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"The body' has become a central focus of both theory and research within sociology over the last twenty years. The lines of inquiry that have emerged are diverse, but engagement with key philosophical discussions of embodiment, including those of Merleau-Ponty Nietzsche and Foucault, have been prominent. Sartre has been largely ignored in this context, however, as he often is, even in more philosophically informed branches of sociology (though see Craib 1976; Tiryakian 1979; Hayim 1996). When his work is cited it is often to criticize both his individualism and what most sociologists take to be his implausibly extreme claims regarding human freedom. The work of Pierre Bourdieu, a leading figure of late twentieth-century sociology, who is discussed below, is exemplary of this. Bourdieu typically formulates his approach as a "middle way' between deterministic approaches on the one side, and the claims to absolute freedom that he associates with Sartre on the other (for instance, Bourdieu 1992a, 2000).

DOI: 10.1057/9780230248519_14

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