ABSTRACT
Social anthropologists have long acknowledged the importance of the body and have recorded insights into cultural aspects of its nutrition, dress, decoration, and preparations for disposal after death. Turner’s case is that by concentrating primarily on social structures sociology has neglected the significance of the body. For medical sociologists in particular, analyses of bodily behavior and meanings have produced insights into how people perceive their bodies and the effect of bodily transformation on their sense of well-being and self-identity. In modern society there has been an increasing emphasis on the body as a source of well-being. The social management of the dead body has implications for cultural attitudes to the living body as well as for perceptions of death. In modern Western societies, however, the role of the priest, once central to death ritual, has declined and medics have taken control over the dying process.
