The politics of the body

Thinking Allowed

BBC

Science, Society & Culture

4.4 • 973 Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The politics of the body: movement and posture. Laurie Taylor talks to Matthew Beaumont, Professor in English Literature at UCL, about how race, class, and politics influence the way we move: You can tell a lot about people by how they walk. Through a series of dialogues with thinkers and walkers, his book explores the relationship between freedom and the human body. Also, Beth Linker, Associate Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania discusses the posture panic which once seized America - a decades-long episode in which it was widely accepted as scientific fact that Americans were suffering from an epidemic of slouching, with potentially catastrophic health consequences. Tracing the rise and fall of this socially manufactured epidemic, she reveals how this period influenced the 20th century eugenics movement and the belief that sitting or standing up straight was a sign of moral rectitude.

Producer: Jayne Egerton

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and maybe it's when I had a hand in.
0:04.0	I'm Tammy Walker and I produce podcasts for the BBC.
0:08.0	My role is to give new and diverse creators a voice with the opportunity to build a career.
0:12.0	That's the thing I love about podcasts.
0:14.4	You start with just a good idea, but then you have the space to see where it goes.
0:18.4	And doing that at the BBC means we can really run with the best stories
0:21.9	while developing the most unique audio talent.
0:24.8	So if you like what you hear, why not check out the huge range of podcast we've got on BBC Sounds.
0:31.6	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:35.0	This is a Thinking Loud Podcasts from the BBC and for more details and much, much more about thinking aloud,
0:42.0	go to our website at BBC.co. UK.
0:46.0	Hello I can still recall the shock I felt upon first seeing John Osbournes look back in anger in
0:52.4	Liverpool must have been in the late 1950s.
0:56.4	Up until then going to the theatre largely meant sitting through polite middle-class dramas
1:01.2	in which well-spoken men and women courteously resolved their on-stage
1:05.6	dilemmas while spending a great deal of time entering and exiting through
1:10.7	French windows. As a would be rebellious teenager I relish the manner in
1:15.9	which the hero of the play Jimmy Porter poured scorn on conventional wisdom
1:20.7	about religion and marriage and proper behavior.
1:24.0	One of his targets was Colonel Nigel Redfern, his girlfriend's father.
1:29.0	One damning phrase was particularly memorable.
1:33.0	Nigel Jimmy said was a straight-backed chinless wonder.
	...

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