Questions, ideas, notes for discussion:

• Reading the introduction to a volume called Incorporations, edited by Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter, I was alerted to 19th century industrialisation of the Western world and the project of modernity's configuration/reduction of the human body to a "finite" unit for maximized production and labour force. And suddenly Marcel Mauss's "Techniques of the body" started to make more sense. It would be interesting to bring into discussion the processes of the mechanization of human body under modernism and compare to what Mauss calls the "efficiency" of the body. I am surprised how little Chris Shilling pays attention to the project of modernity and its reconfiguration of the body as an efficacious machine. (Omur, Sept 14 Thu)

• One of the big problems that one faces in the social theory of the body seems to be the fact that "the body" easily slides into being/ appearing as an abstract discursive category, dissolves into a literary discourse, losing its materiality, temporality and spatiality. Judith Butler complained about this in Bodies that matter and confessed that in trying to consider the materiality of the body, she kept losing track of the subject. It would be interesting to discuss how various approaches to the body attempted to move away from this dilemma. The ontological groundedness of the human body, how do we achieve it? (Omur, Sept 14 Thu)

• Both Bryan Turner and Chris Shilling attempt to map the contemporary theories of the body. I think it would be useful to compare their maps and schemes. (Omur, Sept 14 Thu)