ABSTRACT
Since its inception, the field of HMS (and its antecedent form, PE) has been about the body, either educating about it or working on it. When students do HMS they predominantly learn about the body as a biophysical “thing”. The body is an object to be studied like any other living organism. However, human bodies also exist in a cultural context – one that is constantly changing. Of course this cultural context is itself a product of human action and in this sense there is a dialectical relationship between an individual human body and the cultural context in which it exists.
