Despite these anthropological legacies, the ontological status of social actors, and consequently the problem of human embodiment has, traditionally speaking, been a neglected theme within sociological discourse. To the extent that classical social theorists turned their attention to such issues, they have tended to define human actors in disembodied terms as rational agents who make choices through means/ends formulae, based on ‘utility’ criteria or ‘general value’ orientations (Turner 1991). Conscious ratiocination rather than the biological conditions of action was therefore seen as most important, with little room left for the ‘lived’ body as the primordial basis of human agency in the social world. In short, whilst the body entered anthropology at the fundamental level of ontology, the sociological stress upon rational economic action resulted in a failure to elaborate a fully sustained theoretical account of the body/society relationship. The body, in effect, became external to the actor who appeared, so to speak, as a rational, disembodied, decision-making agent (Turner 1991:9).