What relations between men and women singing in a choir, the paintings of Ferdinand Hodler and Auguste Baud-Bovy, people who experience a serious illness or workers facing work discipline? It is the body and how it is used, manufactured, maintained, shown, repaired and mobilised. This collective book offers a series of insights that shape the contours of a body — i.e. how individuals and society try to interfere with the body — in a variety of situations and contexts. The role played by pensionnats in the adoption of sporting practices, migrant women engaged in care activities for the elderly, the novels of Alice Rivaz, Nati footballers, pole dance practitioners, doctors’ interest in xvııe and xvııe centuries in the concept of Heimweh, the testimony of a himalayist, and the physical conservation strategies developed by an ordinary man during a sporting life are highlighted. Connections between time, places and people are offered through 14 contributions from the history of education, art and sport, medical anthropology, sociology, literature, geography, and from the return of geography. All the items that make up this volume are rooted in Switzerland over a period from the end of the xvııe century to the present day.