Fragments For A History Of The Human Body

"The first approach can be called vertical since what is explored here is the human body's relationship to the divine, to the bestial and to the machines that imitate or simulate it. The second approach covers the various junctures between the body's "outside" and "inside": it can therefore be called a "psychosomatic" approach, studying the manifestation - or production - of soul and the expression of emotions through the body's attitudes, and, on another level, the speculations inspired by cenesthesia, pain and death. Finally, the third approach ... brings into play the classical opposition between organ and function by showing how a certain organ or bodily substance can be used to justify or challenge the way human society functions ..." - foreword Part 3.

This is an imaginative evocation and analysis—through the medium of translations (the author’s own) of once popular but now forgotten literature—of the variety of “stories” in terms of which the Chinese have interpreted their lives since the early years of the 19th century.

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Opening with the provocative query “what might an anthropology of the secular look like?” this book explores the concepts, practices, and political formations of secularism, with emphasis on the major historical shifts that have shaped secular sensibilities and attitudes in the modern West and the Middle East. Talal Asad proceeds to dismantle commonly held assumptions about the secular and the terrain it allegedly covers. He argues that while anthropologists have oriented themselves to the study of the “strangeness of the non-European world” and to what are seen as non-rational dimensions of social life (things like myth, taboo, and religion),the modern and the secular have not been adequately examined. The conclusion is that the secular cannot be viewed as a successor to religion, or be seen as on the side of the rational. It is a category with a multi-layered history, related to major premises of modernity, democracy, and the concept of human rights. This book will appeal to anthropologists, historians, religious studies scholars, as well as scholars working on modernity.

This challenging volume reasserts the centrality of the body within social theory as a means to understanding the complex interrelations between nature, culture and society. At a theoretical level, the volume explores the origins of a social theory of the body in sources ranging from the work of Nietzsche to contemporary feminist theory. The importance of a theoretical understanding of the body to social and cultural analysis of contemporary societies is demonstrated through specific case studies. These range from the expression of the emotions, romantic love, dietary practice, consumer culture, fitness and beauty, to media images of women and sexuality.