Editor's Note

JASHM stands for the Journal for the Anthropological Study of Human Movement. It is an international academic journal that started in 1980. The purpose of the journal is to present current research and writing and to stimulate discussion of ideas and issues that arise from a study of human movement within social and cultural contexts. Recognizing that there are overlaps between socio-cultural anthropological concerns and those of other disciplines (notably philosophy, history, linguistics, sociology, and psychology) as well as interdisciplinary investigations, the editors of JASHM encourage contributions from members of other disciplines who are interested in human movement as a world-wide phenomenon, in addition to those working within the framework of socio-cultural and linguistic anthropological inquiry.

What Do Anthropologist of Human Movement Study?

Human beings everywhere engage in complex structured systems of dynamically embodied actions that are laden with social, cultural, historical, political and economic significance. Such systems include the expressive complexities of sacred and secular rituals, dances, sign languages, ceremonies, martial arts, sports, and the hand and facial gestures that accompany speech in any language, as well as myriad theatrical and performance traditions. There are also numerous mundane bodily techniques (skills) such as ways of eating, dressing, walking, sitting, digging, cleaning, fishing and hunting, as well as craftsmanship of all kinds—highly skilled intelligent activities that engage the material world, involving elaborate tool use and the shaping of things, each of which vary according to cultural and local conventions. Such dynamically embodied signifying acts generate an enormous variety of forms of embodied knowledge, systematized in various ways and to varying degrees, involving cultural conventions as well as creative performativity. In all cases they are constitutive of human subjectivities and inter-subjective domains that engage political economies of knowing and being.