身体の社会学の可能性

人間の「傷つきやすさ」に根ざした理論の構築

抄録

　The human "body" has been a subject of sociological study since the 1980s. Accordingly, the "Sociology of the Body" was founded as an individual field, and a number of scholarly works referring to the body have been produced.
　The importance of the Sociology of the Body, however, is continuously being questioned. Some critics suspect that the majority of the works in the field are only playing with the word "body," and therefore do not possess an academic significance. Others criticize that the works of the Sociology of the Body tend to deal only with "fashionable" topics such as tattooing and body-piercing, and have no interest in more serious topics such as pain, death, and disability. Is the Sociology of the Body, as the critics claim, really a meaningless field lacking in academic significance? Or, docs it have no consequence above trifling matters?
　In this paper, I argue against such criticisms by proposing a prospect of the Sociology of the Body. This prospect consists of discussions on the subject of human "vulnerability," which are related to the issue of human rights, universality of physical pain, and "planetary" humanism. These discussions have a very unique and vital significance since they endeavor to construct a bold but thoughtful cosmopolitan theory, which is required in the contemporary society where dogmatic relativism thrives.