Nick Crossley

Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer

make no evident sense at all. As a result, the complexities of Luhmann’s argument are often much more difficult to follow than in the original German edition. In addition to this, there are also a number of casual errors and mistranslations of basic German terms, which often distort Luhmann’s argument or even undermine the factual accuracy of his historical sociology. Obviously, there are certain mitigating factors which should be taken into consideration when expressing criticisms of this kind. Luhmann’s books are notoriously difficult to translate, and a perfect rendering of the sense and style of his work into English is clearly beyond the ability of any translator, however accomplished. Moreover, this, in my view, is such an important book that it is better to have a poor translation of it for English readers than to have no translation at all. Nonetheless, an individual reader or an academic library willing to pay as much as £75.00 for a long-awaited edition of the major work of a major sociologist, published by one of the most distinguished presses in the English-speaking world, might reasonably expect to purchase a translation in which every effort has been made to ensure linguistic precision, argumentative coherence, and accurate representation of the content of the original text.

The Circuit Trainer’s Habitus: Reflexive Body Techniques and the Sociality of the Workout

In this article I discuss some of the findings of an on-going ethnographic study of two once-weekly circuit training classes held in one of the growing number of private health and fitness clubs. The article has four aims. First, to demonstrate and explore the active role of the body in a central practice of body modification/maintenance: i.e. circuit training. Second, to demonstrate that circuit training is a social structure which both shapes the activity of the agent and is shaped by that (shaped) agent. I aim also to explore this structuration process. Third, to draw out a number of aspects of the sociality of body maintenance/modification. Training, I argue, is a form of symbolic interaction, localized within specific and durable social networks. The final aim of the article is to weave these various claims together into a coherent overall account of circuit training as a form of body modification. As an investigation of the embodied nature of practices of body maintenance and the active role of social agents in relation to these practices the article rejoins an important strand of sociological investigations of ‘the body’. At the same time, however, the article seeks to challenge those approaches, often rooted in Foucauldian analysis, which portray the body as ‘docile’ in relation to body maintenance. Foucauldian inspired studies often reify practices of modification as ‘technologies’ or ‘apparatuses’, ignoring the active role of embodied agents in these practices and eliding the difference between texts which prescribe ways of acting and the more messy and complex reality of those ways of acting.

Worlds, fields and networks: Becker, Bourdieu and the structures of social relations

This paper reflects upon Bourdieu’s concept of cultural fields, Becker’s concept of ‘art worlds’ and the concept of networks as developed in social network analysis. We challenge the distinction that Bourdieu makes between the objective ‘relations’ and ‘positions’ constitutive of ‘social space’ and visible social relationships. In contrast, we maintain that interaction is generative of social spaces and positions and should be integral to any account of them. Becker’s position is better from this perspective, but while Becker refers repeatedly to social networks, he fails to develop the concept or exploit its potential as a means of exploring social structures. Both Becker and Bourdieu have an underdeveloped conception of social connection which weakens their respective conceptions of the space of cultural production. Our proposed remedy is to use social network analysis to derive ‘positions’ and ‘relations’ between ‘positions’, as prioritized by Bourdieu, from data on concrete interactions and relations. This allows ‘world’ analysis to speak to the issues of field analysis without sacrificing its strengths. We illustrate our case by way of an analysis of two UK music scenes from the late 1970s.

Mapping Reflexive Body Techniques: On Body Modification and Maintenance

This article aims to do two things. The first of these is to introduce the concept of reflexive body techniques into the debate on body modification/maintenance. The value of the concept in relation to this debate, in part, is that it ensures that we conceive of the body as both a subject and an object, modifier and modified, and that we thereby avoid the trap of conceptualizing modification in dualistic (mind/body or body/society) terms. Second, the article seeks to explore the pattern of distribution of practices of modification (conceived as reflexive body techniques) through society and to reflect upon the potential usefulness of multi-dimensional scaling as a tool for doing this. This aim is related to the first aim as it is argued that the concept of reflexive body techniques serves to identify and anchor practices ofmodification in a way that is amenable to both quantitative and qualitative forms of analysis, as well as theoretical investigation.

Researching embodiment by way of ‘body techniques’

In this chapter I reflect upon the importance of Marcel Mauss’ concept of ‘body techniques’ for facilitating an empirical analysis of embodiment. I begin by arguing that sociology is not guilty of mind/body dualism, in the philosophical sense, but tends rather to take the embodiment of actions and practices for granted and thus to overlook it, much as Leder suggests happens more generally in everyday, lay experience. It is the purpose, knowledge-base and normativity of actions and practices that has tended to be thematized in sociology, I observe. The importance of Mauss’ concept, I continue, is that it thematizes embodiment, simultaneously drawing attention to the socio-cultural variability of particular ways of acting, without losing sight of purpose, knowledge or normativity. Indeed it draws all of these aspects of action together. Having made these points in an abstract manner, the chapter attempts to show how this innovation can and has shaped empirical work in social science. An empirical focus upon body techniques, I suggest, facilitates an empirical engagement with the embodiment of the social world.

On systematically distorted communication: Bourdieu and the socio‐analysis of publics

In this chapter I consider the potential of the work of Pierre Bourdieu as a means of extending and deepening Habermas’ critique of the public sphere. Bourdieu is not widely recognized as a theorist of the public sphere, perhaps because he does not often name the public sphere as such in his analyses. Nevertheless, much of his work on the media, artistic, educational and political fields involves a powerful analysis of the publics constituted therein. Publics, if we read Bourdieu in this way, are plural. They are differentiated across a range of sites of discursive production. But they are no less important for that. In recent work, for example, he has spoken out in defence of various fields of public discourse which, he argues, are being undermined by increasing economic encroachment (Bourdieu, 1998a; Bourdieu and Haacke, 1995). Like Habermas, but with more of an eye on the economy than on the state, he invokes an image of a process of colonization which compromises the autonomy of fields and thereby the rational debate and critique they might otherwise generate. This form of critique rejoins another which we find much earlier in Bourdieu’s work, however, a form focused upon the manner in which the artistic and political fields in particular are shaped by social inequalities which they, in turn, help to perpetuate. Thus, again like Habermas, Bourdieu’s defence of the public sphere against its colonisation is a defence of fields which he takes to be flawed prototypes of the communicative forms and channels adequate to a properly democratic society. The importance of Bourdieu’s work is not restricted to this considerable research output, however. It offers an important framework or problematic for further research. More specifically, it effects a framework in which we can realise, both empirically and theoretically, an analysis of ‘systematically distorted communication’, such as was deemed central to critical theory by Habermas (1970a,b) in his earlier work. This latter point must be briefly unpacked. ‘Systematically distorted communication’ is central to Habermas’ early definition of critical theory (Habermas, 1972). The epistemology of critical theory, he suggests, should be akin to that of psychoanalysis. And the epistemology of psychoanalysis centres upon ‘systematically distorted communication’. The

Habit and Habitus

This article compares the concept of habitus, as formulated in the work of Mauss and Bourdieu, with the concept of habit, as formulated in the work of Merleau-Ponty and Dewey. The rationale for this, on one level, is to seek to clarify these concepts and any distinction that there may be between them – though the article notes the wide variety of uses of both concepts and suggests that these negate the possibility of any definitive definitions or contrasts. More centrally, however, the purpose of the comparison is to draw out a number of important issues and debates which, it is argued, further work must address if the concepts of habit and habitus are to continue to prove useful and illuminating in social science.

Social Networks and Student Activism: On the Politicising Effect of Campus Connections

In the first part of this paper I present original survey data which suggests that the transition from further to higher education, or more specifically the process of becoming a university student, has a politicising effect upon some students. In particular, university students are more likely that their 6th form counter-parts to have engaged in some of the forms of protest activity associated with social movements. This holds even during periods when levels of social movement mobilisation are low both on and off campus. In the second part of the paper I review several of the key theoretical explanations of student politicisation to be found in the social movements literature. Having criticised these theories and noted that they are challenged by my survey findings, I outline an alternative which focuses upon campus-based social networks. University campuses, I suggest, facilitate the formation of a critical and connected mass of previously politicised actors who then use their further networks to recruit political novices into activism. It is this recruitment activity, which is greatly enhanced by the network structure of campus life, which explains the politicising effect of campus life. Moreover, insofar as new recruits go on to become recruiters this forms part of a self-perpetuating dynamic of politicisation.

Critical Mass, Social Networks and Collective Action: Exploring Student Political Worlds

This article explores the role of ‘critical mass’ and social networks in the generation of collective action. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative (social network) data, the article argues that both are pivotal in the process whereby collective action takes shape. The empirical focus of the article is student politics but it is argued that the mechanisms and dynamics identified have a much wider domain of application.

Social Movements and Social Networks: Introduction

In this Introduction we provide a brief literature review of work on social networks and social movements, a brief introduction to certain key concepts and debates in social network analysis, and a brief introduction to the articles which follow in the special issue.