(p.301) In the late 1970s and early 1980s anthropologists shifted their attention away from symbolic or interpretative anthropology towards practice-oriented approaches (Ortner, 1984). Until then the body had been conceived both as a transmitter and as a ‘receiver’ of cultural knowledge (Lock, 1993: 136). However, the body had been studied more as a discursive object, that is as a concept, rather than in its own right as a material presence (see Turner, 1994, for critiques and consequences). The works of Bourdieu (1977, 1992) inspired a new interest in the social nature of the material body, suggesting that bodily practices, lodged in...