An Ethnological Study of Body Communication

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Althoug humans in society are creatures with bodies, the body as a means of communication has been studied hitherto very little and almost only from the experimental psychologist view point. In this study we investigated the fundamental conditions of body communication in natural social envinonnments of culturally diverse societies in the world, focusing on the touching, bodily coactions and interactional syuchrony. We tried to study the greeting behavior on encounters, and we discovered that the greeting in everyday life is not universal and that in such societies as Italyand Greece when the greeting by touch is obligatory there is a tendency to avoid touching even among acquantances. This fact implies that touch is essential to the human communication.We confirmed on the other hand that the he bodily coaction and synchronization are on the other hand ubiquitous. They are found in every society we studied, but we found out also that they are not simple physiological phenomena. Their occurrence depends very much on culturally determined contexts, and as culture changes radically worldwide there are cases in which they lose communicational function and meaning. But still we are impressed by the frequency and depth of interactional synchrony over the world.As the bodily coaction and synchroy are cultural, they can be seen as body technique. During our investigation we also made observations and visual documentation of professional performers belonging to various cultures in order to find the logic and possibilities of human body communication.