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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Body culture studies | 2/7 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_culture_studies | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T14:59:41.109537+00:00 | kb-cron |
== The word and concept of "body culture" – alternative practice == The word "body culture" first appeared around 1900, originating from the German Körperkultur. Initially, it signified a specific form of physical practice and well-being. The so-called "life reform" (German: Lebensreform) aimed at the clothing reform and nurtured new bodily activities, creating a new sector alongside established gymnastics and sports. The third sector of movement culture included Freikörperkultur (FKK, free body culture, also known as naturism), rhythmic-expressive gymnastics, expressionist dance, yoga, and bodybuilding (Wedemeyer-Kolwe 2004), and a new type of youth wandering (Wandervogel). Despite their diversity, these activities were collectively termed Körperkultur in German, physical culture (→physical education) in English, culture physique in French, and kropskultur in Danish. Inspirations from the body culture movement led 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 (body culture) held a prominent place. This concept also entered into Russian Socialism, where fiskultura became an alternative to bourgeois sport, uniting the revolutionary fractions of the more aesthetic Proletkult and more health-oriented "hygienism" (Riordan 1977). Later, Stalinism forced the contradictory terms under the formula "sport and body culture," a trend that 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 sports-critical discourse with 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 to 1997. In Germany, a series of books titled "Sport: Kultur, Veränderung" (Sport: Culture, Change) marked the body cultural turn from 1981, featuring 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, meditation. 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 I-hsiung from the National Taiwan Normal University founded in 2003 the Taiwan Body Culture Society (Taiwan shenti wenhua xiehui), publishing the reviews Sport Studies (in Chinese, since 2007) and Body Culture Journal (in Chinese, since 2005). 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.
== 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 individual": 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.