ANTHROPOLOGIES OF THE
BODY
• Scheper-Hughes & Lock – “the mindful
body”
• Phenomenology & embodiment
• Bourdieu – Structure, habitus, practice
Scheper-Hughes & Lock:
anthropology of the body
• “The body as simultaneously a physical and
symbolic artifact, naturally and culturally
produced, anchored in a particular historical
moment”
• Four bodies – individual body, social body, and
body politic, the mindful body
• separate but overlapping units of analysis
– different theoretical approaches
– phenomenology, structuralism and symbolism, poststructuralism (practice theory – structure & agency)
The Individual Body
• lived experience of the body-self, body,
mind, matter, psyche, soul
The Social Body
• representational uses of the body as a
natural symbol with which to think about
nature, society, culture
The Body Politic
• regulation, surveillance, & control of
bodies (individual & collective) in
reproduction & sexuality, in work & leisure,
in sickness & other forms of deviance
The Mindful Body
• the most immediate, the proximate terrain
where social truths and social
contradictions are played out
• a locus of personal and social resistance,
creativity, and struggle
• emotions form the mediatrix between the
individual, social and political body, unified
through the concept of the 'mindful body.'
PHENOMENOLOGY &
EMBODIMENT
• Body is not an object to be studied in relation to
culture, but is to be considered as the SUBJECT
of culture
• body is a setting in relation to the world;
consciousness is the body projecting itself into
the world
• Experience not a primordial existential given but
a historically and culturally constitutes process
predicated on certain ways of being in the world
STRUCTURE, HABITUS,
PRACTICE (agency)
• Structure – a particular class of conditions of
existence produce habitus
• Habitus – regulated and regular without being in
any way the product of obedience to rules
• habitus can be collectively orchestrated without
being the product of the organizing action of a
conductor
• Social agents operate according to their "feel for
the game" (the "feel" being, roughly, habitus,
and the "game" being the structure).
STRUCTURE, HABITUS,
PRACTICE (agency)
• Practical sense (practice) -- proleptic
adjustment (anticipatory) to demands of a
field (structure)
• encounter between habitus and a field
which makes possible the near-perfect
anticipation of the future inscribed in all the
concrete configurations (structure)
• the experience -- objective structures -played out as the feel for direction,
orientation, impending outcome
Gender:
the individual body, the social
body, the body politic, and habitus
• Sex, sexuality, &
gender
– Not the same thing
Sex & the individual body
• differences in biology
• Is this a man or
woman?
– How do you know?
Sex & the Social Body
• Tells us part of the
story, but not all of the
story
Gender
Gender
• GENDER - the cultural construction of
male & female characteristics
– vs. the biological nature of men & women
• SEX differences are biological - GENDER
differences are cultural
• behavioral & attitudinal differences from
social & cultural rather than biological
point of view
• Gender refers to the ways members of the
two sexes are perceived, evaluated and
expected to behave
Gender Boundaries
• since gender is culturally constructed the
boundaries are conceptual rather than
physical
• Boundaries require markers to indicate
gender
• the boundaries are dynamic, eg. now it is
acceptable for men to wear earrings
Boundary Markers
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Voice
Physique
Dress
Behaviour
Hair style
Kinetics
Language use
Boundary Markers & Inter-personal
Interaction
• How do we react
when someone
seems to have traits
of each category?
• social intercourse
requires that the
interacting parties
know to which gender
Felicita Vestvali
category `the other'
1824 - 1880
belongs
New York opera star who specialized
in singing contralto "trouser roles."
Women cross dress
all the time.
The difference is
perception.
Acceptance or
Rejection by society
Blurring the Boundaries
• persistence of dualisms in ideologies of
gender
• other categories - every society including
our own is at some time or other faced
with people who do not fit into its sex &
gender categories
“Third” Gender
• a significant number of people
are born with genitalia that is
neither clearly male or female
– Hermaphrodites
• persons who change their
biological sex
• persons who exhibit behavior
deemed appropriate for the
opposite sex
• persons who take on other
gender roles other than those
indicated by their genitals
“Third” Gender
• multiple cultural & historical worlds in which
people of divergent gender & sexual desire exist
– margins or borders of society
• may pass as normal to remain hidden in the
official ideology & everyday commerce of social
life
• In some societies when discovered - iconic
matter out of place - "monsters of the cultural
imagination“
• third gender as sexual deviance a common
theme in N. America
Is it possible to have a genderless
society?
Sexuality & the body politic
• all societies regulate sexuality
– lots of variation cross-culturally
• degree of restrictiveness not always
consistent through life span
– adolescence vs. adulthood
• Varieties of “normative” sexual orientation
– Heterosexual, homosexual, transexual
• Sexuality in societies change over time
Sexuality as body politics
• sex acts have varying social significance and
subjective meanings in accordance with the
cultural context in which they occur
– as evidenced by cross-cultural variation in sex
categories and labels
• the underlying assumption -- sexuality is
mediated by cultural and historical factors
• distinctions to be made between sexual acts,
sexual identities, and sexual communities.
GENDER & POWER
• gender roles - tasks & activities that a culture
assigns to sexes
• gender stereotypes - oversimplified strongly held
ideas about the characteristics of men & women
& third sex-third gender
• gender stratification - unequal distribution of
rewards (socially valued resources, power,
prestige, personal freedom) between men &
women reflecting their position in the social
hierarchy
Gender & the Social Order
Social Stratification & Gender
• Gender is an important dimension of social
inequality
• Gender stratification frequently takes the
form of patriarchy whereby men dominate
women
• Do women in our society have a second
class status relative to men? If so How?
universals versus particulars
• universal subordination of women is often
cited as one of the true cross-cultural
universals, a pan-cultural fact
– Engels called it the “world historical defeat of
women”
• even so the particulars of women’s roles,
statuses, power, and value differ
tremendously by culture
The Poetics & Politics of Bodies
• Body image as text/representation
• The poetics of the text/representation
– identify aesthetic elements, narrative structures,
epistemology
• The politics of text/representation
– Behavior (structure) controls perception
– the body image experienced in perception
approximates that anticipated by the cognized &
behaving self.
• the use of the body-as-symbol and the distortion
of the body image for communicative purposes
• Images of our bodies is a basic component of
our concept of our self and our personal identity.
Some Observations of Bodies in N.
America
• media's increasing use of slim female models and
images of nearly unattainable body measurements
• young women are subjected to images of the “perfect”
female body and are subsequently distorting their own
body images
• Complaints about body fat have become normal
discourse among females
• “This pattern of body image distortion is considerably
more pronounced and more common in women than in
men, to the point that it is considered a characteristically
female phenomenon (1999).
• new field of social aesthetics
Western Male Bodies & Taiwanese
Male Bodies
• Body image disorders appear to be more
prevalent in Western than non-Western men
• Previous studies have shown that young
Western men display unrealistic body ideals and
that Western advertising seems to place an
increasing value on the male body
• Do Taiwanese men exhibit less dissatisfaction
with their bodies than Western men?
• Does Taiwanese advertising place less value on
the male body than Western media?
• Am J Psychiatry 162:263-269, February 2005
Men & Poetics/Politics of Male
Bodies: advertising & self
• Taiwanese men exhibited significantly less
body dissatisfaction than their Western
counterparts.
• In the magazine study, American
magazine advertisements portrayed
undressed Western men frequently, but
Taiwanese magazines portrayed
undressed Asian men rarely
Conclusions
• Taiwan appears less preoccupied with male
body image than Western societies.
• This difference may reflect
– Western traditions emphasizing muscularity and
fitness as a measure of masculinity
– increasing exposure of Western men to muscular
male bodies in media images
– greater decline in traditional male roles in the West,
leading to greater emphasis on the body as a
measure of masculinity
• These factors may explain why body dysmorphic
disorder and anabolic steroid abuse are more
serious problems in the West than in Taiwan.
Discourse, Subjectivity, Power
• Discourses
– a system of representation
– Codes and conventions
– rules and practices that produce meaningful
statements and regulate discourse in different
historical periods
• "Discourse, Foucault argues, “constructs
the topic. It defines and produces the
objects of our knowledge. It governs the
way that a topic can be meaningfully talked
about and reasoned about.”
Concepts of the Individual, self,
person in anthropology
• Individual as member of humankinde
(biologistic)
• Self as locus of experience
(psychologistic)
• Person as agent-in-society (sociologistic)
Identity and Subjectivity
• Social order -- arrays of identifications
jockeying for position, gaining and losing
strength, clashing with others, aligning
with still others, and defining the texture of
social action in their activity.
• Subjectivity – complex negotiation of
representation & experience
• constructing the subject, constructing
agency, constituting subjectivity
Discourse, Subjectivity, Power
• Discourse -- the bearer of various subject positions
• Subject positions -- specific positions of agency and identity in
relation to particular forms of knowledge and practice
• Subjectivity --produced within discourse, subjected to
discourse.
• subject position--[for us to become the subject of a
particular discourse, and thus the bearers of its
power/knowledge] we must locate ourselves in the position
from which the discourse makes most sense, and thus
become its 'subjects' by subjecting' ourselves to its meanings,
power and regulation.
Discourse, Gender, Power
• sexuality and the body -- sites of power
and politics
• socially imposed structures that objectified
sexual identity and gender differences
• socially imposed structures that shape
gender relations and behavior