Physical culture

Johnston and Klandermans [1] (p. 3) reflect that “culture is a broad and often imprecise term but, as others have noted, at the same time intuitively apparent”. This combination of conceptual imprecision and lived intuitiveness is partly what gives rise to ambiguity around the very notion of culture—we all know it is there and somehow important, but we also often struggle to articulate precisely what the term means. Such ambiguity is also at least as prevalent when dealing with the idea of physical culture, which is an often-used term to describe a phenomenon of sociological, anthropological, historical, and philosophical interest. Across these diverse bodies of literature, ambiguity is sustained in part because of dual usage of the term physical culture in both academic and popular literature. While both are relevant, they carry important nuances in meaning and indicate a different aspect of focus, depending on the reading of the word culture. In what follows, I expand a little on these nuances.