Key Concepts in Body and Society

Kate Cregan is the author of Global Childhoods: Issues and Debates (SAGE, 2014), Key Concepts in Body and Society (SAGE, 2012), Sociology of the Body: Mapping the Abstraction of Embodiment (SAGE, 2006) and The Theatre of the Body: Staging Death and Embodying Life in Early Modern London (Brepols, 2009). The majority of her writing and research is based around understandings of the embodiment across time, space and culture-with particular reference to medical interpretations of the body, medical technologies and the representation in images of the body. Two of her allied interests are ethics (human, social and research) and writing pedagogies, in particular how becoming a writer informs the process of becoming a researcher. She has extensive experience teaching and researching in the humanities and social sciences and recently has co-ordinated the teaching of ethics to medical students across the five years of a medical degree. Currently, she is a senior lecturer in sociology in the School of Political and Social Inquiry, and she runs the interdisciplinary Graduate Researchers in Print writing program in the Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne.

• Ageing and Childhood Anorexia/Bulimia/Obesity Appearance and Beauty Civilizing Processes Class/Caste Clothing Colonialism/Post-Colonialism Consumption Cyborgs Death and Dying Difference Disability/Ability Discourse Dualism Emotion Feminism Food and Eating Gender/Sex Genetics Gesture and Habits Habitus Health and Illness Identity Media and Representation Medicine and Science Modification/Dysmorphias Nature/Culture Pain Performativity Phenomenology Power Private/Public Psychoanalysis Queer Race and Ethnicity Religion ReproductionSexuality Sport Technology Violence Work Youth Glossary

This book is a great idea. It provides a thorough, accessible and interesting introduction to the most important concepts in the sociology of the body. Students new to this area will find it invaluableDeborah LuptonUniversity of Sydney Cregan has achieved something distinct: an account of the sociology of the body which incorporates both theory and empirical studies, which demonstrates excellent coverage of an ever expanding field, and which is written in an accessible style. Most impressive is the fact that, whilst each entry is well researched and can be read in isolation, Cregan has ensured a coherence which means the book also works as a whole. An intelligent treatment and account of the sociology of the body, which I look forward to incorporating into my teachingRob MeadowsUniversity of Surrey