ABSTRACT
In a Bourdieusian approach, the body plays a significant role in signifying ones status and belonging within fields. The body is therefore not a fixed entity but is partially constructed by the medium of the habitus: It follows that the body is the most indisputable materialization of class taste, which manifests itself in several ways. If ones body is too big, small, weak, strong, or if one dresses inappropriately or does not control the movements of ones body to fit with accepted demeanours, it will be more difficult to blend in and be accepted in the field or even gain access to it in the first. Chris Shilling has used Bourdieus concept of embodied cultural capital to conceptualise the body as a bearer of value in contemporary society. Contemporary biology no longer uses the concept of race and within the social sciences a significant corpus of work argues human characteristics or phenotypes are only given meaning through a process of racialisation.
