Читать книгу Introducing Anthropology - Laura Pountney - Страница 124

To be healthy, the body mass of the human body has to be within a certain range. If the body is particularly underweight or obese, it will be unhealthy. It could be argued that certain body types are more likely to produce healthy children and, therefore, that there may be an evolutionary explanation for why one body type may appear more attractive to the opposite sex. However, within the range of body shapes there is a wide variety of possibilities.

Anne Becker (1995) conducted fieldwork in Fiji and examined the cultural context of the embodied self through her ethnography of bodily aesthetics, food exchange, care and social relationships. She contrasts the cultivation of the body/self in Fijian society with that in the USA, arguing that the fascination of Americans with, and motivation to work on, moulding (shaping) their body as a personal effort is permitted by their notion that the self is individuated and autonomous. On the other hand, because Fijians concern themselves with the cultivation of social relationships expressed largely through nurturing and food exchange, they have a vested interest in cultivating others’ bodies rather than their own. So, while they pay careful attention to weight and appetite changes among community members, Fijians demonstrate a relative lack of interest in self-reflexive work on the body. Becker demonstrates how the individual body is communally observed, cared for, worked upon and interpreted in Fiji, and how it is in many ways regarded and experienced as a manifestation of its community rather than of the self. Fijian embodied experience not only reflects and includes community processes, but also at times overcomes the body’s physical boundaries. Becker’s study shows that other cultures may have very different ideas from those of Western culture of what the ‘ideal’ body should look like. The reasons for favouring one body type over another relate to social factors – for example, in Fiji, a woman who can work hard is valued, and strong calf muscles are an indication of that. In modern Western society, the mass media are very influential in forming ideals of body shape, as the body does not have the same importance in relation to work or reproduction.