Body culture studies
Encyclopedia
Body culture studies describe and compare bodily practice in the larger context of culture
and society
, i.e. in the tradition of anthropology
, history
and sociology
. As body culture studies analyse culture and society from out people’s bodily practice as basis, they are sometimes understood as a sort of materialist phenomenology.
The significance of the body and of body culture (in German Körperkultur, in Danish kropskultur) was discovered since the early twentieth century by several historians and sociologists. During the 1980s, a particular school of Body Culture Studies spread, in connection with – and critically related to – sport
studies. Body Culture Studies were especially established at Danish universities and academies and cooperated with Nordic, European and East Asian research networks.
Body culture studies include studies of dance
, play (play (activity)
) and game
, outdoor activities, festivities and other forms of movement culture. The field of body culture studies is floating towards studies of medical cultures, of working habits, of gender
and sexual cultures, of fashion
and body decoration, of popular festivity and more generally towards popular culture
studies.
Body Culture Studies have shown useful by making the study of sport enter into broader historical and sociological discussion – from the level of subjectivity to civil society, state and market.
, the Frankfurt School
, and some phenomenologists. Later, Michel Foucault
, Pierre Bourdieu
and the Stuttgart Historical Behaviour Studies
delivered important inspirations for the new body culture studies.
The sociologist Norbert Elias (1939) wrote the first sociology, which placed the body and bodily practice in its centre, describing the change of table manners, shame and violence from the Middle Ages to Early Modern court society as a process of civilisation. Later, Elias (1989) studied the culture of duel in Wilhelminian Prussia, throwing light on particular traits of the German sonderweg
. Elias’ figurational sociology of the body became productive especially in the field of sport studies (Elias/ Dunning 1986; Eric Dunning
et al. 2004). His concept of the "process of civilisation" received, however, also critique from the side of comparative anthropology
of bodily practices (Duerr 1988/2005).
The Frankfurt School
of Critical Theory
turned towards the body with Marxist and Freudian perspectives. Max Horkheimer
and Theodor W. Adorno
(1947) described the Western “dialectics of enlightenment
” as including an underground history of the body. Body history lead from the living body to the dead body becoming a commodity under capitalism
. A younger generation of the Frankfurt School launched the Neo-Marxist sports critique (Rigauer 1969) and developed alternative approaches to movement studies and movement culture (Lippe 1974; Moegling 1988). Historical studies about the body in industrial work (Rabinbach 1992), in transportation (Schivelbusch 1977), and in Fascist aesthetics (Theweleit 1977) as well as in the philosophy of space
(Peter Sloterdijk
1998/ 2004) had their roots in this critical approach.
Philosophical phenomenology (→Phenomenology (philosophy)) paid attention to the body, too. Helmuth Plessner
(1941) studied laughter and weeping as fundamental human expressions. Maurice Merleau-Ponty
(1945) placed the body in the centre of human existence, as a way of experiencing the world, challenging the traditional body-mind dualism of René Descartes
. Gaston Bachelard
(1938) approached bodily existence via a phenomenology of the elements and of space, starting by “psychoanalysis
of fire”.
Based on phenomenological traditions, Michel Foucault
(1975) studied the configurations of knowledge in the post-1800 society, launching the concept of modern panoptical control (→Panopticon
). The body appeared as object of military discipline and of the panopticon as a mechanism of “the biopolitics of power”. Foucault’s approach became especially influential for studies in sport, space, and architecture (Vertinsky/ Bale 2004) as well as for studies in the discipline of gymnastic and sport (Vigarello 1978; Barreau/ Morne 1984; Vertinsky/ McKay 2004).
While Foucault’s studies focused on top-down strategies of power, Pierre Bourdieu
directed his attention more towards bottom-up processes of social-bodily practice. For analysing the class aspect of the body, Bourdieu (1966/67) developed the influential concept of habitus as an incorporated pattern becoming social practice by diverse forms of taste, distinction and display of the body. Some of Bourdieu’s disciples applied these concepts to the study of sports and gymnastics (Defrance 1987).
In Germany, influences of phenomenology induced body culture studies in the historical field. The Stuttgart school of Historical Behaviour Studies
focused from 1971 on gestures and laughter, martial arts
, sport and dance to analyze changes of society and differences between European and non-European cultures (Nitschke 1975, 1981, 1987, 1989, 2009; Henning Eichberg
1978).
These approaches met with tendencies of the late 1970s and 1980s, when humanities
and sociology
developed a new and broader interest in the body. Sociologists, historians, philosophers and anthropologists, scholars from sport studies and from medical studies met in talking about “the return of the body” or its “reappearance” (Kamper/ Wulf 1982). The new interest towards the body was soon followed up by the term “body culture” itself.
) aimed at the reform of clothing and of nurture and favoured new bodily activities, which constituted a new sector side by side with established gymnastics and sport. The main fields of this third sector of movement culture were nudism, rhythmic-expressive gymnastics, yoga
and body building (Wedemeyer-Kolwe 2004) as well as a new type of youth wandering. Though highly diverse, they found a comprehensive term in the German word Körperkultur, in English physical culture
(→physical education
), in French culture physique, and in Danish kropskultur. Inspirations from the movement of body culture gave birth to early studies in the history of bodily positions and movements (Gaulhofer 1930; Marcel Mauss
1934).
In German Socialist workers’ sport, the concept of Körperkultur had a prominent place. The concept also entered into Russian Socialism
where fiskultura became an alternative to bourgeois sport, uniting the revolutionary fractions of more aesthetical Proletkult
and more health-oriented "hygienism" (Riordan 1977). Later, Stalinism
forced the contradictory terms under the formula “sport and body culture”. This continued in the Soviet bloc after 1945.
When the 1968 student movement revived Marxism, the concept of body culture – Körperkultur in West Germany, “somatic culture” in America – re-entered into the sports-critical discourse, but received new analytical dimensions. Quel corps? (Which body?) was the title of a critical review of sports, edited by the French Marxist educationalist Jean-Marie Brohm
in 1975-1997. In Germany, a series of books under the title Sport: Kultur, Veränderung (Sport: culture, change) marked the body cultural turn from 1981, with works of Rigauer, Elias, Eichberg and others.
. In Finland, the concept ruumiinkulttuuri found a similar attention (Sironen 1995; Sparkes/ Silvennoinen 1999).
In international cooperation, “body anthropology” became the keyword for French, Danish and German philosophers, sociologists and educationalists who founded the Institut International d’Anthropologie Corporelle (IIAC) in 1987. They undertook case studies in traditional games
as well as in “scenes” of new urban body cultures (Barreau/ Morne 1984; Barreau/ Jaouen 1998; Dietrich 2001 and 2002).
Body culture studies found a particular interest in East Asian countries. In Japan, the sociologist Satoshi Shimizu from the University of Tsukuba established in 2002 a Centre for the Study of Body Culture, publishing the review Gendai Sports Hyôron (Contemporary Sport Critique, in Japanese, since 1999). In Taiwan, Hsu Yi-hsiung from the National Taiwan Normal University founded in 2003 the Taiwan Body Culture Society (Taiwan shenti wenhua xiehui), publishing the review Sport Studies (in Chinese). And in Korea, Jong Young Lee from the University of Suwon published since 2004 the International Journal of Eastern Sport & Physical Education, focusing on body culture and traditional games.
These initiatives were connected with each other both by contents and by personal networks. In the English and American world, Allen Guttmann (1978, 1996, 2004), John Hoberman
(1984), John Bale (1996, 2002, 2004), Susan Brownell (1995, 2008) and Patricia Vertinsky (2004) contributed by opening the history, sociology and geography of sports towards body culture studies.
While the concept of body culture earlier had denoted an alternative practice and was used in singular, it became now an analytical category describing body cultures in plural. The terms of physical culture (or physical education
) and body culture separated – the first describing a practice, the second a subject of theoretical analysis.
”: the epistemological individualism
and the thesis of ‘late-modern individualization
’.
The methodological habit of counter-posing “the individual” and “the society” is largely disseminated in sociology. It was fundamentally criticized by Norbert Elias
who underlined that there was no meaning in the separation between the individual as a sort of core of human existence and the society as a secondary environment around this core. Society was inside the human body. In contrast, the epistemological solipsism
treated human existence as if the human being was alone in the world – and was only in a secondary process “socialized” (Peter Sloterdijk
1998 vol. 1).
Another current assumption is the historical-sociological individualism. Sociologists as Ulrich Beck
and Anthony Giddens
have postulated that individualization during “high” or “late modernity” had replaced all earlier traditions – religion, nation, class – and left “the individual” alone with its body. The body, thus, got a central position as the only fix-point of “self-identity” left after the dissolution of the traditional norms. The individual chooses and makes its own body as a sort of “gesamtkunstwerk
Ego”.
Body-cultural studies have challenged this assumption (Henning Eichberg
2010: 58-79). They throw light on inter-bodily relations, within which the human individuality has a much more complex position.
as well as the changes from coach traffic via the railway (Schivelbusch 1977) to the sport race of automobiles (→auto racing
) (Sachs 1984) produced new body-cultural configurations of social time.
On the basis of transportation and urbanism
, blitzkrieg
and sports, the French architect and cultural theorist Paul Virilio
(1977) launched the terms of “dromology” (i.e. science of racing) and “dromocracy” (power or dominance of velocity) to describe the knowledge and the politics of modern social acceleration. But the concept of social time embraces many more differentiations, which can be explored by comparing time-dynamic movements of different ethnic cultures (Hall 1984).
geometry. All these patterns are not just spatial-practical arrangements, but they play together with societal orientations. Under this aspect, one has described the history of panoptical control (Foucault 1975; Vertinsky/ Bale 2004), the parcellation of the sportive space, and the hygienic purification of spaces (Augestad 2003). Proxemics
(Hall 1966), the study of distance and space, has become a special field of body culture studies.
Body culture studies have also influenced the understanding of “nature”. In the period around 1800, the “nature” of body culture – of outdoor life, naturism
and green movements (→green politics
) – became a world of liberation and opposition: “Back to nature!” In the course of modern industrial culture, this “other” nature became subjected to colonization and simulation, forming a “second nature”. It even became a virtual world, which is simulating people’s senses as a “third nature”. The study of body culture contributed to a history of cultural ecology
(Eichberg 1988).
Body cultural studies also contributed to a differentiation between what in everyday language often is confused as ‘space’ and ‘place’ whose dialectics were shown by the Chinese-American philosopher Yi-Fu Tuan
(see Bale 2004). Space can be described by coordinates and by certain choreographies. Spatial structures can be standardized and transferred from place to place, which is the case with the standardized facilities of sports. Place, in contrast, is unique – it is only here or there. Locality is related to identity. People play in a certain place – and create the place by play and game. The place plays with the people, as a co-player.
(1986) studied sport in order to throw light on the civilizing process (→The Civilizing Process
). In sports, he saw a line going from original violence to civilized interlacement and pacification. Though there were undertones of hope, Elias tried to avoid evolutionism
, which since the nineteenth century postulated a ‘progressive’ way from ‘primitive’ to ‘civilized’ patterns.
While the concept of civilization normally had hopeful undertones, discipline
had more critical undertones. Cultures of bodily discipline became visible – following Foucault
and the Frankfurt School
– in Baroque dance
(Lippe 1974), in aristocratic and bourgeois pedagogy of the spinal column during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Vigarello 1978), and in hygienic strategies, school sanitation and school gymnastics during the twentieth century (Augestad 2003). Military exercise (→military drill) in Early Modern times was the classic field for body cultural discipline (Gaulhofer 1930; Kleinschmidt 1989).
In the field of sports, a central point of body-cultural dispute has been the question whether sport had its roots in Ancient Greek competitions of the Olympic
type or whether it was fundamentally linked to modernity. While nineteenth century’s Neo-Humanism, Classicism and Olympism assumed the ancient roots of sport, body cultural studies showed that the patterns central to modern sports – quantification, rationalisation, principle of achievement – could not be dated before the industrial culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Eichberg 1978; Guttmann 1978). What was practiced before, were popular games, noble exercises, festivities of different character, children’s games and competitions, but not sport in modern understanding. The emergence of modern sport was an eruptive innovation rather than a logical prolongation of earlier practices. As a revolution of body culture, this transformation contributed to a deeper understanding of the Industrial Revolution
. The so-called Eichberg-Mandell-Guttmann theory about the uniqueness of modern sport became, however, a matter of controversies and was opposed by other historians (Carter/Krüger 1990).
What came out of the controversies between the concepts of modernity, evolution, civilization, discipline and revolution was that “modernization
” only can be thought as a non-lineal change with nuances and full of contradictions. This is how the history of sport (Nielsen 1993 and 2005) and of gymnastics (Defrance 1987; Vestergård Madsen 2003) as well as the history of running
(Bale 2004) have been described in body-cultural terms.
One of the visible and at the same time deeper changes in relation to the modern body concerns the dress reform and the appearance of the naked body, especially in the years between 1900 and the 1920s. The change from noble pale skin to suntanned skin as a ‘sportive’ distinction was not only linked to sport, but had a strong impact on society as a whole. The change of appreciated body colour reversed the social-bodily distinctions between people and classes fundamentally, and nudism became a radical expression of this body-cultural change.
-like festivities, tournaments and popular games before, became modern sport by a new focus on results, measuring and quantifying records (Eichberg 1978; Guttmann 1978). Under the aspect of the principle of achievement, there was no sport in ancient Egypt, in ancient Greece, among the Aztecs or Vikings, and in European Middle Ages
, though there were games, competitions and festivities. Sport as a new type of body culture resulted from societal changes in the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries.
The genesis of sport in connection with industrial productivity
called to attention the historical-cultural relativity of “production” (→Manufacturing
) itself. Studies in the history of “the human motor” and the “mortal engines” of sport showed reification (→reification (Marxism)
) and technology as lines of historical dynamics (Rigauer 1969; Vigarello 1988; Rabinbach 1992; Hoberman 1992). Production became apparent not as a universal concept, but as something historically specific – and sport was its body-cultural ritual.
The hegemonic model of Western modern body culture is achievement sport, translating movement into records. Sportive competition follows the logic of productivity by bodily strain and forms a ranking pyramid with elite sports placed at the top and the losers at the bottom. Through sportive movement, people display a theatre of production.
A contrasting model within modern body culture is delivered by mass sports. In gymnastics
and fitness training, the body is disciplined by subjecting it to certain rules of “scientific”, social geometrical or aesthetic order (Roubal 2007). By rhythmic repetition and formal homogenization, the individual bodies are integrated into a larger whole, which is recommended in terms of reproduction (→reproduction (economics)
), as being healthy and educative. Through fitness sport, people absolve a ritual of reproductive correctness and integration.
A third model is present in popular festivity, dance and play. In carnival and folk sport, people meet people by festive movement. This type of gathering may give life to the top-down arrangements of both productive achievement sport and reproductive fitness sport, too. But the body experience of popular festivity, dance, play and game is a-productive in itself – it celebrates relation in movement.
Practices of sport in their diversity and their historical change, thus, clarify inner contradictions inside social life more generally – among these the contradictions between state, market and civil society. The trialectics of body culture throw light on the complexity of societal relations.
Culture was studied as cultures already by the school of Cultural Relativism
in American anthropology (American Anthropological Association
) in the 1930s (Ruth Benedict
). Postcolonial studies have taken this pluralistic
perspective up again (Bale 1996 and 2004; Brownell 1995; Azoy 2003; Leseth 2004). The discourse in singular about “the body in our society” became problematic when confronted with body cultures in conflict and tension.
The plurality and diversity of body cultures is, however, not only a matter of outward relations. There are also body cultures in plural inside a given society. The study of different class habitus (→class culture), youth cultures, gender cultures (→gender identity
) etc. opened up for deeper insights into the differentiation of civil society.
). Above this basis, people build a superstructure of institutions and ideas, organising and reflecting body culture in relation to collective actions and interests (Eichberg 1978; Dietrich 2001: 10-32; see keyword 2).
By elaborating the complex interplay between bodily practice and the superstructures of ideas and conscience, body cultures studies challenge the established history and sociology.
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Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
and society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
, i.e. in the tradition of anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
and sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
. As body culture studies analyse culture and society from out people’s bodily practice as basis, they are sometimes understood as a sort of materialist phenomenology.
The significance of the body and of body culture (in German Körperkultur, in Danish kropskultur) was discovered since the early twentieth century by several historians and sociologists. During the 1980s, a particular school of Body Culture Studies spread, in connection with – and critically related to – sport
Sport
A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...
studies. Body Culture Studies were especially established at Danish universities and academies and cooperated with Nordic, European and East Asian research networks.
Body culture studies include studies of dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
, play (play (activity)
Play (activity)
Play is a term employed in ethology and psychology to describe to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment...
) and game
Game
A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...
, outdoor activities, festivities and other forms of movement culture. The field of body culture studies is floating towards studies of medical cultures, of working habits, of gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
and sexual cultures, of fashion
Fashion
Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...
and body decoration, of popular festivity and more generally towards popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
studies.
Body Culture Studies have shown useful by making the study of sport enter into broader historical and sociological discussion – from the level of subjectivity to civil society, state and market.
Earlier studies in body and culture
Since early 20th century, sociologists and philosophers had discovered the significance of the body, especially Norbert EliasNorbert Elias
Norbert Elias was a German sociologist of Jewish descent, who later became a British citizen.-Biography:...
, the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
, and some phenomenologists. Later, Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
, Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...
and the Stuttgart Historical Behaviour Studies
Historical Behaviour Studies
Historical behaviour studies is a field of research in cultural history and cultural anthropology and a particular methodological approach to the study of human behaviour.----- Method and object of research :...
delivered important inspirations for the new body culture studies.
The sociologist Norbert Elias (1939) wrote the first sociology, which placed the body and bodily practice in its centre, describing the change of table manners, shame and violence from the Middle Ages to Early Modern court society as a process of civilisation. Later, Elias (1989) studied the culture of duel in Wilhelminian Prussia, throwing light on particular traits of the German sonderweg
Sonderweg
Sonderweg is a controversial theory in German historiography that considers the German-speaking lands, or the country Germany, to have followed a unique course from aristocracy into democracy, distinct from other European countries...
. Elias’ figurational sociology of the body became productive especially in the field of sport studies (Elias/ Dunning 1986; Eric Dunning
Eric Dunning
Eric Dunning is Emeritus Professor of sociology at the University of Leicester, UK.-Career:Eric Dunning was a pioneer in the sociology of sport and the founder, with Patrick Murphy, of the . He is the author of a number of books and articles on sport and the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias...
et al. 2004). His concept of the "process of civilisation" received, however, also critique from the side of comparative anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
of bodily practices (Duerr 1988/2005).
The Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
of Critical Theory
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
turned towards the body with Marxist and Freudian perspectives. Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer was a German-Jewish philosopher-sociologist, famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the 'Frankfurt School' of social research. His most important works include The Eclipse of Reason and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment...
and Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
(1947) described the Western “dialectics of enlightenment
Enlightenment (spiritual)
Enlightenment in a secular context often means the "full comprehension of a situation", but in spiritual terms the word alludes to a spiritual revelation or deep insight into the meaning and purpose of all things, communication with or understanding of the mind of God, profound spiritual...
” as including an underground history of the body. Body history lead from the living body to the dead body becoming a commodity under capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
. A younger generation of the Frankfurt School launched the Neo-Marxist sports critique (Rigauer 1969) and developed alternative approaches to movement studies and movement culture (Lippe 1974; Moegling 1988). Historical studies about the body in industrial work (Rabinbach 1992), in transportation (Schivelbusch 1977), and in Fascist aesthetics (Theweleit 1977) as well as in the philosophy of space
Space
Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...
(Peter Sloterdijk
Peter Sloterdijk
Peter Sloterdijk is a German philosopher, television host, cultural scientist and essayist. He is a professor of philosophy and media theory at the University of Art and Design Karlsruhe. He currently co-hosts the German show Im Glashaus: Das Philosophische Quartett.-Biography:Sloterdijk's father...
1998/ 2004) had their roots in this critical approach.
Philosophical phenomenology (→Phenomenology (philosophy)) paid attention to the body, too. Helmuth Plessner
Helmuth Plessner
Helmuth Plessner was a German philosopher and sociologist, and a primary advocate of "philosophical anthropology" .He was Chairman from 1953-1959 of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie....
(1941) studied laughter and weeping as fundamental human expressions. Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir...
(1945) placed the body in the centre of human existence, as a way of experiencing the world, challenging the traditional body-mind dualism of René Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
. Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break...
(1938) approached bodily existence via a phenomenology of the elements and of space, starting by “psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
of fire”.
Based on phenomenological traditions, Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
(1975) studied the configurations of knowledge in the post-1800 society, launching the concept of modern panoptical control (→Panopticon
Panopticon
The Panopticon is a type of building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe all inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched...
). The body appeared as object of military discipline and of the panopticon as a mechanism of “the biopolitics of power”. Foucault’s approach became especially influential for studies in sport, space, and architecture (Vertinsky/ Bale 2004) as well as for studies in the discipline of gymnastic and sport (Vigarello 1978; Barreau/ Morne 1984; Vertinsky/ McKay 2004).
While Foucault’s studies focused on top-down strategies of power, Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...
directed his attention more towards bottom-up processes of social-bodily practice. For analysing the class aspect of the body, Bourdieu (1966/67) developed the influential concept of habitus as an incorporated pattern becoming social practice by diverse forms of taste, distinction and display of the body. Some of Bourdieu’s disciples applied these concepts to the study of sports and gymnastics (Defrance 1987).
In Germany, influences of phenomenology induced body culture studies in the historical field. The Stuttgart school of Historical Behaviour Studies
Historical Behaviour Studies
Historical behaviour studies is a field of research in cultural history and cultural anthropology and a particular methodological approach to the study of human behaviour.----- Method and object of research :...
focused from 1971 on gestures and laughter, martial arts
Martial arts
Martial arts are extensive systems of codified practices and traditions of combat, practiced for a variety of reasons, including self-defense, competition, physical health and fitness, as well as mental and spiritual development....
, sport and dance to analyze changes of society and differences between European and non-European cultures (Nitschke 1975, 1981, 1987, 1989, 2009; Henning Eichberg
Henning Eichberg
Henning Eichberg Henning Eichberg Henning Eichberg (born December 1, 1942 in Schweidnitz, Silesia is a German sociologist and historian, teaching at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense...
1978).
These approaches met with tendencies of the late 1970s and 1980s, when humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
and sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
developed a new and broader interest in the body. Sociologists, historians, philosophers and anthropologists, scholars from sport studies and from medical studies met in talking about “the return of the body” or its “reappearance” (Kamper/ Wulf 1982). The new interest towards the body was soon followed up by the term “body culture” itself.
The word and concept of “body culture” – alternative practice
The word “body culture” appeared for first time around 1900, but at that time signifying a certain form of physical practice. The so-called “life reform” (German LebensreformLebensreform
Lebensreform was a social movement in late 19th-century and early 20th-century Germany and Switzerland that propagated a back-to-nature lifestyle, emphasizing among others health food/raw food/organic food, nudism, sexual liberation, alternative medicine, and religious reform and at the same time...
) aimed at the reform of clothing and of nurture and favoured new bodily activities, which constituted a new sector side by side with established gymnastics and sport. The main fields of this third sector of movement culture were nudism, rhythmic-expressive gymnastics, yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
and body building (Wedemeyer-Kolwe 2004) as well as a new type of youth wandering. Though highly diverse, they found a comprehensive term in the German word Körperkultur, in English physical culture
Physical culture
Physical culture is a term applied to health and strength training regimens, particularly those that originated during the 19th century. During the mid-late 20th century, the term "physical culture" became largely outmoded in most English-speaking countries, being replaced by terms such as...
(→physical education
Physical education
Physical education or gymnastics is a course taken during primary and secondary education that encourages psychomotor learning in a play or movement exploration setting....
), in French culture physique, and in Danish kropskultur. Inspirations from the movement of body culture gave birth to early studies in the history of bodily positions and movements (Gaulhofer 1930; Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss was a French sociologist. The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss' academic work traversed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology...
1934).
In German Socialist workers’ sport, the concept of Körperkultur had a prominent place. The concept also entered into Russian Socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
where fiskultura became an alternative to bourgeois sport, uniting the revolutionary fractions of more aesthetical Proletkult
Proletkult
Proletkult was movement which arose in the Russian revolution and was active from 1917 to 1925 which aspired to provide the foundations for what was intended to be a truly proletarian art devoid of bourgeois influence.The name is a portmanteau of "proletarskaya kultura" , which are better-known as...
and more health-oriented "hygienism" (Riordan 1977). Later, Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
forced the contradictory terms under the formula “sport and body culture”. This continued in the Soviet bloc after 1945.
When the 1968 student movement revived Marxism, the concept of body culture – Körperkultur in West Germany, “somatic culture” in America – re-entered into the sports-critical discourse, but received new analytical dimensions. Quel corps? (Which body?) was the title of a critical review of sports, edited by the French Marxist educationalist Jean-Marie Brohm
Jean-Marie Brohm
Jean-Marie Brohm is a french sociologist, anthropologist and philosopher. Professor of sociology at the University of Montpellier III, he was also the founder of the journal Quel Corps ?, member of the editoral staff of the monthly Répertoire and is actually director of the journal Prétentaine...
in 1975-1997. In Germany, a series of books under the title Sport: Kultur, Veränderung (Sport: culture, change) marked the body cultural turn from 1981, with works of Rigauer, Elias, Eichberg and others.
Body culture studies – a new critical school
In Denmark, a particular school of Body Culture Studies – kropskultur – developed since around 1980 in connection with the critique of sport (Korsgaard 1982; Eichberg 1998; Vestergård 2003; Nielsen 1993 and 2005). It had its background in Danish popular gymnastics and in alternative movement practices – outdoor activities, play and game, dance, meditationMeditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
. In Finland, the concept ruumiinkulttuuri found a similar attention (Sironen 1995; Sparkes/ Silvennoinen 1999).
In international cooperation, “body anthropology” became the keyword for French, Danish and German philosophers, sociologists and educationalists who founded the Institut International d’Anthropologie Corporelle (IIAC) in 1987. They undertook case studies in traditional games
Game
A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...
as well as in “scenes” of new urban body cultures (Barreau/ Morne 1984; Barreau/ Jaouen 1998; Dietrich 2001 and 2002).
Body culture studies found a particular interest in East Asian countries. In Japan, the sociologist Satoshi Shimizu from the University of Tsukuba established in 2002 a Centre for the Study of Body Culture, publishing the review Gendai Sports Hyôron (Contemporary Sport Critique, in Japanese, since 1999). In Taiwan, Hsu Yi-hsiung from the National Taiwan Normal University founded in 2003 the Taiwan Body Culture Society (Taiwan shenti wenhua xiehui), publishing the review Sport Studies (in Chinese). And in Korea, Jong Young Lee from the University of Suwon published since 2004 the International Journal of Eastern Sport & Physical Education, focusing on body culture and traditional games.
These initiatives were connected with each other both by contents and by personal networks. In the English and American world, Allen Guttmann (1978, 1996, 2004), John Hoberman
John Hoberman
Dr. John Hoberman is a Professor of Germanic languages within the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of numerous books and articles on sports, specifically on their cultural impact, their relationship with race, and the issue of...
(1984), John Bale (1996, 2002, 2004), Susan Brownell (1995, 2008) and Patricia Vertinsky (2004) contributed by opening the history, sociology and geography of sports towards body culture studies.
While the concept of body culture earlier had denoted an alternative practice and was used in singular, it became now an analytical category describing body cultures in plural. The terms of physical culture (or physical education
Physical education
Physical education or gymnastics is a course taken during primary and secondary education that encourages psychomotor learning in a play or movement exploration setting....
) and body culture separated – the first describing a practice, the second a subject of theoretical analysis.
Questioning the “individual” body
Studies in body culture have shown that bodily existence is more than just “the body” as being an individual skin bag under control of an individual mind. Bodily practice happens between the different bodies. This questions current types of thinking “the individualIndividual
An individual is a person or any specific object or thing in a collection. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. Being self expressive...
”: the epistemological individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
and the thesis of ‘late-modern individualization
Individualization
Individualization may refer to*discrimination or perception of the individual within a group or species**identification in forensics and intelligence*the development of individual traits...
’.
The methodological habit of counter-posing “the individual” and “the society” is largely disseminated in sociology. It was fundamentally criticized by Norbert Elias
Norbert Elias
Norbert Elias was a German sociologist of Jewish descent, who later became a British citizen.-Biography:...
who underlined that there was no meaning in the separation between the individual as a sort of core of human existence and the society as a secondary environment around this core. Society was inside the human body. In contrast, the epistemological solipsism
Solipsism
Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. The term comes from Latin solus and ipse . Solipsism as an epistemological position holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not...
treated human existence as if the human being was alone in the world – and was only in a secondary process “socialized” (Peter Sloterdijk
Peter Sloterdijk
Peter Sloterdijk is a German philosopher, television host, cultural scientist and essayist. He is a professor of philosophy and media theory at the University of Art and Design Karlsruhe. He currently co-hosts the German show Im Glashaus: Das Philosophische Quartett.-Biography:Sloterdijk's father...
1998 vol. 1).
Another current assumption is the historical-sociological individualism. Sociologists as Ulrich Beck
Ulrich Beck
Ulrich Beck is a German sociologist who holds a professorship at Munich University and at the London School of Economics.-Life:...
and Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens is a British sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern contributors in the field of sociology, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29...
have postulated that individualization during “high” or “late modernity” had replaced all earlier traditions – religion, nation, class – and left “the individual” alone with its body. The body, thus, got a central position as the only fix-point of “self-identity” left after the dissolution of the traditional norms. The individual chooses and makes its own body as a sort of “gesamtkunstwerk
Gesamtkunstwerk
A Gesamtkunstwerk is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so...
Ego”.
Body-cultural studies have challenged this assumption (Henning Eichberg
Henning Eichberg
Henning Eichberg Henning Eichberg Henning Eichberg (born December 1, 1942 in Schweidnitz, Silesia is a German sociologist and historian, teaching at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense...
2010: 58-79). They throw light on inter-bodily relations, within which the human individuality has a much more complex position.
Social time
An important aspect of body culture is temporal. Modern society is characterized by the significance of speed and acceleration. Sport, giving priority to competitive running and racing, is central among the phenomena illustrating the specifically modern velocity (Eichberg 1978, Bale 2004). The historical change from the circulating stroll in aristocratic and early bourgeois culture to modern joggingJogging
Jogging is a form of trotting or running at a slow or leisurely pace. The main intention is to increase fitness with less stress on the body than from faster running.-Definition:...
as well as the changes from coach traffic via the railway (Schivelbusch 1977) to the sport race of automobiles (→auto racing
Auto racing
Auto racing is a motorsport involving the racing of cars for competition. It is one of the world's most watched televised sports.-The beginning of racing:...
) (Sachs 1984) produced new body-cultural configurations of social time.
On the basis of transportation and urbanism
Urbanism
Broadly, urbanism is a focus on cities and urban areas, their geography, economies, politics, social characteristics, as well as the effects on, and caused by, the built environment.-Philosophy:...
, blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg
For other uses of the word, see: Blitzkrieg Blitzkrieg is an anglicized word describing all-motorised force concentration of tanks, infantry, artillery, combat engineers and air power, concentrating overwhelming force at high speed to break through enemy lines, and, once the lines are broken,...
and sports, the French architect and cultural theorist Paul Virilio
Paul Virilio
Paul Virilio is a cultural theorist and urbanist. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with diverse references to architecture, the arts, the city and the military....
(1977) launched the terms of “dromology” (i.e. science of racing) and “dromocracy” (power or dominance of velocity) to describe the knowledge and the politics of modern social acceleration. But the concept of social time embraces many more differentiations, which can be explored by comparing time-dynamic movements of different ethnic cultures (Hall 1984).
Social space
Another important aspect of body culture is spatial. Bodily display and movement always create space – physical space as socio-psychical space and vice versa. Bodily activities have during history changed between indoor or outdoor milieus, between non-specialized environment, specialized facilities (→sports facilities) and bodily opposition against existing standardized facilities or what was called “sport scape”. In movement, straight lines and the culture of the streamline were confronted by mazes and labyrinthine structures, by patterns of fractalFractal
A fractal has been defined as "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity...
geometry. All these patterns are not just spatial-practical arrangements, but they play together with societal orientations. Under this aspect, one has described the history of panoptical control (Foucault 1975; Vertinsky/ Bale 2004), the parcellation of the sportive space, and the hygienic purification of spaces (Augestad 2003). Proxemics
Proxemics
Proxemics is the study of measurable distances between people as they interact. The term was introduced by anthropologist Edward T. Hall in 1966...
(Hall 1966), the study of distance and space, has become a special field of body culture studies.
Body culture studies have also influenced the understanding of “nature”. In the period around 1800, the “nature” of body culture – of outdoor life, naturism
Naturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
and green movements (→green politics
Green politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
) – became a world of liberation and opposition: “Back to nature!” In the course of modern industrial culture, this “other” nature became subjected to colonization and simulation, forming a “second nature”. It even became a virtual world, which is simulating people’s senses as a “third nature”. The study of body culture contributed to a history of cultural ecology
Cultural ecology
Cultural ecology studies the relationship between a given society and its natural environment as well as the life-forms and ecosystems that support its lifeways . This may be carried out diachronically , or synchronically...
(Eichberg 1988).
Body cultural studies also contributed to a differentiation between what in everyday language often is confused as ‘space’ and ‘place’ whose dialectics were shown by the Chinese-American philosopher Yi-Fu Tuan
Yi-Fu Tuan
Yi-Fu Tuan is a Chinese-U.S. geographer.Tuan was born in 1930 in Tientsin, China. He was the son of a rich oligarch and was part of the top class in the Republic of China....
(see Bale 2004). Space can be described by coordinates and by certain choreographies. Spatial structures can be standardized and transferred from place to place, which is the case with the standardized facilities of sports. Place, in contrast, is unique – it is only here or there. Locality is related to identity. People play in a certain place – and create the place by play and game. The place plays with the people, as a co-player.
Civilisation, discipline, modernity
Studies of body culture enriched the analysis of historical change by conflicting terms. Norbert EliasNorbert Elias
Norbert Elias was a German sociologist of Jewish descent, who later became a British citizen.-Biography:...
(1986) studied sport in order to throw light on the civilizing process (→The Civilizing Process
The Civilizing Process
The book The Civilizing Process written by German sociologist Norbert Elias is an influential work in sociology and Elias' most important work. It was first published in 1939 in German as Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation. Because of the World War it was virtually ignored, but republished in the...
). In sports, he saw a line going from original violence to civilized interlacement and pacification. Though there were undertones of hope, Elias tried to avoid evolutionism
Evolutionism
Evolutionism refers to the biological concept of evolution, specifically to a widely held 19th century belief that organisms are intrinsically bound to increase in complexity. The belief was extended to include cultural evolution and social evolution...
, which since the nineteenth century postulated a ‘progressive’ way from ‘primitive’ to ‘civilized’ patterns.
While the concept of civilization normally had hopeful undertones, discipline
Discipline
In its original sense, discipline is referred to systematic instruction given to disciples to train them as students in a craft or trade, or to follow a particular code of conduct or "order". Often, the phrase "to discipline" carries a negative connotation. This is because enforcement of order –...
had more critical undertones. Cultures of bodily discipline became visible – following Foucault
Foucault
Foucault can refer to:People:*Jean-Pierre Foucault , French television host*Léon Foucault , French physicist*Michel Foucault , French philosopher and historian...
and the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
– in Baroque dance
Baroque dance
Baroque dance is dance of the Baroque era , closely linked with Baroque music, theatre and opera.- English country dance :...
(Lippe 1974), in aristocratic and bourgeois pedagogy of the spinal column during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Vigarello 1978), and in hygienic strategies, school sanitation and school gymnastics during the twentieth century (Augestad 2003). Military exercise (→military drill) in Early Modern times was the classic field for body cultural discipline (Gaulhofer 1930; Kleinschmidt 1989).
In the field of sports, a central point of body-cultural dispute has been the question whether sport had its roots in Ancient Greek competitions of the Olympic
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
type or whether it was fundamentally linked to modernity. While nineteenth century’s Neo-Humanism, Classicism and Olympism assumed the ancient roots of sport, body cultural studies showed that the patterns central to modern sports – quantification, rationalisation, principle of achievement – could not be dated before the industrial culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Eichberg 1978; Guttmann 1978). What was practiced before, were popular games, noble exercises, festivities of different character, children’s games and competitions, but not sport in modern understanding. The emergence of modern sport was an eruptive innovation rather than a logical prolongation of earlier practices. As a revolution of body culture, this transformation contributed to a deeper understanding of the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
. The so-called Eichberg-Mandell-Guttmann theory about the uniqueness of modern sport became, however, a matter of controversies and was opposed by other historians (Carter/Krüger 1990).
What came out of the controversies between the concepts of modernity, evolution, civilization, discipline and revolution was that “modernization
Modernization
In the social sciences, modernization or modernisation refers to a model of an evolutionary transition from a 'pre-modern' or 'traditional' to a 'modern' society. The teleology of modernization is described in social evolutionism theories, existing as a template that has been generally followed by...
” only can be thought as a non-lineal change with nuances and full of contradictions. This is how the history of sport (Nielsen 1993 and 2005) and of gymnastics (Defrance 1987; Vestergård Madsen 2003) as well as the history of running
Running
Running is a means of terrestrial locomotion allowing humans and other animals to move rapidly on foot. It is simply defined in athletics terms as a gait in which at regular points during the running cycle both feet are off the ground...
(Bale 2004) have been described in body-cultural terms.
One of the visible and at the same time deeper changes in relation to the modern body concerns the dress reform and the appearance of the naked body, especially in the years between 1900 and the 1920s. The change from noble pale skin to suntanned skin as a ‘sportive’ distinction was not only linked to sport, but had a strong impact on society as a whole. The change of appreciated body colour reversed the social-bodily distinctions between people and classes fundamentally, and nudism became a radical expression of this body-cultural change.
Industrial body and production
Body culture studies have cast new light on the origins and conditions of the Industrial Revolution, which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries transformed people’s everyday life in a fundamental way. The traditional common-sense explanations of industrialization by technology and economy as ‘driving forces’ have shown as insufficient. Economic interests and technological change had their basic conditions in human social-bodily practice. The history of sport and games in body cultural perspective showed that this practice was changing one or two generations, before the Industrial Revolution as a technological and economic transformation took place. What had been carnivalCarnival
Carnaval is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February. Carnaval typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, mask and public street party...
-like festivities, tournaments and popular games before, became modern sport by a new focus on results, measuring and quantifying records (Eichberg 1978; Guttmann 1978). Under the aspect of the principle of achievement, there was no sport in ancient Egypt, in ancient Greece, among the Aztecs or Vikings, and in European Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, though there were games, competitions and festivities. Sport as a new type of body culture resulted from societal changes in the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries.
The genesis of sport in connection with industrial productivity
Productivity
Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. Productivity is a ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it. Usually this ratio is in the form of an average, expressing the total output divided by the total input...
called to attention the historical-cultural relativity of “production” (→Manufacturing
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...
) itself. Studies in the history of “the human motor” and the “mortal engines” of sport showed reification (→reification (Marxism)
Reification (Marxism)
Reification or Versachlichung, literally "objectification" or regarding something as a separate business matter) is the consideration of an abstraction, relation or object as if they had human or living existence and abilities, when in reality they do not...
) and technology as lines of historical dynamics (Rigauer 1969; Vigarello 1988; Rabinbach 1992; Hoberman 1992). Production became apparent not as a universal concept, but as something historically specific – and sport was its body-cultural ritual.
Trialectics of body culture
Body culture as a field of contradictions demands a dialectical approach, but it is not dualistic in character. Body culture studies have revealed trialectical relations inside the world of sports (Eichberg 1998, 2010; Bale 1996, 2002 and 2004).The hegemonic model of Western modern body culture is achievement sport, translating movement into records. Sportive competition follows the logic of productivity by bodily strain and forms a ranking pyramid with elite sports placed at the top and the losers at the bottom. Through sportive movement, people display a theatre of production.
A contrasting model within modern body culture is delivered by mass sports. In gymnastics
Gymnastics
Gymnastics is a sport involving performance of exercises requiring physical strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, and balance. Internationally, all of the gymnastic sports are governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique with each country having its own national governing body...
and fitness training, the body is disciplined by subjecting it to certain rules of “scientific”, social geometrical or aesthetic order (Roubal 2007). By rhythmic repetition and formal homogenization, the individual bodies are integrated into a larger whole, which is recommended in terms of reproduction (→reproduction (economics)
Reproduction (economics)
In Marxian economics, economic reproduction refers to recurrent processes by which the initial conditions necessary for economic activity to occur are constantly re-created...
), as being healthy and educative. Through fitness sport, people absolve a ritual of reproductive correctness and integration.
A third model is present in popular festivity, dance and play. In carnival and folk sport, people meet people by festive movement. This type of gathering may give life to the top-down arrangements of both productive achievement sport and reproductive fitness sport, too. But the body experience of popular festivity, dance, play and game is a-productive in itself – it celebrates relation in movement.
Practices of sport in their diversity and their historical change, thus, clarify inner contradictions inside social life more generally – among these the contradictions between state, market and civil society. The trialectics of body culture throw light on the complexity of societal relations.
Body cultures in plural
“Culture” in singular is an abstraction. The study of body culture is always a study of body cultures in plural. Body cultures show human life in variety and differences, assimilation and distinction, conflicts and contradictions. This demands a comparative approach to otherness, and this is the way several studies in body culture have gone.Culture was studied as cultures already by the school of Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism
Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and...
in American anthropology (American Anthropological Association
American Anthropological Association
The American Anthropological Association is a professional organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 11,000 members, the Arlington, Virginia based association includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, biological anthropologists, linguistic...
) in the 1930s (Ruth Benedict
Ruth Benedict
Ruth Benedict was an American anthropologist, cultural relativist, and folklorist....
). Postcolonial studies have taken this pluralistic
Cultural pluralism
Cultural pluralism is a term used when smaller groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities, and their values and practices are accepted by the wider culture. Cultural pluralism is often confused with Multiculturalism...
perspective up again (Bale 1996 and 2004; Brownell 1995; Azoy 2003; Leseth 2004). The discourse in singular about “the body in our society” became problematic when confronted with body cultures in conflict and tension.
The plurality and diversity of body cultures is, however, not only a matter of outward relations. There are also body cultures in plural inside a given society. The study of different class habitus (→class culture), youth cultures, gender cultures (→gender identity
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
) etc. opened up for deeper insights into the differentiation of civil society.
Configurational analysis
Body culture studies try to understand bodily practice as patterns revealing the inner tensions and contradictions of a given society. In order to analyze these connections, the study of body culture has turned attention to the configurations of movement in time and space, the energy of movement, its interpersonal relations and objectification (→Historical Behaviour StudiesHistorical Behaviour Studies
Historical behaviour studies is a field of research in cultural history and cultural anthropology and a particular methodological approach to the study of human behaviour.----- Method and object of research :...
). Above this basis, people build a superstructure of institutions and ideas, organising and reflecting body culture in relation to collective actions and interests (Eichberg 1978; Dietrich 2001: 10-32; see keyword 2).
By elaborating the complex interplay between bodily practice and the superstructures of ideas and conscience, body cultures studies challenge the established history and sociology.
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