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The Body and Death

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Exploring the Body

Abstract

The fact that our bodies bring us our deaths as well as our lives is a fundamental influence on the kind of social life that we make together. The capacity to turn away from death is a primary motive for the construction of the human social bond, seen most obviously at fateful moments that involve death, in which unusual efforts may be made to restore fractured bonds. But careful examination also reveals that everyday life is permeated with such resurrective practice, through which members routinely confirm their mutual orientation towards life in the face of death. A sociological account of the body must therefore account for this basic and ever-present message from our material life in the world.

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© 2001 British Sociological Association

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Seale, C. (2001). The Body and Death. In: Cunningham-Burley, S., Backett-Milburn, K. (eds) Exploring the Body. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230501966_6

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