Abstract
How do the sociologists analyze the embodied practice? This essay discusses this matter. As a study of Pierre Bourdieu clarified, the pre-reflective practice in daily life plays an important role of social reproduction. However, it is hard for an agent to explain his own behavior, practice and habitus, because such action is tacit and pre-reflexsive. In this essay, I examine Nick Crossley’s body theory from a viewpoint of how to understand such practice. Crossley emphasizes reflection and reflexive characteristics of the practice whereas Bourdieu emphasizes pre-reflective characteristics of habitus. Crossley submits a “reflexive body techniques” to comprehend both mindful and social aspects in the practice and the body technique, considering the theory of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Marcel Mauss and George Herbert Mead. Crossley attemps to analyze the daily practice and the body technique without reducing them to discourse and behavior. Thus, Crossley seeks to apprehend the bodily life which cannot be reduced to subjectivity and objectivity. Such an argument shows a new viewpoint on body theory in sociology.