The incremental transformation of the body through freediving: A biocultural approach to reflexive bodily practices

IF 0.6 4区社会学 Q3 ANTHROPOLOGY

Ethos Pub Date : 2024-05-10 DOI:10.1111/etho.12430

Greg Downey

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Expert freediving explores the limits of human endurance, with some divers staying underwater for over 10 min or reaching crushing depths on a single breath. This article explores the enskilment process, especially how freediving training involves a suite of reflexive bodily practices with psychological, neurological, and physiological consequences. Examined closely and over time, skill acquisition is a multi-dimensional process involving self-driven adaptations in a cumulative, uneven manner. Because skills combine biological, cultural, and psychological mechanisms, practices are ideal for biocultural analysis in psychological anthropology. This account of the behavioral-development spiral in freediving enskilment suggests that transformative practices are inherently developmental, with neurological consequences. Theories of practice that ignore the temporal dimension or the variability of skill acquisition, that is, accounts that erase the slow and uncertain accumulation of expertise, fundamentally misrepresent how persistent practice blends biology and culture, and causes transformation, as well as the usefulness of ethnography for studying these processes.

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通过自由潜水逐步改变身体：反思性身体实践的生物文化方法

专业自由潜水探究了人类耐力的极限，有些潜水员在水下停留超过 10 分钟，或一次呼吸就能达到惊人的深度。本文探讨了技能训练过程，特别是自由潜水训练如何涉及一系列反射性身体练习，并对心理、神经和生理产生影响。仔细观察，随着时间的推移，技能的习得是一个多维的过程，涉及自我驱动的适应，以一种累积的、不均衡的方式进行。由于技能结合了生物、文化和心理机制，因此实践是心理人类学生物文化分析的理想对象。对自由潜水技能训练中行为-发展螺旋的描述表明，变革性练习本质上是发展性的，会对神经系统产生影响。忽视时间维度或技能习得可变性的实践理论，即抹杀缓慢而不确定的专业知识积累的理论，从根本上歪曲了持久性实践如何融合生物与文化并导致转变，以及人种学在研究这些过程中的作用。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Ethos Multiple-

CiteScore

1.20

自引率

16.70%

发文量

期刊介绍： Ethos is an interdisciplinary and international quarterly journal devoted to scholarly articles dealing with the interrelationships between the individual and the sociocultural milieu, between the psychological disciplines and the social disciplines. The journal publishes work from a wide spectrum of research perspectives. Recent issues, for example, include papers on religion and ritual, medical practice, child development, family relationships, interactional dynamics, history and subjectivity, feminist approaches, emotion, cognitive modeling and cultural belief systems. Methodologies range from analyses of language and discourse, to ethnographic and historical interpretations, to experimental treatments and cross-cultural comparisons.