Brenda Farnell

There is no single entity called American Indian Dance. The several hundred indigenous nations of the USA and Canada each have their own distinct traditions. The Apache Crown Dance (Gauanteaume 1992, Perry 1992), Tewa Buffalo Dance (Sweet 2004 [1984]), Kiowa Black Leg Society dances (Meadows and Palmer 1992), and Yupik Bladder Feast (Williams 1992), are as different from each other as classical ballet is from hip-hop. It is the position of dance as ceremony as well as performance and the inclusion of spiritual practices that distinguish the tremendous variety. Some are strictly ceremonial in purpose, others are more social, but all honor the sacredness of the dance circle.

Chapter 1 The Primacy of Movement Chapter 2 The Body in Social Theory Chapter 3 A New Ontology of Personhood Chapter 4 Movement Literacy Chapter 5 Bourdieu's Habitus - A Sociological Mislocation of Agency Chapter 6 Lakoff's and Johnson's Metaphors - A Psychological Mislocation of Agency Chapter 7 Verbal and Nonverbal - A Linguistic Mislocation of Agency Chapter 8 The Ab(sense) of Kinesthesia in Western Thought Chapter 9 Implications of Dynamic Embodiment for Social Theory

There is no single entity called American Indian Dance. The several hundred indigenous nations of the USA and Canada each have their own distinct traditions. The Apache Crown Dance (Gauanteaume 1992, Perry 1992), Tewa Buffalo Dance (Sweet 2004 [1984]), Kiowa Black Leg Society dances (Meadows and Palmer 1992), and Yupik Bladder Feast (Williams 1992), are as different from each other as classical ballet is from hip-hop. It is the position of dance as ceremony as well as performance and the inclusion of spiritual practices that distinguish the tremendous variety. Some are strictly ceremonial in purpose, others are more social, but all honor the sacredness of the dance circle.

In contrast to notation systems for writing vocal gestures (speech), movement writing systems provide the means to write bodily actions whose modality is visual-kinesthetic rather than vocal. Like the history of writing systems for speech, however, the history of movement writing reveals a tremendous variety of solutions to problems of transcription, and several ways of identifying basic units that form the basis for a script. In contrast to various forms of mnemonic devices, such as word glosses or static pictographic representations of the human body in diagrams or photographs, movement scripts represent a genuine technological breakthrough because they provide the means to become literate in relation to the medium; that is, they provide a means to apperceive, read, write, reconstruct, think and analyze in terms of graphic symbols that represent the movement itself (see Farnell 1994a; Williams and Farnell 1990).

This article provides a historical overview of attempts within anthropological inquiry to theorize " the body " as a component of visual culture. It charts a paradigm shift from an observationist view of behavior to a conception of the body as a somatic and sensory resource for dynamically embodied action in cultural space/time. I argue that to understand the human body as a biocultural resource for the dynamic construction of self, personhood, and identity, and as a means for creative expression as well as more mundane skilled embodied practices, requires theorizing across the usual disciplinary boundaries between biological and social being.

Whether we like it or not, those of us who deal with so called, 'non"verbal' materials are faced at the outset with major problems of translation, transcription, and transliteration; that of a space/time system, whether is it a dance, a rite, a ceremony, a system of greetings or what you wiil, into spoken and more accurately, into written language. We aTe all well aware that space! time systems occupy geographical spaces which are at once 1. physical, 2. social, 3. semantic, 4. conceptual. We must use written language to communicate to others about the system as we use spoken language to express the system, but we also know that spoken or written language introduces other things into the system. As Ardener has pointed out, conventional language intrudes itself into the system (1975), and it is simply a nonsense to imagine that it does not. Drid Williams (1976)

It is widely assumed that sign languages are secondary semiotic phenomena that only come into being when deafness prevents the normal acquisition of a spoken language. That this is not always the case is well illustrated by the sign languages used by contemporary indigenous Australian groups (Kendon 1989), and the sign language shared by indigenous peoples of the Plains region of North America (Farnell1995a; Taylor 1996). These peoples use sign languages in addition to conventional spoken languages, not instead of them. They therefore offer an interesting challenge to definitions of language as traditionally constituted in Western thought, whereby only certain aspects of spoken language practices have counted as 'truly' linguistic (Tedlock 1983).

The article opens with a brief comment on a photograph from Evans-Pritchard's work to illustrate a fundamental problem with Western ways of viewing human movement. I suggest that despite an upsurge of interest inthe body', an understanding of the person as a ...

... torms of mpm devices for image and static images *limited text components images, text dis-digital media sentatlon and audio *user cannot *user cannot play options ... computers duce duce and ship in favor of video able ing standards einternational eif a computer can ...

This commentary' calls for an appreciative but rigorous, critical analysis of three pioneering figures in the anthropology of human movement and visual aspects of human communication. I maintain that their many theoretical and methodological contributions require historical contextualization, taking into account earlier paradigms, subsequent developments, and alternative approaches. The essay makes a number of suggestions for developing a more satisfying historical framework and raises topics for further discussion.

It is counterintuitive to many investigators of body movement to learn that understanding visible forms of expression does not depend upon detailed observation of what can be seen. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the unobservable components of meaning must therefore be located .in internal mental states or processes-a move typical of what Harre and Gillett have called the "first cognitive revolution" in psychology (1994: 8). It would also be a mistake to think that such cognitivism is the only alternative to behavior' of the behaviorist variety.

Human beings everywhere engage in complex structured systems of bodily actions that are socially acquired and laden with cultural significance. Some structured movement systems, such as the martial arts, sporting activities, idioms of dancing, dramatic arts, ceremonials, and ritual events, involve highly deliberated choreographed movement. Other uses of body movement remain out of the focal awareness of their actors due to habit and skill. Examples include ways of eating, dressing, walking, and sitting as well as modes of physical labor such as digging, planting, bricklaying and fishing, all of which vary according to cultural and subcultural conventions. Also out of focal awareness most of the time are the hand gestures, postures, fadal expressions, and spatial orientations that accompany speech in social interaction. There are also signed languages as well as gestures of the mouth, lips, and tongue that produce speech. All these manifestations of human actions in their cultural co...

This article reexamines a Nakota storytelling performance in which Plains Sign Talk and spoken Nakota are employed simultaneously. The new analysis presents further observations regarding relationships between vocal signs and action signs, nested performance spaces external and internal to the narrative, and the spatial syntax of Plains Sign Talk. It also illustrates how processes of entextualization and traditionalization can occur through visual-kinesthetic means as well as speech. The analytic focus on pragmatic function rather than assumed differences in semiotic channel (i.e., verbal versus nonverbal) illustrates the theoretical value of a dynamic conception of embodiment in the analysis of discursive practices generally.

The familiar Western taxonomy of the five senses, in which vision is accorded pride of place as "the noblest of the senses," has a venerable history going back to Plato and Aristotle. As several scholars have noted (e.g. Classen 1993, 1997, Herzfeld 2001, Howes 1991, Ingold 2000, Seremetakis 1994, Stoller 1989) vision is closely followed by hearing, both of which are deemed superior to the lower, more animalistic "contact" senses of touch, taste and smell. This hierarchy was readily mapped onto 19th century evolutionism in both popular and scholarly thinking in the West as the racist tendencies of an earlier anthropology associated the "lower" senses with the "lower" races (Herzfeld 2001). While sight, and to a lesser extent hearing, were deemed the prominent senses of "civilized" westerners, smell, taste, and touch were assumed to predominate among "primitive" races. For example, the early 19th century, pre-Darwinian natur...

Chapter 1 The Primacy of Movement Chapter 2 The Body in Social Theory Chapter 3 A New Ontology of Personhood Chapter 4 Movement Literacy Chapter 5 Bourdieu's Habitus - A Sociological Mislocation of Agency Chapter 6 Lakoff's and Johnson's Metaphors - A Psychological Mislocation of Agency Chapter 7 Verbal and Nonverbal - A Linguistic Mislocation of Agency Chapter 8 The Ab(sense) of Kinesthesia in Western Thought Chapter 9 Implications of Dynamic Embodiment for Social Theory

In the late 1960s, as an undergraduate student of dance at a women’s physical education college in northern England, I was already painfully aware of the extremely tenuous and marginal position held by the study of dance and dancing in the British educational system. There were no departments of dance in universities at that time, a state of affairs that sent a loud and clear message: the academic world completely devalued what I found most meaningful. Imaginative compositions of cultural and artistic value which structured the medium of body movement in space/time apparently did not count as ‘knowledge’ from the prevailing academic perspective. This dismal situation was not improved by many arts educators of the time, who frequently undermined their case for the educational value of the arts with spurious or muddled philosophical arguments.1 In the Western world (that is, western European and derived societies) it is widely assumed that what we call ‘the arts’ are merely for entertainment and enjoyment from which nothing of significance can be learned. The arts in general, and the dance in particular, are regarded as peripheral, expendable, and of no great importance in education as compared to, say, mathematics and the sciences (Best, 1992, p. xii).

... Indeed, the simultaneous use of both speech and action creates an extraordinarily rich performance genre, in some ways similar to Polynesian sitting dances (Kaeppler 1983) or the seated dances of the Swahili ngoma (Franklin 1991). Page 3. STORYTELLING / 81 ...

... In contrast, James Gibson (1966, 1979) provides us with an anti-Cartesian ecological approach to perception. ... of language articulated by the later Wittgenstein, in addition to discourse centered approaches to culture (see Farnell and Graham 1996) have ... Bedu yushin—eye spirit. ...

S ince the articles in the recent special issue of Journal of Sport & Social Issues (JSSI) were written (Re/claiming Indianness: Critical Perspectives on Native American Mascots, Vol. 28, Iss. 1), the situation at the University of Illinois regarding Chief Illiniwek has evolved in a number of interesting ways. Paradoxically perhaps, although the overall situation continues to deteriorate markedly in my view, some positive developments have also taken place. These recent events highlight additional aspects of this racializing practice in a large midwestern public university that I trust will be of interest to JSSI readers. The aftermath of the expensive, so-called dialogue on Chief Illiniwek in 2000 was predictable (see Farnell, 2004, p.40). In the absence of any forum for genuine discussion, the attitudes of opponents on both sides of the issue soon hardened into dichotomous positions. Three subsequent years of procrastination and failure on the part of the board to make a decision to retire the mascot have created a festering wound on campus that some suspect could now erupt into real violence at any time. On one hand, cries of political correctness by Chief Illiniwek supporters serve to block any recognition and discussion of issues of race. Like Orwell's newspeak, accusations of political correctness seek to silence dissent while simultaneously attributing the desire for thought control to opponents. Predictably absent is any discussion of whether the university has indeed failed to adhere to its own policies and stated goals of promoting diversity and eliminating discrimination (as the NCA North Central Association accreditation committee identified in 1999). On the other hand, frequent cries of racism by those advocating the retirement of the mascot fall on deaf ears because they are directed at an audience that does not understand the difference between institutional racism and personal racism. This has further antagonized well-meaning supporters who, as true believers, still insist they are honoring Native Americans, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge any alternative truth and remaining deaf to Native American voices on campus and in the state.

This article provides a historical overview of attempts within anthropological inquiry to theorize " the body " as a component of visual culture. It charts a paradigm shift from an observationist view of behavior to a conception of the body as a somatic and sensory resource for dynamically embodied action in cultural space/time. I argue that to understand the human body as a biocultural resource for the dynamic construction of self, personhood, and identity, and as a means for creative expression as well as more mundane skilled embodied practices, requires theorizing across the usual disciplinary boundaries between biological and social being.

This paper proposes a dynamic theory of embodiment that aims to get beyond the absent moving body in embodied social theory. The first somatic revolution, inspired by Merleau Ponty, provided theories based on the feeling and experience of the body. The theory of dynamic embodiment focuses instead on the doing itself as embodied social action, in which the embodied person is fore-grounded as a complex resource for meaning making. This represents a theoretical enrichment of the earlier turn to the body in social theory, which tended to separate the semiotic, as necessarily representational and/or linguistic, from the somatic as a wide range of corporeal processes and practices assumed to be separated from mind, language and/or conscious thought. We argue that overcoming this persistent Cartesianism requires a New Realist approach to the proper location of human agency as a causal power, one that promotes a bio-psycho-social concept of personhood. Part one of the paper presents a general framework for this perspective, while part two applies this paradigm ethnographically to illustrate how bringing semiosis and somatics together requires a robust conception of multi-sensory modalities.