300210 The Social Life of the Body (BS) (SoSe 2015)

COURSE DESCRIPTION
How can one make sense of the human body as a site of social science inquiry? What is the relation between the body and the mind, as well as the body and the larger social milieux in everyday life experiences? How can we comprehend the body as a social product culminating from a complex matrix of broader social processes and arrangements? How do theoretical and empirical analyses undertaken through the lenses of disciplinary trajectories such as sociology, anthropology, and history aid us in appraising corporealities?
This course aims to deliberate upon the above queries through close examinations of both classical and contemporary theoretical paradigms running the gamut from Merleau‐Ponty, Mauss, Bourdieu, Foucault, and Douglas, to Butler, Stoller, and Shilling, among others, which pertain to the body. By locating the body in different spheres of social life including personhood, gender and sexuality, ethnicity, health and medicine, commodification as well as technology, we interrogate how the human body and embodied experiences intersect with notions of knowledge, power, domination and resistance in both historical and contemporary contexts. These will be pursued through an array of select substantive issues as well as relevant films that throw light upon human bodies in different societies.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
1. Comprehend the history of theorising the body in sociology and anthropology
2. Evaluate a variety of perspectives for understanding the body through a range 
of theories, concepts, and methodological approaches
3. Demonstrate the importance of the body in relation to power, identity, the 
economy, and ‘difference’
4. Examine the ways in which ideas regarding the body are socially and culturally 
constructed