Culture and the Human Body: An Anthropological Perspective

In the course of human prehistory and continuing to the present day, culture has played a prominent role in transforming the human form. From birth to death, the body serves as a medium and metaphor of cultural expression. This book provides a broadly comparative perspective on the many and varied ways in which the human body has been sculpted and transformed by particular cultural traditions and argues that in significant ways, the human body has transcended the laws of natural selection. To appreciate the human body is to acknowledge the various ways in which it has become a cultural artifact rather than a purely natural phenomenon.