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'The body is a mirror of society'. Discuss. The assertion of this essay's title could have easily been made by Durkheim, eager to expand sociology's territory to include areas traditionally belonging to other disciplines. It was his loyal nephew, Mauss, who first classified the miscellaneous examples of the social conditioning of the body as 'body techniques'. The concept of body techniques shows that the ways in which the individual uses his body are not determined by nature, but are the product of "all his education by the whole society to which he belongs." Body techniques are so powerful because after constant repetition they become a kind of 'habitus', forming a general state of physical being. Culturally learned phenomena thus feel instinctive and 'natural'. The social conditioning of the body places it within a broader moral universe. Following Durkheim, Hertz states that the main feature of religion is the distinction it draws...

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