Conceptualizations of the body as a subject and object of study in South American and Anglo-Saxon Physical Education

In recent years, questions and challenges have arisen about the role of Physical Education (PE) in schooling young people about the body and the teaching of movement skills based on “right” ways of doing and being. In educating individuals about the body in general and in PE more specifically, accepted homogenized and universalized ways of considering the body have become problematic. Using a hermeneutic approach to analyse historical discourses which operate within current dominant meanings, this paper explores the sociocultural “shift” that has occurred in relation to the body. Specifically, this paper considers how the body has been conceptualized as a subject and as an object of study according to dominant discourses in the field of PE in both South American and Anglo-Saxon countries. The paper concludes by examining the implications that have arisen from the universalization of a sociocultural perspective of the body in Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy (PESP).