religion and the body- rematerializing the human body in the soci

7/25/2019 Religion and the Body- Rematerializing the Human Body in the Soci

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Trinity University

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Religion and the Body: Rematerializing the HumanBody in the Social Sciences of Religion

Meredith B. McGuireTrinity University

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2/15

Religion and the Body:

Rematerializing the Humn Body

the Soci Sciences of Religion*

MEREDITH B. McGUREt

.

I

The social scences of religon could be transormed by takng seriously the fact that humans

are emboded. A new conceptuazaton of a mndu body has the potential to ead to profond shfts

in how we vew our subjects nd ther worlds Our research strateges need to take nto account that

beevers (and nonbeevers) are not merely disemboded sprts, but that they experence a materaworld n and tough thei bodes. Greater awareness of the socal and potca uses of human bodes

should gude our reseach and theory

The human body probably seems ike he mos unikey magnabe heme f apresidenial address o hs sey, bu hs focus may lead us o some consideaons

ha are cenra o social sciences and o relgon oday. Le me begn wh an apocryphal

creaon ale:

The Lrd was planning or lfe on eath one day. She'd aready done the mountans and streams

pat, and fnished brds, beasts, lowers, and vegges, sunrse and sunset - lots of work and the

Lord saw that it was goodNow the Lord was concerned that the arangements for human fe shoud be just perfect, so

She summoned al the top ange socal scentsts of regon for consutation [and in heaven socia

sciences of region have a ot more respect than were used to, so there were penty of hghly trained

experts to consult].

The cnference asted for weeks, and the Lord had to ettison the plan to have the whoe ob

done in less than seven days. Ange soca scentists presened n entre detaled proposa, atcipating

human opnons and beiefs, human emotons and attitudes, human social organizaton ad roes

every theme ever raised n the Angel Journal of Social Sciences of Religion

The Lord seemed impressed by much of the proposa but kept havng diffculty envisonng sme

centr asects about what humnity was going to mean At frst, the anges thought maybe the

probem was socl science jgon, but then they reminded themseves that the Lords omscence

could overcome that obstace. So, maybe something was omitted from the plan.

Fina, the Lord said: "Coeages, these ideas ae very promsng. These ndigs abot humans

having opinons, atttudes values, and ideas are certainy gong to be useu. Something seems to

be missing, though; t al seems a ittle unrea - and I want ths earth proect to be rea So, what

if I men, try to imagine for a moment, ust what f these humans had bodies???"

Now h s a key queson fr us What if people - the subjects of our research andtheozing - had matea bodes? Presen socia scence concepions of our subjecs arecuarly sembied. Wheher weaalyzng nvidu beevers or regious organza-

*resented as the Presidential Address to the 19 meetings of the Society for the Scienti Sudy of Religion

Meredith B. McGuire is a professor of socioogy and anthpogy at inity University San Atonio, TX 71.She is immediate past president of SSSR

Jornal for the Scientifi Stdy f Religion 9, 9 (): 283


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28 JOURNAL FOR THE SCENTIFIC STUDY OF REGON

tions or reigious ideas, the relationsp of humans to ther own boes nd to the bodiesof others is remote or atogether absent from most of our work. How mght our understanng of reion be different if we pr as though the pe involv had bes?

Ths bief sketch of some cotions twn rion nd the by is meant to makethe body matter n two senses of the word. Fst, the body shoud be n impott component of our consideraton of si aspts of reigion Bies e important; they matterto the rsons who nhabit th, d ons sk to mny ofte byoen humnconces Prt of the reason our bes matter to us is that we strongy identi our veryselves wth our bes We experience thngs done to our bes as done to our selves

Our agency as active personae in sety is accompshed through our bodes MerleaPonty (1962:37) has remnded us, "Consciousness is in the frst place not a matter of'I tink that but of can Thus, loss of that agency (for exmpe, through dsabty,

ensavement, or repression) is experenced as a fundamental assaut upon our selves1Becase of ts ntimate lnkage attenton to how peoples bodes matter to them cngive sia scientists valuabe cues to the nature of the connection betwn individulnd society

Second, bodies are matter The material reaty of ou bes is part of the oundingof hman experence n reaity: The ved body is our veicle for rceivng and nterpretng our wod As mateal reaity human bes aso viviy experience the materconditions of sia exstence Siety inscribes itsef upon the concrete bodies of itsmembers or exple it is not abstract lungs that e fled with ud after years ofworkng in a textle factory nor is it merely an idea of a famnesticken chld who desof malnutrition and dehydation

Bause bes re matter n this sond sense of the word, they ae link wth othermaterial reaties Let us remnd ourseves that real bes conceive bear, nd nursecdren Rel bies suffer lness pan, chonc dsabties, and death Real besexperence hunger and cod. Real boes also experience peasure - aesthetic pleasues,sexul pleasures and sensuous peasures such as the embrace of a frend a view of abreathtakng sunset the sound of a luaby, a gentle cess, the aoma of esh breadRe bes abor nd ae shaped by their work whether by the constrants of the mineshaft or the vid splay termna, whether by toxc chemcs or the stessf workpace.In addtion and ths is aso reevt to an understandng of regon in the world today),let s remember that rea bes ae vctms of abuse totue and wa As sa scientists of regon we could eaty expand the depth of our understandng of siety if

we were to remateialze the human bodyOur splne haemvesh by the fact that it has bn so heavy nuenc

by epsmologc tadtion it a cult d hstorcal constcton n whch thof the spt haveb radcay splt om maa thngs and n whch mnd is consdesepate om by2 We have neaty dvded our subdscpnes along the ines of this

. Note that Giddens's (1984) structuration theory aso emphasizd the impotance of the ctve mbodedsujet (i.., "gency) eflexivey ngaged n concrete socia I sptil I tempo contexts

2 S Godon 1988, fo a succnct discussion o the mpct of Enightenment nturasm o contmporary

Wste sieties orat cosmologies nd ontoogies; s aso Comof 198; Schepperughs nd L 1987Kmeye 1988 Osherm and Ama-Singham 1981.


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RELIGION AND THE BODY 285

dualsm: The "mnd I spit pat gst the sal scentsts and elgous studies scholas

whle the "by pat (tanslated by some as "eally eal) gs to the bologsts andmedical scentsts. It s counterpoductve fo us ndivdually and pofessonally to con

tnue to accept uncitclly the assumptons of ths nd I body dualsm. Rathe, let us

assume that the humn body s both a bologcal and a cultual poduct smultaneously

physcal and symboc, existng lways n a specfic sal and envionmental context n

whch the by s both actve agent and yet shaped by each s moment and ts

hstoy To end us of ths unitay qualty, Scheppe-Hughes and Lock (1987) have

erred to t as the "mindful body. We must econceptuaize mnd, body and sety,

not as meely connected, but ndd as dply ntepenetatng, meshed as a nea

unitay phenomenon.

Ths essay s but a bef skeh of some sgest dtions o how the sal scences

of egon ght come to a bette appecaton of this mindl body These suggestonsae hee oganzed along thee boad themes

1 the body's impotance n selfexperience and self's experence of othes;

2) the bodys ole n the poducton and eecton of social meanings;

3) the bodys sgnicance as the subject and object of power relations.

These th themes daw om aous theoetical appoaches with divese epstemolocal

assumptons, but colltvely they suggest both the mpotance of consdeng the nd

f by and some possble dectons fo futue nqury.

T pemna anda ndicat ts of sal imtance the scentc study

of eligion o we ae aleady kly inteest in elgons elatonspt

ndvidual selvesto soco-cultul meanings and to the theme of powe.

THE BODY AND SELF EXPERIENCE

The lvng by s ou fundmental phenomenologcal bass f appehendng self and

siety. Each sons body as t s concetely expeenc as t s "lv, s fndamentally

diffeent fom the body as t s objectvely obseved (cf. Schag 1979). Fo example, my

hand as a pat of me s not the se as the entty which my docto sees when observng

t fo sgns of njuy; t s not the same as the object of my musc teaches attenton

when advising about my ngerng t s not the same as the objt of my students atten

ton when I am wtng on the chalkboad My hand, as an ntegl pt of the lvngby, s dented with my self. As Macel (1952:315) emphaszed, "I do not mke use

of my body I am my body We expeence actons done to ou bodes as done to ou

vey selves

Obesamanifestaons of ou selves in our eveyday wolds At the same tme

embment s ou way of knowng those wolds and nteactng wth them Though ou

bodes, we see, fl, he peceve touch, smel and we hold ou everyday wolds Whle

each indvdual s uniquely emb the exence s also pofoundly sial Fo example,

ou experience with ou bies s mediat by leed oles d othe exptatons; t

s shaped by the mmediate sal context as well as by historcal antecedents of whch

the ndvdual may not even be awae; and t s appeend nd communicat ndtly

though lgage and othe cultual symbols


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286 JOURA FOR THE SCENTIFC STDY OF RELIGIO

f we abandon our dualistic notions of how humans relate to their worlds, we should

consider the possibility that the body has a dirt role in knowing (see Csordas forthcoming). Exploring the somatic component of ways of knowng may give us a better

approach for understanding ternate states of reality, reigious heing, the effective

ness of ritual, and such spiritul modes of knowledge as "discernment, "prophecy,

"anointing, and so on For example, a number of years ago, a coleague of ne, Peter

reund, was studying some of the somatic eatures of meditation in the Divine Light

Mission. He was ustrated that, as a siolost, he could not deal with premes' rerts

of actualy tasting spiritual "nt and sing lights dng meditation, wthout impicitly

discong the somatic relity of those experiences.

My examples of how our understaning of the by and self-experience might inform

our analysis of religion are drawn from two very disparate fields: (a) the study of ilness,

pn nd suffering, and (b) analyses of gendered bly experience.

Illness, Pain and Sufferin

My focus on the body as a matter of sociological interest grew out of my study of

ritual forms of heang, such as Christian or psychic or Easte forms of reigious healing

These heaing groups utiized body ritus as ways of transforming their selves. 3 Consis

tent with its underlying Cartesi duism, Weste medicine treats iness as a

pathologicl condition of the by; ilness for which no physiological pathology can be

identied is often assumed tobpsychosomatic, practicy translated as "all in the head,

nd therefore is treated as fundmentay unre. Because these pradigmatic "bnders

e so thoroughly leed in medical trining, many doctors e unable to de with theirpatients experiences of ilness, pain, and suffering and so they subsequently disconfirm

those experiences.

Suspending the dulistic approach of biomedicine, we find that ilness is a profounly

human experience It cals into question normal expectations about our boies and

capacities. When illness is not pt of our lie, we tke the relationship betwn our bodies

and our selves for granted Indeed, we are not likely to think about our bies or to be

particulrly conscious of many bodily sensations. In health, we expect our boies to be

able to function, to sustain a presentation of our selves as norm, reiable prticipants

in social interaction (Dingwa 1976:98). What we cal ilness is a isturbance in body

processes or experience that has become problematic for the inividual.

The experience of iness, even if only temporary, rends us of our imitations, ourdependencies (present and potentil), and our ultimate mortlity Our bodies inform us

that they cannot always be counted on to be "able for what we wnt them to do Since

our important social relationsps, our very sense of who we are, are intimaely conected

with our bies and their routine nctioning, being il is disruptive d disordering. We

identify our selves with our boies, as exempified by one injured persons introspective

account:

What semed at first, to be o moe tha a oca peipheal bekage ad beakdow ow showeditsef i a diffeet ad quite teribe, ght - as a bekdow of memoy of thikig f wil -no

just a lesion in my musce, bu a esion in me" (Sacks 1984:67; emphasis i oiga).

3. Sima tasfomatio of the bodyself ca be see i the itual pocess of the pilgimage which is a bodiy

tasito space and time see Faebeg 986).

opyright Rights


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RELGION AND THE BODY 287

Most everyday inesses are not profoundy disptive, though they, t, reid

the sufferer of prson ts nd dendcies. Other ilesses, however,adply disrp

tive, treateing mportant relationships, the individuals exercise of persona agency,

and the ill person's very sense of se Sever fatures of such sruptive ness highight

the intimate connection between body experience and sense of sef (see Muphy 1987).

Loss is one factor that can make an iness experience profoundy disruptive Peope

activey gieve, ause the loss of by pats (eg., putaion of a) or by ctions

(eg., partial bidness represent a oss of integrity, a disruption of the whoeness of the

person (Cassell 1982) Peope suffer, not oly om oss of present capacities d roes,

but aso om beig robbed of their uture: the tnager who is parapegic after a car acci

dent, the young and cidless womn who has a hysteromy, the ederly musicia whose

artitis makes playig a belove instrument impossible

Chronc iness and pin, in particuar, force the sufferer to come to new terms withtime. Sometimes lifthreanig acute ess or a serious accident has this kid of impact,

but acute lness is by defiition temporary Coic lness often leads to a radical re

assessment, in ight of chaged and yetchanging capacities, of ones self in reationship

to past ad uture. The experience of chroc ilness ivolves both a sense of oss and

a heightened selfconsciousness (Charmz 1983, 1987) Chonic pain poses basic probems

for the sufferers sense of sef. Unke acute pain, croic pain is a somatic reminder

that tings are not right and may never be right. Tis render, phenomenaly situated

n ones own by, is escapabe" (Hiber 1984:370) The by as subjtivy xe

is trasformed nto an object with pain resutig in a om of ienation fom one's own

by. In one moment one is ones by; [i) the next one has a by" (Brgsma 1982:111)

Ilness is aso espiay damaging to the sef when it is exprienced as overwhelming, unpdicbk and unconlbk Such inss pyzs the rsons abiity to mana

life, to pan, to act - in short, o exercise agency Enormous attention must be given,

not merey to actu crisis peiods in the iness, but also to such miue, munde worries

as: Can I negoia the path om my car to the store?" (cf Kleim 198844) Unprict

ablity a uncontrolability result in a disunction between the person ad the body; the

tkenforgrnt ncioning is gone and the rson exriences, i et, I caot count

on my body; it fails me. The by becomes other," at best an upredictabe aly.

Such experiences of sueing, pn, ad ilness are not merey i the by" or in

the nd or spirit"; rather, they are exrienced by the whole person as assats on the

self For tis reason, many attempts to identi and measure a persons welbeing" are

obscated by the extent to wich an ndividus phenomena being wel" involves a

complex iterface of such emotional ad sial infuences in that rsons' very by

experiences.

If we approach pain ad suffering om the persptive of Caresian duism, we end

up with an image of religious re!ponses as epiphenomena! addons, something the mind

was doing after the body was suffeing. Tis perspective has l to a siology of reigion

wich has fused excusivey on ideas about the by and its sufferig eg, theicies

(a ig useful concept, butlt by its ideaistic assumptions If, by contrast, we

have image of a mindul by, then spiritual responses may be simultaousy pa

of the indfuby responses to pain nd ilness. Thus, we ca better understnd the

impact of religion on the body itself, not ust on ideas about the body.


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288 JOURNAL FOR THE SCENTFC STUDY OF RELIGON

Gendered Bodies

If our bodies re important in our self-experience, how does it afft my being thatI am embied in the world as a fmale rather thn as a ale? Biologicay deterministicanswers to this question result in incredible simplistic pictures of "engendered bies.Probably ony inimal aspts of selfxrience are deriv solely om biological factorsexclusive of cultur d historica iuence. There are very few (if any) selfexperientialfatures characteristic of al women in all cultures_ nd ties which they she by virtueonly of their being embodied as femes and which no men she due to their embodiment as males Gerber 1979). Cuture shapes even experiences of biological events suchas chidbirth and menopause; the fact of feale ebiment is not sufficient to predictthe individua's experience of sef even durng such intensely biophysical presses

On the other hand gender is not irrelevant to ones self-experience All fatures ofour embodient affect our interaction with our social and physical environments. Forexple if y by is extreely thin or if I am exceptionay beautil if I am missinga leg or if I have brown skin if I cannot s or if I am ta a such fatures of yemboient afect how I interact with y world and indirectly y self-exrience.However as the above exples of experiences of pain nd ilness show the inuenceof this eboient on people's self-experience is not siply a matter of individual variation. If my culture teaches its mebers to respond to bluyed rsons as highly valuedand I happen to be embodied as blueyed, then I have a disproportionate eliho ofexperiencing my bluyed self as valuable as honor Lkewise if my cuture holds thatfemaleness is dgerous pouting ensning nd I happen to be ebodied as feae

then y sef-experience is ikely to be inuenced by this cultural evauation Note thatit is not just that I have an idea of negative vaues about women; rather to the extentthat I have inteaed these interpretations I experience them as part of my experienceof my own body, my own self

As inuential as these siay constructed gender vauations may be owever theyare not fixed or deterministic. Rather sia constructions of gender are fluid and the

power to control the reconstruction of "engendered embient or instance in thecontext of changing conteporary sieties is spiicay political powe as describedfurther below; cf. Bourdieu 1977:165-168). One good place to begin an appreciation ofthat sial reconstruction is prisely the re of emerging religious ritua myth andnarrative oy 1989). Some interesting research in woen's studies and reigion is in

vestigatng these attempts to reconstruct integrations of bymind and culturenature.hus it is tackling centra issues not ust quaint little periphera topics for separate sessions at profssional meetngs

THE BODY AND SOCIAL MEANINGS

Our discipine has been aware at least since Durkhei that human bodies areiportant sybols of cultur and sil structura meanings. Body symboism isimportt our cosmologies. Similarly imagery drawn rom the body its pts itspostures its functions is inked with conceptions of the self and its relationship to lger materi and sial environent.


8/15

RELIGION AD THE BODY

/

289

Numerous anthropologica studies have revealed that often the bdiy laization

of a particuar iness represents culturally meaningf idioms of distress. For exampe,

when an Irian woman complains of a "press heart, her expression of distress i inkwith a ger set of sial conces: infertiity, attractiveness, sexua intercorse, polu

tion, old age (Gd 1977) There exsts also a substantial iterature on bdy imagery, as

inked with bdy boundary conceptions, distortions in bdy perceptions, perceived lus

of contro, and so on Litte of this literature has, however, been brought to bear upon

the study o reigion, perhaps because so much of the focus was upon psychopathoogica

situations assumed to be irrelevant to normal regiosity.

Some 15 years ago, a mnor study attempted to identify the saience of traditiona

Christian body symboism fr a sample of hospit rsons diaos as schizophrenic

and fr a presumaby normal sample. The aysis fonder, due py to the author's

incorrect assumption that the sia meanings of Christian bdy symboism coud be

derived deductively om thelogy. Nevertheless, some of his conclusion is probably

accate that none of the tradition Christian by symbs, as den in their thlogica

purity, holds strong saience for contemporary beievers, whether schizophrenic or not

(Ruth 1974).

Wie this inding probaby surprses no one, we should not be too quick to assume

that therefre no bdy symboism or persona bdy imagery has powerfu signficance

for mde W esteers. Indeed, the pronence of by imagery in media advertzng,

in the culture of tness, in the worlds of pul music, itature, srt and a, suggest

that body symboism and rsona body imagery e of centra importance n under

standing mode sia structure, cuture, and personaity. Reigious and quasi-religious

themes are cerly important in this symboismSymboic d strctralist anthropologists have consider the human bdy, its parts

(eg, specific organs, and products (e.g, tears, mik, blo) to be something of a cognitive

patte or map, reprening important socia relations Mary Douglas (1966, 1970) has

reminded us that the body is a natura syml which can be used metaphoricay at

severa leves of meaning simultaneusly She observed how conces about the bdy

requenty are metaphors for socia conces, such as order and boundary maintenance

he cosmoogy of the Qoahuayas of the South American Andes exempies this

metaphorica inkage of the scia body with the individua body. This peope identifies

the human anatomy wth their mountain envronment; both mountain and by have

head, chest, breast and nipple, heart, stomach, feet, etc Ilness is attributed to disrp

tions between peope and the land sia conficts betwn, for example, the residentsof the hert and the residents of the feet must be resolved by healing, a ceremony by

which concerned members rituay feed and restore whoeness to the mountain and thusto the group (Bastien 1985)

In a smar ven, Victr er (1968) observed that the heaing rituas of the Ndembu

tribe of Africa acted upon the by of the afflicted metaphoricaly to heal socia conicts

n the ger socia group My own research on spiritua healing among mddcass

Amercan suburbis und remkaby simil metaphorica nkages twn ndivdual

bdes and soci bodies Heaing resuts were often accompished through the actua

practice of a metaphorica conntion or transition. For exampe, in a Jain yoga and

meditation group, the metaphor of a we person as a y ground, ert, and baanced


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290 JOURNAL FOR THE SCENTIFC STUDY OF RELGON

tree was iterally effected through the practice of the tree pose" (McGure 1988

A larger part of the eectiveness of the social meanngs of the body is that they do

not n to orate at the level of conscousness. In sialization, the indvidual acqures,to some degree, what Bourdieu 1977:124 has called a socially informed body, whch

is structured by its leed tastes and dstastes. ts socially shaped senses include not

only such senses as smel or touch, but also the sense of beauty, business sense, sense

of propriety moral sense sense of humor, sense of the sacred, sense of responsiblty,

and so on For example, in America, the socially infrmed body senses both the distinc

tive odor of the underarm and the culturally appropriate reulsion to it. Similarly, the

socially inormed body experiences not only the bodly sensation of a burn but also the

culturally shaped sense that this is pan.

As sially constructed reality, however, these senses, along with their practical use

in everyday human life, are open to change. Since tradtional Weste body schemata

are no longer taken for granted as givens, a struggle over the power to define these

symbols is evdent. Bourdieu 1977:165 has remnded us, The spically symbolc power

to impose [such] principles of the construction of reaity is a major dimension of

potical wer"

Religon has hstorcally had a prominent role n such symbolc power Contemporary

offcial religon enjoys far less power in shaping today's sially informed by, but

rgions d quasi-reions e stl ve much involved the stggle r symboc power

and specifcally over the meangs of the body and its senses Good examples are the

meanngs proferred (both as ideas and as senses) by such diverse movements as New

Age regions, the ti-abortion movement, movements r aative women's sprituality,

Creationism, and the Green movement.Consistent th our aim of rematerializing the body, however, we must remember

that body ritual is not merely the manipulation of abstract symbols derved from the

body. Rather, it is always produced in the context of scific ecological, economic, and

sial condtions (Bourdieu 1977:113- thus its poltical signifcance and its potential

role in sial change, as well as in sial stablity So the social meangs of the body

are necessrily lnked with the potica body.

THE BODY AN POWER RELTIONS

The expression of spifc power relationships in body terms, as illusrated by the

writings of ancient and medeval philosophers, is a very old practice An impressiveexample of the political uses of body imagery is the medieval ction of the king's two

bodes (one being natura and subject to passions and death the other being the body

poitc Accordingy, the king was incorporated as head with his subjects in the body

poltic, whch was not subecttdeath or passions (s O'Neil 1985:6790 In hese poitical

uses of the body, reigon often gred importantly as a legtimatng orce or the exercise

of power ad privlegeThe social sciences of relgion have, from the classical formulations of reud, Mrx,

nd Weber to the present, focused primarily upon religons role in the soial contrl of

the body Much of hs theorizing, however, has been flawed by assumptions of a mind

body duaism (and in many cases there has been disproportionate ephasis upon


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RELIGION AND THE BODY 291

cotive processes).4 O'Neil (985:48) has suggested that this bias may be due to oupeence fo img ouselves as beng contoed though ideas nd consensua ela

tionshps, since the pospect of beng contoled though the body and ccve elationsps seems slavish.

By uncitically acceptg a body-mind dualsm and tening towad cogntive biasesn undestandng social contol howeve the sia sciences may be unable to gasp theenomous potency of modern soci control mechasms.ONe (985:52) has agedthat we must "thnk of al technology as biotechnology to see ... that eve powerover nature is a power over ourselves. Such powe is not ony pesent in ou machnesbut polferates in the dscusive poduction of the human sciences designed to contollfe thought, health, sanity, and knowledge (emphasis in the oigna).

The elative lack of impotance of expcitly eigous legitimations fo contempoay

socil control (at least n the public sphee) may distact us fom awaeness of the highyideologca but masked as ationl, elements of potent foms of sia contol.Modefoms of socia contol, masked as theapy masked as medical intevention, masked aswokplace incentives, masked as entetainment ae paticulaly potent bause theyopeate inectly upon the peson's ente mndful body Contempoay masks foideologc execises of power ove people make these foms of social contol especialyinsious

The foowing suggests a few concete examples of how the human ody is inkedectly d inectly with powe elations in mode Weste societies.

The Body at Work

At a elementay level wok is something embodied ndviduas do t sustinthemselves.We wok to obtan and pepae food; we wok to clothe and shelte ouselvesand ou famlies; we wok to aange ou lves within ou physical and socia envionment.Some cippng of mind and ody occus as a bypuct of al foms of wok Foexample, when I am bending ove a hoe to ti a eld, my mnd and body become ted,

haps sshan o boken egdless of whethe it is my eld o that of an aibusness,egdess of whethe my labo w feed me and my famly aduately o ply.

Marx obseved however, that cetan wok elationshps ae paticulaly cpping,such as when the division of labo sepates menta fom physical labo, and when thecontions of wok ceate an alienation fom self and fom inne and oute envonment.

Mx (197758) note "Factoy wok exhausts the nevous system to the uppemost,at the sae time it stfles and esticts the fee expession of mnd and body.

Wok unde ealy capitalist modes of poduction equed diffeent bodes om thoseworking under other fms of puction.One impotant fnction of sia contol thenecame te development and maintenance of the appopate bodes fo wage labo.Notonly wit the factory itself but also in the eucational system and (to some extent)wthn the faly sil contol mechansms contriuted towad pucng bodes readyfor wok unde capitalsm: They needed to e docle capable of being constne to do

4. Fo a rtica evew o this lieate and a poposed coetve poin of depaue f fuhe heoizing

abot the mind body ee Feund, 1988.


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292 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

repetitive tasks n a imited range of motion, and control enough to take breaks fr

fo, eimination or rest ony at times alowed by management. Such bodies must t

themselves to the tme, space, and motion lmitations of productionIn me fs of pructon, sal control and the puction of appropriat bies

are just as important, but the nature of the desirable worker has bn ren, d in

creasingly the mes of sial control operate inteally A gd example is the siaiza

tion of ight attendts, as dument by Hhschld (1983). An nteal pt o thefight attendants' work is the pruction of emotional responses to custmers that are

consistent with the company's image of sevice and iendliness In taining, ight

attendants are schled, not merely to act iendly and helpl, but indeed to try to make

themselves feel those attitudes nd emotions M meths of workplace manament

oten eftively dsguse power issues: Well-trained workers come to view sial control

as merely "selfcontrol Nevertheless, workers mind bodes can be hurt diseased, orbroken, even by these seemingly more beni rms of sial control Indeed, there is

mpressive evidence that many of today's deblitatng chronic diseases are bypructs

of harml emotional and bodiy selcontrol (Freund 1982, 1988).

The Disciplined Body

Not ony in the rena o work, but also in most maor nstitutional spheres, me

bies are discpined bes Foucault has argued that contemporary sieties have

developed numerous tecnologies of power to regulate the body, bodily expression,

attitudes, emotions, and emotional expression simultaneously Accordingly, these rms

of sia control, because they work subtly upon the by and ind at once, are morepotent, not merely assuring supercial compiance but ind capable of penetratng the

ndivduas soul In contrast to simple, repressive sial control, these mechansms

are constitutive, generating frces (Foucault 1980 1977)

Ban Tuer's work (1984) has fai to appriate Foucaults emphasis upon howsiety acts upon the by itself; however, his anysis ds build itlly upon Weber's

thies o rationation. By discipline is, in many rests, a pme example o m

rationing tdes In the dischan world, all asts o life ome subordinat

to bueaucraticaly organized pattes o behavior, ie., reimens Tuer has examined

by regimens ke iet, table manners, exercise, and hygiene as rationalization o human

bies consistent with the exercise of power in mode sial structures (er 1984).

He hs also not that me by regimen aims to reproduce not ony discipinedworkers, but also discipin consumers, who have leed to nd to consume systematically a vast array of scial fs, cosmetics, medicines, clothes, leisure ativities, andso on

The comprehensive discipline of ind and by evident n these regimens becomesa uliarly m fm o asceticism yone who doubts this role o regmen has but

to spend a wk trying to practice the tness prescription of gungho heath spa Each

meal, each muscle oup, each patte of breathing, each posture, becomes subject to

its spified discipline Furthermore, there are ideological supports for these regimens,which transform bad body practices nto mern forms of sin, r which the ndivdual

is held moraly responsible (Craword 1984; Glassner 989).


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RELIGON AND THE BODY 293

These uses of body iscipne, and ther linkage wth mode rms of legitimation

of power and mes of socia contro, suggest that they are certinly appropiate fuses

for the sial sciences of relgion.

Power and Female Bodies

As note above, gender is one importnt element shapng how the ndividul rceives

self and the world The "engendered body is also both the instrument of power and the

site of strugges over power The most obvious power strugge is in the arena of repruc

tive control, in which reigious egitimations nd organizations are promnent Numerous

mcrothnoogies of power, subtle itte practices, also are used to subordinate feme

bodies; for example, the power to touch or to nterrupt another are assertions of power

used f more uently by men towards women thn by women or by men towards oth

men (see Henley 1977).

Followi Foucault, Bordo (989 has nayzed how the tur denition of ty

is inscribed upon women's boies As with the workers bies, power is exercised over

female bodies, not merey by exteal sl controls, but so from within They bome

docile bodies, "use bodies, whose energies nd expressions are reguated nd "im

proved by the organzation of womens regmens of iet, mkeup, cothing, schedule,

and space In ts context, Bordo has suggested that we mght best understand several

womens disorders as litic stures of dece aganst the s controls of fty

Contemporary pathoogies, such as buemia, anorexia, nd agoraphobia, coud constitute

protests5 Athough they are ultimately self-deatng and counterpructive. They may

be vewed as assertions of power and sexuaity in the face of me "thnologies ofpower whih inform women that, to be appropriatey feminine, they must contro what

they eat and mit what space they may occupy Bordo has suggested that mode

feminsts need to exne crticaly their own assumptions that women should manage

the bies to t a newly dened politicaly corrt by. Are women nessariy more

fr when, instead of practicing waking in high hs and grdes, they now exercise extra

ordinary body mnagement in weghtifting, mrtia arts, and marathon g?

The Political Abuse of Bodies: Torture and War

Another poitical use of boes is to torture andk them These are hady new prac

tices, but contemporary sieties sm to spend considerabe effort to expand nd refnetheir meths for these tasks Eaine Scrrys (1985 difcult bk, The Body in Pain,

has argued that poitica torture exists to convert the re pain of the vctim nto the

ction of power of the torturer The structure of torture shows that it systematicy robs

the sufferer of agency nd even of a voice to express the sef n pain simutanusy,

the torturer appropriates that agency to its coltive sef e.g a regime) Scrry states:

5. Sly ck (1989)h argued that many expessions of llnes such a the cultually widspread "attackof nerve are politcal statements, .e counter-asertons against the power stuctue that simultaneoulyrob the subordnate of an efftve voce


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294 JOURAL FOR THE SCIENTIFC STUDY OF RELIGION

I the vey process [torture] uses to produce pain within the body of the prisoer it bestows visibity

o the structure and eormity of what is usualy private ad icommuicabe, contaied withi the

boudaries of the sufferer's by. t the goes o to deny, to falsify the reality of the very thing

it has itself obectified by a perceptua shift which converts the visio of sufferig ito the wholy

ilusory but to the torturers ad the regime they represet wholy convicig spectace of power

(Scarry 185:27).

We not legitimat by the putative nds of a regme, similar ends are accomplish

by rape d spouse abuse: The violence transforms the sufferng of the vctm into the

ficton of power of the rapst or abusive partner. Wle not explictly condonng these

acts of vence, many relgous groups n ths socety tel the vctms, n effect, that they

are responsble for the own sufferng (fr example, that the rape or abuse would not

have occurred f the woman had been a good grl").Slarly, Scarry has gued that war is an exercise of power over bodies, n part

because it takes place between potcal bes and between bodies of ries, and in partalso because it accomplishes ts ends specfcally by the destruction of human bodes

When it suts ptcal ends, the casualties of w are gloss over; instruments of destruc-

ton are renwt words ke cherry pcker" or lttle boy, and the enemy is described

as neutralized," cleaned out," lqudated" The physic issue of dead and wounded

bodies s translated nto verbal issues, such as eedom or fatherland orjiha or racl

purty or natonal security, and so on. Scry concludes

The dispute that eads to the war ivolves a process by which each side cals nto questio thelegitimacy ad thereby erodes the reality of the other countrys issues beliefs ideas, selfcoceptio.

Dispute eads relentlessly to war ot oly because war is an extesio and intensificatio f dispute

but because it is a correctio ad reversal of it. That is the ijurig ot oly provides a meas of

choosing between disputants but aso provides by its massive opeig of huma bodies a way ofrecoecting the derealized and disembodied beiefs with the force ad power of the materia word

Scry 1985 128

Ts discussion is a useul cautionay reminder of the dehumanizing consequences

of certan potcal uses of hum bodes n the past and present, religious institutons

have often legtmated (and frequently directly partcipated in) torture and w. n the

face of the horrors of mode warfe and gross abuses of power, relgon s also one

important source of a prophetic voce for human rghts and peace

CONCLUSION

The sial scences of religon could be transfrmed by taking seriously the fact that

humans e emboed. A new conceptuazaton of a mindful by has the potental to

lead to profund sfts n how we vew our subjects and the wod ur resechstrateges need to take nto account that beevers (and nonbeevers e not merely

disemb spirts, but that they exrence a material word n and though ther bes

Greater awareness of the s and poitcal uses of human bodes should guide our

resech and theory.


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RELIGION AND THE BODY

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