The Second Edition of this ground-breaking book includes a new introduction which analyzes the social changes which have given a special prominence to the body in contemporary social theory, and develops Turner's own notion of a `somatic society', a society within which major political and personal problems are both problematized in the body and expressed through it. Complementing the introduction is a preface whose stress is lyrical and pictorial. Turner reflects on the cover images used in recent work on the body, recognizing that it is often through the history of art that we can dimly grasp the body metaphors which lie, no longer to hand, but at the foundation of thinking and feeling.