SOCI 1002 Lecture Notes - Killing Us Softly, Jean Kilbourne, Michel Foucault
19 Feb 2014
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Document Summary
Like anything else about us, the circumstance of living in society makes an enormous amount of difference to our bodies. The kind of society in which we live affects whether we are at peace with our body. We may view bodies as a task- something to work on which requires daily care and attention. Once working on our body has been formed into a duty, society sets the standards for a desirable and approved shape: these standards change, shift, and move, not the same across all society. The body is something to work on. Failure to comply with standards can induce feelings of shame. Those not meeting such requirements may find themselves subjected to routine discrimination: for example, prejudicial attitudes towards disabled people as manifest in the very design of buildings. However bizarre it may seem at first glance, our bodies are the objects of social conditioning.
