Hey, Body...

How do you look at the body if you are a conductor?

Well, to clear this is not too easy. We did not get as a conductor any scientificly particular way to look at it during in our training. However, the body presents peculiar problems for academic disciplines which attempt to study it. Initially, there appears to be a problem of where the body should be located for investigation. It could be situated within the neutral science, including medicine, psychology and the social sciences – all can lay claim to body knowledge. The natural sciences would appropriate the body on the grounds that only a rigorous examination of bodily parts will yield the body’s secrets. “Such reductionism, when applied to the body, may well have value within hard-core medical practice, but certainly misses the area of human experience related to subjectivity, with which the body becomes inextricably involved.” (Shaw, 1997)
/The body/ “ is far too important a subject for sociologists to leave to the natural sciences” (Schilling 1993)

Why shouldn’t we look at the body issue in distinguish areas? In sociology, phenomenology, somatisation, in psychotherapy!
On the subject of the body within Sociology I would suggest to look up the following authors: Shilling, Synott, Yoshida, Bendelow, Williams, Sharma.
Shilling (1993) points out how we are becoming body conscious. This he suggests, in an aspect of high modernity, in that the body becomes more relevant to understanding our self- identity. It is certainly an aspect of modern culture where the body is viewed as a “legitimate consumer target by the marketing industry”. Such notions as body image perpetuate the mind-body dichotomy.

It will be continued…