Biological and physical anthropologists have tended to see the study of human variation and the material body as the defining elements of their subdiscipline(s). Generally, sociologists and social anthropologists, in contrast, have shown little interest in such issues. For them, the body has often been taken for granted, absent-present, as a relatively stable and commanding platform on which a variety of cultural inscriptions can be established and performed. Recent theoretical developments, however, in anthropology, sociology and related fields – informed by the notions of biosociality and nature cultures – contribute to the understanding of an unstable, relational and variable body. Since the material and the social body are fundamentally conflated through continuous processes of relationality and embodiment, this paper argues, the issue of human variation needs to be revised and expanded. Such rethinking has important biopolitical implications, particularly in the context of divisions marked by race, ethnicity, class and gender.
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