ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of the body concepts that were introduced within sociology in the call to take the body more seriously as an object of analysis. It begins by breaking down the concept of the body as an absent presence further, and situating it within some of the broader moves and debates that were beginning to characterize the emergence of body studies within sociology and social theory. The emergence of sociology has been linked to two key questions: how to account for social change, and how to account for social reproduction. French sociologist Emile Durkheim argued that sociology should be an examination of the constraint and imposition of social structures on the formation of human subjects. This chapter starts with the tradition of Darwinistic evolutionism and examines some of the assumptions it is taken to make about what makes us human.
