J E N N I F E R L . G R A V E S , M . A .
Culture & The Body
Culture & The Body
Humans are cultural as much as biological beings, and this fact has profound ramifications for how we live our everyday lives.
Cultural forces are at work in how one uses one’s body, how that body feels to one, and how others respond to one’s body. Ex: Human ideas of what counts as sexually attractive are not fully
determined by biology. How one’s body is perceived is a matter of culture. How one’s body shape and look are culturally defined can have large ramifications.
Can you think of other examples of the influence of culture on the body?
Thus the body is as much a cultural phenomenon as a biological one.
Culture Against Nature
Hobbesian View: Human nature is anarchic and unruly. Left to our own devices, without the guiding constraints of
culture, each of us would run riot. Without culture, life would be nasty, brutish and short.
By regulating and controlling our emotional drives (which are potentially violent and always unpredictable), culture works to ensure that everyday life is possible by allowing for regularity, predictability and order.
Proponent Sigmund Freud (1957): Civilization relies on a renunciation of instinctual gratifications… and urgencies. Cultural norms and values make humans give up their
natural dispositions towards promiscuous sex, unregulated defecation and urination, and random acts of violence. Primary Method: Shame
Toilet Culture An Example of Culture Taming Instinct
Excretion of waste has become culturally regulated. All societies have a toilet culture that dictates ways of thinking about and enacting the excretion of waste.
Western society has a particularly strict toiletry culture in which we are disgusted by defecatory materials and have stern rules about the legitimate times and places for excretion.
Cultural Definitions Are at Work: It is only because cultural contexts have decreed things one way that we see them that way (ex: feces as dirty). Ex: Hygiene and Symbolism Ex: Colored TP Ex: Terminology for Bathrooms
Are you familiar with different toilet cultures?
Toilet Culture An Example of Culture Taming Instinct
Example: Capitalism and Toilet Rules – Cultural Norms Impose Upon Bodies The capitalistically organized workplace is centered around a
search for profit, and workers’ bodies are controlled accordingly. The natural rhythms of their bodies (like need for a toilet) do not fit with the required tempo of work, because the body must keep working in the pursuit of profit, no matter what.
Point: In everyday life there is as antagonism between cultural expectations and bodily capacities and desires.
Other examples of this antagonism?
The Cultured Body
Cultural forces do not just control the human body (see above), they also shape it.
Cultural contexts profoundly shape how we make use of our bodies – walking, talking, running, throwing, lifting and so on.
Primary Theory: Mauss’ Body Techniques & Habitus
Examples: Gender & Class
Body Techniques
There is no completely ‘natural’ way for a person to use their body. Ex: Positions of the arms and hands while walking.
We learn how to use our bodies. Mostly through imitation. Each generation passes on a body culture to its offspring
comprised of a number of body techniques. Each human body is sculpted by the particular
cultural context a person is brought up and lives within.
Body Techniques
Body Techniques – forms of bodily movement and action that are expressive of the cultural life of the group Experienced and enacted unconsciously. Felt as natural, but actually created by the culture of the
group. Body techniques involve both activities and what we think
about those activities. Expressive of cultural norms. What is acceptable in one culture may not be in another. The
same is true within a culture in different social contexts. Ex: Belching at a Meal Other examples?
Habitus
Body techniques are part of a group’s habitus or distinctive lifestyle, which is produced by the particular social conditions of the group. The habitus is made up of particular ways of thinking,
feeling and acting that are characteristic of the group. The habitus is embodied – culture is instilled into the
minds of group members and onto their bodies. Put simply, culture shapes how we move,
how we act, and how our bodies look.
Gender & Body Techniques
We all must learn to be male or female (DeBeauvoir 1972). People conform to the cultural norms regarding male
and female behavior set by the social context in which they live.
We see our gender norms as natural, but they are entirely culturally derived and are thus mutable.
Corporeality is one aspect of this – the ways in which we move and experience our bodies.
Gender & Body Techniques
Cultural forces shape bodies in specifically gendered ways.
Culture socializes women to move in certain ways and teaches men to move in other ways.
Thus boys learn different bodily skills and capacities for movement than do girls. Shapes the way people experience their bodies.
Examples: Hillary vs. Bill Throwing First Pitch Sports (Young 1990)
Males are defined and trained to be physically competent; female are not. So through socialization the female has been discouraged from reaching
out in a confident manner toward the space around her. Ex: Expectation of Daintiness
Gender & Body Techniques
Meeting (or not meeting) cultural expectations about the body can have profound effects on people. People who do not operate in ways congruent with the
norms of bodily behavior generally experience the disapproval of others who think that a departure from these norms is unnatural.
Examples? Thus body values and norms are both enabling
– in that they teach us to move in socially acceptable ways – and restricting – in that we must conform to them or risk social sanction.
Class & Body Techniques
Bourdieu (1992) investigated how a particular habitus (Mauss) and set of corresponding body techniques shape the life-world (Husserl) of people in particular class groupings.
Three Class-Based Groups: Working Class Lower Middle Class Upper Middle Class
Each has its own habitus and thus its own distinctive set of body techniques (e.g. ways of eating drinking, walking, talking, etc.).
The habitus of each class is derived from the social conditions of each class.
Class & Body Techniques
Upper Middle Class – Life of Ease High Economic Capital – financial resources High Cultural Capital – knowledge about highly
respected forms of culture Outcome: distance from practical urgencies, at ease with
themselves, unshakable confidence, no one is superior to them
Body Techniques: ideals of ease and elegance Orients them toward certain types of sporting activities like
fencing and polo.
Class & Body Techniques
Lower Middle Class – Highly Aspirational Look up to and admire the upper middle class. Look down on and despise the working class. Outcome: Want to distinguish themselves from the
working class and be more like the upper middle class. This desire is doomed because the UMs will always look down
their noses at the LMs. Thus they have a contradictory social position.
Body Techniques: less elegant and authoritative Sports: Jogging and Yoga
These are aspirational in nature, attempting to make the body better.
Class & Body Techniques
Working Class – Taste of the Necessary Low Economic Capital Low Cultural Capital Outcome: faced with the pressing problems of existence Body Techniques: unpretentious and straightforward;
functionality; bluntness Sports: physical strength and aggressiveness via sports like
weightlifting and boxing Critiques of Bourdieu:
Tending towards caricaturing. Now out of date.
What are your thoughts?
Conclusion
Central Theme: The ways in which people use, display and understand their bodies in everyday contexts are far from being reducible to biologically determined behaviors. Examples: tattoos/piercings; eating disorders; obesity
Apparently natural phenomena – like toilet behaviors – are thoroughly bound up with cultural forces. Other examples?
Social hierarchies – like gender & class – are culturally inscribed onto our bodies. Other examples?
Culture & The Body
Culture & The Body (2)
Culture Against Nature
Toilet Culture An Example of Culture Taming Instinct
Toilet Culture An Example of Culture Taming Instinct (2)
The Cultured Body
Body Techniques
Body Techniques (2)
Habitus
Gender & Body Techniques
Gender & Body Techniques (2)
Gender & Body Techniques (3)
Class & Body Techniques
Class & Body Techniques (2)
Class & Body Techniques (3)
Class & Body Techniques (4)
Conclusion
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