Gesture and Movement "

Human beings everywhere engage in complex structured systems of bodily actions that are socially acquired and laden with cultural significance. Some structured movement systems, such as the martial arts, sporting activities, idioms of dancing, dramatic arts, ceremonials, and ritual events, involve highly deliberated choreographed movement. Other uses of body movement remain out of the focal awareness of their actors due to habit and skill. Examples include ways of eating, dressing, walking, and sitting as well as modes of physical labor such as digging, planting, bricklaying and fishing, all of which vary according to cultural and subcultural conventions. Also out of focal awareness most of the time are the hand gestures, postures, fadal expressions, and spatial orientations that accompany speech in social interaction. There are also signed languages as well as gestures of the mouth, lips, and tongue that produce speech. All these manifestations of human actions in their cultural context comprise the anthropology of human movement.