Key Perspectives on the Body and the Sociology of the Body

We generally do not think of our bodies as social spaces, but focus only on the physical body. However, our bodies are connected to society. What is the body? When does life begin? In what ways do we conceive and give birth? How does the body relate to self-identity and death? Why do popular cultures give different images of the body depending on gender and age? How do power and capital intervene in our bodies? How do cutting-edge technologies change our bodies today? The sociology of the body encounters numerous questions like these. This means that the sociology of the body can draw on many areas of sociological research, including gender, race, aging, disability, social psychology and health, and death. This paper focuses on theorizing the sociology of the body and explores the possibility of expanding the sociology of the body, especially the possibility of ‘disability (death) and the sociology of the body.’ To this end, we review the main sociological perspectives and theorists on the body, discuss the key issues and major social theorists that have been mainly dealt with in the sociology of the body, and finally suggest the need to establish the sociology of disability, aging, death, and the body, which have remained as the margins of the sociology of the body.