Socjologia ciała, czyli (póki co) teorie dekoracyjne
The Sociology of the Body, or (For the Time Being) Decorative Theories

Summary/Abstract: The sociological interest in the body is defined mainly by the so called Cartesian paradigm, which posits that everything in society and culture (including human bodies and material objects) has only arbitrary qualities. This position negates the existence of prior physical and embodied meanings, which have been studied by late phenomenology and which have been studied by anthropologists (Paul Willis, Kirsten Hastrup). Such theories, focusing on descriptions of social and cultural reconstructions of the body, have been called “decorative theories” by Bryan Turner. The validity of this critique is confirmed by other researchers, who call for a renaturalization of social research and the humanities (Doris Bachmann-Medick, Jürgen Habermas, Ted Benton, and Ian Craib). Recent work by Polish and international scholars allow us to expect a shift in the current sociological paradigm towards one that is materialistic, embodied, and thus naturalist.

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