A volume of essays taking up the theme of castration invites an exploration of the relationship between the biological and the social, the private and the public. Indeed, the ‘private parts’, those which are kept hidden, are by their very nature not private but social: they can only perform their biological, generative function with another person. A focus not just on the body, but on the male generative organ, raises a number of questions about the human, sexed body and the interpretation of the social role of the biological body: what is its value, how should it be used, who may act on it, what does its presence or absence signify, and what does it indicate about an individual's social function? Taking the male member by itself provides an opportunity for a pars pro toto response to a long-standing conundrum in social theory: ‘Is the person merely a collection of roles or is the person the organizing principle which integrates and orchestrates given social roles?’ Evidence from the Anglo-Saxon period indicates that the body was valued for the functions it could perform. The individual gave a means for recognizing a collection of functions; but the evidence depicts the individual primarily in terms of how a larger social matrix incorporated, and therefore valued, him rather than the individual holding inherent value. However, there is no single social matrix for the Anglo-Saxon period, but a changing vision of social order, how the individual fit into it, and the part the individual played in maintaining it.