ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by locating 'the body' in contemporary physiotherapy with a historical sketch of what the body has meant to physiotherapy in the past and how this was significant, before explaining a little about the idea of the body-as-machine and the problems this is causing the profession today. It then outlines some of the 'other' ways that historians, philosophers and sociologists have defined the body over the last century and how this has informed our understanding of what it means to be healthy or sick. An analysis of the radically transformed body that is now emerging in the 21st century follows and the chapter examines two important fields of research around the lived body and the social body, and look at some of the research being conducted by physiotherapists in these fields. The body-as-machine is an exclusive and totalising discourse that has served the profession extremely well over its history.
