“Expert Systems” Returning to Body Knowledge

Abstract

Arguing about the body in the field of sociology is important in two ways : Firstly, we can obtain a viewpoint from the level of lay people's “ordinary experiences” which reflect on modernity. Secondly, we can plan to re-construct social theory which can break through the deadlock of modern knowledge that accompanies the establishment of the scientific field. Moreover, arguing about the body is equivalent to arguing about the political practice of lay people arising from their fundamental question “how do we/I live?” From this standpoint, this paper brings into question “health” -the symbolic value of which has never been challenged in modernity. For example, we can take seikatsu shukan byo (lifestyle related diseases) as a “new type of risk” in modern society. This concept works as “the symbolic token” for the ordinary experiences of lay people. For it to work, the “establishment of expert systems” is needed. By making such risk a target that one must avoid, scientific knowledge causes an overflow of advice about ordinary experiences in everyday life. Therefore, I think such a phenomenon causes lay people resort to practices that re-embed in the local context, through scientific knowledge, what their “ordinary experiences” have “dis-embedded.” Although lay people do not question the high idea of health promotion, they can make opposing knowledge easily work against instructions related to basic attitudes, which are embodied and originate in experiences. The term “body knowledge” I use in this paper means that knowledge is, in some sense, actually grounded in and shaped by the body, rather than separate from it. By looking at sociology as an “expert system, ” this paper explores sociology's new possibilities for the 21st century.