15/05/2020 How COVID-19 makes us use our bodies differently | The Familiar Strange

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MAY 11, 2020 / THE FAMILIAR STRANGE

Author: Sophie Chao, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sydney

in Australia. She received her Ph.D. from Macquarie University, Sydney, in 2019
and previously worked for the human rights organization Forest Peoples Programme, in
Indonesia, supporting the rights of forest-dwelling Indigenous peoples to their customary
lands, resources, and livelihoods. Her research explores emerging multispecies relationships in
West Papua in the context of oil palm expansion. You can reach her at
sophie.chao@gmail.com 

A few weeks ago, my partner and I went shopping for a belated birthday gift at our
local shopping centre. We had both self-isolated for the previous four weeks and were
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trying to limit our activities to the essential. Usually packed with people on a weekend,
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the mall was empty. Most of the shops were closed until further notice. A couple of
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security guards asked us to spray hand sanitizer at the entrance and there were just
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two staff members in the perfume shop that we visited. We tried several fragrances
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and nally picked one. I approached a sales assistant to hand over the sample and
asked for the perfume’s price and availability. She told me to put the sample back on
the shelf and went to get a new bottle. A sign near the cash register informed us to pay Subscribe

by card rather than cash and to pack our own bags. We did so and left the shop. 

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After we had walked out, my partner said to me, “You know back there in the shop? You Tweets by @TFSTweets
were totally not respecting social distancing.” I was surprised and disbelieving. As my The Familiar Strange Retweeted
partner explained, it turned out I had been standing very close to the sales assistant, Oceania
@OceaniaJournal
followed her when she went to get the perfume bottle, and handed her a sample bottle.
Sophie Chao draws on Marcel Mauss' idea of the
Apparently, I hadn’t noticed that the staff looked a bit uncomfortable throughout the “techniques of the body” to outline how COVID-19
is changing relationships between the body and
encounter. My partner added, “She was probably wondering if you even knew you were society: via @TFSTweets
not respecting social distancing, and if not, why not. Maybe she thought you were thefamiliarstrange.com/2020/05/11/cov…

trying to stay normal, despite the whole COVID-19 situation. Or maybe she thought
you were being irresponsible. She probably wanted to say something but felt she
couldn’t, because it might come across as rude.” I felt embarrassed for failing to adopt
the correct bodily comportment in that brief interaction. I tried to be more careful
during the rest of our time in the mall and beyond. I also became interested more
generally in just how COVID-19 was recon guring peoples’ senses and uses of the How COVID-19 makes us use our bodie…
body – both their own and those of others. COVID-19 has prompted a renewed aware…
thefamiliarstrange.com

Revisiting Mauss 
19h

The Familiar Strange Retweeted

Dr Thomas Wright
These thoughts brought me to revisit what French sociologist Marcel Mauss calls the @enviroanth
“techniques of the body.” Explored in a seminal essay published in 1934, techniques of COVID-19 is forcing us to reshape relationships
between the body and society.
the body refers to the physical actions and behaviours that individuals must learn in @Sophie_MH_Chao draws on anthropological
order to become fully- edged members of their society. Such techniques range from ideas of 'techniques of the body' to consider how
post-pandemic human interactions change - and
public, collective behaviours to mundane, private ones – marching, swimming, walking, the role of privilege:
thefamiliarstrange.com/2020/05/11/cov… via
eating, drinking, running, sleeping, dancing, and even breathing. Techniques of the @TFSTweets
body, Mauss argued, are culturally shaped rather than biologically given. They are
transmitted over time from one generation to another. Techniques of the body are at
once physiological, psychological, and sociological. They differ across cultures, and also
often according to gender, age, profession, or status. 

Mauss’ concept of techniques of the body has been central to other theories
How COVID-19 makes us use our bodie…
concerning the relationship between the body and society. These include Pierre COVID-19 has prompted a renewed aware…
Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, or the collective yet often unspoken set of bodily thefamiliarstrange.com

behaviours that bind particular members of a cultural group, and Michel Foucault’s
May 14, 2020
notion of discipline, or the self-governance of the body that characterizes the subject
The Familiar Strange
of the modern industrial age. Central to these theories is the idea that techniques of

Performativity
@TFSTweets

S hi Ch it th t ' h i t
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15/05/2020 How COVID-19 makes us use our bodies differently | The Familiar Strange

the body, while learned, often tend to appear more or less habitual, or taken for Performativity
Sophie Chao writes that 'we are now having to
change the way we behave, move, and interact,

granted. In other words, we only really realize that we have learned to behave a certain in order to keep ourselves and those around us
=
safe from contagion... In the COVID-19 context,
way when we encounter a different way of doing the same thing. we are having to re-think and re-learn the

Techniques of the Body

techniques of the
body.'thefamiliarstrange.com/2020/05/11/cov…

In many ways, this is exactly what the anthropological eldwork experience is all about.
Anthropologists undertake long-term participant-observation in culturally diverse
settings in order to denaturalize the behaviours expected in their own society and
understand why different behaviours make sense in other societies. What we glean
from this is that there is no such thing as “normal” or “abnormal” bodily comportment
outside of the cultural context in which that behaviour is assessed. In fact, many
anthropologists will tell you that it is precisely when they failed to get the techniques
of the body right that they learned the most about what proper social and individual
conduct entails among the people they study. As with other themes in our discipline, May 14, 2020

anthropologists study diverse forms of bodily behaviour in order to make the strange Embed View on Twitter
familiar and the familiar strange.

COVID-19 and a new bodily comportment 

For many anthropologists, the growing COVID-19 pandemic has pre-empted the
possibility of eldwork in faraway sites. At the same time, the pandemic is making us
increasingly aware of how we use our bodies in our own everyday lives, back at home.
This is largely because we are now having to change the way we behave, move, and
interact, in order to keep ourselves and those around us safe from contagion. In some
cases, binding government regulations and policies require that people practice
physical distancing, like the 1.5-meter rule or the two-person limit on home guests in
Australia*. In other cases, changes in individual behaviour are encouraged in the form
of informal advice or recommendations, particularly in terms of personal hygiene, like
sterilizing one’s phone regularly or taking a shower after coming home from work.
Often, formal and informal changes in behaviour are mutually reinforcing. Both frame
the recon guration of bodily techniques as part of an individual and collective process
of responsibilisation – one that can keep us safe in the midst of a growing global
pandemic. In the COVID-19 context, we are having to re-think and re-learn the
techniques of the body.

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15/05/2020 How COVID-19 makes us use our bodies differently | The Familiar Strange

For starters, COVID-19 has prompted a renewed awareness of how we use our bodies
under “normal” circumstances. For instance, some of us have noticed when and how
often we would usually wash our hands or touch our faces. We become aware of the
habitual forms of tactile contact we make with others on a daily basis. The close ones
we hug or kiss or the colleagues and peers we shake hands with. The cashiers who
package our shopping for us at the supermarket, or the staff members who help us pick
out perfumes and clothes in the shops. The way we try out each other’s food and drinks
at restaurants and bars during social gatherings. Some of us have also become more
aware of the virtual techniques of the body at play during increasingly common online
conferencing and calls. For instance, how interpersonal connection and attention in a
Zoom session differs when we don’t actually make eye-contact with our interlocutors,
or how our conversations and body language change when we permanently see
ourselves on the computer screen.

Beyond awareness, COVID-19 is also demanding that we change our bodily behaviours
to prevent the spread of the pandemic. This entails both transforming existing
techniques and learning new ones. For instance, instructional videos on the internet
teach us the correct sequence of steps involved in washing our hands properly. We
learn to keep a 1.5-meter distance from others in public places, which sometimes
requires stopping, taking another path, or crossing the pavement. We start to wear
masks and use hand sanitizer. Comprehensive lists inform us of hygienic measures to
take when we come home, like showering, changing clothes, and disinfecting keys and
wallets. We also begin to keep track of and limit what we touch – other people,
elevator buttons, our own face.

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15/05/2020 How COVID-19 makes us use our bodies differently | The Familiar Strange

Some of us might use our knees, feet, elbows and knuckles instead of our ngertips in
mundane activities – for instance, to tap out a PIN code, make a selection on a digital
screen, push open a door, or ip on a light switch. We learn how to cough and sneeze in
our elbows rather than hands, or try to avoid doing so entirely when in the public gaze.
These hygienic practices are all part of a particular set of bodily techniques that Marcel
Mauss called “care of the body,” or prescribed, everyday physical acts that serve to
maintain the well-being of individuals and to af rm their belonging within broader
social communities.
Care of the Body = Set of Bodily Techniques
Interpreting new behaviours

The ways we adapt our bodily techniques in the COVID-

19 pandemic also shapes the way our behaviour is
interpreted. In some contexts, maintaining “normal”
bodily behaviour is seen in a positive light because it
seems to suggest sustained social intimacy despite the
pandemic conditions. This is often the case with close
friends or family members, whom we might continue to
kiss or hug, rather than adopt the Wuhan-shake with.
On the other hand, violating requisite bodily
comportments can lead to criticism and dobbing, which again speaks to the ethos of
responsibilisation that shapes COVID-19 times. Here, the failure to adapt the body to
pandemic conditions may not just be assessed as strange or abnormal, but rather as
irresponsible, dangerous, or sel sh. 

Most often, failing to adopt pandemic-appropriate comportment, as exempli ed by my

COVID-19 faux-pas in the perfume shop, seems to result in more or less visible
discomfort, embarrassment, or annoyance on the part of those around us. People may
feel uncomfortable asking us to take some distance or moving themselves further
away to signal that such distance is needed, because although it is necessary, it feels
unnatural and potentially rude. These particular techniques of the body are not part of
our habitual social enculturation, yet we must learn to accept and practice them. 

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15/05/2020 How COVID-19 makes us use our bodies differently | The Familiar Strange

I have witnessed several such awkward situations over the last few weeks. In malls,
forest trails, and supermarkets, for instance, paths or corridors are sometimes too
narrow for two people to cross them at the same time. Often, there would be an
awkward pause, a shared hesitation, and tentative eye-contact. Both parties would
move away at the same time, but in the same direction. Eventually, one person would Reading-Interpreting the Body
change the aisle, cross the road, or wait for the other to cross. Our incapacity to read
each other’s bodies and adequately deploy our own would sometimes lead to a shared
smile or laugh. In other cases, we were left feeling a bit embarrassed and doubtful as to
whether we had done the right thing. In these and many other instances, people are
having to gure out and learn what techniques of the body to deploy in different places
and circumstances – the mall, supermarket, park, or bushland. Health is the primary
motive for these bodily behaviours, but the ways in which these behaviours are
assessed by others matters too.

Privileges and impossibilities 

Finally, it’s important to remember that even if we know what bodily techniques we
should adopt, for many people, actually putting this into practice can be dif cult,
dangerous, and sometimes impossible. African-American men in New York City, for
instance, have expressed concerns that following the CDC advice to cover their faces
could expose them to harassment from the police and entrench racial stigma. Physical
distancing is quasi-impossible for residents of the already over-populated slums of
Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Strict quarantine measures in India have caused
migrant workers to have to walk hundreds of miles home in groups of hundreds and
thousands. The danger of equating “staying home” with “staying safe” comes to stark
light in contexts of domestic violence and abuse, where the home is a place of danger
rather than comfort. Meanwhile, many homeless people simply have no home to seek
shelter in. We might all inhabit a shared COVID-19 culture – but reading this culture
through peoples’ physical practices and exposures highlights the unequal distribution
of threat and protection afforded to different human bodies and communities across
the world. 

Mauss’ insights into the ways we learn to use our bodies remain useful to think with in
the context of the COVID-19 climate. This climate is not just making us more aware of
habitual bodily comportments – it is making us have to adapt to new ones, quickly and
responsibly. Such transformations (or their absence) are subject to different social
assessments. What was once “normal” behaviour can be re-classi ed as strange or
reckless in light of the fact that COVID-19 is not just around us but may very well
already be inside us. Changing our techniques of the body is as much about avoiding
being infected as it is about avoiding transmission. As with every form of enculturation,
re-educating our bodies in contextually appropriate ways is a learning process – one
that encompasses both individual actions and decisions, and the ways they are socially
assessed and evaluated. This learning process is central to our emergent socialisation
as situated inhabitants of a COVID-19 “culture” – a process that, to torque Mauss’
words, involves nding ways to continue living in common, albeit not in contact.

*Make sure to stay up to date on your local restrictions and guidelines as they might change
and/or be different to those cited in this blog, which – just like ethnography – captures a
moment in time.

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15/05/2020 How COVID-19 makes us use our bodies differently | The Familiar Strange

[Image of the elbowbump is not the author’s and is by Noah Matteo on Unsplash]

[The social distancing sign at David Jones is by Kgbo  (CC BY-SA 4.0)]

[The social distancing sign in a bottle shop is by Kgbo  (CC BY-SA 4.0)]

[The image of cleaning keyboard is by Erik Mclean on Unsplash]

[The Foot Shake image is created by Lívia Koreeda on Unsplash, submitted for United
Nations Global Call Out To Creatives – help stop the spread of COVID-19]

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BEHAVIOR , BEHAVIOUR , COVID-19 , MARCEL MAUSS , PIERRE BOURDIEU ,

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