Why does Shilling describe the body as unfinished Essay

Why does Shilling describe the body as unfinished - Essay Example 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 paper s 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 â€Å"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 ag ency and interaction have been too often defined as if they were somehow â€Å"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 â€Å"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: â€Å"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