Body,Symbol And Society:Physical Activity Research From The Perspective Of Cultural Anthropology

Body is the physical core of physical activity, which is the prototype of sports. Physical activity culture is a part of sports culture. Human’ s observation of world began from body, and their understanding of world reflected in physical activity. Body awareness and practice of human body occurred in the evolution of the human body’s instinctive effort, as well as in the body of conscious awareness, which plays an important role in social construction. How the physical activity act on social construction, and by what means physical activity achieve social construction are related to deepening of the body and physical activity understanding, and the "truth" of physical activity problems. However, today studies on this issue are rare.Based on the above, this study take physical activity, a body form beyond the division of labor as breakthrough point, from the perspective of cultural anthropology to discuss body. In this study, materials such as mythology, paintings, ritual activities are collected and analyzed, the theory of remaining, function-structure theory of the whole theory, cultural symbol theory, bourdieu’s field and habitus theory are employed. Using the method of literature analysis, field investigation, case study and "deep description" research method, this study aims to reveal the process and mechanism of body building society, and the relationship between body and social construction.Conclusions are as follows:1. After the awakening of human’s body consciousness, the thoughts of death and body-soul problems were raised. The affirmation of the body noumenon and expectations for life continuation promoted early marriage norms of human behavior and the proliferation of healthy offspring. Under the original sensitivity infiltration thinking and self-awareness, body construction process constructed society through the ritualized body. Ritual played the key role in physical activity-body building-social construction process;2. Ritual, as a gather of many kinds of symbol, was the integration of various individual physical activities, reflecting the will and faith of the collective, which was the discipline and amendment of human body and enrichment of life, being the criterion guiding collective members social behaviors. Unlike everyday life, as an "anti-structure", ritual had played an important role in the construction of cultural custom form, interpersonal relationship pattern and the style choice of social governance, which constitutes the basis of social construction;3. The organizational process of ritual is a collective physical activity, reflects stable social groups and steady social structures. The infectious pace in ritual appeals the collective consciousness, so that the collective breath, heart beat and muscles involved in the movement form a high strength culture field for the vigor and excitement, which will strengthen the cultural identity of members shared rituals, shaping human behaviors and interpersonal social relationship;4. Body construction, not only to promote social construction at the first, but has been and will be interacting with social construction constantly and dynamically. This research holds that any social construction began from physical restraint and body construction. In some sense, social construction is human’s construction. So, in contemporary social construction, body construction is still of great realistic significance.