This essay focuses on Richard Sennett's Flesh and stone. The body and the cify in Western dvilization. It stresses some of lhe central questions in Sennett's baok: the relationship between a global history and a local perspective; .uses" or .ways of doing" as ways of producing. Although not Sennett's main concern, implications of these questions in lhe field of material culture studies are investigated, especially the possibility of a discursive paradigm in the analysis of spatial practices and bodily experiences.