Why does Shilling describe the body as unfinished - Essay Example

?Why does Shilling describe the body as unfinished? An important part of the discipline of sociology is to explore the relationship between the humanbody and the sense of self that people have in relation to that body and to society as a whole. The work of Giddens (1991) has brought into focus the role that society plays in helping us to form a body image, through cultural and social influences that begin from the moment of birth. The self that we come to recognise is an embodied self, and we use the power that is in that body to interact with the world around us. We have to exercise control on that body, but and in so doing we build up an ordered view of our own identity which we then present for others to see and interact with. This explains how and why our view of the world is necessarily bodily centered. The work of Shilling (1999; Shilling and Mellor, 2007) builds on this groundwork and explores the tensions than can exist between the self and the body. Every human being exists in a physical form, that is to say a body, and yet also at the same time is able to conceive of this body as something separate from, but still related to, the actual self. This ability to distinguish mental and physical attributes creates a number of problems for sociologists, because it is not understood and applied in exactly the same way across different cultures and in different historical times. This paper discusses two papers in which Shilling discusses the body in relation to society, and theorizes that the body is in a fundamental way unfinished. The main points of the two articles are summarized and the reasons which led to the formulation of the “unfinished body” hypothesis are explored. Finally this paper outlines some of the implications of this important way of understanding the relationship between body, identity and society. In the past the vocabulary of religion would have been used to portray this kind of issue as a contrast between the body and the spirit or even the soul. In modern times different sociologists such as Parsons (1988) and Lockwood (1964) have debated interrelationships between humans and society and there have been many different ways of theorising the body in a social sense. In Shilling’s view, too much attention has been paid to the mind, and not enough to the body, resulting in a view of the individual and of society which is flawed. Concepts such as agency and interaction have been too often defined as if they were somehow “disembodied.” (Shilling, 1999, p. 544) In 1999 and again in 2007, Shilling addresses these problems, and brings out a series of arguments to show that the individual human body is unfinished, because it requires interaction with others before it can achieve integrity and cohesion. This paper considers the arguments of each paper in turn in the light of other scholars who have examined similar issues and explores what Shillings means by the body being “unfinished” and why, along with implications of this insight for sociology in the twenty first century. In the earlier paper Shilling turns to the work of Goffman (1983) on the individual’s need for a social self, through which interactions with others are lived: “People are confronted with the necessity of establishing interpersonal relations with others, in order to construct a social self, and remain vulnerable within this domain: interaction occurs within arenas which expose people, physically and mentally, to others (Shilling, 1999, p. 546). According to Shilling, Goffman improves on earlier work on the self and society by taking more account of corporeal and emotional aspects, and this puts the mental, or cognitive, aspect back into its place alongside these other ones, rather above them in a position of pre-eminence. Goffman’s work on embarrassment (Goffman, 1983) clearly describes some of the physical signals that occur when people engage in particular activities, and this causes Shilling to reflect on the supposed interconnection between thoughts, emotions, and bodily experiences. He approves of Goffman’s analysis, but thinks it does not go far enough: “Despite their valuable presence in Goffman’s work, however, the emotional and bodily foundations of human being, social selves, and interaction are underdeveloped.” (Shilling, 1999, p. 549) Shilling also calls for more research on emotions other than embarrassment in order to understand the full range of experiences that humans have, and the different intensities that occur. One such example, on the emotions of pride and shame, by Scheff (1990) is cited and Shilling challenges sociologists to explain how and why such very obvious social phenomena as sudden romantic attachment, additions, fantasies, fears etc, are related to our attachments and interactions. In such emotional states, body and mind are taken over by the emotions, and the human being is forced then to deal with a chaotic set of impulses, some of which are contradictory. These phenomena give us clues towards an understanding of the nature of the self. It is not something fixed and rationally controlled by the mind, but it is liable to mental, physical and social forces. A useful analogy to illustrate this might be the way that a baby learns about its own distinctive existence as apart from the world around it. Using feedback from others in the family the baby learns to use limbs, voice and all parts of the body in a playful way. All kinds of physical as well as emotional and cognitive interaction are needed before the baby can develop a healthy sense of self. In some ways this process carries on through into childhood, adult life and even ageing, as the individual reacts to the world around as a physical being. The body does not remain the same throughout life, but changes, and the individual interacts differently through all the stages of growing older, and all of this is conditioned by expectations set down in each society. This is perhaps most obviously seen in the case of sexual behaviours which are partly dictated by birth sex, partly by the enacting of gender through naming by the parents, and all sorts of stereotyping influences in society at large. Many people adopt bodily practises considered appropriate to their assumed gender because they are in effect taught to do so. Others take a stance directly opposed to mainstream expectations, as for example in homosexual identity, and others try to transcend the binary opposition model through bisexuality and transsexuality. All of these choices are acted out in the mind and the body, through clothes, makeup and even gesture and voice. The point about all of these gender-related modifications is that they work on the body as an unfinished, or imperfect artefact, which requires further work both from outside influences and from the individual him or herself as well. Shilling reads Goffman’s work on embarrassment as a first step in describing the fundamentally unfinished nature of the human body. It is only when interacting with others that the body is fully constructed. It gains cohesion in interaction with others. This explains, in Shilling’s view, some of the problems that beset people our modern societies: “a lack of recognition and esteem for the infant self, or a lack of suitable and sufficiently aspirational goals, interests and role models, can lead to a failure to build a coherent self and a dependence on risky and addictive behaviour and vulnerability to charismatic manipulation…” (Shilling, 1999, p. 557) This can occur in childhood, when proper parenting is lacking, or in adulthood when negative life events can cause regression and “disintegration anxiety.” What Shilling has done in this paper is make more explicit some of the somatic factors which are at work in modern interaction order theories and this causes us to reflect more deeply on issues of body, self and the social order around us. These issues are followed up with some modern examples in the Shilling and Mellor paper of 2007. The authors note that the arrival of technologies which enhance the human body began first in areas such as medicine, and they are increasing all the time, so that people in modern western societies can hardly imagine themselves existing without machines. In fact they have become so dominant in our world that to some extent people are enslaved to the demands of technology enhanced living, and have to work ever more efficiently to keep in step with machines and increasingly locked in to a utilitarian view of themselves. Technology has become a part of the way that we interact with the world, and in Shilling’s and Mellor’s view, particularly the world of work. A whole new dimension enters into these issues when one considers the developments in technology which allow all kinds of embodiments of self through assisted or virtual means. In their view, even virtual representations of the body are closely tied with the real physical body because computer users still access the virtual worlds via their physical bodies: “the time people spend in virtual environments, for instance, is limited by their biological need for food and drink, and their ability to physically tolerate such environments.” (Shilling, 1999, p. 554) Shilling and Mellor point out, however, that this is not a universal occurrence, and that there are exceptions: “for a significant minority within this context, and, perhaps, for the majority outside it, religious and other values continue to steer the development and deployment of technology.” (Shilling and Mellor, 2007, p. 532) In the world of work people are expected to work in a way which ignores the body in some respects (for example flirting and teasing is discouraged and there are penalties for activities which amount to harassment) but which demands certain bodily actions in other ways (for example customer relations employees are expected to smile and express politeness and respect with their bodies when in face to face with customers). An example of the kind of pressure that work puts on the embodied individual can be found in the airline industry, where abilities like submissiveness and attributes like the presentation and performance of femininity are particularly valued by management. (Taylor and Tyler, 2000) Through the examples of Taoism and charismatic Christianity, Shilling and Mellor show how corporeal techniques, skills dispositions and beliefs are passed down through families. This process is called “body pedagogics” (Shilling and Mellor, 2007, p. 533) Shilling and Meyer maintain that the western, technological demands on people to use their bodies in work, and to make their bodies conform to certain norms and requirements causes people to see their bodies as objects, and to suppress them and control them, in order to function better at work. This encourages people to make a distinction between self and body which is unhealthy. In contrast to this, Taoism encourages harmony with the world, and the practicing of “actionless action” which means aligning the physical and mental self with the whole world. This underpins Taoist activities such as controlled breathing which is not so much an active exercise, as a quiet way of being at peace with the world, including the world of things and the social world which includes other people. Tai chi for example, is often practiced out of doors and in large groups of people. It is a kind of collective bodily awareness which is much better for people than the hectic and individualist world of the modern west: “In contrast to the objectification and commodification of work and natural and social environments, with their attendant truncation of lived experience… Taoism promots an ethic of embodied immanence.” (Shilling and Mellor, 2007, p. 540) A parallel is drawn with charismatic Christianity which encourages experiences of altered states of consciousness such as speaking in tongues, healing, trances and “spirit possession”. Again this is a collective experience, involving bodily and inner self, and in the presence of a group of people. The body pedagogic, in Shilling’s terminology, that this cultural group uses is “communion” and a structured program of tuition which is part of a long term acculturation process which is designed to help individuals “to become sufficiently open to bodily, psychological and spiritual transformation.” (Shilling and Mellor, 2007, p. 541) This is described as a rebirth of the whole human being. The two case studied cited by Shilling and Mellor, the Taoist which harmonizes the body with all elements of the cosmos, and the charismatic Christian which involves a rebirth have this in common: they are world views which humans learn over a long period, as embodied individuals, using more than just their rational faculties. They enable people to experience forms of immanence and transcendence and one implication of this work is that it sheds light on some of the fault lines in contemporary technological society: “it is the denial of these experiences that has been central to traditional sociological concerns about the problem of personality and the increase of anomie and suicide in industrial societies.” (Shilling and Mellor, 3007, p. 456) It is clear that Shilling perceives the influence of a whole culture as influencing the way that an individual relates to his or her own body and how in turn that embodied individual relates with others. Davis applies this kind of thinking to the issue of feminism and embodied identity and theorizes that cosmetic surgery, far from being a demeaning, frivolous or oppressive practice, can be used by women as a way of building their identity through their own body. (Davis, 2003, p.74). |She takes it one step further and applies it also to the kind of complex embodiment that takes place when a person from a particular ethnic group engages in “ethnic surgery” to remove physical markers of ethnicity or race. Immigrants to America have indulged in this for many decades, and Davis rightly points out that some of the motivation for this is to try and overcome barriers of power and oppression in a hierarchical society which rates the Caucasian white body as superior to all other racial and ethnic types. By resorting to cosmetic surgery, some people in the past have hoped to gain relief from the stigmatization that comes from their own natural body attributes. In the contemporary world, however, things are not so simple, since there are multiple undercurrents going on in society at the same time. The example of Michael Jackson is cited as one of a man who is addicted to surgery, but not necessarily out of a desire to escape his ethnic origins. The identity of a pop star of this magnitude is something that can be changed at will, and it has even been suggested that a mercurial, superhuman identity is what he is striving for, along with living out of his work, in this case musical stardom, physically in his body: “Thus Jackson’s surgeries could be treated as a matter of show business utility – of using his body as a vehicle for selling his music.” (Davis, 2003, p. 82) His face is became increasingly androgynous, and ageless, suggesting that it is not even race or sex that he is trying to escape, but in fact it physical embodiment itself that he is trying to find release from: “His ethereal, almost death-like demeanor makes one wonder whether he isn’t attempting to transcend the material body altogether …” (Davis, 2003, p. 82). This article is in some ways quite prophetic because it was written before Jackson’s death, apparently from some prescription drug related event in June 2009. This example of Michael Jackson is very revealing of the intersections of pressure points in modern American society: gender and race are here made into something ambivalent, and new, but public reaction to Jackson’s surgeries is largely negative. The social construction of race, and the implicit hierarchies that this contains, are what makes people uneasy with cosmetic surgery that blurs ethnic distinctiveness. The contemporary fascination with celebrities, especially among young people in affluent western capitalist societies is another interesting example of how body and identity are linked. The emergence of punk rock, for example, with its preference for clumsy piercings and dark clothing called forth armies of imitators, wishing to adopt something of the rebellious identity that the singers projected in their music. In the twenty first century there is a fashion for tattoos, formerly a signifier of belonging to a shifting population of sailors, perennial outsiders who are only temporarily ashore. The type of tattoos chosen by young people can range from the lurid heavy metal type to sweet little flowers and hearts or philosophical sayings, often in foreign languages. The bodies of the young are being used as a commodity, as a shop window for displaying the identity that the individual wishes to project, rather than the one that is unconsciously there. Most of this is little more than make-up that is made permanent, and it alters the body in minor ways to create visible affinity with certain groups. But some body modification is taken to extremes, leading to a pathological addiction. The issue, as Foucault would remind us, is ultimately that of power. People desire power over the social structures that they are born into. Even white middle class teenagers, who enjoy the most materially privileged position in western societies, seek to throw off the constraints of their background and take on aspects of identities which they find more appealing. There are some contexts in which body modification takes place without the consent of the individual, for example in cases of illness and trauma. It is often observed in the case of women with breast cancer, for example, that women suffer just as much through cosmetic aspects such as loss of hair through chemotherapy. For some people this emphasizes the mortality of the flesh, and the powerlessness that a woman feels in the course of this terrible disease. The scarf of a sufferer can be seen as a stigma, but in some cases can be worn with pride, as a symbol of resistance and struggle against the role of victim that society places the suffering body into. In the case of Alzheimers disease, society so overemphasizes the cognitive as to deny selfhood to the sufferer, forgetting that physical and emotional dimensions of the individual are still present and worthy of respect. (Kontos, 2003) In conclusion, then, we have seen that Shilling bases his position of the work of Giddens and Goffman, but extends their insights into areas not covered by these scholars. Using examples from earlier studies, and from modern society, Shilling concludes that there are aspects of the body which are unexplained unless one considers the body as part of something bigger than just the individual human being. These examples all confirm the unfinished nature of the body which Shilling proposes, and demonstrate that it is only in interaction with others and with the structures of society that an individual learns to build his or her own embodied identities throughout every stage of life. The implications of this are very far-reaching, not least the realisation that culture is extremely important in the way that we conceive of our own individual self. It is only through the absorption of influences from society around us that we are able to develop, maintain and adapt our self image throughout the changing stages of life. Modern illnesses, behaviours, fashions and ideologies are all experienced and expressed by the body and the mind, and Shilling urges us to reject modern over-emphasis on mental and cognitive factors and remember how important the body and society are in helping us to construct our sense of self. References Davis, K. 2003. Surgical Passing: Or Why Michael Jackson’s Nose Makes ‘us’ Uneasy. Feminist Theory 4 (1), pp. 73-92. Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-identity: self and society in the late modern age. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Goffman, E. 1982 [1967]. 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