In which Anthony Synnott explores a subject which has been woefully ignored: our bodies. He surveys the history of thought about the body and senses, focusing on gender, the face, hair, smell etc. Thinking about the body will never be the same... `A valuable pionerring work that makes a significant contribution to the now rapidly growing sociological literature on the body' - Sociological Review'Synnott shows just how much scholarly attention has been devoted to the body over the past twenty years ... [he] calmly plots a course throuh this material, pruning its excesses, highlighting its essentials and placing it all in the widest context possible.' - New Statesman and Society