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Home/Anthropology/Mains PYQ/2025/Paper I/Culture & Society
UPSC MainsAnthropology Optional Paper I 2025 10 Marks Model Answer Available

Culture and Embodiment — 2025 Paper I

Question · 2025 · Paper I · 10 Marks

Culture and embodiment.

Model Answer

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Introduction
Embodiment means the way culture is lived through the body. It shows that the body is not merely biological; it is trained, disciplined, decorated, gendered and experienced through cultural meanings.

Culture inscribed on the body
Marcel Mauss, in “Techniques of the Body” (1934), showed that even walking, swimming, eating and sitting are culturally learned bodily techniques. Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of habitus in Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977) explains how repeated social practices become bodily dispositions.

Body as a site of identity
Dress, tattooing, scarification, ritual marks, hairstyle, posture and food habits express gender, caste, ethnicity, age and religious identity. For example, fasting, veiling, initiation marks or dance forms embody cultural values.

Body, power and suffering
Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock’s idea of the “mindful body” (1987) shows how social suffering, poverty and gender inequality become embodied as malnutrition, stress or illness.

Conclusion
Culture and embodiment together show that anthropology studies the body as both biological organism and cultural text. This makes embodiment central to medical anthropology, gender studies and performance studies.

2025 Critically examine the drawbacks in assuming culture as an 'integrated-closed' system in understanding of contemporary society. 2025 Describe briefly the theoretical perspectives in linguistic anthropology to explain the relationship of culture, language and thought. 2024 Attributes of culture 2024 Examine critically the concept of social stratification as a basis for sustaining social inequality.

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UPSC Anthropology Optional 2025 — Paper I

28 questions

1(e) Culture and embodiment.

10 Marks150 words
Syllabus: Paper I > Nature of Culture > Contemporary Culture Concepts > Embodiment; body and culture
2025Paper ICulture & SocietyModel answer available

1(a) Mendelian and non-Mendelian traits.

10 Marks150 words
Syllabus: Paper I > Human Genetics > Mendelian Genetics in Man > Mendelian and non-Mendelian inheritance
2025Paper IHuman Genetics & Human BiologyModel answer available

1(c) Osteodontokeratik culture and its makers.

10 Marks150 words
Syllabus: Paper I > Prehistoric Archaeology > Early Tool Traditions > Osteodontokeratic culture; australopithecine makers
2025Paper IPrehistoric ArchaeologyAnswer coming soon