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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Body culture studies | 3/7 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_culture_studies | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T14:59:41.109537+00:00 | kb-cron |
== 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 jogging 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).
== 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 fractal 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.
== Body culture and politics == Body culture can also be considered political such as how the body shape and appearance as well as sports, dance, and other recreational activities manifest and influence social change driven by politics. This is best demonstrated by practice theory, which explains that, since body techniques serve as the means by which existing social order is produced and maintained, it, therefore, become important sites for challenging and transforming the social order when change does occur. In power plays, for instance, the body is used in sporting events as a form of rhetoric, articulating political causes. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the body became an important part of George W. Bush's geopolitics in addition to the projection of American power. On the other hand, the body was also used to condemn elitist and spectator sport within a mass physical culture starting this period in America, which evokes participation, inclusion, and populism. The body is an integral component in the feminist politics. It is maintained that in order for this feminist initiatives to be effective, it is imperative that women's bodies, along with their works, labor, and voice, are present for everyone to see.