Bodily Capital: Capturing the Role of the Body in Social Inequality

• In Event: 473 - Section on Body and Embodiment Paper Session. Open Topic on Bodies and Embodiment

Abstract

In this article, I put forward a revised and extended theory of bodily capital aimed at conceptualizing the body as a central locus of social inequality. Bodily capital refers to an assortment of physical attributes such as height, weight, skin tone, body size & weight, and notions of beauty, which vary contextually in their salience and/or consequentiality, yet tend to be efficacious in a wide array of social interactions within and across important institutions where social inequalities are produced and reproduced (e.g. the education system, the labor market, the criminal justice system, dating, and the marital market, etc.). I identify two (related) pathways through which bodily capital may produce and reproduces social inequality: internal (how self-regard and self-identification affect behavior yielding various inequalities) and external (categorical ascription, stigmatization, and discrimination by alters associated with social closure and opportunity hoarding); and I highlight the importance of the body’s ability to both (1) signify categorical membership dichotomously and (2) signify categorical membership along continua. I note that some studies even show that aspects of physical appearance are independently associated with inequalities and sometimes associated with inequalities similar to or even larger in magnitude to that of race, ethnicity, and gender. Ultimately, I sketch the outlines of an integrated domain for the study of social inequality vis a vis the body, providing a micro-foundations for bodily inequalities, whilst linking the micro-level to macro-level stratification through inter-subjectively shared cognitive schemata across key social institutions (“culture”).

Author

• Ellis Prentis Monk, Princeton University