From committed research at the Research Seminar in Physical Anthropology, to a construction of a critical physical anthropology at the ENAH

Abstract

In the 70s the active and convinced participation of a group of doctrinaire teachers and students eager to build a new reality, contributed to the existence of the Research Seminar in Physical Anthropology (siaf) at the National School of Anthropology and History in Mexico, and to the reformulation of its subject matter. Hence many watered. In my case I tried to give continuity to this purpose by providing an important place for conceptual creation and theoretical constitution, and a recovering the statement of an engaged anthropology, but also recognizing the importance of seeing their contributions and omissions. This paper recounts scenes and notions, from which it was noted the importance of thinking the man and his body as social historical subject and the imperative to analyze it from a class perspective, but tries to go beyond by exposing the challenge of establishing new formulations to understand it as a producer of meaning, effectively constrained to networks of power and domination from which the social and cultural aspects play an important role. This reflection-construction route may lead to a new line of thought that set the critical physical anthropology from the ontological and epistemological review of its main assumptions. Convinced of the latter, I discuss some elements that I have been working on to address the body as a perceptual field that is socially and culturally constructed, and culture as a producer of health, such as disease and as a determinant of experience modified by it and to which ascribes meaning and significance.