Bodily Dimensions Research Articles

Audience gestures and horizon of expectations in Israeli theatre

Dennis Kennedy deals with the issue of constructing spectators’ subjectivity, suggesting the term ‘audience gestures’ to explain the complicated behaviour of spectators and focusing on the active bodily dimension of reception (e.g., applause, cheering, booing, hissing). In his view, audience gestures construct the subjectivity of the spectators in terms of social and cultural identities, though they depend on the ‘horizon of expectations’ – the sociopolitical, cultural and aesthetical baggage of the audience. In contrast, this article argues that it is the performance that mostly directs and even programmes audience gestures, which in turn construct the spectators’ subjectivity or identity. By way of exemplifying how the ‘horizon of expectations’ directs the ‘audience gestures,’ this article will discuss audience behaviour in two Israeli theatrical productions – one dealing with secular Jewish identity, the other with Mizrhai ethnic identity – in terms of constructed social identities.

Taking the bus in peri-urban Mexico City: Bodily perspectives on own and urban becoming

This paper explores the movement of bodies in urbanising landscapes. In particular, it looks at the bodily practice that unfolds at a ‘bus stop made by stopping buses’ in peri-urban Mexico City. Doing so, I pursue three questions: What are the specificities of bodily practice in the peri-urban realm and out of what socio-material conditions do they emerge? How does this practice sit within notions of informality and cityness? And what urban imaginaries do peri-urban practitioners ‘grow’ out of their direct engagement with the material environment, that is, in this case, when taking buses? The bus stop in question is located in the municipality of Tecámac, State of Mexico, in the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City (ZMVM). It is a site of pure activity, social occurrence without being forged into built form; a site with ‘nothing there’ but the encounter of travellers and buses along the Mexico City-Pachuca highway. Carefully examining the seemingly banal activity of flagging down and boarding buses, however, allows us to take seriously the bodily and material dimensions of urban life and to acknowledge their influence on how city is made and thought. The paper draws on ethnographic research with a focus on visual and sensory methods.

Medieval Sciences of Emotions during the Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries: An Intellectual History

The standard narrative of the development of Western thinking about emotions is that the concept of emotions emerged alongside the secularization of European society and thought and was linked to the emergence of psychology as a discipline. This essay argues that a systematic psychology of affectivity emerged far earlier and can be found in Western Christian thought. In the context of the cultural renewal of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, Christian anthropology—the conception of the human being—was totally reshaped. We would like to trace the steps of this development. The shift took place gradually from the end of the eleventh century onward, both in the monastic context and in the new scholastic milieu. In earlier medieval times, emotions were understood in terms of the dual moral perspective of vices and virtues, as defined by the parameters of the Fall and Salvation: affective life was largely reduced either to negative disturbances of the soul that a Christian should resist or to a positive love of God that one should cultivate. From the beginning of the twelfth century onward, Western thinking about affective life began to engage new questions. Emotions both positive and negative came to be regarded as important aspects of a more complex picture of human nature and attracted growing attention as such. Without departing from the Christian framework, which remained the basis of the growing, psychologically oriented literature, emotions came to be described in relation to the powers of the soul, and their sensory and bodily dimensions, as well as their cognitive, rational, and volitional functions, were increasingly considered in an integrated way. Our essay analyzes the medieval psychology of emotions from a fresh perspective.

Toward re-thinking science education in terms of affective practices: reflections from the field

Rational and operationalized views of science and what it means for teachers and students to know and enact legitimate science practices have dominated science education research for many decades (Fusco and Barton in J Res Sci Teach 38(3):337–354, 2001. doi:10.1002/1098-2736(200103)38:3 3.0.CO;2-0). Michalinos Zembylas challenges historically prevalent dichotomies of mind/body, reason/emotion, and emotion/affect, calling researchers and educators to move beyond the Cartesian dualisms, which have perpetuated a myth of scientific objectivity devoid of bias, subjectivity and emotions. Zembylas (Crit Stud Teach Learn 1(1):1–21, 2013. doi:10.14426/cristal.v1i1.2) contends that the role of emotions and affect are best understood as relational and entangled in epistemological, cultural, and historical contexts of education, which represent contested sites of control and resistance. We argue that Zembylas’ work is pivotal since “theoretical frames of reference for doing research in science education…[and] what constitutes knowledge and being within a particular frame” carry material bearings over the enactments of science teaching and learning (Kyle in J Res Sci Teach 31:695–696, 1994, p. 321. doi:10.1002/tea.3660310703). In this paper, we hold cogen dialogue about how re-thinking notions of emotion and affect affords us, both science educators and researchers, to re-envision science education beyond cognitive and social frames. The framing of our dialogue as cogen builds on Wolff-Michael Roth and Kenneth Tobin’s (At the elbows of another: learning to teach through coteaching. Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2002) notion of cogenerative dialogue. Holding cogen is an invitation to an openly dialogic and safe area, which serves as a space for a dialogic inquiry that includes radical listening of situated knowledges and learning from similarities as well as differences of experiences (Tobin in Cult Stud Sci Educ, in review, 2015). From our situated experiences reforms, colleges of education, schools, and curriculum place not enough emphasis on affective and bodily dimensions of teaching and learning. Instead, the privilege seems to be given to reason, evidence, and rationalities, which continue to reinforce dominant ways of knowing and experiencing. The separation of mind and body, reason and emotion, effect and affect in teaching and research might bear unintended and negative consequences for many children and teachers who are engaged in bodily and affective forms of learning science. In this forum we wish to expand on the discussion to consider the interdependent nature of learning, experience, and affect by drawing on our work with science teachers and culturally and linguistically diverse students, juxtaposed alongside Zembylas’ reflections, to further theorize the affective turn in science education.

Reliable Gait Recognition Using 3D Reconstructions and Random Forests - An Anthropometric Approach.

Photogrammetric measurements of bodily dimensions and analysis of gait patterns in CCTV are important tools in forensic investigations but accurate extraction of the measurements are challenging. This study tested whether manual annotation of the joint centers on 3D reconstructions could provide reliable recognition. Sixteen participants performed normal walking where 3D reconstructions were obtained continually. Segment lengths and kinematics from the extremities were manually extracted by eight expert observers. The results showed that all the participants were recognized, assuming the same expert annotated the data. Recognition based on data annotated by different experts was less reliable achieving 72.6% correct recognitions as some parameters were heavily affected by interobserver variability. This study verified that 3D reconstructions are feasible for forensic gait analysis as an improved alternative to conventional CCTV. However, further studies are needed to account for the use of different clothing, field conditions, etc.

Satire and Geopolitics: Vulgarity, Ambiguity and the Body Grotesque in South Park

Humour and laughter have become the subject of recent geopolitical scrutiny. Scholars have explored the affirmative and liberatory possibilities of humour, and the affective bodily dimensions of laughter as tools for transformative action in critical geopolitics. Humour that is vulgar and politically ambiguous is yet to be explored as a potent geopolitical avenue of enquiry. Studies of satire have suggested that rather than contesting entrenched geopolitical beliefs, satirical shows can serve to further divide audiences both amenable and antagonistic to the satire in question. I argue that this should not involve a wholesale rejection of satirical shows, as humour that uses irony, subversion, and other discursive techniques is just one way satirical media becomes an effective commentator on political issues. I examine the show South Park and argue its satire combines bodily and scatological humour with more traditional satirical techniques to produce a comedy that ridicules contemporary issues by reducing complex politics to the most basic and crass condition possible. This is defined in a Bakhtinian sense of the body grotesque, a social inversion through reference to the common bodily functions of all human beings.

A look into the household environment of female wheelchair users : An ergonomic approach

Women are engaged in performing a number of household activities like working in kitchen, child care, clothing care and sorting out and storing almost all kind of household items. These activities require moving about the premises and carrying stuff from one place to other within the house. Disabled women are performing these activities in an environment which is not suitable for their changed bodily dimensions and conditions. Hence, they find it very difficult to work in this kind of environment especially when they need to stretch their body beyond their physical capabilities. So, the present study was planned to ergonomically evaluate the household environment (furniture, storage spaces and working centers) of the female wheelchair users of Punjab. Results revealed that there were no special provisions or workspace designing for the wheelchair users, regarding their limitations, to make their living and working comfortable in their houses.

How to Address Politics of the Body in Participatory Performance? On the Possibilities of Sensory Fields and Collective Body Techniques as Analytical Tools

This article discusses the importance of and challenges in analyzing and contex- tualizing the ways of bodily participation in participatory performance practices. The writer suggests that the crucial ideological assumptions, as well as the processes of exclusion and inclusion of any participatory project, are not to be seen solely in their “goals” or “themes”, but, even more distinctly, in the modes of bodily participation that they employ. The writer presents a novel performance analytical framework that takes the bodily dimension – what is actually done to and expected from the bodies of the participants during the performance event – as the starting point for critical analysis. Drawing especially from Jacques Rancière’s and Marcel Mauss’s views of human perception and experience, the main concepts of this framework are ‘sensory fields’ and ‘collective body tech- niques’. The writer also shows how these concepts have informed his research on Lois Weaver’s performance What Tammy Needs to Know About Getting Old and Having Sex (2008).

Bodies of War, the Past Continuous, and (Ar)rhythmic Experiences

In recent years, International Relations scholars have shown a growing interest in the body. Yet, the body often remains rather abstract. In this article, we engage with the lived body and personal histories, claim that the international is not only personal but also corporeal with bodily dimension, and explore the body as a complex intersection that characterizes and shapes the relations between the singular, social, and international. To illustrate our argument, we discuss a sensuous experience of war that defies simplistic categorization and interpretation. The aim is to introduce an alternative onto-epistemological angle on International Relations in order to overcome the separation of the discipline from ordinary people and local everyday practices. The body is shown to be a site of the political, a place of intersection that both enacts practices and fosters relations with others and toward the world, and engages in practices that disrupt the normal rhythm of international politics and its governing logic.

ERGO-ANALYSIS OF SCHOOL FURNITURE IN USE BY SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN SOUTH WESTERN NIGERIA

The anthropometric data of the students in secondary schools was obtained and possible mismatch between the relevant dimensions of students and the classroom furniture they use were examined. A total of 480 students in Junior Secondary 1 through Senior Secondary 3 in sixteen (Eight Public and Eight Private) Secondary Schools participated in the study with ages ranging from 10 years to 18 years. Fourteen anthropometric measurements and the dimensions of four types of chairs and four types of desks prevalent in the students' classrooms were measured. The means, standard deviations, fifth, fiftieth and ninety fifth percentiles were calculated. The anthropometric dimensions of the students in the public schools were statistically compared with those in the private schools with use of SPSS 16.0 Statistical Package. Moreover, the student body dimensions and furniture dimensions were compared. The results show that that all the measured dimensions of the students in the public schools (Popliteal Height: 39.5 cm, Sitting Height: 77.3 cm, Knee Height: 53.0 cm, Elbow Height Sitting: 16.0 cm, Buttock-Popliteal Length: 43.8 cm; using the 50 th percentiles) and private schools (Popliteal Height: 40.2 cm, Sitting Height: 80.3 cm, Knee Height: 53.3 cm, Elbow Height Sitting: 16.5 cm, Buttock-Popliteal Length: 44.0 cm; using the 50 th percentiles) were not significantly different (p = 0.00) except Buttock-Popliteal Length (p = 0.08) and Hip Breadth (p = 0.12). Moreover, a degree of mismatch between the students' bodily dimensions and the classroom furniture available to them was established. It was concluded that the anthropometric data of the .Nigerian Students were not employed in the manufacture of the school furniture and may be an indication that school furniture and students anthropometric dimensions are at variant nationwide.

Bodily dimensions of reading and writing practices on paper and digitally

This article investigates the different shapes in which reading and writing practices occur when paper/pen are compared with keyboard/screen. The focus is on the bodily aspects of these practices. Reading and writing are viewed as techniques of the body, which over the years have become increasingly mediated by technologies. The analysis is grounded in the theory of social practice. Research material consists of written essays collected from 25 students at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, in 2013. Results show that paper as material is considered suitable and adaptive to numerous reading purposes and bodily positions, while regarding the screen the places and positions of reading are viewed as more limited due to the material boundary conditions presented by devices. Students describe handwriting as a more flexible and relaxed bodily practice than typing, although the worsening skills of handwriting are recognized too. Skills and competences turned out to be less decisive factors than materials and images when trying to explain the differences in reading and writing practices when a paper/pen is compared with a keyboard/screen. Finally, the study argues that digital reading writing interfaces do not determine the ways we read and write as strongly as previously suggested.

O CORPO NO TRABALHO

Esta resenha apresenta e analisa a obra Le corps à l´ouvrage, de Thierry Pillon. Será mostrado que o livro tem relevância para os estudos sobre o corpo, pois ele evidencia a importância da dimensão corpórea nas situações de trabalho, o que não tem sido muito usual nos estudos culturais sobre o corpo.

Mouthing Disgust and Pleasure in Eating Disorders

ABSTRACTThis article explores the complex sensorial encounters that people with eating disorders have in response to their mouths, food, eating, and embodiment. We argue that relationships to food, perceived primarily in clinical and psychological terms of control and discipline, ignore sensorial and generative dimensions of embodiment and the associated affective agency of hungers, pleasures, and disgust. Through analysis of the filmed performance of Untitled (The Party), we examine how the mouth for people with eating disorders embodies a metaphorical space of disgust, but also pleasure. As a soft, moist bodily opening, the mouth presents a symbolic space that can be filled with sensorial engagements of touch, disgust, pleasure, and taste. It is through the materiality of cream as used in the performance, and Irigaray's morphological mediation of bodily dimensions and language via the mucous touch, that we present new sensorial engagements with eating disorders.

Bodily dimensions of the constitution of boundaries

ZusammenfassungIm Kontext sozialpädagogischer Forschung und Theoriebildung bildet die theoriesystematische Reflexion der Verhältnisse von Körper/Leib und Grenzen eine Leerstelle. Diese Zusammenhänge werden im Beitrag vor dem Hintergrund anthropologischer, poststrukturalistischer, sozialontologischer sowie praxeologischer Theorieperspektiven beleuchtet. In diesen Bestimmungsversuchen erweist sich der Körper zum einen als Grenze sowie in seiner Grenzhaftigkeit, zum anderen sind Körper an der Konstitution von Grenzen ebenfalls beteiligt. Es wird aufgezeigt, dass und wie mittels Markierungen bestimmter Aspekte von und an Körpern symbolische Grenzen, während mit Körpern – wie etwa bei der Konstituierung von Kollektivität und Gemeinschaft – zugleich soziale Grenzen konstruiert werden. Im Zuge der Analysen werden insbesondere Fragen nach der hegemonialen Wahrnehmbarkeit, der (Un)Sichtbarkeiten und des (Un)Sagbaren diskutiert. Die theoriegeleiteten Überlegungen tragen dazu bei, Soziale Arbeit als ‚grenzbearbeitende Wissenschaft‘ körpertheoretisch zu reflektieren.

Between Persons: How Concepts of the Person Make Moral Experience Possible

AbstractMoral theories often conflate morality with society or mind, while detaching mind from society, and society from subjectivity. This eliminates the existential “space between” persons where morality is a process of making mutually recognized lives possible. Moral experience is a cultural experience of intersubjectivity, which has social and cultural, subjective and reflective, imaginative and practical, and existential and bodily dimensions. Concepts of the person organize the moral possibilities of intersubjectivity; they can help situate culturally formulated ethics in “the space between persons” in ways that help generate the moral presence afforded others and self.

The role of attention in motor control.

Research on the focus of attention (FOA) in motor control has found a consistent advantage for focusing externally (on the effects of one's actions) compared to focusing internally (on one's body mechanics). However, most of this work has concentrated on movement outcomes, leaving open the question of how external attention changes the movement itself. Somewhat paradoxically, recent research has found that external attention also increases trial-by-trial movement variability. To explain these findings, we propose a theory of attention in motor control, grounded in optimal control theory, wherein variability is minimized along attended aspects of the movement. Internal attention thus reduces variability in individual bodily dimensions (positions and velocities of effectors), whereas external attention minimizes variability in the task outcome. Because the goal of a task defines a dimension in the movement space that is generally oblique to bodily dimensions, external attention should increase correlations among bodily dimensions while allowing their individual variances to grow. The current experiment tests these predictions in a dart-throwing task. External FOA led to more accurate performance and increased variability in the motion of the throwing arm, concomitant with stronger correlations among bodily dimensions (shoulder, elbow, and wrist positions and velocities) in a manner consistent with the task kinematics. These findings indicate a shift in the control policy of the motor system, consistent with the proposed theory. These results suggest an important role of attention as a control parameter in the regulation of the motor system, and more broadly illustrate the importance of cognitive mechanisms in motor behavior.

Student's Body Dimensions in Relation to Classroom Furniture.

This study was carried out to investigate the fit between university student's anthropometry and classroom furniture dimensions. In this cross-sectional and descriptive-analyzing study conducted in 2012, a total of 194 students (aged 18 through 30 years), were recruited randomly from Tabriz University of Medical Science community. The body size of each student was assessed using anthropometric measurements including shoulder height, elbow height, popliteal height, buttock-popliteal length, hip breadth and distance between elbows. Combinational equations defined the acceptable furni-ture dimensions according to anthropometry and match percentages were computed, according to either the existing situations assuming that they could use the most appropriate of the sizes available. Desk and seat height were higher than the accepted limits for most students (92.5% and 98.4%, respectively), while seat depth was appropriate for only 84.6% of students. The data indicate a mismatch between the students' bodily dimensions and the classroom furniture available to them. The chairs are too high and too deep and desks are also too high for the pupils. This situation may have negative effects on the sitting posture of the students especially when reading and writing. High mismatch percentages were found between furniture and stu-dents' anthropometry. The results confirm that furniture for university students should be selected and designed busied on their anthropometric dimensions.

Einführung: Gefühle gegen Juden. Die Emotionsgeschichte des modernen Antisemitismus

Historians and social scientists have rarely investigated modern anti-Semitism as an emotional phenomenon. The authors argue that the current conceptual weaknesses of research on anti-Semitism can be overcome by reflecting on its affective dimensions. They offer a detailed critique of the most influential approaches within the historical literature, especially the social psychology of prejudice. By proposing a strictly historical understanding of emotions and by exposing its bodily dimension, they hope to avoid the existing problems of decontextualizing anti-Semitism. Finally, they also highlight the emotional insecurities (other than from hatred, fear, anger et cetera) of anti-Semites, created by the increasing difficulty of identifying the object of their hatred: the acculturated Jews.

The theatricality of sport and the issue of ideology

Through the study of Richard Gruneau and Gunter Gebauer’s respective works, this article examines the social significance and theoretical implications of sport’s capacity to represent social life in a theatrical manner. The drama-like images and representations sporting practices produce, institutions codify, and television programs enhance is considered in relation to ideology’s integrative, legitimating, and distorting functions (Ricoeur). Acknowledging the filiations of ‘theatre’ with ‘theory’ – both words stand for ‘to contemplate, to see, to observe’ – this study considers theatricality as a valuable theoretical notion that enables a synthetic and reflexive understanding of athletic practices’ bodily dimension, symbolic representations, and institutional determinants.

Ageing embodiment and the search for social change

When we issued our call for contributions to this special section, we intended to showcase the potential for the theoretical and conceptual enrichment that the turn to the body in ageing studies has given rise to. The proliferation of writings in this area is to be welcome, especially if it is going to encourage critical evaluations of the conditions in which ageing is imagined, ‘‘practised’’ and regulated. The growing interest in ageing bodies has taken place against a backdrop in which knowledge about old age was being questioned. A particular target of this process of questioning was scientific expertise, and the urge to extract of set of objective principles constituting ageing as a universal and therefore homogeneous condition, from which little deviation could be envisaged (Katz 1996; Vincent 2006). Questioning the scienticisation of ageing did not augur an abandonment of the bodily dimension of ageing. What it meant was that the biological was no longer the unique reference point in the truth of ageing and old age. The social dimension (broadly speaking) of ageing and old age became salient and freed scholarship from intellectual impoverishment. The turn to the body in ageing has had four moments: (1) the identification and examination of the discursive conditions in which the truth of ageing