European Panorama of Body Image and Physical Education: Corporeal Turn in the History of Education

Abstract

Author: Kéri Katalin | Title: European Panorama of Body Image and Physical Education: Corporeal Turn in the History of Education | Subtitle: Book Review: Polenghi, S., Németh, A. and Kasper, T. (eds.). (2021). Education and the Body in Europe (1900–1950). Movements, public health, pedagogical rules and cultural ideas. In the collection: Erziehung in Wissenschaft und Praxis. Herausgegeben von Johanna Hopfner und Claudia Stöckl Band 14. Berlin: Peter Lang GmbH. | Published: Sodobna pedagogika / Journal of Contemporary Educational Studies Let./Vol. 72 (138); Issue 1/2021 (March); Str. /pp. 190–196. | ISSN 0038 0474 | Licenc: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 | Summary: The human body has been a prominent subject in medical history as well as psychological and anthropological research continuously over the past three decades. In their introduction, the editors of this volume highlight the works of Norbert Elias, Michel Foucault and Georges Vigarello as early historiographic antecedents, and point out how, in the 1980s and 1990s, sociology and women’s research put the corporeal turn at the heart of cultural and historical research on the human body. Recent studies (unlike previous traditional anthropological approaches) emphasise the historical and cultural determination of the human body. The starting point is the idea that people in different historical and geographical areas have different attitudes towards their own bodies and the bodies of other people. The research on the human body has also brought new and different approaches to the exploration of educational history in recent decades. The first research results were published related to the exploration of childhood history and women’s history, and the influential work of Ariès, Duby, Perrot, Becchi and Julia should be noted. In recent years, thematic conferences, monographs and volumes of studies around the world have shown how widely the works of the aforementioned authors have attracted interest and inspiration in relation to the human body and physical education. Foucault’s work on the relationship between the human body and power, which brought a new framework of interpretation and a different approach to research, is highlighted as crucial from the point of view of educational history.