Current European ideas about the body are largely influenced by a Cartesian dualism in which it is seen as separate from the mind. Emotions are generally located in the body in Euro-American culture, in opposition to the rational mind. Other societies do not make the same distinction. Some may conceive three parts to the person, while others see the body as an integrated whole. This demonstrates how passion and knowledge are inextricably linked in local explanations of the value of head-hunting to the person carrying out the act.
Anthropologists commonly see the body as a statement of identity.
Many rites of passage mark changes in social status by transforming the body. The widespread practice of body scarification in parts of central Africa is a means of literally marking the individual's transition through stages of his or her life cycle. Among the Nuba, for example, women are scarified with specific patterns at the onset of menstruation, at marriage and at the birth of their first child when they are assumed to have reached full maturity. The body can be seen as a microcosm of society, the rules and taboos surrounding parts of the body mirroring social or cosmological principles. The prevalent notion that the left hand is unclean is an example of this.