Varieties of habitus and the embodiment of ballet - SAGE Journals

A RT I C L E

Varieties of habitus and the embodiment of ballet

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Qualitative Research Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi vol. 6(4) 535–558

S T E V E N P. WA I N W R I G H T King’s College London CLARE WILLIAMS King’s College London B RYA N S . T U R N E R National University of Singapore

The overall aim of our research was to produce an ethnography of ballet as a social practice. We draw upon our fieldwork at the Royal Ballet (London) where we conducted 20 in-depth interviews with ballet staff, and observed ‘the company at work’, in class, rehearsal, and performance. We explored dancers’ (n = 9) and ex-dancers’ (who are now administrators, teachers, and character dancers: n = 11) perceptions of their bodies, dancing careers, and the major changes that have occurred in the world of ballet over their professional lives. In this article, we draw upon Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, physical capital and cultural capital. The main focus of our article is an extended discussion of our threefold distinction between individual habitus, institutional habitus and choreographic habitus. Although our ethnography of the body is set within the elite cultural field of professional classical ballet, we hope that our research adds to debates on the interrelationships between individuals and institutions, the body and society, and on the salience of Bourdieu’s notion of habitus for understandings of the social world.

A B S T R AC T

KEYWORDS:

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ballet, body, culture, ethnography, habitus

Introduction The broad aim of this article is to provide a counterweight to the excessively theoretical approach to the body that is a striking trait of the burgeoning literature on the body (Turner, 1996). This ‘decorative sociology’ is commonplace across the whole field of cultural studies (Turner and Rojek, 2001). Relatively little research has focused on the ways that ‘specific social worlds invest, shape, and deploy human bodies’ (Wacquant, 1995: 65). Atkinson (2000) also

DOI: 10.1177/1468794106068023

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argues against what he describes as ‘sociology at a distance’, and in his recent ethnography of Welsh National Opera he explores the cultural production of opera as a series of social practices. Similarly, our qualitative research aims to understand the balletic body as a series of cultural practices. In general terms, there is a dearth of empirical research on the sociology of the body in western theatre dance (Thomas, 2003), and especially on classical ballet (Wulff, 1998). In brief, research on the ‘body and dance’ is dominated by postmodern readings of ‘dance as texts’ (Adshead-Lansdale, 1999; Desmond, 1997; Fraleigh and Hanstein, 1999; Goellner and Murphy, 1995), although there is some ethnographic literature on ‘ethnic dance’ (see Cowan, 1990). In addition, elements of Bourdieu’s analytical framework have been applied in research on modern dance in the USA (Daly, 1995; Morris, 2001). We hope that our research on ballet and the body is a useful corrective to the often peculiarly disembodied literatures on dance, particularly ballet, and on the body more generally.

Bourdieu and habitus Pierre Bourdieu’s work is widely viewed as a fruitful approach to both theory and research on the body (Shilling, 1993; Turner, 1992) as Bourdieu links agency (practice) with structure (via capital and field) through the process of habitus. Moreover, ‘the way people treat their bodies reveals the deepest dispositions of the habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 190). Habitus is, in essence, an acquired scheme of dispositions: ‘When habitus encounters a social world of which it is the product, it is like a “fish in water”… it takes the world about itself for granted’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 127). Bourdieu (1984), in brief, argues that physical capital (in the form of body shape, gait and posture) is socially produced through, for example, sport, food and etiquette. In this article, we are using the term physical capital as basically a synonym for the fleshy body, and we argue that the acquisition of physical capital is essential in pursuits where ‘the body matters’ – for example, in boxing and ballet (Wainwight and Turner, 2003a). Moreover, Bourdieu’s concept of habitus: ‘illuminate[s] the circular process whereby practices are incorporated within the body, only then to be regenerated through the embodied work and competence of the body’ (Crossley, 2001: 106). Our ethnographic study of the Royal Ballet (London) explores the production of the dancer’s habitus within the cultural world of classical ballet. Although the main focus of our research is on injury (Turner and Wainwright, 2002, 2003, 2004; Wainwright and Turner, 2004a; Wainwright et al., 2005) and ageing (Wainwright and Turner, 2003b, 2004b), in this article we discuss the value of the notion of habitus for understandings of both the balletic body and of the social world more generally. Habitus is the coping-stone of Bourdieu’s conceptual system, or, to change the metaphor, habitus ‘is the conceptual pivot of Bourdieu’s theoretical synthesis’ (Seidman, 1998: 154). Habitus is the outcome of the sedimentation of past experiences, shaping the agents’ perceptions and actions of the present

Wainwright et al.: Varieties of habitus and the embodiment of ballet

and future and thereby moulding their social practices: ‘It is because this world has produced me, because it has produced the categories of thought that I apply to it, that it appears to me as self-evident’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 127). Habitus ‘tends towards reproducing existing social structures’ (Shilling, 1993: 129), being ‘durable but not eternal’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 133). Hence, a useful way to think of habitus is as ‘a processing of structure’ (Ball, 1998: 3), ‘the embodiment of social structure’ (Sweetman, 2003: 532, original italics). Habitus is, therefore, both a medium and outcome of social practice. In Bourdieusian language, the habitus consists of ‘systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 53). Similarly, ‘[t]he habitus, the product of history, produces individual and collective practices, and hence history, in accordance with the schemas engendered by history’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 82). On one level, because biographies are always different, then everyone has a unique habitus. However, on another level, each individual habitus also bears the stamp of a group’s collective history. Moreover, the habitus is not simply a state of mind, it is also a bodily state of being. The body is a repository of ingrained and durable dispositions and this incorporation of our history is demonstrated, for instance, in the differences in posture that men and women adopt (Bourdieu, 2001). In this article, we argue that it is possible to tease out three forms of habitus (individual, institutional and choreographic) in the field of ballet. Furthermore, we suggest this tripartite schema is an important counterweight to one of the frequent criticisms of Bourdieu’s work. For instance, Shilling (1993: 149) claims that: The concept of habitus has a lot of work to do in Bourdieu’s conceptual scheme. It is something of an overburdened concept whose meaning tends to slip, slide and even disappear, as it is deployed in different contexts.

As a short illustration of our threefold distinction, the dancer Wayne Sleep’s stature, speed and his remarkable ability to turn, or his ‘individual habitus’ was accentuated by his schooling [Royal Ballet School] and training [Royal Ballet] that together formed his ‘institutional habitus’ as a ‘Royal Ballet dancer’ (Sleep, 1996). This, in turn, was further reinforced in the roles created for him when he was a star dancer at the Royal Ballet via his ‘choreographic habitus’ e.g. as Kolya in Sir Frederick Ashton’s (1978) ballet A Month in the Country (Brinson and Crisp, 1980), and this meant that his (considerable) abilities as a ‘lyrical adagio’ dancer were underdeveloped. Furthermore, Wayne Sleep’s height (5’2”) meant he was seen as a demi-caractère dancer rather than as a danseur noble (Sleep, 1996). In other words, his stature meant he danced the Jester, and not the Prince – for example, in Ashton’s (1948) ballet Cinderella. To coin an aphorism: his balletic body sealed his dancing destiny. As we shall see, the same maxim can be applied to female dancers too, and we therefore give a range of male and female examples in our article. Of course we

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accept that ballet is a gendered art form, but an in-depth discussion of this is beyond the scope of this article (see Banes, 1998; Burt, 1995). Although our three varieties of habitus are interlinked, we turn next to outline individual habitus, before proceeding to discuss institutional and then choreographic habitus. We conclude our article with an overview of the linkages between these three types of habitus, and we end with a broader discussion of some of the sociological writings on Bourdieu’s notion of habitus.

The dancer’s individual habitus The pre-eminence of Balanchine as a choreographer and founder of the NYCB (New York City Ballet) has had a profound effect on the look of the modern ballerina (Shearer, 1986). To cite a famous example from the great American ballerina Gelsey Kirkland’s (1988: 56) painfully honest autobiography: [George Balanchine] halted class and approached me for a kind of physical inspection. With his knuckles, he thumped me on my sternum and down my rib cage clucking his tongue and remarking ‘Must see the bones’… He did not merely say, ‘Eat less’, he said repeatedly, ‘Eat nothing’… Mr B’s ideal proportions called for an almost skeletal frame, accentuating the collarbones and length of neck… Mr B’s methods and taste have been adopted by virtually every Ballet Company and school in America… ‘Thin-is-in’… For those who refuse to go along with the crowd, professional employment is unlikely.

In our terms, this illustrates the interconnection and reciprocity between individual and institutional habitus. Even if a dancer meets the broad physical requirement for ballet, there is still a tendency to ‘catalogue’ dancers in terms of their body – as we saw with our example of Wayne Sleep. In addition, all dancers find some steps and movements easier to perform than others. For example, Darcey Bussell, one of the leading ballerinas in England, writes that: ‘I find bourrées [small running steps on Pointe] hard... I have very bendy feet which makes it hard for me to stay on the tips of my toes’ (1998: 117). In other words, differences in physical capital produce differences in individual habitus, and these are then developed (and usually reproduced) in the way a choreographer inscribes his steps upon a dancer (as we will see later, when we discuss choreographic habitus). Antoinette Sibley and Lynne Seymour were contemporaries at the Royal Ballet and yet, ‘we were brought up in completely different spheres: me [Sibley] totally as a classical ballerina, she [Seymour] totally as a dramatic ballerina’ (Newman, 1986: 150; Seymour, 1984). In other words, their shared institutional habitus was overridden by the interconnection between their individual and choreographic habitus. Gelsey Kirkland, again, has written of how her body and the way she danced profoundly influenced her development as a ballerina: I thought of myself as a soubrette or allegro dancer, known for speed and precision. In my struggle to become a lyrical or adagio dancer, I was trying to take on

Wainwright et al.: Varieties of habitus and the embodiment of ballet those qualities of character that I associated with the drama of classical dance. I knew that I had to work against my training… My physical type and technical proficiency decreed a specific place for me in the Balanchine repertory. My figure sealed my fate. (Kirkland, 1988: 82, our italics)

To escape this fate, Kirkland left NYCB and joined ABT (American Ballet Theatre). Her transformation can be seen as an example of the reflexive nature of Bourdieu’s sociology: [Bourdieu’s] constructivist structuralism suggests that the aim of social science is to enhance the constructivist power of social agency over social structures. Bourdieu’s structuralism thus involves the freeing of agency from oppressive social structures by raising to the level of reflexivity the degree to which existing forms of cultural production are limited by social structures. (Delanty, 1997: 115)

In other words, and in our terms, Kirkland transformed her individual habitus by changing the institutional habitus and the choreographic habitus that she worked within. Her move enabled her to evolve into a different type of ballerina. This sense of transformation is captured in Dame Marie Rambert’s famous account of watching Vaslav Nijinski in both class and performance: One is often asked whether his jump was really as high as it is always described. To that I answer: ‘I don’t know how far from the ground it was, but I know it was near the stars.’ Who would watch the floor when he danced? He transported you at once into higher spheres with the sheer ecstasy of his flight... And then there was his unique interpretation. He wafted the perfume of the rose in Spectre de la Rose; he was the very spirit of Chopin in Les Sylphides; he looked like a Hamlet in his Giselle; his Petrushka broke your heart with his sorrow, and his Faune had the real breath of antiquity. (Rambert, 1972: 60)

This is a paradigmatic example of the transfiguration of physical capital into the artistic capital of balletic genius. In other words, the technical abilities of fleshy bodies (physical capital) are combined with an embodied cultural knowledge (artistic capital). Not all dancers reach the level of genius of Nijinski, of course, but the embodiment of artistry and the sheer physical slog and buzz of acquiring it, together with the joy of dancing, are defining characteristics of the cultural world of a ballet company, as Megan (now a leading ballet coach, once a great dancer) remarked: Megan: We’re surrounded by beautiful, talented, young people. Unusual people. We all have the same identity in a sense. We love being pushed. We love being challenged. We don’t mind getting hot and sweaty and killing ourselves. We get a buzz from being exhausted, and still managing to get up and do it again. It’s a drug. All of us have that in common. The example above is a powerful depiction of the way in which the social world of the professional ballet company becomes embodied in its dancers. It is this

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intersection between body, career and institutions that contributes simultaneously to a sociological understanding of dancing careers and to the embodiment of dance. Ballet is an art that is literally inscribed on the body as both ballet technique and, especially, ballet artistry, is handed from one generation to the next (Bland, 1981; Guest, 1988). As we have already intimated, the close correspondence between an individual’s ballet habitus and a choreographic habitus is invariably most closely aligned when roles are created on dancers: When steps are created on you, they are inevitably the sort of steps you favour. When the second cast tries to step into your shoes it feels completely alien. Chris [Saunders, Royal Ballet] worked at it until his body couldn’t take any more. I doubt he’ll be walking in the morning. (Bull, 1999[1998]: 151)

The discipline required to literally exhaust your stocks of physical capital is the dancer’s daily price for the acquisition of their lifetime’s artistic capital. For as Margot Fonteyn (1978: 106, our italics) recalls, ‘new roles are the stuff of life for a dancer, and when such plums are landed it is a sure thing that every spare moment will be spent perfecting them’ – even if, apparently, this means that you are, like Christopher Saunders, unable to walk the next day. The individual habitus of the truly great dancer tends to eclipse any shortcomings that they may have in, say, technique. So, with the young Rudolf Nureyev: The viewer was so transfixed by the sweeping scope of his movements, his confidence and feline grace, that even the most vigilant eyes failed to catch his technical imperfections. They were in fact of no importance given the thrill of his presence. (Smakov, 1984: 227)

The dancer’s institutional habitus Nureyev was a product of the discipline and schooling of what is now the Vaganova ballet school of the Kirov Ballet in St Petersburg (Craine and Mackrell, 2000). His individual habitus was moulded through this (Russian) institutional habitus. Similarly, although Gelsey Kirkland danced with the dramatic flair of a Russian-trained ballerina in her later career, she laments how ‘I would not have the benefit of years of memorization to take on the style and shape that seemed to be the basis of the Russian theatre. I would never be a Russian ballerina’ (Kirkland, 1988: 92, our italics). Kirkland was one of Mikail Baryshnikov’s favourite partners when he first defected from the Kirov to the West. She states: Watching him [Baryshnikov] rehearse the variations for his upcoming appearance in La Bayadère I was stunned again by his technical virtuosity, the liquid purity with which he executed his steps. His body was more than an object of physical attraction, it was a fountain of wisdom. (Kirkland, 1988: 122)

There is of course a reciprocal relationship between individual and institutional habitus. One example of this is an extract from our discussion with Royal Ballet dancer Jessie, about body types and ballet companies.


Jessie: I think it’s interesting because in this company we do have very different shapes and sizes, men and women, whereas in a company like the Paris Opera Ballet, they are much more uniform. Much, much more uniform. And the Russians too. Very much more uniform. And it’s, it’s almost a deliberate thing for us. If you’re looking at the corps de ballet in Swan Lake, you’re not going to get here the same uniformity that you do in the Paris company or in Russia. But because so much of our rep is the Ashton and the Macmillan rep, which is based around characters, you know, real people. And real people aren’t all the same size and shape, they are all different. And so for our repertoire it really works that we have a wide range of shapes and sizes and I think we really don’t want to lose that. Another example of the influence of an institutional habitus is the contrast between two of the greatest male dancers of the 1960s, the Danish Eric Bruhn and the Russian Rudolf Nureyev: As the epitome of the Bournonville dancer, Bruhn was Nureyev’s polar opposite, the Apollo to his Dionysius, poetic not powerful. Where the Soviet school favoured big, soaring, powerful jumps with sustained poses, the Franco-Danish style of Bournonville shunned fire for finesse, calling for crisp, nimble footwork, quick changes in direction, fluttering beats and incremental steps building to a crescendo. Bruhn moved audiences with the effortlessness of his dancing; Nureyev thrilled them with the effortfulness of his dancing … With its emphasis on buoyancy and precision, on bounding beaten steps and quicksilver shifts of weight, it [Bournonville] contrasted sharply with his own pliant, expansive style of dancing. (Solway, 1998: 192, 280)

In our study, one of the people responsible for auditions and selection of Royal Ballet dancers supports this distinction between schooling and national styles of ballet: Megan: We all know that when someone comes for an audition you really have to look at their initial posture at the barre to have a pretty good idea of where they’ve trained. You can tell whether it’s Russian training, or French, Danish, American. They all have a different way of standing. They support their arms differently. They use their heads differently. This theme, of embodied differences in dance style, which are a sign of differences in institutional habitus between the leading ballet companies, was something that we were particularly interested in hearing Zelda’s views upon, because she trained in France and danced with the Paris Opera Ballet before joining the Royal Ballet: Interviewer: What about the difference between the Royal Ballet and the Paris Opera? Zelda: The Paris Opera is a beautiful, beautiful company – absolutely beautiful. Beautiful dancers. As dancers the Royal has always danced much faster…

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Interviewer: So did you find that difficult coming from your French training? Zelda: Yes I did, because for us it’s completely different. It’s all much more the flexibility, not so much the flexibility as the high leg and the length of the leg. You are not as fast because you have that length. It’s a different quality of dancing. I love the talent of being really quick, but I know that I don’t have that Royal Ballet work [training] that is necessary. So physical capital, ‘suppleness and length of leg’, enables the production of the desired line and extensions of the Parisienne company; and this type of body and the embodiment of French schooling (the intense dance training at a company ballet school from the ages of 11–18) acts as a constraint on dancers if they then switch to the relatively ‘fast footwork’ of the Royal Ballet. Zelda went on to talk about other influences on the institutional habitus of the Royal Ballet: Zelda: …there’s people like me who are foreigners…and they’ve all kinds of different trainings and it makes a huge difference in the company because it means that it is more difficult to get a similar style, basically…and the Royal used to. I mean when I joined, eight years ago, you could still really see the style of the Royal Ballet, because you had all the…dancers like Tracy Brown, Nicky Sedgefield, Nicky Roberts – all these people still in their 30s, still dancing. And they had a quality that now you don’t see. Because the oldest person now is about 22! That’s me! The company has gone much much younger. I had the chance to see all these people dancing and they are the ones that I copied and that I kind of sucked all this information from. But now the younger ones don’t have the same thing. They do in a way because they have Darcey [Bussell], but they don’t have the middle layer of people that make the company really important. What is noticeable here is the way in which the signature of the Royal has changed with the influx of a younger and more diverse group of dancers. The institutional habitus has been diluted by an influx of dancers with a more widely varied individual habitus than, say, 20 years ago when almost the whole company of around 80 dancers were products of the Royal Ballet School. Another dancer we interviewed had spent almost seven years with NYCB (New York City Ballet) before moving to the rival, and very different, ABT (American Ballet Theatre) – a point we highlighted in a question to Errol: Interviewer: Did you find it difficult when you moved from NYCB to ABT as they have very different styles and a completely different rep? Errol: Yes and no. The first time I danced for ABT it was a bit weird. It wasn’t because of what I could or couldn’t do, but because I was thinking exactly what you just asked me. I doubted myself… In


this profession you look at yourself all the time under a microscope. There definitely was a transition period though. I understood that, and I wanted to be patient with myself. There’s got to be a period of development. Interviewer: So how long was it before you really felt comfortable dancing for ABT? Errol: Probably when I was about three months into it… Coming from City Ballet it was going to take time to convince some people. Whether it [his dancing] was good or bad didn’t really matter. It was going to take that amount of time. The first night I was doing Sleeping Beauty and I was just sweating and sweating… That was probably the worst experience I’ve ever had, to be honest. Errol felt comfortable in his old and familiar dancing home at NYCB, but very uncomfortable when he moved to his ‘new dancing home’ at ABT. The nerves of his first night illustrate the embodied nature of the balletic habitus and the way that a dancer’s habitus is the product of a very particular field, for, as Crossley (2003: 62) notes, there are ‘fields within fields’. In this case, Errol had moved from the abstract style of NYCB, where he was one of the company’s star dancers, to ABT, which is famous for a very different repertoire of ballets, and where the emphasis is on narrative and drama. For Bourdieu, ‘being a fish in water’ is one key sign of habitus (Bourdieu, 1984). This becomes increasingly difficult when there is an increasing movement of star dancers between the leading ballet companies, who are inevitably, to some extent, ‘fish out of water’. In contrast, Casper, a ballet coach, talks of how the institution is literally able to mould the corps de ballet into one body: Casper: I think where the strength of this company lies is actually in the main body of the company: the corps de ballet, the soloists. It’s that strength of that group of people staying together over a period of time, again we’re back to the family thing, the cohesiveness of the company, they’re not transient dancers so they actually work together for a concentrated amount of time and become much better performers. Then we can get a depth to them. Comparative sociology compares phenomena over both time and space. The notion of institutional habitus can also be viewed as a continuum along these two dimensions. In other words, the institutional habitus varies both between ballet companies (spatially) and within a ballet company (historically). Several informants commented on the dramatic changes in what we describe as the institutional habitus of the Royal Ballet. Many of our interviews were with people who had spent their entire careers with the Royal Ballet. They argued that some of the particular changes that they noted reflected broader changes in British society. One striking theme was the increased participation of dancers

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in decision-making. Both Dexter and Megan joined the company over 40 years ago. At that time: Dexter:

Then there was no question of being asked. Dame Ninette [de Valois, the legendary founder and first director of the Royal Ballet] made me do two Albrechts [the demanding lead male role in Giselle] in one day. I’d just done a matinee and she said, ‘You’re on again tonight!’…it never occurred to anybody to argue with her. You were told what you were doing, and now you are asked if you will do it. Megan: In those days I think it really was that we served the company. I don’t think that there was a policy then of anyone on the management actually feeling that they had a real responsibility to fulfil our lives for us. Whereas I know Anthony [Dowell, the Director of the company at the time of the interview] does… As time’s gone on, everywhere in society, no longer does one sell one’s soul for a company. You wanna know what they are going to do back for you. The role of the Director of the Royal Ballet is a striking example of this change in the institutional habitus of the Royal Ballet being a mirror of broader changes in organizations and society over the last four decades.

The dancer’s choreographic habitus All choreographers need to work out their ideas on real bodies (Brinson and Crisp, 1980). There is a reciprocal relationship between the choreographer’s ideas of what movements he (typically) wants, on how they look on the bodies of the dancers he is inscribing his choreography on, and with how these steps feel for the dancer. This is true even when dancers are rehearsing an established ballet (it was apparent in every rehearsal that we attended). In a similar way, no two pianists will play, say, Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11 in exactly the same way, even though the notes on the page are the same. However, with dance then, the process of creation is often inspired and always changed by working with dancers’ bodies. For the choreographer George Balanchine: First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty... I need to have real, living bodies to look at. I see how this one can stretch and that one can jump and another one can turn, and then I begin to get a few ideas. (Balanchine, in Taper, 1984: 4)

Balanchine makes the link between the individual dancer and the choreographer when he argues: ‘Steps are made by a person. It’s the person dancing the steps – that’s what choreography is, not the steps by themselves’ (in Taper, 1984: 321). The choreographer John Cranko notes how the physical capital invested in the steps needs to be converted into artistic capital through the melding of the individual, institutional and choreographic habituses (although he didn’t use those terms to express this idea). Cranko writes:

Wainwright et al.: Varieties of habitus and the embodiment of ballet There’s a limit to the amount of jumping around people can do... One has to convert this extremely physical image – a physical way of expressing oneself – into a spiritual way of expressing oneself. In the great Balanchine ballets – Serenade, Concerto Barocco, Apollo – the flesh becomes spirit while you’re watching them. (Percival, 1983: 139)

The institutional habitus is partially determined by the predominant choreographic habitus – for example, at the Kirov Ballet via the heritage of Marius Petipa, at the Royal Danish Ballet via August Bournonville, at the Royal Ballet via Frederick Ashton and Kenneth Macmillan, and at the NYCB via George Balanchine. A favourite saying of Nureyev’s was: ‘My body has Petipa, my head has Bournonville, and my heart has Balanchine’ (in Solway, 1998: 462). So, on his appointment as Director of the Paris Opera Ballet in 1983, Nureyev introduced classes in Bournonville and Balanchine techniques to complement the existing ‘Petipa’ inspired French style of the Paris company (Craine and Mackrell, 2000). Lisa sums up the factors that have produced the ‘English style’ of the Royal Ballet: Lisa: English style is mostly wrapped up in its choreography of course. Since coming here I do notice a serious lack of good port de bras [movement of the shoulders], but I also notice a serious advantage of technical ability. So there are pros and cons, and if we could just marry the two, then we could have a wonderful ballet company. The rep, probably has changed more. We’ve kept Ashton; we’ve kept Macmillan, which has been our staple diet I would say in trying to keep the style. The classics change because they become different combinations of style. I mean dealing with the corps de ballet, from worldwide. And I suppose in that way it’s made us like every other company in many ways. In this case, the choreographic habitus is seen as trumping the rather inchoate institutional habitus produced via a range of international teachers, and the increasing international nature of companies like the Royal Ballet, both in terms of dancers, and especially in terms of the globalization and homogenization of the core ballet repertoire (Newman, 2004; Wainwright et al., in press). The quotation above also reinforces the difficulty that current ballet masters and ballet mistresses face in producing a stylistically uniform and regimented corps de ballet. The difference between rehearsing and performing in a certain style (a choreographic habitus) and being taught daily class in a certain style (a schooling habitus) was brought out by one of the world’s leading ballet teachers in his comments on the production of an English and an American style of ballet: Dudley: I was asked about this in America. What was the difference between Balanchine and Ashton? Balanchine established an American way

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of moving. Ashton created a choreographic style of moving that was very coordinated with the English, sort of, rather reserved way of moving. He developed his choreography along those lines. Balanchine invented a style of American movement that involved the classroom. Ashton did not. Ashton wasn’t interested in that. So it was a very different kind of development. Balanchine came from Russia, and it would have been a very interesting thing had he not of gone to America. How would he have developed in Russia? But he went to America at a very important time of his life and he spent a lot of time in Hollywood – which a lot of people don’t realize. He did a lot of movies. All of that old Busby Berkely stuff. When you look at Balanchine’s choreography in terms of formations and all that one thing after the other, it’s all Busby Berkley influenced. Ashton’s influence was Anna Pavlova and Margot Fonteyn, not reserved, but proper is a good word. ‘Nothing a little bit too much dear. No don’t do this! Oh no no no no, we don’t do that!’ So a sort of elegance that he brought about with that. So, although it is true that Ashton did not teach daily class, students at the Royal Ballet School inevitably dance a great deal of Ashton as Ashton remains the mainstay of the Royal Ballet repertory (Jordan and Grau, 1996; Kavanagh, 1996; Vaughan, 1977). This view, and the implication that dancers trained in ballet schools where Ashton is not part of the everyday curriculum find it more difficult to dance Ashton, is supported by our interview data. For example: Interviewer: Do you think that with the people coming from the Royal Ballet School, the Ashton is more instilled? Casper: Yes, yes… Again it depends on the individual, whether they assimilate it quickly or whether they don’t. You find the ones that do make quicker progress through the company. Very often you get a dancer who comes in from outside that you see immediately has the potential to be able to integrate into the company very quickly because their style of dancing is such that they fit in terribly quickly. Others don’t, and it’s a matter of time until you find out whether they can or they can’t. So, it also seems that the choreographic habitus is itself transformed via the institutional habitus of ballet companies with significantly different dance styles. It can be seen that the relations between individual habitus, institutional habitus and choreographic habitus are complex, and in our discussion we elaborate on some of the ways in which they are interrelated.


Discussion and conclusion The relationship between individual, institutional and choreographic habitus becomes especially clear when there is either concordance or discordance between these three elements. So, for example, when the choreographer William Forsythe’s productions are: Danced by companies other than his own [Frankfurt Ballet], they tend to do it with great success, but not always as articulately as his own dancers. Forsythe’s own dancers have…been practising his steps and concepts for years, some for more than a decade, whereas other dancers usually only have about a month to learn them. And this shows in their respective performances. (Wulff, 1998: 42)

Here, individual habitus is insufficiently shaped via a lack of the appropriate background schooling, the embodied discipline, of a particular choreographic and institutional habitus. The dance quotations gleaned both from our interviews with Royal Ballet dancers and from the memoirs of dancers provide a useful insight into the bodily habitus of classical ballet dancers. Moreover, they begin to illuminate the relationships between the body, self, society and culture within the field of dance. To oversimplify, we saw earlier how the so-called ‘lyrical style’ of the Royal Ballet is less suited to the ‘attacking athletic allegro style’ required for the ballets that Balanchine produced for his New York City Ballet (Clarke and Crisp, 1981). Some ballet memoirs reveal the synthesis of individual, institutional and choreographic habitus that occurs in one dancer – for example, in the contrasting styles (balletic habitus) of, say, Allegra Kent with the NYCB (Kent, 1997) and Antoinette Sibley with the Royal Ballet (Newman, 1986). Furthermore, dancers who move between companies, and particularly those who endeavour to move between classical ballet and modern dance, such as Nureyev (Solway, 1998), provide useful insights into these differing habituses. As they struggle with fresh ways of dancing, they are, in effect, trying to obtain enough physical capital and cultural capital to assume a new dance habitus. The ex-Kirov dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, therefore, spent two years with NYCB in order to attain his ‘Balanchine’ habitus (Ramsey, 1998). We hope our article has shown that the cultural world of ballet is replete with embodied practices. For instance, the mental and physical demands of a career in ballet become embodied in a craving for perfection. This daily quest for the unattainable is one of the features of class, rehearsal and performance. The ballet coach literally inscribes the steps onto and into the bodies of the next generation of dancers. Ballet is based on the production and reproduction of this generational artistic embodiment. More generally, the balletic habitus is constantly created and replicated by the reciprocal connections between agency and structure. We tried to capture this process in our tripartite distinction of individual habitus, institutional habitus and choreographic habitus. Individual habitus is extremely diverse as individuals vary both in terms of their capital (some are great turners, others great jumpers; some are polished

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technicians, others are wonderful actors and so on) and in their embodied histories. Some dancers prefer modern dance to classical ballet, while others prefer the classroom to the stage – and vice versa. At the individual level, distinctions in physical capital can literally ‘seal your fate’. For instance, the raw material that forms your ‘body type’ can determine whether your career trajectory as a male dancer follows that of a danseur noble or of a demi-caractère dancer. The individual agent is processed by the institutional structure, and this reflexive relationship produces and reproduces the habitus of the balletic body. Casting for existing and for new ballets adds a further choreographic dimension to this association, and so the dancer’s habitus is a function of the interrelationships between individual, institution and choreography. Shevtsova (2002: 58) states that ‘habitus is a socialised subjectivity’ and so there is both an individual and a ‘group habitus’. In a similar vein, several authors have discussed the idea of ‘institutional habitus’ (Reay, 1998; Reay et al., 2001; Thomas, 2002), and especially the ways in which this can, for example, mould students’ choice of university in the UK as the school ‘launders cultural advantages’ (Crossley, 2003: 43). Institutional habitus is ‘the impact of a cultural group or social class as it is mediated through an organisation’ (Reay et al., 2001). Within the field of dance, schools will have differing institutional habituses, and our interviews revealed how many dancers saw their move from the Royal Ballet School to the Royal Ballet Company as inevitable and natural. To adopt a phrase of Bourdieu’s (2000: 143): ‘they feel at home in the world because the world is also in them, in the form of habitus, a virtue made of necessity’. For Bourdieu, and for many other social researchers influenced by his approach such as Reay et al. (2001), habitus is a key to understanding social class and the reproduction of hierarchies of distinction (Bourdieu, 1984). Habitus is, essentially, an appropriated set of generative dispositions. Some of these dispositions are bodily ones. Hence: The apparently most insignificant techniques of the body – ways of walking or blowing one’s nose, ways of eating or talking…[reveals] the most fundamental principles of construction and evaluation of the social world. (Bourdieu, 1984: 466)

The lifestyles of the different social classes become inscribed on and in their bodies. Furthermore, physical capital – via body shape, gait, posture, speech and so on – contributes to the reproduction of social inequalities. In other words, the body is a bearer of value in society (Shilling, 1993). One way of extending our research would be to investigate the field of classical ballet in order to trace the social trajectories of aspiring ballet dancers who, for example, enter the Royal Ballet School and the subsequent dancing careers of graduates of this school. We have some interesting data on the family milieux of those who become professional dancers, and this too could form the basis for a Bourdieusian discussion on social hierarchy and issues of power which are central to Bourdieu’s notion of habitus (Hillier and Rooksby, 2002; Wainwright and Turner, 2003a).


We recognize that the institutional structure of ballet, like any field, determines a range of social positions in terms of their prestige and authority. In other words, the structure of the field shapes the careers of ballet dancers. Although all dancers have physical limitations, what counts as ‘physical capital’, as we outlined earlier, and how this is viewed, changes both historically and geographically. The power to determine ‘what counts’ exemplifies the power struggles within a field. The careers of ballet dancers, like other ‘sports stars, artistes’ (and even academics), depend on the views and actions of those with the power to determine what counts as capital within a particular field. Even world famous ballerinas like Gelsey Kirkland and Lynn Seymour were literally driven out of ballet companies through disputes with powerful ballet company directors (Kirkland, 1988; Seymour, 1984). The different forms of institutional habitus could also be considered as different forms of capital, with currency in some fields (say, the Royal Ballet) but not in others (for example, the Kirov). Various company styles are forms of capital within these ‘fields within fields’. In this article, we highlighted the difference between the internalization of a company style (a product of the institutional habitus and choreographic habitus of, say, the Royal Ballet) by members of the corps de ballet and the way various ‘star dancers’ can adopt (given time) or ignore a particular company style as they dance around the world. Within a ballet company, the corps de ballet is the institutional habitus made manifest. Here, dancers of different schooling and styles become one entity; or, to put it more accurately, their individual bodies are transfigured to dance as one body. Even with the homogenizing pressures of globalization, the corps of, say, the Kirov Ballet, New York City Ballet, and the Royal Ballet would form three noticeably different bodies. However, staying in the corps for years may wear away and eventually ablate your individual dance habitus. The work of being, in a sense, ‘a clone in the collective’ renders some dancers incapable of becoming principal dancers. In contrast, some future principal dancers – for instance, Lynn Seymour (Seymour, 1984), have such an abundance of individual habitus that they are quickly promoted out of the corps as their individuality overrides the communal similarity of the uniform corps de ballet. Because it takes years to incorporate the distinct style of a dance company into your body, dancers who change companies and thereby move ‘across styles’ are interesting case studies of the interplay between individual, institutional and choreographic habitus. Hence, Frederick Ashton, the founder of the English style of ballet, created only one major role for Rudolf Nureyev during Nureyev’s 15 years as a guest artist of the Royal Ballet (in Marguerite and Armand, 1963, a role that accentuated Nureyev’s dramatic Russian style of dancing [Vaughan, 1977]). Mikhail Baryshnikov was correspondingly disappointed by the lack of English style in Rhapsody (1980) – when Ashton created a role for him that was full of Baryshnikov’s bravura ‘trademark tricks’ but devoid of Ashton’s brand of languid lyricism (Kavanagh, 1996). In both cases, a great choreographer responded to the remarkably individual balletic bodies

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of these ex-Kirov dancers to produce works that are more infused with Russian melodrama and bravura than with flowing Ashtonian English restraint. It is likely to take a year, and often much longer, for a dancer to acquire a new institutional habitus. Nureyev could have become ‘an English dancer’ but he was very reluctant to do so because he felt it would diminish the brightness of his talent (Solway, 1998): ‘Endlessly newsworthy... He is adored by a huge audience; he is a force of nature’ (Brinson and Crisp, 1980: 244). ‘Forces of nature’, like Nureyev, mould institutions in as much their own image as vice versa (Solway, 1998). In the concluding section of our article, we address some of the criticisms that have been made of Bourdieu’s work, and especially of the concept of habitus (Calhoun et al., 1993; Fowler, 2000; Grenfell and James, 1998; Lane, 2000; Robbins, 2000; Shusterman, 1999). Typically, critics of Bourdieu’s work see it as vague, deterministic and ahistorical. Given the wide range of Bourdieu’s writings, and his growing eminence across a number of academic disciplines, this has inevitably produced a large critical literature. Our aim here is to outline and evaluate three of the more common criticisms that relate directly to our discussion of habitus in the field of ballet. First, Bourdieu’s concepts are often criticized for being vague. A typical critical refrain is ‘that in trying to explain everything they explain nothing’. Equally, the cynic might tease the Bourdieusian with the taunt that ‘they wouldn’t know what the habitus is if they tripped over it’. Similarly, the concept of field is sometimes conceptualized as a bounded space, or as a field of struggles, and/or as a ‘magnetic’ field – where agents align themselves with the pole that ‘attracts’ their stock of capital: The concept [of field] has an almost chameleon-like quality in that it can mean all things to all people: determined and determining, structured and structuring, strong and weak, modern and postmodern, promoting reproduction and change, Marxist and Weberian. (Prior, 2000: 144)

But this supposed weakness is, we argue, the strength of Bourdieu’s concepts. It is the very vagueness and ambiguity of Bourdieu’s notions that give them an elasticity that allows the concepts of habitus, capital and field to be employed in a wide range of empirical research projects – as Bourdieu’s extensive and very varied research shows. The concept of field, for example, has captured the imagination of researchers trying to unravel some of the complexity of fields as diverse as education (Reay et al., 2001); literature, (Pinto, 1996); social policy (Peillon, 1998); disability (Edwards and Imrie, 2003); radical social movements (Crossley, 2003); journalism (Marliere, 1998); personal finance (Aldridge, 1998); theatre (Shevtsova, 2002) and the arts (Danto, 1999). Moreover, other key concepts in both the humanities and social sciences are also vague, but this does not mean that they lack heuristic purchase. So, to give just one example, ‘we should not assume that the word ‘culture’ can act as a magic wand; it is what we do with it that counts’ (Smith, 2000: 133, our italics). This, as we shall see shortly, is essentially Bourdieu’s defence against


his critics. In this article, we have tried to show how three varieties of habitus are helpful in understanding the field of classical ballet. Body techniques, within and beyond ballet, are not naturally acquired; they are essentially about education (Durkheim and Mauss, 1975[1912]). As a result of this detailed education of the body into a cluster of techniques, human beings occupy a habitus. Mauss argued that this habitus is the: ‘techniques and work of collective and individual reason rather than, in the ordinary way, merely the soul and its repetitive faculties’ (Mauss, 1979: 101). One can see in this passage the intellectual roots of Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and his logic of embodied practice (see Crossley, 2001). Ballet is a paradigm case of embodied social practices. We see habitus and embodiment as entwined, as ‘bodies embrace and express the habitus of the field in which they are located’ (Wainwright and Turner, 2004a: 101). In addition, we view embodiment as overcoming the problematic Cartesian dualism between mind and body (see Crossley, 2001). In a similar vein, habitus is also a way to overcome the Cartesian mind–body split. For example, Bourdieu (2000: 136) writes: ‘to understand practical understanding, one has to move beyond the alternatives of thing and consciousness’. Moreover, to use Csordas’ (1994) phrase: ‘Embodiment provides the existential ground of culture and self ’. The concept of embodiment derives from Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) Phenomenology of Perception. In essence, Merleau-Ponty rejected the mind–body dualism of Descartes by contending that thinking, feeling and doing are all practical actions that obligate embodiment. For Merleau-Ponty, the body is never isolated because it is always engaged with the world (Weiss, 1999). Bourdieu draws upon Merleau-Ponty in the development of the concept of habitus (Crossley, 2001). Furthermore: We can define embodiment as the mode by which human beings practically engage with and apprehend the world. In this respect, the concept of embodiment also has a close affinity with the sociology of Bourdieu, which attempts to overcome dichotomies between action and structure in the notions of practice and ‘habitus’. (Abercrombie et al., 2000: 115)

One critical response to our tripartite distinction of the varieties of habitus is to claim that this proliferation of terms reifies ‘the habitus’ into three pseudoobjects which then need to be related in some kind of framework. We emphasize that we see habitus as a useful way of gaining some analytical purchase on a wide-ranging array of social processes that thereby contributes to a richer understanding of various types of social fields. We accept that some aspects are relatively fixed – for instance, that a dancer’s height (especially when relatively small or tall) has an important influence on a dancer’s career (as we saw in the case of Wayne Sleep) – while some things are changeable so dancers can learn to dance in a different way, and an individual habitus can be modified through new choreographies and new artistic influences shaping an institutional habitus. Our article is an attempt to capture the fluid interplay of regimes of

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practice in which person, troupe and choreography are dynamic and responsive to constant changes. Second, Bourdieu’s work is often viewed as being deterministic (Alexander, 1995). For example, Jenkins (1992: 97) claims that habitus acts behind the backs of agents so that in Bourdieu’s schema, ‘behaviour has its causes, but actors are not allowed their reasons’. In our view, however, this overstates the case. The habitus is not deterministic, but it is determining. This distinction means that the habitus allows some room for manoeuvre, but typically not very much. Usually the habitus changes slowly though a process of evolution. But revolutions in habitus do occur. Fateful moments, to use Giddens’ (1991) phrase, change the trajectory of our lives and with it the nature of our habitus. The habitus can be transformed via what Bourdieu calls the ‘Don Quixote effect’ where perceptions and dispositions are ‘ill-adapted because they are attuned to an earlier state of the objective conditions’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 109). This disjunction between habitus and field can lead to ‘a site of explosive forces (resentment) which may await (and even look for) the opportunity to break out’ (Bourdieu: 1993a: 87). The threat of redundancy or, to use a positive example, an important job promotion may both produce a revolution in habitus. We saw earlier how dancers like Kirkland, Nureyev and Baryshnikov all ‘broke out’ and thereby changed their balletic habitus. These star dancers refashioned their identity as they had what Sweetman (2003) calls a reflexive habitus. Crossley’s (2003: 55) point that ‘reflexive schemas of self-inspection and reflection constitute an integral part of the normal habitus’ is especially true of the balletic habitus. This alleged determinism leads to a third common criticism of the Bourdieusian corpus: that it is ahistorical. We argue that this, once again, is wide of the mark. Bourdieu argues that history and sociology should be flip sides of the same coin; that history should be a historical sociology of the past, while sociology, at its best, is a social history of the present (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Correspondingly, many of Bourdieu’s books are, effectively, social histories of, for example, academia (Bourdieu, 1988, 1997b) and of the cultural field (Bourdieu, 1984, 1993b, 1996, 1997a). We hope, by using evocative examples from our own research, that we have outlined some of the elements of a ‘social history’ of the Royal Ballet and that our use of a range of ballet memoirs also constitutes the beginnings of an historical sociology of ballet’s recent past (Wainwright et al., in press). One of the recurring themes in Bourdieu’s writings is his attempt to wake people from their ‘doxic slumbers’. This is because ‘a scientific practice that fails to question itself does not, properly speaking, know what it does’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 236). Once again, Bourdieu provides a telling insight in his critique of some of his critics: I blame most of my readers for having considered as theoretical treatises, meant solely to be read or commented upon, works that, like gymnastics handbooks, were

Wainwright et al.: Varieties of habitus and the embodiment of ballet intended for exercise, or even better, for being put into practice.... In fact, as I have said hundreds of times, I have always been immersed in empirical research projects, and the theoretical instruments I was able to produce in the course of these endeavours were intended not for theoretical commentary and exegesis, but to be put to use in new research, be it mine or that of others. It is this comprehension through use that is most rarely granted me. (Bourdieu, 1993c: 271, original italics)

Bourdieu’s ‘theoretical concepts’ have been empirically forged in a wide range of empirical research projects. He offers us a powerful way of thinking about the social world. The continuous spiral between theory, practice and theory, combined with the open and adaptable nature of his key concepts, means that Bourdieu’s work offers a very fruitful approach to social research on the body. Such a claim is echoed in a range of statements that praise Bourdieu’s achievements. For example, ‘My main claim is that he [Bourdieu] has superseded various problems that have perennially plagued sociology as a critical social theory and that, at the present moment, this is the most original and cogent modelling of the social world that we have’ (Fowler, 1997: 13). Bourdieu’s cultural sociology is: ‘not only the best, but…the only game in town’ (Lash, 1993: 193). Furthermore, ‘the manner in which he [Bourdieu] manages to weave together both empirical data and theoretical insight is a lesson for all of us in the “art” of doing sociological research…the intellectual fruits are there for the takers’ (Williams, 1995: 581, 601). Even Bourdieu’s critics concede that he is ‘enormously good for thinking with’ (Jenkins, 1992: 11). We, like many other social researchers, view Bourdieu’s conceptual schema as a set of tools for thinking with, and it is inevitable that academics, like Bourdieu himself, use terms like habitus to mean slightly different things. In this article, we employ physical capital in a somewhat different way from Bourdieu, and our notion of individual habitus differs from Bourdieu who writes of habitus and social agents. In conclusion, our article is an example of Dyke’s dictum that ‘the best way to praise and appraise Bourdieu’s work is also the most straightforward: use it’ (Dyke, 1999: 192, our italics). Bourdieu’s social theory ‘should be understood as habitus rather than as a theory of habitus’ (Brubaker, 1993, original italics). We hope our discussion of three varieties of habitus and the embodiment of ballet is an interesting and helpful example of Bourdieu’s (1993c: 271) plea for social researchers to aim for ‘comprehension [of habitus] through use’. REFERENCES

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Wainwright et al.: Varieties of habitus and the embodiment of ballet Wainwright, S.P. and Turner, B.S. (2003a) ‘Reflections on Embodiment and Vulnerability’, Journal of Medical Ethics: Medical Humanities 29: 4–7. Wainwright, S.P. and Turner, B.S. (2003b) ‘Ageing and the Dancing Body’, in C. Faircloth (ed.) Ageing Bodies: Meanings and Perspective, pp. 259–92. Boston, MA: Alta Mira Press. Wainwright, S.P. and Turner, B.S. (2004a) ‘Epiphanies of Embodiment: Injury, Identity and the Balletic Body’, Qualitative Research 4(3): 311–38. Wainwright, S.P. and Turner, B.S. (2004b) ‘Narratives of Embodiment: Body, Ageing, Retirement and Career in Royal Ballet Dancers’, in H. Thomas and J. Ahmed (eds) Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory, pp. 98–120. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Wainwright, S.P., Williams, C. and Turner, B.S. (2005) ‘Fractured Identities: Narratives of Injury and the Balletic Body’, Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 9(1): 49–66. Wainwright, S.P., Williams, C. and Turner, B.S. (in press) ‘Globalization, Habitus and the Balletic Body’, Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies. Weiss, C. (1999) Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality. London: Routledge. Williams, S. (1995) ‘Theorising Class, Health and Lifestyles: Can Bourdieu Help Us?’, Sociology of Health and Illness 17(5): 577–604. Wulff, H. (1998) Ballet Across Borders: Career and Culture in the World of Dancers. Oxford: Berg. S T E V E N P. WA I N W R I G H T is Senior Lecturer at King’s College London. His research focuses on three areas: first, his major current interest is in the connections between Medical Sociology and Science & Technology Studies (especially innovative medical technologies). Second, he also works on Medical Humanities (especially narratives of ageing and death in painting, opera and ballet). Third, he has written extensively on the Sociology of Body (especially the reciprocal relationships between various combinations of the arts, the social sciences, biomedical science and medicine). He is currently working on an ESRC-funded ethnography of stem cell research, and some of this study forms the basis of his (with Clare Williams) forthcoming research monograph on The Body, Biomedicine & Society: Reflections on High-Tech Medicine (PalgraveMacmillan). Address: Division of Health & Social Care Research, King’s College London, 57 Waterloo Road, London SE1 8WA, UK. [email: [email protected]] C L A R E W I L L I A M S is Reader in the Social Science of Biomedicine at King’s College London. Her research focuses on the clinical, ethical and social implications of innovative health technologies, particularly from the perspective of health care practitioners and scientists, and on influences of gender on health. She currently holds research grants from the Wellcome Trust Biomedical Ethics Programme on ‘Facilitating choice, framing choice: experiences of staff working in pre-implantation genetic diagnosis’, and the ESRC Stem Cell Initiative: ‘Mapping stem cell innovation in action: the interface between the bench and the bedside’. She has recently completed research for the Wellcome Trust Biomedical Ethics Programme on the ethical and clinical dilemmas of the changing status of the foetus for practitioners and policy makers; for the ESRC/MRC Innovative Health Technologies Programme, exploring the social implications of innovative first trimester antenatal screening; and for the Wellcome Trust Biomedical Ethics Programme on the clinical and ethical dilemmas of genetic and reproductive developments for health practitioners. Address: Division of Health & Social Care Research, King’s College London, 57 Waterloo Road, London SE1 8WA, UK. [email: [email protected]]

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Qualitative Research 6(4) is Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. His previous research focused on four areas: Medical Sociology (particularly the body and society); Political Sociology (especially citizenship and human rights); the Sociology of Religion (chiefly Islam); and Social Theory (especially Classical Social Theory). He sees these four domains as related via the theme of the body and embodiment. Over the next six years, he is directing research on globalization and religion concentrating on such issues as religious conflict and the modern state, religious authority and electronic information, human rights and religion, the human body, medical change and religious cosmologies. The general aim is to develop a comprehensive overview of the impact of globalization on religions, and the consequences of religion on global processes, and this will be published as three books on religion and globalization (Cambridge University Press). Address: Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore. [email: [email protected]]

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