Body theory

[1] Noted thinkers who developed their respective body theories include Michel Foucault, Norbert Elias, Roland Barthes, and Yuasa Yasuo.

[5] Scholars identified fundamentally different conceptions based on the qualities they exhibit from the tribal, traditional, modern to postmodern periods.

[7] It also includes the Eastern concept of the authentic self, which - in Japan - pertains to the creative, productive "function" or "field" of life energy.

[7] Contemporary theorists such as Ichikawa Hiroshi,[8] Yuasa Yasuo, and Masachi Osawa drew from these traditions and modulated it with current phenomenological concepts of the "lived body".

[14] Michel Foucault's theory of the body focuses on how it serves as a site of discourse and power as well as an object of discipline and control.

The former, which sociologist Chris Shilling advocated, focuses on the idea that there is a biological explanation and basis for human behavior.

Interpretations include views of the female body as socially, culturally, and legally defined in terms of its sexual availability to men.

[22] There are also theorists who cite the role that media communications, globalization, international trade, consumerism, education, and political incursions, among others play in theorizing the modern embodied being.

[5] Another post-modern interpretation involves the approach to reading the body in the context of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.

In this view, the material body is understood in terms of social construction where it formed part of conceptualization of the body-as-text metaphor.

[23] There are scholars who note that the post-modern conceptualizations of the body theory tend to be distanced from individuals’ everyday embodied experiences and practices.