The body

Question 1

Body techniques

Answer 1

Mauss was concerned to explain the functional importance of how cultures use their bodies in different ways. Bodilt techniques are defined by Mauss as something that is both traditional (passed down through imitation of those who socialise us) and effective (has a reason socially learned ways of doing things)

Question 2

Habitus

Answer 2

Describes the combination of techniques that make up a culturally specific way of using ones entire body.

Question 3

Practice theory

Answer 3

Discusses the relationship between Habitus and society. This has been productively applied to many ethnographic contexts.

Question 4

Social skin

Answer 4

Turner- The body and skin is a key site of cultural communication.

Question 5

Kayapo

Answer 5

Amazonian peoples, practice highly complex forms a body adornment, which Turner regards as dress.

Question 6

Nakedness

Answer 6

A cultural category which describes the natural site beneath culture.

Question 7

kayapo dress

Answer 7

Their dress has to do with being clean and healthy, their body decoration symbolically purges the self form its polluting natural substances. Only people that have mastered their polluting, natural selves can display their its physical symbols.

Question 8

Kayapo body paint

Answer 8

This is a complex symbolic system, which describes the duality of nature and culture. Black paint symbolises the dangerous state at the edge of culture. Parts of you that one would cover.

Question 9

Red body paint

Answer 9

Accentuates the parts of the body that are used in cultural communication- the mouth and such.