1.Introduction30Classical Foun

1.Introduction30Classical Foundations[微笑]The theoretical implications of this approach towards the body can be
clarified further by exploring how it is based upon a version of what I shall
refer to as corporeal realism.There is a long tradition of writings on realist philosophy and scientific method, a tradition which constitutes an influential (if internally differentiated) trend in the social sciences and which has been
developed recently by Roy Bhaskar and others into forms of critical realism
(for excellent introductions to key debates regarding realism, see Keat and
Urry, 1982; Sayer, 2000). Some of these realist works have tended to marginalize the body, but if we take seriously the implications key realist principles have for the analysis of embodiment it is possible to explicate the
central features of a corporeal realist approach towards the body–society
relationship as outlined in the convergence thesis. In what follows, then, I
am not concerned with engaging with the philosophical complexities of
realism, or even with outlining here the full range of implications that realism could have for an analysis of the body, but with isolating in the briefest
and simplest of terms its central features.4 My reason for doing this is to help
formalize and extend what is of value in the convergence thesis outlined
above, and to provide a framework for the substantive studies that follow
later in this study.