Prof. Dr. Tobias Boll – FB 02

Seminar: Corporeal Orders: Embodiment, Social Difference, and Inequality

Instructors: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Tobias Boll
Shortname: S Wahlveranstaltung
Course No.: 02.149.16910
Course Type: Seminar

Requirements / organisational issues

Master's students who would like to participate in this seminar as part of Module 3 should send an email with the seminar name, their name, and their Matrikelnummer to the Student Advising Office („Studienbüro“ https://www.soziologie.uni-mainz.de/studienbuero/). For technical reasons, it is unfortunately not possible to register independently.

Anwesenheitspflicht

Anyone who is absent in the first session without excuse risks losing their place. A prior informal excuse to the teacher by e-mail is sufficient. No medical certificate is required.

Recommended reading list

Introductory Reading:

Mason, Katherine (2013): Social Stratification and the Body: Gender, Race, and Class. Sociology Compass 7(8), 686-698. Available online at https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soc4.12058 (Paywall, Access free with JGU membership)
Shilling, Chris (1993): The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage. Chapters 5 & 6.

How are bodies involved in and affected by the making of social difference and inequality? How do processes of human differentiation become inscribed in embodied practices? And what effects do such differentiations have on people’s lives, health, and participation chances?

This seminar explores the entanglements of embodiment, social difference, and inequality. In the first part of the course, we focus on how bodies function as sites, media, and bearers of social distinctions. Drawing on classical and contemporary sociological theories, we examine how differences—such as gender, race, ability, and age—are practically enacted, socially stabilized, and materially embedded in and through bodies. We ask how corporeal orders emerge and how the body is implicated in the ongoing practice of human differentiation.

In the second part, we turn to the consequences of such differentiations. We explore how inequality becomes embodied—affecting health, access to care, recognition, and participation in society. Empirical case studies may include the racialization of health, the pathologization of fatness, the politics of aging, and forms of digital surveillance targeting marginalized bodies.

Students will engage critically with theoretical texts and empirical examples and are invited to reflect on their own embodied position in relation to the issues discussed.

The course will be taught in English and is open to students with an interest in sociology, gender studies, cultural theory, and related fields.

Additional information

Course language is English; all reading is in English.

In modules 09 and 10 (core subject) and module 06 (minor subject) , one “Vertiefungsseminar“ and one “Wahlveranstaltung“ must be taken.

A term paper must be written in one of the seminars per module. The topic of the term paper must be discussed in advance with the supervisor. Assignments whose topic has not been discussed in advance may be rejected. This does not replace registration for the examination in Jogustine.

Further information (in German) on those courses (“Vertiefungsseminare” and “Wahlveranstaltungen“) can be found here: https://www.soziologie.uni-mainz.de/studium/studierende/#modul-vertiefungs-uns-wahlveranstaltungen

Further information on writing a term paper can be found here: https://www.soziologie.uni-mainz.de/downloads

Dates