bodyThe body is an entity created by a biological process of sex, genetic
heritance, and nurturing. The human body is rather malleable because it
can be trained to execute a wide variety of tasks from athletic to religious.
Although the body is something given to us, it is not unusual to modify
it for specific purposes, such as guarding the royal harem with eunuchs
in religious cultures such as Indian, Chinese, and Islamic. It is also com-
mon for the body to be modified by religious practices, such as tonsure,
circumcision, tattooing, scarring, fasting, or flagellation. The religious
motivation behind these forms of bodily modification differs depending
on the religious cultural context, with some of these bodily modifications
accompanying rites of passage, atonement for transgressions, or attempts
to tame and control the body.
As embodied beings within the world, humans experience sexual
drives that a person can follow, feel guilty about, or attempt to control by
means of ascetic practices such as celibacy and/or meditation. These
sexual drives within an embodied condition suggest that the body is a
sensitive substance with the ability to produce both pain and pleasure.
Other than being a sensitive substance, the human body is a visible, tan-
gible object in space and time. A person can touch their body, touch other
bodies, or be touched by other bodies. The same is true of the senses of
smell, taste, hearing, and perception.
The human body can transform itself into a sign that functions in a self-
referential manner and as a referent for others by means of its ability to give
itself meaning. When the human body becomes a symbol it can serve as a
bridge connecting nature and culture. Functioning as a sign or symbol, the
body can become an ambivalent entity from a cross-cultural perspective.
Nonetheless, the body possesses the potential to embody and reveal cultural
values and attitudes. In the Middle East and India, the body is hierarchically
ordered, which makes a person’s feet the lowest part of the body. To kick
another person or strike them with a shoe or sandal is considered an insult
and means of polluting another person. In Muslim prayer, a believer’s fore-
head, which is considered the noblest part of a person, comes into contact
with the ground in a powerful symbolic action of submission to God.
In addition to functioning as a sign or symbol, the body is simply flesh,
which expresses its lustful nature, making the body threatening and dan-
gerous unless it is controlled and regulated by social processes. Although
the body is biologically given, it is still the result of numerous social and
cultural practices, behaviors, and discourses that operate in concert to
construct the body as a social artifact. This scenario suggests that the
body is both a biological gift and socially constructed. Society and cul-
ture informs a people what they can and cannot do with their bodies by
setting boundaries and giving a proper cultural image of the body.