In the 1980’s, a number of articles containing conceptualizations of the body were circulating. These conceptualizations of what the body was, what the body did, and what the body represented set the context of Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ and Margaret Lock’s 1987 essay, The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology. In this prolegomenon, the authors pull together all of the existing literature of the body in the 1980’s and argued that there were actually three bodies – the individual body, the social body, and the body politic – therefore, setting the stage for future anthropological work to further study and theorize the body. Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1987) argue that the “first and perhaps most self-evident level is the individual body, understood in the phenomenological sense of the lived experience of the body-self” (7). In other words, the first body – the individual body – is the site of the self; that is, it is the experience everyone has in their individual bodies. It is the “I” centred experiences of the body; therefore implicating that the “I” in the body is a cultural construction. The social body, according to Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1987) refers to the “representational uses of the body as a natural symbol with which to think about nature, society, and culture” (7). Essentially, the social body is a symbol that is shaped through dominant social ideologies and hegemonies and therefore, reflects and expresses the core social values of the society in which the body is situated. Finally, Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1987) maintain that the body politic refers to the “regulation, surveillance, and control of bodies (individual and collective) in reproduction and sexuality, in work and in leisure, in sickness and other forms od deviance and human difference” (7-8). Influenced by Foucault, the body politic stems from Foucault’s notion of biopower, in which the exercise of ‘control’ or the manifestation of governance or even the action of discourse, shapes bodies and produces new forms of practice and new kinds of social relationships. The execution of biopower in relation the body politic is seen through governmental laws regarding reproduction and information collected from the population through the census, as the “stability of the body politic rests on its ability to regulate populations (the social body) and to discipline individual bodies” (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987:8). These three bodies are representative not only of three separate and overlapping units of analysis, but also three different theoretical approaches and epistemologies: phenomenology, structuralism and symbolism, and post-structuralism (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987). Nonetheless, while all three bodies are important to analyze, this reflection will focus on the social body and it’s symbolic theoretical and epistemological approach, as seen in the articles by Taylor (1988), Turner (1957), Yafeh (2007), and Wade (2011).
Mary Douglas symbolically analyzed the social body. Douglas maintained that the individual internalized social facts through the body and argued, “Just as it is true that everything symbolizes the body, so it is equally true that the body symbolizes everything else” (1966:122). It follows, then, that the experiences of the body are representations and expressions of the society in which the body is situated. In Taylor’s (1988) ethnographic study of the concept of flow in Rwandan popular medicine, he found that Rwandan popular medicine was ontologically Aristotelian, in that the body was comprised of humors. More specifically, Taylor (1988) found that the humoral flow of bodily fluids was symbolic of Rwandan beliefs, practices, and culture, and concern issues related to social and biological reproduction. According to Taylor, “Liquids figure prominently in this symbolism for they mediate between physiological, sociological, and cosomological notions of causality” (Taylor 1988:1343). For instance, women who were unable to produce breast milk were biologically and socially diagnosed as “blocked beings”, as their inability to produce breast milk was caused by a blockage of flow, which in turn, represented them as a socially “defect” being. Another example Taylor (1988) found was that socially perceived “mad” people, were supposedly biologically understood to have a lack of saliva and therefore, dry mouths. What these two examples demonstrate is that any lack of humoral flow meant a lack of Rwandan normalcy. More importantly, in the gift economy of Rwanda, the lack of liquid humoral flow between a woman and her child in the form of breast milk meant that an exchange could not occur. Taylor argues that this liquid exchange is not simply something material; instead, it is symbolic of Rwandan culture, tradition, and social practices. A “blocked being” is therefore defunct not only in terms of being able to transmit the material liquid (i.e. breast milk), but also in terms of not being able to transmit Rwandan culture and meaning. The body of a “blocked being” in Rwanda is biologically, physiologically, and socially unable to symbolize society and instead, becomes a symbol of “defect”.
Similarly, in Turner’s (1957) ethnographic study of symbols in Ndembu ritual, he found that the milk tree was a polyvalent symbol in Ndembu society. For some informants, the milk tree symbolized a woman’s womb, whereas for other informants, when discussing the milk tree symbolism in the context of the girls’ puberty ritual, they tended to stress the “harmonizing, cohesive aspects of the milk tree symbolism”, as well as the aspect of dependence (71). Turner explained, “The child depends on its mother for nutriment; similarly, say the Ndembu, the tribesman drinks from the breasts of tribal custom. Thus, nourishment and learning are equated in the meaning content of the milk tree” (71). From all of these polyvalent meanings of the symbol of the milk tree, Turner maintains that all of these meanings reflect the principles and values of social organization, as well as a woman’s relationship to her body. Women’s bodies become a site for Ndembu social inscription, akin to how children’s bodies become a site for gender inscription, as in Yafeh’s (2007) ethnographic study on the cultural construction of femininity in kindergarten girls.
Yafeh (2007) maintains, “The child’s body is not static, it changes incessantly, and therefore it plays a crucial role in children’s lives and in their experience of themselves” (517). Much like Douglas’ views on how individuals internalize social facts through their bodies, Yafeh further argues that children’s bodies specifically, internalize socio-culturally constructed gender norms through their bodies. However, where Yafeh’s argument gets interesting, is when she sats, “Haredi girls embody a unique concept of time reflecting the importance attributed in their culture to reliving the past as a formative experience of both present and future identities” (Yafeh 2007:520). The Jewish concept of time, according to Yafeh (2007), “becomes a marker of cultural affiliation and female identity through an active enactment of the girls’ past, present, and future bodies” (520). In other words, Yafeh maintains that kindergarten Haredi girls are taught to embody a past ideal, modest feminine body in their ultraorthodox Jewish religion and are then expected to reproduce that body in their future adolescent and adult lives. The hegemonic ideal of Haredi femininity, as implied by Yafeh, is something durable – static, almost – and most importantly, something both teachable and attainable to and for young girls to reproduce. Obviously influenced by Mauss’ “Techniques of the Body” and Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, Yafeh’s description and argument of the type of femininity that young Haredi girls are taught and expected to embody and reproduce is something socio-culturally constructed and endemic to that society, where this type of femininity is “constituted along a continuum of past, present, and future female identities” (542). For Yafeh, the body – specifically, young girls’ bodies – is a “symbol (and concrete) bridge between past and future identities” (543). While very interesting, Yafeh’s argument about time and femininity being static in Jewish tradition fails to recognize the dynamism of social life and leaves hardly any room for any sort of social change in perspectives of femininity or perspectives on religion. Many critics of Bourdieu’s notion of habitus use this same argument, as Bourdieu maintained that habitus is something that is durable and long lasting; habitus can be described as dispositions or tendencies, which draw upon past experiences that shape present behaviour, perceptions, actions, interpretations in the present moment and have a tendency to be reproduced – much like the hegemonic ideal of femininity in Yafeh’s ethnographic study.
Wade’s (2011) study almost speaks directly to both my critique of Yafeh’s article, as well as to general criticisms of Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. In Wade’s (2011) ethnographic study of the more malleable habitus of Lindy hop dancers, she addresses the criticisms of Bourdieu’s habitus as being “deterministic”, and responds by arguing that habitus is instead, determining; thus, allowing for social change. She argues that there are two lines of thought on this: (1) Habitus can the target of conscious manipulation; and (2) Reconceptualization of the social structure which is said to embody the habitus. To clarify (1), Wade argues that we are aware of our body habits and are able to consciously change our body habitus, much like her Lindy hop dancers. To clarify (2), because habitus is structure dependent, a reconceptualization of the social structure itself can give rise to various forms of habitus, as she nicely states, “If a society is understood to be monolithic, then the habitus will be as well” (Wade 2011:226). Wade maintains that because not many people have focused on “habitual inertia”, there has been little empirical evidence on the potential of habitus to permit social change. She argues that her research on lindy hop dancers subverts the notion that habitus often works against the “out-of-place individual”, and instead, “the same phenomenon can also be seen as an opportunity to diversify their bodily tools” (Wade 2011:227).
Interestingly, this article allowed me to observe some important parallels between Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and Foucault’s concept of discourse, as both have been argued to limit the agency of the individual and limit the space of social change. For Bourdieu, social structure creates habitus, which is durable and has a tendency to be reproduced through individual bodies. For Foucault, discourse creates subjects, which are then trained to reproduce, enact, and adhere to the discourse, in order to remain within the boundaries of the discourse and to not be labeled as “deviants”. These subjects created by Foucault’s discourse are trained to be docile; that is, compliant, through panoptical surveillance and through the pervasive and pleasurable “rules” of the discourse. Foucault’s concept of discourse seems to mirror Bourdieu’s construction of social structure. If the discourse is the social structure, then the pervasive and pleasurable “rules” of the discourse could arguably be described as Bourdieu’s habitus, as both the rules of the discourse and Bourdieu’s habitus are durable, long-lasting, have a tendency to be reproduced, and as Wade (2011) noted, work against the “out-of-place individual” – the non-docile body that is situated outside of the discourse. This observation leads me to the question, if Yafeh and Wade used a Foucauldian theoretical approach to their conceptualizations of both childrens’ and dancers’ bodies, would they have argued differently? What would Yafeh have said about those bodies who were “unteachable” and who failed to fit within the discourse of ultraorthodox Jewish religion? How would Wade talk about her lindy-hop dancers? Would she reach the same conclusions? Moreover, what would the bodies of those unteachable, “deviant”, and “blocked-being” children and Lindy-hop dancers be symbolizing about their respective societies?