Embodiment and Experience The Existential Ground of Culture and Self [Paperback]

A collection of essays examining the relationship between cultural values and the body as a source of symbols and instrument of experience.The unifying theme of these essays is that the body is at once a source of symbols as well as the instrument of experience. This view is applied by the contributors to a variety of topics, including dietary customs, the expression of emotion, the experience of pain and political violence.The unifying theme of these essays is that the body is at once a source of symbols as well as the instrument of experience. This view is applied by the contributors to a variety of topics, including dietary customs, the expression of emotion, the experience of pain and political violence.Students of culture have been increasingly concerned with the ways in which cultural values are inscribed on the body. The unifying theme of these essays is that the body is at once a fount of symbols and the instrument of experience. This more complex and dynamic view is applied by the contributors to a variety of topics, including dietary customs, the expression of emotion, the experience of pain, and political violence. Their purpose is to contribute to a phenomenological theory of culture and self.Introduction: the body as representation and being-in-the-world Thomas J. Csordas; Part I. Paradigms and Polemics: 1. Bodies and anti-bodies: flesh and fetish in contemporary social theory Terence Turner; 2. Society's body: emotion and the 'somatization' of social theory M. L. Lyon and J. M. Barbalet; Part II. Form, Appearance and Movement: 3. The political economy of injury and compassion: amputees on the Thai-Cambodia border Lindsay French; 4. Nurturing and negligence: working on others' bodies in Fiji Anne E. Becker; 5. The silenced body - the expressive Leib: on the dialectic of mind and life in Chinese cathartic healing Thomas Ots; Part III. Self, Sensibility, and Emotion: 6. Embodied metaphors: nerves as lived experience Setha M. Low; 7. Bodily transactions oflCÉ