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This text is a response to the growing need for sociological research on the body. Sociology has abandoned the old dualism in which the body was left to the natural sciences while sociology concentrated on cultural and social matters. Sociologists aim to overcome the split between nature/culture, biology/society and body/mind, although the body has a material basis it is also socially constructed: social meanings are attached to it, and it is shaped and regulated by social forces. These insights are being developed within the "sociology of the body" and they are also being applied to a wide range of sociological areas such as sexuality, health and illness, and identity politics. This work provides specific examples of the ways in which qualitative research methods can be deployed to reinvestigate the relation between the body and society. It also provides empirical evidence on body matters and contains analysis not only of representations and images of the body, but of how these representations affect social interaction and social relationships.