Vulnerable/Dangerous Bodies? The Trials and Tribulations of Sleep

Introduction

The starting point of this chapter is that we are sleeping as well as waking beings. It is only relatively recently, however, that sociologists have begun to wake up to this embodied fact and accord sleep the proper attention it deserves. Corporeal themes of living in/as a body do not begin and end with waking life. Sleep, moreover, is embodied and embedded in the social world. As such it merits far greater attention from corporeal sociologists than it has received to date.

In this chapter I wish to take a closer look at the particular if not peculiar vulnerabilities and dangers that sleep embodies and engenders. ¹ The first part of the chapter provides what may be construed as a preliminary phenomenological sketch of sleep in terms of living in/as a body in general, and the disappearing body/self in particular. This in turn paves the way, in the second part of the chapter, for a more detailed examination of the embodied vulnerabilities and dangers of sleep in relation to self and others. Sleep, however, as I argue in the third section of the chapter, is far from simply a passive state that just ‘happens’ to us. Rather, it is brought under our own partial control through a series of sleep-related habits, routines and rituals, including (reflexive) body techniques which help facilitate safe passage into and out of the sleep role. The remainder of the chapter, building on these embodied insights, involves a broader series of sociological reflections on sleep in a 24/7 risk society as a matter of ‘public concern’ where themes of vulnerability, vigilance and virtue loom large across the public-private divide.

The dormant/dreaming body and the disappearing self: I sleep therefore I am (not)?

An encounter or engagement with sleep raises a host of complex philosophical as well as sociological issues. Sleep, indeed, has been the source of much philosophical speculation and debate through the ages, from the ancient Greeks to the present day. Descartes’ deliberations on sleep and dreams are particularly instructive in this respect. Sleep, for obvious reasons, posed a potential problem in terms of Descartes classic formulation cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am). Either we cease to exist when we sleep (I sleep therefore I am not) given the loss of consciousness it entails, or else some other explanation or qualifying clause is necessary in the case of sleep and other states of unconsciousness. Descartes’ own particular resolution of this conundrum, unsurprisingly perhaps, favoured the latter line of reasoning, namely that we are never entirely unconscious, even in the deepest, soundest sleep. We also, of course, dream. Yet dreaming, for Descartes, posed another problem as to whether or not there are any ‘sure signs’ or ‘definite marks’ that enable us to know for certain we are awake rather than dreaming, or dreaming rather than awake. Descartes, to be sure, was not the first nor the last philosopher to pose this problem; both Plato before him and Bertrand Russell after him raised similar doubts about the dream-awake distinction. Descartes, however, as part and parcel of his principle of ‘methodic doubt’, is particularly troubled by this problem in The Meditations. Thus in the first meditation he doubts whether there are any such grounds for distinguishing one state from the other. By the sixth meditation, however, Descartes appears to have regained confidence in his ability reliably to distinguish dreams from wakefulness, thereby dismissing his previous doubts as ‘laughable’, in part because God would not allow him to be so deceived and in part because dreams are ‘never joined with all the other actions of life by the memory as is the case with actions that occur when one is awake’ (Descartes, 1996/1641, Sixth Meditation: 89).

Another awkward philosophical question arises at this point as to whether or not sleep itself may be regarded as the necessary or indispensable condition of (self) consciousness. Johnstone Jnr (1973), for example, is a strong advocate of this claim, arguing that it is only by virtue of the ‘interruption’ or ‘gap’ in consciousness which states such as sleep afford us, that we become aware of being conscious at all. Without sleep, in other words, the very notion of consciousness and unconsciousness would have little or no meaning. This, to be sure, is a bold statement which accords sleep pride of place in any debate on consciousness; a kind of ‘absent presence’, and a profound one at that. It is equally possible if not more plausible, however, to argue precisely the opposite case, namely that it is consciousness itself which makes sleep an intelligible phenomenon, not the other way around. ‘The phenomenon of sleep and related interruptions of consciousness’, in other words, ‘are intelligible, if and only if, one is aware of his (sic) own consciousness prior to such an interruption’ (Galloway, 1977: 110, my emphasis).

But what precisely is sleep anyway? What are its defining hallmarks and how are we to distinguish it from waking life? Answers to these questions are not quite as simple as they seem. Certainly sleep cannot be equated with going to bed, lying down, closing our eyes or the partaking of rest. I may, for example, lie in bed, eyes tightly closed, without getting a wink of sleep all night long. It is possible moreover to sleep standing up with our eyes wide open. We are also quite busy when we sleep, including fervent brain wave activity when we dream, the maintenance of basic bodily functions such as heartbeat and respiration, and other replenishing, repair and restorative work. Two key features nonetheless, in keeping with the foregoing discussion, stand out as defining criteria: first, the perceptual barrier that sleep erects between us and the waking world, and; second, the relatively rapid reversibility of sleep compared to other bodily states such as coma or death (Dement with Vaughan, 2000). We live through sleep, in other words, unlike death.

Phenomenologically speaking, sleep may be regarded as a ‘withrawal from the intersubjective world’ through a ‘radical alteration in the tension of consciousness’ (Schutz, 1974: 46). Upon waking, ‘my activities of consciousness begin where they left off before I went to sleep’ (Ibid). Between my withdrawal from the everyday life-world and my return to it, however, ‘time has not stood still’ (Ibid). I live through world time, that is to say, as ‘transcending “my time“’ (yesterday was Sunday, today is Monday) (Ibid). Cast in bodily terms, what this amounts to is a phenomenological transition from an ecstatic modality in which the body projects outwards in experience to a recessive modality in which the body falls back into unexperiencable depth (Leder, 1990). Dreams, to be sure, as noted earlier, restore an experiential process; but a preliminary severance from waking involvement, Leder (1990: 57) rightly argues, is necessary in order to dream. It is this ‘severance’, this loss of consciousness to the world that is shared by all phases of sleep. We can only ever access the sleeping body indirectly, moreover: ‘Where “it” is “I”, as conscious perceiving subject, necessarily am not’ (Leder, 1990: 58). Upon awakening, for example, I may fallibly piece together the nature, quality and quantity of my sleep. How do I feel, am I (still) tired, did I get enough sleep? Others too of course provide another indirect route to the nature and quality of my sleep life, whether our nearest and dearest or the technician in the sleep laboratory.

Sleep, therefore, these indirect modes of recovery or apprehension notwithstanding, involves a certain ‘absence’ from self and others. Sleep, moreover, is not something I can directly will, command or control, try as I might. Rather, sleep comes over us, or creeps up on us. We fall asleep. I may look to sleep, mimic sleep, ritually play at sleep, or indirectly try to influence its occurrence in a variety of ingenious ways but, try as I might, sleep comes of its own accord (cf. Merleau-Ponty, 1962). The harder I try to sleep, indeed, the more likely it is to elude or evade me and the worse I am likely to feel. I may even become anxious about my sleep, knowing I need it but being unable to get it. My (incessant) wakefulness, in this case, itself becomes a ‘problem’, thereby transforming my normal mode of corporeal dis-appearance into a state of corporeal dys-appearance (cf. Leder, 1990). Alternatively, I may actually experience my own bodily need, drive or desire for sleep as a ‘problem’, something to be fought against or resisted, given my own waking projects or plans, thereby transforming my body again into a state of corporeal dys-appearance (Crossley, 2004).

Between deep sleep and alert wakefulness, nonetheless, lie a range of ‘intermediate positions’ or ‘transitional states’ through which I ‘cyclically move’ (Leder, 1990). This includes light sleep, half sleep, dream states and various other twilight or hypnagogic experiences (cf. Mavromatis, 1987) that hover somewhere between the ecstastic (the I can) and the recessive (the I cannot) (Leder, 1990). Lucid dreaming is particularly interesting on this count, given the fact that people are consciously aware they are dreaming, when they are dreaming (ie, ‘I am dreaming this’), hence the term lucid dreaming (see, for example, La Berge, 1985). They may even, in rare or fleeting instances begin to take control of their dream world. This in turn suggests that: (i) the statement ‘I am asleep’, contra Malcolm (1959), is perhaps possible (ie, that people ‘can and do have dream experiences in which they are aware of being asleep and dreaming’ (Mavromatis, 1987: 104–5)); (ii) dreams are no mere fabrications we conjure upon waking, and; (iii) we can perhaps, to the extent that lucid dreams are influenced by us in this fashion, be ‘sinful’ or ‘immoral’ in our dreams (see, for example, Flanagan, 2000).

A further important qualification to the foregoing discussion arises at this point, namely that we are never entirely ‘cut off’ from or ‘dead to’ the intersubjective world, even when asleep. Not only is sleep a rapidly reversible state, it involves a partial or selective rather than total screening of external stimuli. Some things may not wake us but others surely will: the gentle calling of our name, perhaps, or the slightest stirrings of a mother's newborn baby. A strong enough stimuli, if all else fails, will usually arouse us and bring us back into the waking world, happily or otherwise. This therefore, harking back to previous Cartesian formulations, implies a partial rather than a total loss of self/world in sleep: we remain, to varying degrees, socially ‘attuned’ or ‘attentive’ whilst we sleep. Our intentional threads to the intersubjective world, in short, as Merleau-Ponty (1962) reminds us, are ‘never entirely severed’. We are never entirely sleepers, not even in the deepest darkest moments of sleep.

Safe and sound in our beds? The embodied vulnerabilities and dangers of sleep(iness)

Embedded in the foregoing discussion are further important questions regarding the embodied vulnerabilities and dangers of sleep(iness), both to self and others. We are all, of course, by virtue of our fleshy, mortal, embodiment, vulnerable creatures in sickness and in health: beings unto death. Sleep, it is clear, whilst undoubtedly a source of great comfort and pleasure, sanctuary and salvation for many of us, renders us vulnerable or dangerous, potentially at least, in all sorts of ways.

A number of points may be raised in support of this contention. For a start, the loss of waking consciousness and control that sleep involves renders me vulnerable both to other waking agents who may do me ‘harm’ and to my (absent) self. It is true of course that we all have to sleep at some time or other. Sleep, in this respect, may well be construed as a great leveller: ‘thy indifferent judge between high and low’, to quote Sir Philip Syndey's famous phrase. Waking agents, nonetheless, have a distinct advantage by virtue of their wakefulness over those who sleep. The power balance, as such, is firmly tilted in favour of waking agents whilst we sleep. Whilst I am asleep, for example, burglars may tip-toe into my house, steal my goods, and leave me with few worldly possession when I awake the next morning. I may even be attacked in the night or killed in my sleep, being caught ‘unaware’ or ‘off my guard’. Raids too, for good reason, are often conducted in the middle of the night or early hours of the morning when people are asleep in their beds and hence at their most vulnerable. Feigning sleep, in contrast, goes someway towards reversing this power imbalance, lulling waking agents into a false sense of security through the guise or mantle of sleep (Schwartz, 1970).

Matters do not end here, however. We are also vulnerable to ourselves, given the loss of bodily control sleep effects. Sleep disorders, for example, come in many shapes and sizes, from sleep apnoea (colloquially known as the ‘midnight strangler’) through the horrors of the nightmare to restless leg syndrome (Kryger et al., 2005). Take sleep paralysis (SP) and sleep walking (somnambulism), for instance. The former, (SP), is a sleep-wake cycle disturbance occurring in the transition into or out of sleep which involves feelings of paralysis for several seconds or minutes, often accompanied by hypnagogic experiences. This may include auditory and visual hallucinations, a sense of an evil presence or pressure on the chest (the so-called ‘incubus’ or ‘old hag’) and associated feelings of choking, suffocating, floating or out-of-body sensations (see, for example, Cheyne et al., 1999). Unlike the nightmare, however, SP is a waking experience that may result in feelings of abject terror. Beliefs about demonic attacks, paranormal experiences, even alien abductions, are common, moreover, despite prevailing physiological explanations. Weisgerber's (2004) study of SP sufferers use of the Internet, for example, clearly suggests that far from dispelling these myths surrounding the disorder, the interactions of on-line bulletin board members of the SP community actually reinforced them by offering a forum for the articulation and discussion of alternative (ie, non-medical) explanatory frameworks.

Somnambulists, in contrast, may quite literally find themselves walking into all sorts of trouble. Perhaps the most recent illustration of this, reported in the British national press, concerned a 15-year-old girl who was rescued after she went sleep -walking and ended up on the arm of a 130- foot crane! On spotting the girl, a passer-by dialled 999, prompting a dramatic rescue operation by emergency services to reach the girl who was unaware of the danger she was in. Asked to comment on this seemingly bizarre event, a sleep expert stated that he was not at all surprised by the incident: ‘I treat people who have driven cars, ridden horses and even attempted to fly a helicopter’, he said (Ebrahim, quoted in Marsh, 2005).

It is not simply a case of the sleepers’ vulnerability to self/others, however. Others may also be vulnerable to us when we sleep. We may, in other words, be a danger to others by virtue of our sleeping bodies. I may lash out at my partner in my sleep, for example, dealing her a violent, albeit unintentional, blow. Cases have also been reported of murders committed whilst asleep, acquittal hanging or falling on this dormant criterion. Jules Lowe, for example, in a recent court case in Manchester, was acquitted of murdering his father Eddie after he, with the help of a sleep expert, convinced the jury that he was sleep-walking at the time.

Bodies then, as this suggests, may behave quite ‘badly’ when we sleep, placing both self and others at risk. We are, in this respect, socially as well as physically vulnerable given the potentially embarrassing or stigmatizing, if not criminal, consequences of these dormant acts.

There is however a further important dimension to this picture of the embodied vulnerabilities of sleep, one hinted at earlier, which has less to do with the actual state of being asleep, or even the act of feigning sleep, than with the embodied vulnerabilities that lack of sleep, particularly prolonged or sustain lack of sleep, engenders. The effects of sleep deprivation, as this suggests, are likely to vary depending on the nature and type of sleep deprivation in question. Total sleep deprivation, for example, is a very different case from limited or partial sleep deprivation. Effects, moreover, are likely to vary from individual to individual. The longer I go without sleep, however, the more I am likely to suffer in one way or another. I am liable, for example, to feel increasingly tired and sleepy – itself variable throughout any twenty-four period due to circadian rhythms within the body – to find cognitive and motor tasks more difficult to perform, to become more sensitive to pain, to become moody, irritable or downright bad tempered, even to hallucinate or become paranoid. Body temperature, immune functioning and health status may also be affected in due course. Whether or not total sleep deprivation is lethal is difficult to assess, for obvious ethical reasons. Results from animal studies, nonetheless, clearly suggest that eventual death results (see, for example, Rechtschaffen et al., 1989).

Sleep deprivation, it is claimed, is a common complaint in a 24/7 society, the costs and consequences of which are still being counted. There is, however, a darker more disturbing side to the sleep deprivation story in which our own embodied need for sleep is used against us for various dubious ends and purposes. A common theme in our pilot work on women's experiences of (not) sleeping in contexts of domestic violence (for example, Williams, et al., 2004; Lowe et al., 2007) ² was being woken or stopped from sleeping as part of the abuse (‘don't you dare go to sleep’). Related themes included being afraid to sleep too deeply (‘sleeping on your guard’); fear of being attacked or even killed whilst asleep; sleeping with weapons of self-defence by the bed; taking/timing sleep when perpetrators of domestic violence were out or about to sleep themselves; fighting constant fatigue and other physical and emotional signs of abuse and sleep deprivation; use of alcohol, street and prescription drugs to manage sleep, and; continuing ‘bad’ or ‘poor’ sleep (including bad dreams) after the domestic violence had ended, particularly when court cases or child contact was imminent. The impact of domestic violence on children's sleep was also a prominent theme in these women's accounts, including disturbed sleep, night waking, bed-wetting and episodes of shouting and crying in their sleep.

What we see here in effect is the way in which power relations are re/constituted in and through the ‘control’ of sleep, thereby rendering these women and children vulnerable. Sleep deprivation in such circumstances is part and parcel of a regime to establish a docile and powerless victim whose own response is dulled or blunted through these very means (Lowe et al., 2007). There are direct links here, moreover, to the use of sleep deprivation in other contexts as an instrument of interrogation, punishment or torture, a very effective one at that, given it leaves no obvious physical marks or traces on its victims. These techniques or tactics, indeed, have a long history in both the East and West. Perhaps the most recent well publicized case of these principles in practice concerns the euphemistically described ‘sleep management’, ‘dietary manipulation’ and ‘stress position’ techniques used by US military personnel in Abu Ghraib and Guatanamo Bay. Debates on the legality of these techniques continues. Their ‘efficacy’ in breaking down even the most recalcitrant of victims, nonetheless, is surely beyond doubt, the very reason indeed for their continuing deployment, legal or otherwise.

To these observations on the darker side of sleep deprivation, we may of course add the plight of those who, for whatever reason, spend their lives sleeping ‘rough’ on the street. Sleep, for example, as Rensen's (2003) insightful ethnography of sleeping rough on the streets of Amsterdam shows, is a ‘rare privilege’ for the majority of outside sleepers. Even resting is ‘scarcely possible’, given the nature of street life and the embodied vulnerabilities it entails. The homeless, as such, may exist in a liminal state somewhere between fatigue and half-sleep. Sleeping outside, in this respect, is almost always a ‘compromise’ which itself embodies ‘numerous facets of homelessness’. Placing these issues in global perspective, moreover, provides a further important reminder of the precarious sleep and unenviable sleeping arrangements of those living in other adverse conditions (be it poverty, overcrowding, famine, flood or bloodshed) around the world today.

Whilst sleep then, to summarize, may well be a corporeal release or pleasure to be anticipated and savoured, it also embodies and engenders its own potential vulnerabilities and dangers, not simply when we do sleep but also when we do not sleep, both for self and others (with or without bed and abode) across the public-private divide.

Going to bed/doing sleeping: emotion, habit, trust and routine

The danger in the foregoing analysis is that it paints an overly passive picture of sleep, or perhaps more correctly the sleeper, and that it fosters a largely negative impression that sleep is all about dangers, hazards, risks and vulnerabilities. Yet sleep as I have already stressed, is a corporeal pleasure for many if not all of us, something we look forward to if not welcome as a vital social ‘release’. It is also something we actively try to manage or ‘do’ (cf. Taylor, 1993) in our daily/nightly lives, thereby placing it under our own partial control. But what precisely does this partial control involve or entail?

A number of points may be made here with respect to ‘going to bed’ and ‘doing’ sleeping. For a start, from a physical and spatial viewpoint, we tend to sleep, ‘rough’ sleepers notwithstanding, in specially designated places and spaces, usually though not always in the privacy and comfort of our own homes, or our bedrooms to be more precise. Sleep and residency, as Schwartz (1970) astutely notes, are intimately related, thereby tying bed to abode and dormancy to domicile. In going to bed, moreover, I may go through a series of more or less elaborate checking routines and rituals designed to put my mind at rest and ensure, as best I can, my own (and other family members) safety and security whilst I/we sleep. I may, for example, bolt the door, close the windows, set the alarm, and check various other pieces of equipment that need to be turned off for the night are turned off. I should also, of course, if I am diligent or safety-conscious, check the smoke alarms at least once a week to make sure they perform their duty of night watchmen, alerting us to any danger, whilst we sleep in our beds.

These routines and rituals are part and parcel of other more explicit body-centred routines and rituals involved in going to bed and going to sleep, practices which help prepare us for sleep or facilitate our passage into this dormant state. In going to bed, for example, I may go to the bathroom, clean my teeth, change out of my day clothes, put on my pyjamas, climb into bed and set the alarm clock. I may also take a warm bath, have a milky drink, read in bed for a little while, listen to the radio, or perhaps if I am having particular difficulty with my sleep, take a sleeping tablet or some herbal remedy to lull me into the land of Nod. These seemingly humble bed-time rituals and routines, moreover, may be particularly elaborate in the case of young children, including bathing, bed-time stories, lullabies, tucking in or swaddling, kissing goodnight and so forth (Ben-Ari, 2005). Similarly, upon awakening the next morning, I may go through a series of more or less elaborate ‘reverse’ routines and rituals that help ease or facilitate my passage back into the waking world, including a return to the bathroom, the brushing of my teeth, washing, shaving and dressing, having breakfast and so forth.

What we have here, in effect, is a status or role passage which itself is mediated or facilitated by a ‘transition phase’ or ‘interactional membrane’ (cf. Goffman, 1961; Schwartz, 1970) of the utmost importance for any successful or accomplished movement to and from the waking world, or into and out of the ‘sleep role’ if you prefer (Schwartz, 1970). Sleep, from this perspective, is mediated by way of a series of body techniques, rituals and practices (cf. Mauss, 1973/1934; Bourdieu, 1984) which bring it under our own partial control: an important reminder of the learnt as well as the unlearnt, reflexive as well as the pre-reflexive, purposive as well was the non-purposive, personal as well as the pre-personal, elements of this embodied transition into and out of waking life (Crossley, 2004). It is not simply a case of the individual preparing for bed because they are tired or sleepy, however, but of growing tired or sleepy in and through these preparatory phases, processes or practices; a ‘reciprocity of motive and action in the sleep role’, as Schwartz (1970: 488–91) appositely puts it. These techniques and rituals, moreover, provide a crucial means of establishing ontological security and basic trust (cf. Giddens, 1984). Trust and security, reciprocally, are the important prerequisites or indispensable ingredients for the effectiveness of these very techniques and rituals themselves (Crossley, 2004). ‘To sleep’, in other words, ‘we must be at rest, which means free of anxiety, which in turn means ontologically secure. Habits and routines are the key to such security’ (Crossley, 2004: 11).

Emotions, it is clear, are intimately bound up with these issues. I will not for example, sleep soundly if I am feeling anxious, insecure or unsafe, or if I am feeling sad, angry, fearful or stressed about something. The nature and quality of my sleep, in reciprocal fashion, is likely to affect my mood and feelings in significant, though perhaps unacknowledged, ways. If I have not slept well, for whatever reason, I may be moody, irritable, bad tempered, prone to emotional outbursts or just plain unbearable to live with, particularly if my sleep problems continue unabated. Good or bad dreams too may engender a variety of emotions both during the dream itself and upon waking as we ponder and piece them back together as best we can, with or without the aid of an analyst.

There is in fact a lot of (hidden) emotion work or emotion management (cf. Hochschild, 1983) involved in ‘doing’ sleeping in relation both to self and other. Individuals, for instance, may attempt to resolve, or at least rehearse, some of the emotional issues of the day when they take to their beds (Pahl, 2005). Longer-term emotional issues may also be mulled over in these quieter moments, both prior to sleep and during other points of the night should we awaken. Putting children to bed and tending to them in the night provides another important dimension to the picture here – a further hidden form of emotion work which tends to fall most heavily on women's shoulders (Hislop & Arber, 2003).

We also, of course, frequently sleep together rather than alone. Modern day coupledom it seems is predicated on the need to sleep together as a symbol or embodied expression of the relationship; a great source of comfort if not security for many of us. To sleep with one's partner or lover, indeed, denotes a level of intimacy and trust over and above the purely physical, carnal or sexual act (Schwartz, 1970). ³ Couples who decide to sleep apart, therefore, for whatever reason, must contend with the symbolic as well as the practical significance of doing so in terms of what this says, rightly or wrongly, about their relationship. Sleeping in an empty bed, moreover, when you have been used to sleeping next to your nearest and dearest, may itself give rise to awkward, strange or uneasy feelings and hence to varying degrees of sleep disturbance. The doing of sleeping then, as this suggests, is closely bound up with the doing of emotion and the doing of intimacy: an embodied expression of mutual trust and vulnerability through which we are commonly, carnally bound.

Vulnerability, vigilance and virtue: the problematization of sleep in a 24/7 risk society as a matter of ‘public concern’

The bulk of this chapter so far has been taken up with the embodied vulnerabilities and dangers of sleep(iness) and the doing of sleeping in everyday/night life. A full sociological account of these issues, however, must also contend with the manner in which sleep is becoming increasingly ‘problematized’ in contemporary society as a matter of ‘public concern’: an issue that involves both a heightened social awareness and cultural sensitivity to the ‘risks’ associated with lack of sleep and calls for ever greater vigilance in relation to sleep and alertness management. The moral equation of sleep with sloth, in this respect, is now being challenged or reconfigured through a revaluation of the virtues of sleep, albeit a revaluation which remains broadly congruent with late capitalist imperatives and agendas. We live in an era in which people, so we are told, are not getting ‘enough’ sleep given the pressures of life and living in 24/7 society (www.sleepfoundation.org; Dement with Vaughan, 2000; Leadbeater, 2004). The stresses and strains of work, the demands of family life, expanding leisure and entertainment opportunities and the endless possibilities of the technology revolution, these and many other factors are said to be keeping us from our beds and depriving us of our sleep. Sleepiness, as such, is becoming increasingly problematized as an ‘at risk’ state; a transition, as Kroll-Smith and Gunter (2005) astutely comment, from a relatively benign, private, corporeal moment and promise of tranquil repose, into a public, clinical, measurable condition and a potentially hazardous reprobate state, both to self and others. Alongside, or opposite, the idea of sleepiness as a naturally occurring bodily state, in other words, we now find growing concerns in professional and popular culture about the consequences of sleepiness for health and public safety.

Sleepiness, it is claimed, is a prime culprit or contributory factor in many accidents, both on and off the job, from the Exxon Valdez oil spill to the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster (Moore-Ede, 1993). Drowsiness behind the wheel, moreover, is now construed as every bit as dangerous as drunk driving. It is also viewed as the enemy of creativity, productivity and performance in all walks of life. This in turn translates more or less readily into the politics of blame if not the criminalization of sleepiness in a 24/7 society – the basic message being that you too are responsible for getting ‘enough’ sleep. The UK Selby rail disaster, for example, resulted in a man being put behind bars on the grounds that he was wrecklessly sleepy behind the wheel. States in the US such as New Jersey are also now criminalizing drowsiness behind the wheel (Kroll-Smith & Gunter, 2005). Meanwhile, various organizations, particularly in the US, are starting to introduce ‘sleep-friendly’ or ‘sleep-smart’ policies and practices, including the seemingly humble workplace nap, thereby bringing corporeal needs and corporate demands into closer alignment through a further ‘deprivatization’ of sleep (see, for example, Baxter & Kroll-Smith, 2005; Brown, 2004).

What we have here then, are a series of scientific, medical, managerial and moral discourses and agendas, themselves borrowing liberally from one another and popularized through the media (Kroll-Smith, 2003), in which sleep(iness) is increasingly problematized as a matter of public concern; a problem which calls for ever renewed vigilance. We are, it seems, increasingly advised, encouraged or cajoled, through multiple forms of authority and expertise, to govern, regulate or supervise our sleep as well as our waking lives in the name of health and happiness, wisdom and virtue, productivity and performance in all walks of life (Kroll-Smith, 2003; Kroll-Smith & Gunter, 2005). Sleep, in these and other ways, is increasingly being put to work, both literally and metaphorically, in the interests of medicalized and managerial agendas in the 24/7 era (Williams, 2005; Brown, 2004).

One may also speculate in this vein about the future uptake of new wakefulness promoting drugs such as Provigil (Modafinil). Initially marketed for the treatment of conditions such as narcolepsy, this drug is already being used in the US for newly emergent conditions such as ‘shift-work sleep disorder’ and ‘excessive daytime sleepiness’ (EDS). It is also being trailed in the military. Is this, we might justifiably ask, the thin end of the wedge? When imagined in corporate contexts, for example, ‘might it be possible that workers will be encouraged to use it and work even longer without rest’, thereby helping ‘overcome bodily limitations in the name of success’ (Brown, 2004: 186)? Will sleep(iness), in other words, be increasingly micro-managed in this fashion in the future, both on and off the job, given the pressures of life and living in the 24/7 era? And if so, at what human cost? Something to sleep on perhaps….

Conclusions

It is tempting, given the relatively embryonic state of sociological work on sleep to date, to avoid any hard-and-fast conclusions or to end on an inconclusive note. A number of points nonetheless are worth spelling out in closing.

The first, most obvious, point to note, echoing the theme of this particular section of the monograph, is that a full and proper sociological account of living in/as a body must of necessity include or incorporate sleep. Sleep, as we have seen, raises important further questions about the being and having aspects of embodiment. It also poses intriguing questions about consciousness, agency and selfhood. But whilst sleep, I have argued, may justifiably be construed as a corporeal pleasure and a valued ‘social release’, it also renders us vulnerable or dangerous, potentially at least, to self and others through this loss of waking consciousness and loss of corporeal control. In order to sleep, therefore, we need to feel safe, secure and at ease. Sleep, indeed, as I have shown, is intimately bound up with emotion, trust and ontological (in)security. The ‘doing’ or reflexive management of sleeping, in this respect, modifies these embodied vulnerabilities and dangers in important ways. The basic embodied fact remains nonetheless that we are all more or less vulnerable or dangerous when we sleep, both to self and others.

This in turn raises a broader series of sociological questions about sleep, vulnerability and human rights. If Turner (1992) is correct that human rights need to be grounded in our own embodied vulnerability then again this must surely include sleep. The fragile, fitful, fateful sleep of those in poor, war-torn, famine-stricken, disease-ridden parts of the world today, moreover, provides another powerful reminder of this basic embodied fact. Sleep, from this perspective, may very well be a great leveller and a basic human right but it is also something that unites and divides us: a sensitive existential marker or expression of (in)equality, (in)security and (in)justice, both past and present, public and private.

The other point to spell out in closing concerns the increasing problematization of sleep in a 24/7 risk society as a matter of public concern. Sleep, as we have seen, is increasingly construed and constructed as a new site of risk and a new source of governance tied to the politics of blame. Within this new configuration of meaning, vigilance is valorized, with or without the aid of the latest pharmacological ‘fix’. As for the future of sleep, clearly, to the extent that sleep remains a valued ‘social release’, it will not be ‘done away with’ lightly, either as a designer lifestyle option or a permanent post-human possibility. That sleep is now being ‘put to work’ in corporate culture, however, is surely a telling sign: the final frontier perhaps of late capitalism?

In these and other ways, then, sociology has much to contribute to the study of sleep and society. The argument here, however, is not so much for a ghettoized sociology of sleep, seen as the province of the mad, marginal or maverick few, but of the relevance of sleep to the sociological enterprise as a whole, not least the sociology of embodiment. It is time therefore, to conclude, for sociologists to wake up to the trials and tribulations, if not the problems and politics of sleep.