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Med Humanities 2003;29:4-7 doi:10.1136/mh.29.1.4
  • Original article

Reflections on embodiment and vulnerability

  1. S P Wainwright1,
  2. B S Turner2
  1. 1Florence Nightingale School of Nursing, King’s College London, London, UK
  2. 2Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
  1. Correspondence to:
 Mr S P Wainwright, Florence Nightingale School of Nursing, 57 Waterloo Road, London SE1 8WA, UK; 
 steven.wainwright{at}kcl.ac.uk
  • Accepted 2 April 2003

Abstract

Bodies matter as our experience of them is the basis both for social life and also for much medical and social research. There has been a spectacular increase in academic research on the body in the last twenty years or so. This paper—although a review of three ethnographic studies on the seemingly disparate and narrow fields of the embodiment of working class experience, boxing, and ballet—illuminates the broader relationships between the body, self, and society. Our paper works on three levels: firstly, as an account of the “lived experience” of embodied vulnerability; secondly, as an application of Bourdieu’s theoretical schema, and thirdly, as a philosophically grounded critique of radical social constructionist views of the body.

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