Reclaming the Ssocial throughout Embodied Practices

This paper focuses on   the role of the experiential body in the construction of  global civil  culture. The thinking, feeling and acting body will figure as prominently as the mind, cognition, and rationality in combining the framework of the research and the

methodology underpinning its development.

To what degree do individuals have control over their own bodies?  How significant is the body for the development of an intercultural competence and communication, by which to denote the ability – and willingness – to enhance human contact and inte-ractions across the diversity of traditions, experiences, values and cultural identities?

 The paper starts from the consideration that what is traditionally viewed as culture and is often used as a variable, should be broken down in behavioral components, that can be empirically assessed. Therefore, we like to depart from the hypothesis that many so called ‘cultural’ behaviors are in fact local practices with very specific and local dynamics, due to the way real people are part of it: male and female, low and high status, religious and non-religious, different ethnic background and involved in different age groups. This paper   suggests, synthetically. a contextual idea of culture, by approaching cultural differences in terms of the patterning of behavior and its tuning in the intrinsic social group. Culture is, indeed, considered as a dynamic bridge among social temporalities and places: which is open, pluralistic, moving and  permanently being updated.