RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Reflections on embodiment and vulnerability
JF Medical Humanities
JO J Med Humanit
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics
SP 4
OP 7
DO 10.1136/mh.29.1.4
VO 29
IS 1
A1 S P Wainwright
A1 B S Turner
YR 2003
UL http://mh.bmj.com/content/29/1/4.abstract
AB 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.