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The Body in Society: An Introduction. Alexan dra Howson. Cambridge, England: Polity. 2004. 198 pages. $26.00.
A Sociology of the Body course is potentially a "hot" crossover course. It is a course that offers students an opportunity to understand the social context within which the body is studied, treated, and evoked as an image. These are issues which appeal to students with a variety of career aspira tions, including health related careers, education, fashion studies, illustration and advertising. The Body in Society: An Introduction by Alexandra Howson is a well -organized text suited to such a course.
The book has three objectives. It identifies the key issues concerning the body and what makes the body socially significant. second, it outlines sociological perspectives and conceptual frame works which are concerned with these issues. Finally, it provides a series of comparisons be tween sociology and other social scientific per spectives on the body. The book is organized as follows. Chapters 1 and 2 emphasize the impor tance of the body in the development and presen tation of the self, primarily drawing upon the social interactionist paradigm. Chapters 3 to 5 discuss the social processes that construct the body and shape bodily conduct, including the "civilizing process" and consumer culture (p. 13). The final chapter explores the influence of images on the changing body across the life course, including childhood, aging and death.
The major strength of the book is that it draws upon an interdisciplinary body of litera ture and is sufficiently detailed to enable the students to come to the realization that social scientific knowledge is not composed of isolated facts but rather is a body of knowledge built upon the work of others. Many of the topics can serve as springboards for lively classroom dis cussion. For example, Howson traces the origins of the "biom[iota]dical...