Bodies as Sites of Cultural Reflection in Early Childhood Education

Rachael S. Burke, Judith Duncan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138795037
• eBook ISBN: 9781317636991
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Taking the body as a locus for discussion, Rachael S. Burke and Judith Duncan argue not only that implicit cultural practices shape most of the interactions taking place in early childhood curricula and pedagogy but that many of these practices often go unnoticed or unrecognized as being pedagogy. Current scholars, inspired by Foucault, acknowledge that the body is socially and culturally produced and historically situated—it is simultaneously a part of nature and society as well as a representation of the way that nature and society can be conceived. Every natural symbol originating from the body contains and conveys a social meaning, and every culture selects its own meaning from the myriad of potential body symbolisms.

Bodies as Sites of Cultural Reflection in Early Childhood Education uses empirical examples from qualitative fieldwork conducted in New Zealand and Japan to explore these theories and discuss the ways in which children's bodies represent a central focus in teachers' pedagogical discussions and create contexts for the embodiment of children's experiences in the early years.

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Introduction

Introduction

This book focuses on the body in order to explore the ways in which early childhood education (ECE) settings incorporate implicit cultural practices into pedagogy and practice. We argue that implicit cultural practices not only shape many of interactions taking place in the early childhood context, but many of these practices often go unnoticed or unrecognised as culturally informed. In this book we share our analysis from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in New Zealand and Japan, to demonstrate ways in which children’s bodies are viewed, manipulated, protected, ordered, and challenged, and that this provides a useful lens through which to examine unseen cultural ECE practices. The theories of Mauss (1936/1973) position the body as a crucible of bodily techniques. Mauss argues that such techniques cannot be viewed as ‘natural’, but rather classified as cultural practices. In the chapters which follow, the ideas of Mauss still resonate, but they are complemented by the theories of Douglas (1970/1996) and Foucault (1975/1995). Douglas expands on Mauss’ theories and introduces the idea of the body as a natural symbol. Her focus is on the exchange of symbolic meanings between the individual body and the social body. The theories of Foucault centre on the body as political, as a site for discipline, domestication, and training. Foucault contends that institutionalised structures such as the early childhood centre work to produce docile bodies that can be used for state purposes. Weaving the work of these three theorists through ethnographic data provides the framework for an examination of Scheper-Hughes and Lock’s (1987) ‘three bodies’.

The body has been the subject of anthropological research since the late 1970s and continues to provide a focus for robust discussion by social scientists (Fraser & Greco 2005; Mascia-Lees, 2011). The ‘three bodies’ approach suggested by Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1987) has been especially useful for unpacking the layers of dialogue that emerged from our research processes. The ‘three bodies’ express three areas of discrete, yet related, analysis developed by the theorists: Mauss (1936/1973), Douglas (1970/1996), and Foucault (1975/1995). While Mauss was concerned with the experience of the individual, physical body, Douglas looked for symbolic meaning in the social body, and Foucault remained committed to unpacking the body politic. These foundation theorists informed the analysis of our study and shape the chapters in this book.

For the ethnographic study, we used the research methodology developed by Tobin, Wu, and Davidson (1989) and Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa (2009) Preschool in Three Cultures (PS3C) to stimulate a multi-vocal text to reveal hidden cultural assumptions in culturally different early years contexts. Using video to reflect on comparative material proved to be a powerful way to expose these hidden assumptions. What this method revealed is the central role that children’s bodies play in the early childhood experience.

Through this book, we will argue that the ways in which children’s bodies are viewed, manipulated, protected, ordered, and challenged provide a useful lens through which to examine unseen and taken-for-granted cultural practices in early years education.

Personal Connections

This book has its roots in a long association with the two countries in the study— New Zealand and Japan—an academic quest that has paralleled our journeys as mothers, teachers, researchers, and scholars.

Rachael spent almost six years living and teaching in small towns in rural Hokkaido, Japan. For three of these years, she was based at Oka Kindergarten, and it was to this centre that Rachael returned to conduct fieldwork. While Rachael and her husband had left New Zealand as newly graduated university students, they came home as parents to three young boys who had already negotiated many aspects of early childhood education in Japan. The family’s return to New Zealand meant the boys had to readjust to schooling and kindergarten in their ‘homeland’. Rather than being a seamless transition, Rachael was confronted with the reality of early childhood education that bore little resemblance to her own childhood memories of it. She found she was confounded by unspoken assumptions, echoing what she had experienced while her children attended kindergarten in Japan. These implicit practices expected of mother and child provided the impetus for this book, and for an earlier period of research conducted in Hokkaido centres.

Judith’s involvement with early childhood education in New Zealand spans more than thirty years, and her connections with early childhood in Japan over the last decade. Working with Japanese academic colleagues and Japanese postgraduate students has enabled Judith to engage in cultural conversations and experiences in both New Zealand and Japan, collectively comparing theoretical ideas and cultural experiences—challenging assumptions and expectations in both countries. Over several visits to Japan, Judith has spent rich time in early childhood centres in Hiroshima, Osaka, Kobe, and Imabari, discussing ideas and pedagogical decisions with teachers and principals. These embedded experiences have enabled Judith to reframe her thinking about early childhood education and her own assumptions about early childhood, and set the scene for supporting Rachael’s investigative research, reported in this book.

Theoretical Underpinnings

The body, the focus of this book, has been the subject of anthropological interest for several decades. In the late 1970s, the body first emerged as the focus of ontological and epistemological research by social scientists. By the 1980s, the body had become such a significant object of study that “the anthropology of the body” was recognised as a subfield of the discipline (Mascia-Lees, 2011, p. 1). In the case of other disciplines, such as sociology, studies placing the body at the centre of research exploded during the 1990s when the paradigm of ‘embodiment’ was developed. This paradigm takes the actual, lived experience of the body, or ‘being-in-the-world’, as a starting point. Csordas (1999) distinguishes this from the anthropology of the body, which considers the body as an external object of analysis through a focus on bodily metaphors. Space limitations do not allow for a comprehensive review of the vast literature devoted to the body, but readers are directed to Lock (1993), Csordas (1999), and Fraser and Greco (2005), who provide clear overviews and a starting point for further understanding.

Marcel Mauss and the Emergence of the Body in Anthropological Theory

Although there is a diverse range of scholars from various academic disciplines now concerned with the corporeality of the self, it is claimed that the body emerged for the first time in anthropological theory as a central object of research through the work of British anthropologist Mary Douglas (Synnott & Howes, 1992). Yet, in her book Natural Symbols (1970/1996), Douglas draws on the work of Marcel Mauss who initially outlined a systemic anthropology of the body. In his pioneering essay, Techniques of the Body (1936/1973), Mauss identifies ordinary bodily actions as ‘techniques’. By techniques he means the varying ways people in different societies know how to use their bodies. Rather than viewing these techniques as natural and outside the remit of culture, Mauss argues that these actions can be classified as cultural practices. Therefore, the naked body can be repositioned as “man’s first and most natural instrument” (Mauss 1936/1973, p. 70).

The Work of Mary Douglas

Douglas (1970/1996) builds on Mauss’ assertion that the human body be treated “as an image of society and that there can be no natural way of considering the body that does not involve at the same time a social dimension” (p. 74). In other words, every natural symbol originating from the body contains and conveys a social meaning, and every culture selects its own meaning from the myriad of potential body symbolisms. Douglas argues that Mauss’ view of bodily actions as techniques prioritised cultural variation to the point of discounting any behaviour as natural. This approach contrasts with Lévi-Strauss (1964), who focused on symbolic universals, which he felt informed the way human bodies were socially constructed.

Douglas’s work addresses the space between these two contrasting theoretical approaches. Douglas argues that the ‘natural’ body, in the sense that it is universally apparent across cultures, is not the physico-biological body, but the exchange of meanings between two bodies, the individual body and the social body.

The social body constrains the way the physical body is perceived. The physical experience of the body, always modified by the social categories through which it is known, sustains a particular view of society. There is a continual exchange of meanings between the two kinds of bodily experiences so that each reinforces the categories of the other.

(Douglas, 1970/1996, p. 69)

These two bodies, the ‘individual’ and the ‘social’, are sometimes “so near as to be almost merged; sometimes they are far apart. The tension between them allows the elaboration of meanings” (Douglas, 1970/1996, p. 87). Critics such as Van Wolputte (2004) have argued that Douglas’s distinction between the two bodies only serves to reaffirm the dualism of mind and body, and privilege the former. In contrast, the theory of embodiment does not imply “the neglect of ‘mind’, but it does situate mind in ‘practice’” (Strathern & Stewart, 2011, p. 397).

Michel Foucault and the Body

While Douglas (1970/1996) viewed the individual, physical body and the social body as reciprocally symbolic, Michel Foucault (1975/1995) saw the body as a site of discipline, domestication, training, and punishment by the state. Through these measures, the body is rendered ‘docile’ for economic or military purposes: “The body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body” (Foucault, 1975/1995, p. 26). The creation of these ‘docile bodies’ is accomplished through the micro-physics of bio-power, which is the power exercised on the body through to the minutest physical actions. Foucault’s theories contend that the state produces docile bodies through institutionalised structures such as the prison, the hospital, and the school. But Foucault (1975/1995) goes further than that, arguing that, through constant surveillance and inspection, society itself becomes a prison:

[The political technology of the body] cannot be localized in a particular type of institution or state apparatus. For they have recourse to it; they use, select or impose certain of its methods. But, in its mechanisms and its effects, it is situated at a quite different level. What the apparatuses and institutions operate is, in a sense, a micro-physics of power, whose field of validity is situated in a sense between these great functionings and the bodies themselves with their materiality and their forces.

(p. 26)

Through this process of assessment, coordination, and ultimately, surveillance, emerges the “disciplinary individual” who has been created by these new techniques of power (Foucault, 1975/1995, p. 227). Foucault’s theories have been criticised as overly pessimistic through his neglect to consider agency, and his inability to provide a means of overcoming the current forms of power (Erickson & Murphy, 2008). Despite this, Foucault is regarded as making a significant contribution to anthropology through the way he repositioned the body at the centre of scholarly consideration (Synnott & Howes, 1992).

The Three Bodies

While Foucault was concerned with the body as political, and Douglas the body as symbolic, in the mid-1980s, medical anthropologists Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock (1987) called for anthropologists to problematise the body another way. Taking a view of the body as “simultaneously a physical and symbolic artifact, as both naturally and culturally produced, and as securely anchored in a particular historical moment”, Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1987, p. 7) proposed ‘three bodies’ and three anthropological approaches. At the first level of analysis is the ‘individual body’ in the phenomenological sense of embodied experiences people have of their bodies. With reference to Mauss (1936/1973), Scheper-Hughes and Lock assume that all people share a sense of the embodied self as separate to other individual bodies. At the second level of analysis is the ‘social body’, which functions as a natural symbol with which to think about social relationships, culture, and nature (Douglas, 1970/1996). At the third level is the ‘body politic’, which asserts that power and control are also embodied. Here the work of Foucault (1973a, 1973b, 1980, 1975/1995) is evident through the ways in which the body is subjected to surveillance, regulation, and control. The stability of the body politic depends on its ability to regulate the social body and to discipline individual bodies. In outlining their theoretical approach, Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1987) state that

[t]he ‘three bodies’ represent, then, not only three separate and overlapping units of analysis, but also th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• List of Figures
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Authors
• Glossary of Key Terms
• Series Editor Introduction
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Children’s Bodies as Contested Sites
• 3 Embodying the Curriculum
• 4 Risk and the Body
• 5 The Body as a Site of Discipline
• 6 The Body as Natural Symbol
• 7 Bodies in Context
• Author Index
• Subject Index