Body culture studies

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (July 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Part of a series on the
Anthropology of art, media, music, dance and film
Basic concepts Color symbolism Visual culture Body culture Material culture New media
Case studies Art Art of the Americas Indigenous Australian art Oceanic art Film Nanook of the North The Ax Fight Nǃai, the Story of a ǃKung Woman Incidents of Travel in Chichen Itza The Doon School Quintet
Museums National Anthropological Archives Centro Cultural Mexiquense Museum of Anthropology at UBC Museum of Anthropology, Cambridge Museum of Indian Arts and Culture Robert Hull Fleming Museum List of museums
Related articles Ethnographic film Video ethnography Ethnocinema List of ethnographic films Margaret Mead Film Festival Cantometrics Museum anthropology Salvage ethnography Tribal art/Folk art
Major theorists Tim Asch Gregory Bateson Franz Boas Pierre Bourdieu John Collier Frances Densmore Robert J. Flaherty Robert Gardner Alfred Gell Robert Hugh Layton Claude Lévi-Strauss Alan Lomax John Marshall Margaret Mead Alan Merriam Bruno Nettl Hortense Powdermaker Jean Rouch David MacDougall
Social and cultural anthropology
v t e

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 in terms of human bodily practices, they are sometimes viewed as a form of materialist phenomenology.

Its significance (in German Körperkultur, in Danish kropskultur)^[1] was discovered in 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 – sports studies. These studies were especially established at Danish universities and academies and operated in collaboration with Nordic, European and East Asian research networks.

Body culture studies include studies in dance, play and game, outdoor activities, festivities and other forms of movement culture. It floats towards studies in medical cultures, working habits, gender and sexual cultures, fashion and body decoration, popular festivity and popular culture studies.

These were made useful when it made the study of sport enter into a broader historical and sociological discussion – from the level of subjectivity to civil society, state and market.