Keywords

The aim of this handbook is to show that embodiment is far more important in learning and education than is often assumed. Modern cognitive science has also reached this conclusion, having recognized that consciousness and cognitive processes need a physical body with which to interact, without which they would not exist. This has long been known in the fields of Anthropology, Cultural Studies and the Humanities. In recent decades, however, it has become considerably more important. In many societies and in many sciences, there is an increased interest in the body and the concept of embodiment. Today, there is hardly any scientific discipline which is not expressly interested in processes of embodiment. The chapters in this handbook, therefore, bring together a wide range of interdisciplinary scholarly research on embodiment from different countries in many areas of society, focusing especially on children and young adults. In situating the body at the centre of educational practices and research, the authors follow historical, conceptual, empirical and practical educational approaches and traditions. The core argument is as follows: on a superficial level, education appears to be designed by normative requirements and largely without regard to bodily needs and corporeal interactions. However, thorough analysis reveals that education is composed of a broad spectrum of bodily expressions, forms of ‘corporeal regulation’, personal abilities, motivations, subjective perceptions, individual peculiarities and the like. These aspects play a major role in learners’ success. Here, we can see a historical development in terms of focusing on bodies as vehicles of learning. In former times young adults’ bodies were viewed either as obstacles to learning due to factors such as weakness and deviance, or as objects, as in the context of physical education or training lessons.

The handbook forms part of a development in the Humanities in which there has been a re-evaluation of the body. The book provides an overview of corporeality and embodiment from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. It focuses on seven areas in which the processes of embodiment and learning in the field of education are particularly important. Before turning to these, however, it is important to define the frame of reference of our research.

There was an explicit interest in the body in the progressive education of Europe and America at the end of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, and this interest was then developed further in Educational Anthropology over the last 50 years under the influence of Anthropology and General Pedagogics when it became an important area of education and Educational Science research (Wulf, 2013, 2022b). This development was supported by a number of research projects in the Humanities and Social Sciences which highlighted the important social role of the body. There were important insights into the role played by the ‘performative’ and the ‘material turn’ in our understanding of the body—this will be explored further below (Wulf and Zirfas, 2007; Nohl, 2011). It became clear that incorporating the world is dependent on our imagination and that this generates emotions of many kinds. Studies show that many embodiment processes generate practical knowledge (Kraus, 2008–2012). A considerable part of this knowledge is implicit or tacit. This is where we see the limits of theoretical language-based research. Tacit or wordless knowledge is practical knowledge that is important for social and pedagogical action (Kraus et al., 2021). This knowledge is indispensable for the social changes that must be made as a consequence of the many negative effects of the Anthropocene (Wallenhorst and Wulf, 2023).

1 Historical Perspectives

The body has become an increasingly important subject in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Studies for almost 50 years now. In the early 1980s there was a growth in studies on the body (Feher et al., 1983). It is therefore completely acceptable to speak of a “return of the body” (Kamper and Wulf, 1982). From the very beginning of this early research it was clear that there is no single scientific discipline that can claim the body as its own topic, and also that new fields of knowledge were emerging with different thematic approaches and research methods. New forms of knowledge were appearing (that were sometimes contradictory), not only because of their interdisciplinary nature but also because they were intercultural (Wulf and Kamper, 2002).

From a historical point of view there were several reasons for the body becoming a central subject of research in the Humanities, with new conceptions of the world and humanity. One reason lies in the fact that the traditional ‘western’ division between body and spirit was unsatisfactory. It had led to an increase in processes of abstraction, which has distanced, disciplined and instrumentalized the body. With the increase in digitalization there has been a further intensification of these processes of rationalizing the body, seeing it in terms of economic factors, taking away its materiality, all of which can be seen as a result of this division (Kontopodis et al., 2017). We have become increasingly aware of the appropriation of the body for purposes that have nothing to do with human bodiliness (that has been suffered in silence) and also of the destructive effects of this development on many societies and the life on our planet. Human bodies with their diverse senses, passions and desires have become forced into a control mechanism of prohibitions and rules and subjected to many forms of repression. Critical Theory, for example, has seen this as a consequence of the increasing abstraction, the media transformation of our world and the transformation into images, in many instances, there has been an increase in psychogenic and sociogenic illnesses. Many of these are related to the undesirable side-effects of a social dynamic that is oriented towards growth and progress, with side-effects which have expedited climate change, the depletion of non-renewable resources and fast-growing rubbish mountains. In leisure, art and culture we see a marked increase in the desire for bodily experiences to compensate for this abstraction. This can be interpreted as a desire to find new ways to live and new meanings in our lives and a less destructive relationship with nature and our own bodies.

2 Continental Educational Science and Educational Anthropology

In the Humanities and Social Sciences, the reception and development of the paradigm of the body has been different across the countries of Europe, and this is still the case. The same is also true of the field of education where there have always been different assumptions in different countries on what pedagogy is about. In this book you will find a collection of chapters that picks up on a variety of traditions and premises that have coloured the way the body and embodiment have become an important subject in society and education. In Germany, for example, there were two important developments which we will briefly mention.

One development relates to the concept of ‘Bildung’ which has become a central concept in education since the early nineteenth century. Johann H. Pestalozzi prepared the ground for this in some ways but the concept was influenced and made popular by Immanuel Kant, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Schleiermacher and many others (Wulf, 2022b). In the 20th century, it came to our attention through Progressive Education, and it was then picked up by the Frankfurt School that emphasized the political dimension that had received too little attention until then. In the present day there are controversial discussions about using the concept to characterize quantitative metric empirical studies as well. The concept of ‘Bildung’ differs from the English tradition of ‘education’ which is understood predominantly as a task performed in the context of school. ‘Bildung’ goes further, and the emphasis is placed on the activity and the responsibility of subjects for their own ‘Bildung’. ‘Bildung’ is not limited to teaching and learning in school and to an education that is going to be useful or vocational. The goal is a fully rounded person, morally, politically and aesthetically, who has the capability of judging and forming critical opinions.

The second development that led to seeing the body and embodiment as issues in the field of education was based on discussions in Anthropology and Educational Anthropology which played an increasingly important role in German Educational Science from the 1960s onwards. The understanding of Anthropology and Educational Anthropology that formed the basis of this again differed from the customary understanding of the concepts in the English-speaking world. Anthropology was understood first and foremost as four paradigms. Two of these were based on what is common to all humanity (Wulf, 2013). They were hominization (Roberts, 2011) and Philosophical Anthropology that had its inception in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century (Scheler, 2009; Plessner, 1981; Gehlen, 1988). The other two paradigms were Historical Anthropology that grew up at the same time in France around the Ecole des Annales (Burke, 1991; Bloch, 1964) and Cultural or Social Anthropology or Ethnology that became popular in several European countries (Kuper, 1973). Subsequently, views which were based rather more on general characteristics of the human body and on incorporation were combined with views which emphasized that what was special about the body and what was imprinted differently depending on cultural and historical factors. Educational Anthropology was also swayed by this, changing its focus from being predominantly philosophical, developing instead into a historical, cultural, educational anthropology. Educational anthropology today considers theoretical philosophical, historical and ethnographic research important (Wulf and Zirfas, 2014). The anthropological approach has helped with the understanding and research of embodiment and learning as being on the one hand something common to us all and on the other as a process that is culturally and historically different. In the globalized world of the Anthropocene in which human beings largely determine the fate of the planet and where it is essential to put right what has gone badly wrong in a completely different way, an anthropological view of things together with the educational practices based on this are of key importance. Perhaps this will also mean that the sustainability goals will be achieved (UN, 2015). If education approaches the human body, embodiment and learning in a conscious and respectful way, then educational anthropology and education will be able to play an important part in fulfilling this task (Wallenhorst and Wulf, 2023).

3 Learners as Human Beings

A further reason for ‘rediscovering the body’ in education is because corporeality plays an especially important role for children and young people. Our relationship to our body changes depending on our age and what we experience as pleasurable or repulsive, what draws our attention or what doesn’t interest us at all, and also depending on how we evaluate something (Kraus, 2000). This plays a particularly important role in school and classroom education (Kraus, 2008–2012).

Seen in a more general way, as young people’s personalities develop it becomes clear that listening, being spoken to by another person and perceiving the world through hearing are of central importance for the incorporation of the world into their imaginary. The fact that we hear ourselves when we speak plays a key role in the forming of the subject and intersubjectivity. The senses are also extremely important in the way we experience the world. It is through smell, taste and touch that we perceive and (more or less implicitly) understand the world, its objects, other people and also ourselves. It is through the senses that we experience the alterity of the world and are able to become individuals and subjects (Michaels and Wulf, 2014; Wulf, 2016). Physical movements are also important. They lead to incorporations which transform the outside world into the world inside us and transform the inner world of our imaginary into the outside world. Lakoff and Johnson (1999) have detected several directions of perception: source–path–goal; up–down; into–out of; towards–away from; straight–curves, which are bound to the positions and movements of the body and which are essential for our balance and physical orientation in space.

4 Corporeality and Senses

“ʻCorporealityʼ is a term that can be used to signify the body as social actant” (Gilleard and Higgs, 2013, p. 17). Our corporeality conveys and performs individuality, such as specific dispositions, age, gender, a certain social upbringing and cultural imprint. Corporeality is the conditio sine qua non for all individual life. As one cannot position oneself outside of one’s perceptions, corporeality largely evades transparency and reflection. It can neither be fully grasped nor expressed. Maurice Merleau-Ponty expressed this from a phenomenological point of view: “In so far as it sees or touches the world, my body can therefore be neither seen nor touched. What prevents its ever being an object, ever being completely constituted [M.-P’s emphasis] is that it is the instance by which there are objects” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 92). According to phenomenology, all reality appears in the first hand as sensual impressions, non-articulable perceptions, subliminal thoughts and as the origin of speaking in silence. As our body is our ‘natural I and as such the subject of perception’, we are our body, without any distance. Thus, we cannot have a complete consciousness about our living body. The bodily orientation in an individual or situational field of seeing, acting or speaking is a ‘point zero’. At the point zero—where we always already are—we become (tacitly) aware of how one deals with something and how practices relate to their contexts. This is where Meyer-Drawe (2008) locates the experience of learning. Learning, thus, lacks evidence regarding its starting point and process—it is an occurrence. In learning, former knowledge is rejected and new features enter familiar contexts: an inner estrangement enables us to respond to things we do not yet know. Thus, we do not gain knowledge, insight and understanding only in an active way. Rather we experience and learn by dealing with multiple disruptions, chiasms and fissures. After we have learnt something, then all of a sudden things make sense in a kind of archaic and persistent way, as if this sense had been there forever.

It is our senses that primarily enable us to connect with others and the world outside our own body and also to perceive ourselves (Michaels and Wulf, 2014). There are three aspects that clarify the process of embodiment and perceptions. The first is based on the physical attributes of homo sapiens and, as the prerequisite for our sensory experiences, is the same for all humans. The second aspect denotes the historical and cultural differences in human perception. There are differences depending on whether people live in the Middle Ages or in the present day, in Europe or in China. The third aspect is determined by the uniqueness of each individual person which distinguishes them and their lifeworlds from all other people. All our sensory perceptions are constituted through the working together of these three aspects, which are merged into an inextricable nexus in which the individual aspects can no longer be differentiated from each other. The senses cannot be seen in isolation. The way we understand the senses determines how we understand our bodies and vice versa. Michael Polanyi described this situation thus: “Our body is the only assembly of things known as most exclusively by relying on our awareness of them for attending to something else… we make sense of the world, we rely on our tacit knowledge of impact made by the world on our body and the complex of our body these impacts” (Polanyi, 1974, pp. 147, 148). Bourdieu drew our attention to the fact that our social habitus is the consequence of a multidimensional embodiment (Bourdieu, 1984, 1990) in the course of which embodied identities and embodied practices are formed, through which we are socially engaged and historically situated within social and personal time: Embodiment encompasses all those actions performed by the body or on the body which are inextricably oriented towards the social. As living beings and living bodies we react to our social environment: we learn and act.

5 Performativity

The growing interest in the body and embodiment is also connected to the discovery of the cultural importance of performativity, performance arts and the performativity of theatrical staging and productions. Performativity highlights a central aspect of social action and behaviour. Here the meanings of actions are not predominantly interpreted in words. What is central are the staging and performance and the skills that a situation demands. It is the social staging and performance of actions and ways of behaving that are important. The quality of people’s social relations depends very much on ‘how’ people use their bodies, that is, the physical distance they keep, their stance and posture and gestures. All of these convey to other people more than the conscious intentions of their actions. The bodily qualities of actions also suggest intersubjective and social relations, interpretations and meaning, views of the future and so on. In order to give a full picture of processes of embodiment in education we investigate here how social and educational action comes about and the extent to which it is intermeshed with language, deeds and imagination (see also Kress et al., 2021), how its uniqueness is a result of social and cultural frameworks (Resina and Wulf, 2019).

Based on the premise that pedagogy is a science of actions, that is, a practical science to be practised (Wulf, 2003), performativity in the act of education acquires a special importance in the processes of embodiment and learning. Since performative practices place an emphasis on valid norms, rules and certainties, they can have a conserving and stabilizing effect as well as one that transforms or subverts a situation at hand. The execution of performative acts contains the possibility of disempowering and changing the norms and rules in their very execution, treating them in an ironical way and questioning their unquestionability.

Performative acts also have a dimension that refers back to itself, identifies and exemplifies itself. They do not definitively refer to something outside of themselves but to something within themselves; they do what they mean; their meaning is to be found in their execution. By being executed they portray a reality; they create ‘their’ reality as ‘the’ reality in question (Wulf and Zirfas, 2007, 2014).

Social knowledge can be grasped as performative knowledge that has been acquired through the execution of social practices (Wulf et al., 2010). Here we see that the corporeality of the people performing the actions, from the performativity perspective, seen as elements of staging and performance, is of central importance. Social actions are symbolic arrangements of the human body. When we consider performativity, it is a question of how the links between language, power and action that make up social action determine our world and thus also education (Wulf et al., 2001; Wulf and Zirfas, 2007).

From the performativity point of view, we realize that not only norms but also objects, spaces theories about, bodies and artefacts play a part in everything we do, and this means that what happens in an educational context need to be rethought. The performativity concept locates the body as the site and medium of all that we do. In empirical research, the performative turn involves a micro-analytic examination of various practices. The performative turn entails a revision of the existing theoretical approaches to educational practices and learning by drawing our attention to tacit, that is, unwritten, unofficial and unintended but effective features and practices and, in this context, to corporeality (Kraus et al., 2021). From a methodological point of view, a social setting is then not seen as merely ‘given’, but as ‘constituted’ by historical and cultural conventions, conceptual approaches, methodological and methodical presuppositions and the like.

6 Mimetic Processes

In recent years there have been three approaches to researching and demonstrating the important role of mimetic processes in the incorporation of knowledge. The first of these shows how mimetic processes were conceptualized historically in European philosophy from Plato to Derrida. It also shows how these processes were developed as important ways of handing down culture from one generation to the next. According to the mimesis approach, embodiment takes place by means of copying, ‘wanting to become like’, ‘becoming similar to’ or assimilation. Acting mimetically also means expressing, ‘bringing something into being’ or even anticipating something that does not yet exist (Gebauer and Wulf, 1995, 1998).

A second approach that has demonstrated the importance of mimetic processes for the incorporation of social relations was developed as part of Evolutionary Anthropology. Here investigations have shown that although elementary forms of mimetic learning do take place also in non-human primates, human beings (and small children in particular) have the special capacity to learn mimetically (Tomasello, 1999). In young children’s striving to become similar to adults or older siblings we find the motivation to understand causal connections between the objects of the world and the communicative intentions of other people in gestures, symbols and constructions. Accordingly, event schemas and object categories are formed through dependence on others (Tomasello, 2008).

Thirdly, research on mirror neurons has shown that we reproduce what we have perceived in our brains in the very process of perceiving it. For example, an act of violence elicits similar processes in the person perceiving it to those in the person committing it. This incorporation happens because of the mirror neuron system (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2008; Jacoboni, 2008).

Mimetic abilities are interwoven with such bodily processes and often counteract social abstraction processes. They form a bridge to what is outside of us, to the world and to other people. Thus, the focus on mimetic learning softens the strict split between subject and object and the sharp difference between ‘is’ and ‘ought’. What we have instead is an understanding of something ‘in between’, which is experienced in a person’s assimilation of an outside world or another person. Mimetic processes contain rational elements; however, they go beyond this. As mimetic processes allow us to get really close to objects, they are indispensable for our understanding. Whereas modern rational thinking relates to the isolated subject of cognition, the mimetic processes take place in a network of relationships between subjects. The mimetic creation of a symbolic world makes reference to other world views and draws other people into our own world. It recognizes the exchange between world and subject and the aspect of power that this contains.

The history of mimetic processes in education and human development is also the history of the struggle for the power to create symbolic worlds, for the power to portray oneself and others and the power to interpret the world in one’s own way or else to fit in or perhaps be forced into doing so. In this way, especially in the field of education and socialization, mimesis is also part of the history of power structures.

7 Imagination

Imagination plays an essential role in the embodiment that takes place through mimetic processes. Imagination helps to transform the outside world into the inner world and the inner world into the outside world (Wulf, 2022a). Imagination is the force that creates images, that expresses itself in images and that can be understood in images. In a general sense, inner and outer ‘images’ include feelings, atmospheres and other ‘imaginations’, that is sounds, traces of touch, smell and taste. In the imagination on the one hand what is absent is present; but on the other, the imagination is also materially absent. The representative character of the imagination lies in this paradoxical structure. The representative power of imagination makes it possible to transform and incorporate the outside world into the inside world and the inside world into the outside world. The spectrum of possible changes in this process ranges from minimal deviations to major innovations and inventions. While a psychoanalytic perspective, for example, tends to point to the limited possibilities of emotions changing (Kraus, 2000), an aesthetic perspective emphasizes the creative possibilities of the individual. Perceptions of both the external world and internal images can generate emotions. An example of this are perceptions of erotic situations in the outside world or the perception of erotic images in the imagination. The erotic images of the imagination can precede and evoke emotions; they can become their medium and accompany them; as well as they can be a consequence of emotions.

Arnold Gehlen (1988) sees imagination as rooted in the life of the human body and its origin in the vegetative system and understands it in connection with the excess drive of humans. For André Leroi-Gourhan, the development of the imagination has its starting point in the muscular activities in connection with movement, food and sex (Leroi-Gourhan, 1993). Marcel Jousse (1974) sees the emergence of the imagination in the mimetic actions of people directed towards the processes of nature. Despite their different points of view, these authors agree that imagination is closely related to people’s physical activities, emotions and actions and is therefore essential for embodiment: the imagination creates representations of emotions in the world of ideas and is, thereby, an important prerequisite for the ability to communicate emotions. Imagination also brings emotions to light in dreams, visions and hallucinations and enables them to be created in works of culture, in art and literature, theatre, music and architecture, as well as in politics, business and technology (Wulf, 2022b). While imagination and emotion are universal human life conditions, historically and culturally they manifest themselves differently (Huppauf and Wulf, 2009). They unfold differently under different historical and cultural conditions.

8 Emotions

Processes of embodiment produce feelings. This is true both of perceptions of the world that are based on the senses and also of processes of the imagination which bring to our consciousness imaginary worlds that are not really present, such as those created in literary texts for example. In teaching and learning feelings and the formation of feelings are of central importance. They are important in how people lead their lives. There are no embodiment processes that do not affect the emotions which are important in the constitution of the person and of individuality (Michaels and Wulf, 2012).

The truth of this was seen in Johann Gottfried Herder’s response to Descartes’ cogito ergo sum: “I feel! I am” (Herder, 1960, p. 282). Feeling is understood here as a guarantee of being, of human existence. For Herder, people experience themselves in their feelings, in the immediate presence of feeling, of touching. The feeling derived from the sense of touch is the sense that determines the emotions. On the one hand, emotions are similar, while, on the other hand, they are different from person to person. Emotions are socially and culturally shaped, that is, they are incorporated and communicated linguistically, medially and normatively. Many emotions are generated and conveyed in interactions; they are the result of relationships with other people and with the world. Emotions are understood neither as essence nor as-mere social and cultural constructions. Emotions have a bio-social character. From such an understanding of emotion a number of challenges arise that require further exploration. These include the relationship between emotion and body, in particular between emotion and movement, emotion and action, emotion and ritual, emotion and memory, emotion and language, emotion and imagination.

In contrast to the extensive experimental research into emotions, which often tends to regard emotions as being independent of their historical and cultural contexts and draws universal conclusions in a way that is not always acceptable, the focus of anthropological and historical research as well as historical-anthropological research is on the particularity resulting from a situation and a context. There seems to be a limited number of basic emotions, but there are numerous shades, blends and overlays between these so that many emotions are ambiguous (Kraus et al., 2021). Every time emotions are new, but also known at the same time; we know them, but not well enough; much has been said about them, but no language can capture them fully; they surprise, cannot be tied down, they change and evade control. Even in memory they appear differently. Emotions are fluid; that makes it difficult to make them objects of cognition; there is a difference that is hard to resolve between their dynamic movement and the claim to distanced objective knowledge.

The commercialization of emotions permeates all areas of human relationships in capitalist societies (Martin et al., 2003; Gobé, 2001). Not only commercialization, but also the politicization of emotions plays an important role in all societies and cultures. In particular where politics becomes populist, emotions are used, or rather misused, for example, by playing with people’s fears and hopes in order to achieve political goals (Furedi, 2005).

9 Tacit Knowledge

As we have seen, in research on embodiment and learning we keep coming up against the limitations of a knowledge that can be expressed in language. We experience the difference between what can be put into words and the perception and learning processes of the senses and the body. The research on iconic and performative knowledge has shown that the insights gained here are quite different from those that can be expressed and portrayed in language. Much of the learning that is done by the body takes place on an unconscious level or via the senses and movements of the body (Kraus et al., 2021).

With his distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’, Gilbert Ryle had already in the 1940s drawn attention to the fact that there are different forms of knowledge, the practical implementations of which, described as ‘knowing how’, are difficult to research (Ryle, 1990; Collins, 2010). With these methods, the focus is not on the acquisition of factual knowledge that can be expressed linguistically. On the contrary, ‘knowing how’ describes a skill that enables the person to act. ‘Knowing how’ is learned in mimetic processes by relating to the practices of other people. An example of this is rituals. Rituals are not statements, reasons or explanations themselves, but they transport such. They must be staged and performed in order to come into force. The knowledge required for rituals is a performative, practical knowledge, which differs from the knowledge needed for the description, interpretation and analysis of rituals. One can see here that ‘knowing how’ is practical knowledge—an embodied skill that is visible in a person’s performance (Wulf, 2006).

A practice such as driving a car is only learned if the explanation of how to learn was understood. But constantly remembering the explanation is not necessary to execute the action. An action cannot be ‘skilfully’ performed as long as this remembering is necessary. Learning happens through embodiment, through which the person gets the skill to do something, that is, to drive a car. Practical skill is thus a form of knowledge that requires attention and social recognition; in the words of Gilbert Ryle (1990, p. 33): “Successful practice precedes its actual theory”. Types of practical knowledge are constitutive for many sciences such as Medicine, Law and Education. In this regard, embodiment and learning are decisive for all everyday and professional knowledge.

10 The Structure of the Handbook

This handbook develops the awareness that, as the agent, medium and addressee of education and socialization, the body plays a central role in learning and education in several specific ways. In line with its goals the handbook is divided into seven parts, each one of which has its own short introduction.

  1. 1.

    Part I consists of various “Philosophical and Historical Underpinnings” which help to put the subject into context. It includes chapters on how the subject can be anthropologically and socially classified as part of the Anthropocene, on the embodiment of cognition, on attentiveness, on tacit knowledge and on the importance of mindfulness and the intergenerational and antinomic foundations of pedagogy.

  2. 2.

    Part II moves on to examine “The Pedagogical Relationship and Professionalism”. In view of the vulnerability of the body, here the focus is on the significance of power, how power is expressed in educational gestures, and on the need for a tactful approach in enculturation and socialization.

  3. 3.

    Part III, “Body, Sociality and Learning”, continues to develop and analyse questions around enculturation and socialisation. Mimetic and performative processes underpinning education and the embodiment of learning are examined. These chapters show that learning based on embodiment is focused on other people and that experiences of alterity and gender play a key role in the engendering of emotions.

  4. 4.

    Part IV, “Body, Space and Learning”, examines the importance of movement and touch, of temporality, space and materiality in processes of embodiment. Embodiment is to be seen as a multisensory, multimodal process. This is illustrated with examples from the worlds of dance, museums and school.

  5. 5.

    In Part V, “Body, Virtual Reality and Mindfulness”, our attention turns to the forms of embodiment that result from the processes of digital transformation and also the role of mindfulness in the development of individuality and subjectivity.

  6. 6.

    In Part VI, “Classroom Practices”, the focus turns to school learning processes, how they are designed and choreographed and the ‘structured ways of acting together with others’, with an example from a mathematics lesson. A conscious approach to embodiment can play a role in postcolonial subjectivation. Through the sharing of music a conscious approach to embodiment can help lead to important aesthetic experiences.

  7. 7.

    Part VII and final section, “Body in Times of Glocalization”, considers the importance of research into the processes of embodiment for the reciprocal interchange between global and local, general and particular points of view. Studies relating to China, India, Nigeria, Brazil and the Islamic world show that in the world of the Anthropocene what is needed is for local, regional and global perspectives to be interconnected if we are to meet the challenges that lie before us on various levels. And here it is corporeality, embodiment and learning that create an awareness of difference just as they also promote mutual understanding.

We would like to express our gratitude to Elizabeth Hamilton for reviewing the language in many sections of the handbook and to Silas de Saram and Zinnia Lautner for their help in preparing the manuscript for printing.