Anthropology of the Body

La sessualità, oggi, si "vede" ovunque, non occorre andarla a cercare; ci troviamo di fronte ad un flusso costante di immagini più o meno velatamente riferite al sesso ma di sessualità non si parla. Forse la si balbetta, pressappoco, nelle pagine delle riviste, nelle conversazioni tra pari, nelle chat e nei forum. La reticenza nel riconoscere il giusto spazio ad un argomento come la sessualità è il sintomo di un disagio diffuso, che diventa malessere nel momento in cui viene associata all'adolescenza.
Il volume propone una ricostruzione articolata del processo di sviluppo della sessualità individuali, partendo dall'infanzia fino alla tarda adolescenza.
La riflessione condotta in queste pagine, incentrata sul contesto italiano ma con costanti raffronti ad altre realtà sociali, culturali e storiche, si sviluppa partendo da un insieme di testimonianze raccolte sul campo, attraverso la conduzione di interviste, focus group e l'analisi di materiale etnografico online. Lo scopo è dare la parola agli adolescenti per mostrare dall'interno il mutamento in atto; un cambiamento che, per certi versi, sta portando al superamento delle tradizionali dicotomie di genere.

The opposition between the naked and the clothed body is one of the most productive elements of cultural history and is often associated with the dichotomy between nature and culture. According to tradition, nudity stimulates the imagination and is the imaginary origin of art. The article examines this narrative in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and in the eighteenth century in Rousseau, the Encyclopédie, and Winckelmann, in order to show its poetic productivity, but also its colonial entanglements.

Following the neoliberal restructuration of the Turkish welfare and banking systems in the 2000s, many veterans of Turkey’s Kurdish war faced debt enforcement due to failed payments for prosthetic limbs. Veterans responded to debt collection by turning their own bodies into spectacles of debt and sacrifice by publicly removing and showcasing their debt-ridden prostheses. The media interest in these prosthetic spectacles further amplified the visceral threat of dismemberment evoked by veterans’ embodied performances. The public debates surrounding “prosthesis repossession” cases extended well beyond veteran welfare issues, inscribing all sorts of social and political anxieties on the amputee veteran body, such as anxieties around the incommensurability between the value regimes of nationalism and neoliberalism or around the Syrian refugees. Providing a window into larger questions about the interconnections between disability, gender, nationalism, and neoliberal capitalism, prosthesis repossession cases show us how debt and disability coproduce each other at the nexus of consumer debt and nationalist welfare in Turkey. By homing in on the prosthetic re-membering and dismembering of veteran bodies in a rapidly changing health milieu, we see how the political economy of violence and the violence of political economy become complicit in the production of debt, dismemberment, and prosthetic rehabilitation.

First published in 1988, this volume redefined the anthropological study of menstrual customs. Examining cultures as diverse as long-house dwellers in North Borneo, African farmers, Welsh housewives, and postindustrial American workers, it challenged the previously widespread image of a universal "menstrual taboo" as well as the common assumption of universal female subordination that underlay it. Offering feminist perspectives on comparative gender politics and symbolism, the book has interested students and scholars in anthropology, women's studies, religion, and comparative health systems. Originally listed as a “Notable” book in Choice, it later won the first Most Enduring Edited Collection Prize, awarded by the Council for the Anthropology of Reproduction (a unit of the American Anthropological Association.). The book continues to be taught regularly around the world.

Este libro presenta los principales abordajes sobre el cuerpo elaborados en la antropología social. En la primera parte se discuten los enfoques teóricos y metodológicos, a partir de un texto Silvia Citro en el que reseña la constitución de la antropología del cuerpo como campo disciplinar, vinculándola con los cambios históricos más importantes en las experiencias cotidianas de los cuerpos en-el-mundo durante el siglo xx. Asimismo, se incluye la publicación, por primera vez en castellano, de traducciones de artículos clave dentro de este campo, como son los de Thomas Csordas, Michael Jackson y Michael Lambek. En la segunda parte se presentan investigaciones sobre la pluralidad de cuerpos abordados, que incluyen desde las construcciones de sexo-género en el sistema médico, las corporalidades que emergen en diversas prácticas laborales urbanas (como las de obreros, policías y bailarinas), hasta el modo en que las dimensiones étnicas y raciales constituyen corporalidades en distintas prácticas y grupos sociales (indígenas, afrodescendientes, modern primitives).

It is sometimes argued that the non-therapeutic, non-consensual alteration of children’s genitals should be discussed in two separate ethical discourses: one for girls (in which such alterations should be termed ‘female genital mutilation’ or FGM), and one for boys (in which such alterations should be termed ‘male circumcision’). In this article, I call into question the moral and empirical basis for such a distinction, and argue that all children—whether female, male, or intersex—should be free from having parts of their genitals removed unless there is a pressing medical indication.

« Les Techniques du corps » (1934), a key text of the Marcel Mauss intellectual legacy, includes a personal testimony on the epistemological effect of his American journey. The purpose of this article is to explore this text in order to precise the role of the contact with the American culture in the evolution of Marcel Mauss’s understanding of cultural practices. We will confirm, through this reading, his departing of the durkheimian tradition in the second part of his career and the long misunderstanding by most of the French sociologists of the originality of his thinking, which explains its contemporary reevaluation.

This is the brochure for the April 2018 conference “Corporeal Restrictions, Embodied Freedoms: Italian Interventions on the Body” organized by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, City University of New York.  The final program will be posted closer to the conference date.

L’accident provoque un changement corporel brutal, qui rompt avec la transformation corporelle ordinaire, toute en continuité et en fluidité. Le corps est soudainement vulnérable, ébranlé par une transformation radicale, à savoir : l’avènement d’un nouveau potentiel corporel.
Ce « nouveau » corps ne se résume pas à un donné biologique naturel et premier, complet et définitif, et dans ce cas irrémédiable. Il va s’agir de le rééduquer. Ainsi, ce potentiel corporel va être l’objet d’un formatage dans le cadre de soins et d’une vie en collectivité, d’une transmission de techniques du corps par les soignants et les rééducateurs, d’une conformation sous l’influence des pairs, d’une sémantisation collective et progressive.
L’expérience corporelle de l’homme blessé se développe en interaction avec son environnement humain, matériel, technologique, social et culturel. Le changement corporel ne trouve pas immédiatement sens au sortir du coma : le réseau sémantique qui permettait jusqu’alors l’interprétation des signaux corporels se révèle progressivement caduque.

Au fil de l’analyse sociologique, le handicap se révèlera le fruit d’apprentissages, le produit d’une socialisation. Et si la chair impose ses contraintes objectives, les significations intériorisées et mises en acte par l’individu, ses pairs et les professionnels de santé soumettent en retour la matière corporelle à leur dictat. Au fur et à mesure de la sémantisation de l’expérience du corps blessé, la matière organique se transforme, et le blessé, d’accidenté devient handicapé.

Tutto imprescindibilmente parte dal corpo, il nostro e dell’Altro, entrambi portatori di segni. Il corpo si fa corpus nel processo di signifi- cazione e di ibridazione. Quando scopriamo che il sé subisce un processo di omologazione, il sé diviene anch’esso globale, dimenticando la differen- ziazione e il riconoscimento dell’Altro come tensione creativa. In qualche modo, più vediamo il mondo uniformarsi, più ci rendiamo conto. Ma chi è veramente l’Altro? Può davvero la bellezza salvarci? Può l’arte avere la consapevolezza di essere politica? Attraverso alcune pratiche estetiche si “narra” il fenomeno complesso delle migrazioni e l’avanzare delle estreme destre nel mondo. Attraverso ciò che chiamiamo arte traduciamo questo fenomeno complesso.

______________________________
Everything inevitably starts from the body, our body and that of the Other, both bearing signs. The body becomes corpus in the process of signification and hybridization. When we discover that the self enjoys a process of homologation, the self also becomes global, forgetting the differentiation and recognition of the Other as a creative tension. Somehow, the more we see the world conform, the more we realize. But who is really the Other? Beauty will save the world? Can art have the awareness of being political? Through some aesthetic practices we “narrate” the complex phenomenon of migrations and the rise of the Right-Wing Populism in the World. Through the art we translate this complex phenomenon.

ABSTRACT In the article, we make an attempt at discussing what it means that our reality is commodified, what the consequences of this are, how we commodify our bodies and what role in this process is played by cyborgization, as well as what the relation between commodification and disembodiment is. These issues seem to be significant, because when the consumptionist and neoliberal discourse is reconstructed, the aspect of commodification of a human through cyborgization is omitted or marginalized. And such a context of commodification seems to be especially important, as it constitutes the idea of radical questioning of a biological body as a commodity of high market value. Thus, it constitutes the paradox of the commodification of body, i.e. a situation when the most attractive (from the consumer’s point view) body is a body that is disembodied to the maximum.

Антропология движения и танца возникла как особая дисциплина в 1970-е годы в работах Джоан Кеалиинохомоку, Дрид Уильямс и их единомышленников. Она сочетает в себе контекстуалистский, или «эмический» (emic), подход к человеческому движению c подходом универсалистским, «этическим» (etic). В отличие от прежней этнографии, она не является западноцентристской, исследуя «высокие» формы танца – такие, как балет – наряду с «танцевальным фольклором». Вместо умозрительных рассуждений о «функциях» танца в обществе или «причинах», по которым люди танцуют, современная антропология движения и танца задается вопросом «что люди делают, когда танцуют?», трактуя человеческое движение как целенаправленное и осознанное действие. Пользуясь такими категориями, как «танцевальное» (экспрессивное) тело, эта дисциплина смыкается с театральной антропологией

Winner of 2009 Outstanding Book Award, North American Society for the Sociology of Sport.

In parks and cafes, homes and stadium stands, Cubans talk baseball. I contend that when they are analyzing and debating plays, games, teams, and athletes, Cubans are exchanging ideas not just about baseball but also about Cuba and cubanidad, or what it means to be Cuban. I explore the interconnections between baseball and Cuban identity. Suggesting that baseball is in many ways an apt metaphor for cubanidad, I point out aspects of the sport that resonate with Cuban social and political life: the perpetual tension between risk and security, the interplay between individual style and collective regulation, and the risky journeys undertaken with the intention, but not the guarantee, of returning home.

Chapter One is available below

A Reader in Medical Anthropology: Theoretical Trajectories, Emergent Realities brings together articles from the key theoretical approaches in the field of medical anthropology as well as related science and technology studies. The editors' comprehensive introductions evaluate the historical lineages of these approaches and their value in addressing critical problems associated with contemporary forms of illness experience and health care. Presents a key selection of both classic and new agenda-setting articles in medical ...

An eminent sociologist and anthropologist, professor at the University of Strasbourg, great walker and formidable thinker, David Le Breton has focused his research on the anthropology of the body. According to him, we do not “have” a body but “are” our body, an important clarification that shows his ontogenetic approach, which is preeminently interested in the processual and transformative. His numerous publications cover such original themes as the anthropology of human face, voice, pain, skin, risk (specially in teenagers) and, of course, walking, which represents the most immediate way, within everyone’s reach, to rediscover our corporeality and rebel against the transhumanist position of contempt for the body of our hyper-technological societies. After having had the opportunity to carry out a research stay with him in 2019, we have maintained a close collaboration that has led us to carry out this interview in which we discuss highly topical issues, such as the social consequences of the pandemic, the healing capacity of walking to which he dedicates his latest publication (2020b), as well as other important clarifications on his thought, key in the anthropology of the body in the 21st century.
KEY

In the 1960s and 70s, videogames emerged as a new form of software technology which allowed people to experience innovative ways of playing games in a virtual context via a controller and a screen. Ever since, the gaming industry has grown exponentially and continues to attract new users and designers across the globe. Even though we are not going to go over the history of videogames or games in general. We will still explain some play and games concepts which we think to be relevant in the context of this research concerning videogames related advertisements and the gamer's body. Throughout this paper, I will use the term " gamer's body " to refer to any individual's body who's accustomed to playing videogames and the word " gameplay " to talk about the actual play experiences (the uses of the virtual gamer's body or the uses of the gamer's body in-game) which videogames are valued to be delivering especially in ads. However, the readers must keep in mind that they are different degrees and reasons to why an individual might identify himself as a gamer and 'play or be invested in a specific videogame.' Each game has an impact on the overall industry especially if it has been experienced and reviewed positively by a significant number of gamers. Similarly, each gameplay experience as well as each gamer's experience derived from a videogame's gameplay via the gamer's body will influence their next choice when buying a newly released one. Basically, we will argue that the social significance of videogames lies within the use of the gamer's body which able us to experience other appearances, in designed virtual worlds full of challenges and roles, that would otherwise be physically impossible to undertake. As a result, it will able us to draw conclusions about what ideas surround the gamer's body as both socially significant in the virtual worlds of games and the real physical life body.

De la naissance à la mort, nous habitons notre corps, qui est un révélateur de ce que nous sommes. Dans nos sociétés développées, et surtout depuis la libération sexuelle, il est devenu pour beaucoup d’entre nous une préoccupation quotidienne.
D’« accouchement » à « yoga », en passant par « body-building », « ivrogne », « lesbianisme » ou « jeux vidéo », plus de deux cents
articles cernent le corps, et donnent à voir ses diverses pratiques et ses représentations.
Cette troisième édition permet d’ouvrir ce dictionnaire à des problématiques actuelles, mais aussi à l’analyse renouvelée des objets, techniques et expériences du corps.

This paper examines current issues at the intersection of the Sociology of Technology and the interdisciplinary field of Sound Studies. It begins with an overview of major social constructionist, interpretive semiotic, and actor–network theoretical sociological approaches to technology as developed within the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Considering the predominance of narrative visual metaphors in these approaches' treatment of socio-technical perception, it is argued that the “turn to sound” in social studies of technology, rather than simply furnishing established analytic approaches with a fresh set of empirical cases (i.e. “sound technologies”), presents an opportunity to better sensitize STS approaches to the contingent socio-technical shaping and distribution of embodied perceptual modalities in general. A critical review of recent social and historical studies of sound and technology, attending especially to debates surrounding the theoretical shift from acoustemological or soundscape-based to signal-oriented “transductive” approaches, suggests the importance for future STS and Sound Studies work of addressing how shared modes of sensory perception are produced within particular socio-technical frames.

Gyms are becoming a mass hobby: they are multiplying, their subscription costs are falling and the ways of working out are becoming standardized. This is the "fitness revolution" (Andreasson & Johansson, 2014a). If the injunctions to the body care date from the beginning of the 20th century, fitness is constituted like an important body shaping offer since the eighties. In a neoliberal zeitgeist where the individual must "take him-self in charge" to become an "entrepreneur of himself" (Castel, 2016), improving one's body capital (Mauger, 2018) is a central issue. The body is always interacting with the social, but how does the gym (re)produce the genre in this setting? A mixed ethnographic survey, quantitative and qualitative, was conducted intermittently in a gym for a year and a half. In order to study the gender relations in this frame as well as the careers (e.g., Goffman, 1961) of body shaping involved, we conducted analysis to compare practices between women and men. We relied on the following materials: a national survey on sports practices (EPPS, 2010); the production of a logic model; a map of the city's gyms; participant and numerical observations (492 observations, including 6,064 women, 13,035 men cumulative and not distinct); photos ; 26 in-depth interviews with clients (with different morphologies, social backgrounds and ages) and 2 informative interviews with the staff. We analyzed: the primary socialization of the respondents to identify the constitution of sexual dispositions; interactions in occupied spaces and body shaping. Three sequences emerge from the body shaping career, each with variations: in its structuring (eg, assiduity, planning), in its asceticism (eg, feeding changes) and in taste for practice (eg, unpleasant, pleasant and dependence). Primary sport socialization of the respondents was gendered, producing gendered body dispositions. Although starting a career at the gym is motivated by physical dissatisfaction (e.g., aesthetics, performance, health), these dispositions are revisited. In situ analysis reveals a socio-sexual division of space. Men favor bodybuilding over cardio training (79% vs. 21%), while women tend to occupy the two spaces fairly (44% vs. 56%). According to numerical observations and interviews, young women would limit their mobility in the area of bodybuilding being "afraid" of being harassed. In addition, men favor the shaping of the upper body compared to the bottom/center (80% vs. 20%), while for women the gap is smaller (38% vs. 62%). However, we note that monopolization of bodybuilding by men limits the free training of women. As a result, the gender of the actors influences their career, in which women can limit their commitment more quickly. Finally, any body shaping is not constituted in body capital, because it must be related to normative expectations of gender, so be a gendered body capital. The gym as an institution plays an active role in this process, it appears as a space of a second socialization where the habitus can be transformed, a technology of gender that can move the borders built by the social between women and men’s bodies, but also sometimes a way to trouble the gender.


Les salles de sport deviennent un loisir de masse : elles se multiplient, leurs coûts d’abonnement baissent et les façons de s’entraîner se standardisent. C’est la « révolution du fitness » (Andreasson & Johansson, 2014a). Si les injonctions à la préoccupation du corps datent du début du XXème siècle, le fitness se constitue comme une offre de façonnage corporel importante depuis les années quatre-vingt. Dans un zeitgeist néolibéral où l’individu doit « se prendre en main » pour devenir un véritable « entrepreneur de soi » (Castel, 2016), améliorer son capital corporel (Mauger, 2018) est un enjeu central. Le corps est toujours en interaction avec le social, mais comment la salle de sport (re)produit elle le genre dans ce cadre ?
Une enquête ethnographique mixte, quantitative et qualitative, a été menée de façon discontinue dans une salle de sport pendant un an et demi. Afin d’étudier les rapports de genre à l’œuvre ainsi que les carrières (e.g., Goffman, 1961) de façonnage corporel en jeu, nous avons réalisé des analyses permettant de comparer des pratiques entre les femmes et les hommes. Nous nous sommes appuyés sur les matériaux suivants : une enquête nationale sur les pratiques sportives (EPPS, 2010) ; la production d’un modèle logic ; une carte des salles de sport de la ville ; des observations participantes et chiffrées (492 observations, dont 6.064 femmes, 13.035 hommes cumulé·e·s et non distinct·e·s) ; des photographies ; 26 entretiens approfondis auprès de client·e·s (ayant différentes morphologies, origines sociales et âges) et 2 entretiens informatifs auprès du personnel de la salle. Nous avons analysé : la socialisation primaire sportive des enquêté·e·s pour identifier la constitution de dispositions corporelles sexuées ; les interactions dans les espaces occupés et le façonnage corporel. Trois séquences émergent de la carrière de façonnage corporel, chacune possédant des variations : dans sa structuration (e.g., assiduité, planification), dans son ascétisme (e.g., changements d’alimentation) et dans le goût pour la pratique (e.g., déplaisant, plaisant et dépendance).
La socialisation primaire sportive des enquêté·e·s était genrée produisant des dispositions corporelles sexuées. Bien que débuter une carrière à la salle de sport soit motivé par l’insatisfaction physique (e.g., esthétique, performance, santé), lesdites dispositions sont revisitées. L’analyse in situ révèle une division socio-sexuée de l’espace. Les hommes privilégient la musculation par rapport au cardio-training (79 % contre 21 %), tandis que les femmes ont tendance à occuper de manière équitable ces deux espaces (44 % contre 56 %). Selon les observations chiffrées et les entretiens, les jeunes femmes limiteraient leur mobilité dans l’espace de la musculation ayant « peur » d’être harcelées. Par ailleurs, les hommes privilégient le façonnage du haut du corps par rapport au bas/centre (80 % contre 20 %), alors que pour les femmes l’écart est plus faible (38 % contre 62 %). Toutefois, on remarque que la monopolisation de la musculation par les hommes limite le libre entrainement des femmes. De ce fait, le sexe des acteur/trice·s influence leur carrière, au sein de laquelle les femmes peuvent limiter plus rapidement leur engagement. Finalement, tout façonnage corporel ne se constitue pas en capital corporel, car il se doit d’être en lien avec les attentes normatives du genre, donc être un capital corporel genré. La salle de sport en tant qu’institution joue un rôle actif dans ce processus, elle apparaît comme un espace d’une seconde socialisation où les habitus peuvent se transformer, une technologie de genre qui peut déplacer les frontières construites par le social entre les corps des femmes et des hommes, mais aussi parfois une manière de troubler le genre.

The present contribution will deal with the project of “decomposition of thought” that Maine de Biran (1766-1824) carries out starting from his masterpiece of 1804, the Mémoire sur la décomposition de la pensée. In order to understand
its originality it has proved necessary to take into account the critical resumption of Condillac’s sensualism proposed by the author. As a matter of fact, Maine de Biran explicitly states his will to «rewrite from a new point of view the Traité des sensations»; and this critical rewriting is fundamentally based on the concept of effort – with the consequent passage from the passive objectivation, typical of Condillac’s analysis, to the first person experience of subjective activity – and on what could be defined in terms of “sensorial perspectivism”. Actually, the science of man emerging from the biranian writings refuses the primacy and the exclusivity of visual register in the name of a sensorial holism – revaluating therefore kinesthetic tactility as well as the close coupling between the ear and the voice or the
act of breathing – which allows the integration, though not the confusion, of the different plans of human existence.

En este apartado vamos a centrarnos en una nueva mirada sobre la psicopedagogía; es lo que he denominado«psicopedagogía(s) transgresora(s)». Tal vez pueda parecer algo presuntuoso o atrevido tal forma de designar determinadas praxis (o saberes), pero existen, cosa que nos ayuda a pensar en otras posibilidades reales, en otras formas de mirar y entender el objeto último de la psicopedagogía: la educación.