A Social History of corporeity: from the physical body to the living body

Abstract

In this work, a review of the different perceptions of the body that different societies have had throughout history is carried out. It will be seen how, in some moments, positive meanings predominated in the social representation of the body, while at other times the body was perceived from a negative point of view. For the realization of this article qualitative research was carried out based on the review of documents of the history of thought and social theory on the construction of social representations of the body. For this, the theoretical framework of systemic constructivism has been used -in particular, the theory of social imaginaries of Juan Luis Pintos- and the notion of epistemological rupture of Gaston Bachelard. Special attention is also paid to the gender perspective when carrying out the study. It can be concluded that the social representations of the body have been affected by a process of secularization and medicalization, affecting in different ways the perception of the female body, than that of the male. Building throughout the time a representation of the body as something changing and that assumes an identity role for people.