Giddens Sociology - Essay Example

Giddens (1997) in his monumental work Sociology gives acutely interesting views on the human body, eating habits, illness, and aging. He says anorexia has become a compulsive sickness in industrialized, wealthy countries, and is unknown in underdeveloped regions of the world. Till the end of the 18th century, rounded female figures like in Ruben’s curvaceous paintings had been appreciated and only in the late nineteenth century, the thin and slim female body was coveted ‘as an ideal for most women.’ Anorexia and bulimia go together leading to serious eating disorders and if not clinically and psychologically treated, could lead to starvation and death. 20% of British women, including Princess Diana, at one time or another, go through this alarming experience, which has turned out to be a sociological issue.

The obsessive concern about dieting and life-threatening forms of anorexia are spreading like epidemics in Western societies. Astonishingly they are connected with social factors, experiences, and the ‘interconnections between social life and the body,’ (118). Giddens says ‘sociology of the body’ depends on two major themes, one, ‘the effects of social change on the body’ and another, ‘the increasing separation of the body from nature,’ (118) and hence, is connected with the reproductive technologies, which was referred to as social technologies by Foucault (1988), meaning our intervention in the regular functioning of the body. The wide spread anorexia could also be caused by globalization and acceptance of Western culture.

Gidden feels that every British is dieting all the while, not only by eating less but also by being decisively choosy about the right food. Advertisements, scientific and medical constant information, and recent discoveries coming through bombarding media, regarding cholesterol and its connection with heart disease, and the calorie content of different foods influence people’s decisions. Today, we are able to design and shape our own bodies by exercising, dieting, and making constant decisions about food habits, even though the situation causes enormous stress and tension. ‘Eighty percent of anorexics show an addition to exercise,’ (119), and thus ‘compulsive exercisers’ are created. If women embark on an exercising regime for attaining ‘body beautiful’, men are concerned about the careful cultivation of muscular bodies. Muscle builder is also addictive exerciser, exactly like active women, suffering from a ‘fear of fatness’ who ‘are still judged as much by their appearance as their attainments’ (120), and women had been unable to overcome the ‘feelings of shame about the body’ (ibid).

Designer babies produced by ‘intervening in the genetic make-up of the fetus’ (122) are a bigger issue than abortion that had created strong ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ lobbies. Scientists fear that designer babies continued uncurbed, could create a ‘biological underclass’ (ibid), which would be discriminated against for its disadvantages posing against employment, health insurance, and other priorities of life.

Illness always brings images of cures like healers, acupuncture and nature cure, ending with the present,nt day scientifically backed, technologically developed medicines, therapies, and surgeries. Epidemics like Black Death which ruled continents by spreading dread in human hearts are controlled today by inoculations, immunizations, and antibiotics. Health, illness, and child mortality depend on the social scale on which the individual is placed. Working conditions, diet, living zone, access to medical care, and risk-free life usually come with the wealth of society and improve life expectancy and quality. AIDS became a social stigma (also thought to be the product of germ warfare that might have inadvertently created a lethal killer germ) and was initially attached to homosexuals (Rock Hudson, the symbol of male virility being the most shocking example), was later accepted as heterosexually connected too.

UK adopted the much-acclaimed NHS for its citizens, controlled today by DHA, even though the system is still far from perfect. ‘One of the most controversial innovations was that individual hospitals could opt to become self-governing trusts,’ says Gidden (129) marveling at the various rules of NHS. The US spends enormous sums of money each year on its healthcare. ‘The logic of the American health care system is based on the idea that competition produces the cheapest services since it allows consumers to pick and choose,’ argues Giddeon (p. 130). He feels that a decision should be made if younger lives should be saved at the expense of the older ones. This looks unfair infringement of the human rights of the elderly that could create an upheaval in societies.

This brings us to the environment and ecological balance of the world and the function of its ecosystems. How much tampering of nature man could get away with, without ruining the future of the planet? Various kinds and levels of pollution, and destruction of irreparable natural resources, resulting in ecological degradation appalls us today. “Goldsmith (1988) says: ‘more destruction has been wrought to the fragile framework of the biosphere during the last 40 years, since global development has really got underway, than during the preceding two or three million years’” (p.130). Talking about aging, Giddeon feels that elders have lost importance in Western societies, whereas in non-western societies like India and China, they are revered as wise men with valuable experience and thus, older people in the West are living frustrated lives as men behind times. An encouraging trend is that people defy aging today in spite of the connected health hazards, although it need not be necessary in all cases. He feels attitudes towards aging and physical attractiveness should change and the fight against ageism should be encouraged with the least possible age discrimination, as older people are rebelling against the ‘age-locked society’. This means categorization according to age should be discouraged. Instead of being ‘pensioned off’, ‘making up as they do an increasing proportion of the population as a whole, older people are potentially a group with a good deal of political power,’ (P. 135).