This book explores the diverse ways of researching and theorizing the body. It draws together a range of empirical work on different themes, each taking the body and its study as its central problematic. It creatively combines contributions on disability, illness, scars, sleep, complementary medicine, and running, as well as the lifecourse themes of childhood, youth and death. The different approaches to reaching the body examined through these contributions include autobiography, case studies, interviews, and participant observation.

There has been a notable upsurge of interest in the body in empirical and theoretical study and debate. Contributions to this book move these debates forward by considering a range of bodies as active in their own construction in social and economic processes. The authors consider the body as a site of agency, resistance, and compromise and reflect upon the reluctance of sociology to engage with the body and notions of embodiment.

How possible is it for the state to steer family values and relationships? How do we assess claims of harm and benefit from state action and inaction? What kind of engagement should we seek between the state and our personal lives? The evidence presented includes state engagements with separating couples, lone parents, retired people, black families, disabled people, pregnant teenagers and young people negotiating adulthood. The range of perspectives, data, and cross-nation-state comparisons, helps readers to come to their own conclusions.

This volume explores diverse ways of researching and theorizing the body. It draws together a range of empirical work on different themes, each taking the body and its study as its central problematic. It creatively combines contributions on disability, illness, scars, sleep, complementary medicine, running, as well as the lifecourse themes of childhood, youth and death. The different approaches to researching the body examined through these contributions include autobiography, case-studies, interviews and participant observation.