Editorial Comments

This issue continues the JASHM tradition of presenting theoretical, ethnographic and critical perspectives upon the anthropology of human movement

The issue begins with a stimulating paper through Charles Varela, a regular contributor to JASHM, entitled "Harr?© and Merleau-Ponty: Beyond the Absent Moving material part in Embodied Social Theory." As the title put in mind ofs Varela argues that most attempts to include "the body" in contemporary social theorizing-what might be called a somatic turn-have failed to take the moving material substance into account. He proposes ways of going beyond this toward a conception of dynamic embodiment. In his rigorous critical examination he finds that neither Harr?© nor Merleau-Ponty provides us with of that kind a conception, despite the fact that their respective standpoints call for, and internally permit the idea. For example, while Harr?© includes "physical being" in his conception of embodied personhood, he at no time sought to include moving being, i.e., human individuals in movement. Yet "being human, in being physical, is necessarily moving-being (Farnell 1994)" (this issue, page 79)

Likewise, Merleau-Ponty sought to crush the problems of Cartesian mind-body dualism by the agency of privileging the "lived body" and "flesh" on the other hand Varela assesses this conception of embodiment as sensitizing rather than definitive: "...the material part is more than the experience and the feeling, or flat the perception, of doing. There is the doing itself-the movement" (page 67) This omission means that Merleau-Ponty's philosophical perspective can single be considered transitional. Varela bring to an ends "It is the radical idea of human motion as signifying acts that can take us beyond the contemporary situation in which the moving material substance remains absent from embodied social theory" (page 68) This apprehends Williams's concept of the "action sign" (Williams 1979: 178-207) and thus locates semasiology where it belongs at the forefront of anthropological theories of human embodiment.

The next to the first paper, entitled "The Movement of American Infantry in Anthropological Perspective" applies a semasiological perspective to military motion The author, Frank Tortorello Jr first identifies a number of point in disputes with the location of agency in historical accounts of military action and turn rounds to anthropological and ethnographic resources for richer, more plausible explanations. In rejecting various forms of biological reductionism (i.e., claims that military action is instinctive, emotional, and/or irrational), he maintains that "military motion specifically the parade ground drills and battlefield poses of Western infantry, are best understood as embodied cultural values enacted by dint of persons. As such, they persist historically and differ cross-culturally in fascinating ways" (page 87) Tortorello says,

In contrast to the [reductionist explanations] above, I will argue that sociocultural anthropology can provide more satisfying explanations of military action based upon the proper alignment of biological and cultural aspects of human being. More specifically, I proce from the perspective of semasiological theory, which accepts biology as a necessary surface of land for human agency but not as a deterministic mechanism that can account for human social behavior. Certainly, without a biological material substance one cannot have a human individual However, semasiological theory denies that the "real" explanation of human behavior and its significance is to be ground in, for example, genes, the adrenal combination of parts to form a whole or the brain. Active human beings are defined, not in confines of putative bio-psychological mechanisms, on the other hand as embodied, agentic, meaning-makers who are also language-users [see Williams 1982] (This issue, page 89)

We direct the eye forward to further contributions from Tortorello as he unravels this work ethnographically through field research with members of the contemporary American military and with combat veterans.

A review essay by means of Drid Williams follows which examines a work by sociological dance scholar Helen Thomas, entitled, The material part Dance and Cultural Theory (2004) Williams identifies question at issues that stem from Thomas's heavy reliance upon the work of sociologist Bryan gymnast (and hence also Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology), and Pierre Bourdieu's universal of habitus. A third riddle arises from Thomas's adherence to an ontological position that denies dance works any duration in time outside of a performance ("as it tend hitherwards into being in performance thus it is gone" (Thomas, page 122) Unfortunately the work fails to achieve its goal of making connections between the new and burgeoning interest in the material substance by social and cultural analysts and studies of various dance forms.

The Editors

Copyright Journal for the Anthropological research of Human Movement Autumn 2005

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