Body Language: Inserting Bodily Experience into Sociological Analysis

• In Event: 473 - Section on Body and Embodiment Paper Session. Open Topic on Bodies and Embodiment

Abstract

Many sociologists studying health and illness would benefit from placing the body at the center of their analyses. Despite a long lineage of attending to the body, the discipline as a whole remains divided in regards to how to go about theorizing embodiment. Projects that include the body face difficult questions of representation. How do we, as social scientists, go about the complex task of capturing and translating the language of the body? This paper served as an exploration into questions about how to analytically capture the body, particularly the body in pain. Using the case example of pain, I highlight some of the epistemological and theoretical complexities that embodiment presents. I examine the analytical traction gained by various approaches to theorizing the body, focusing specifically on the lived experience of pain, and the structural consequences of pain. I conclude by offering methodological insights into how sociologists of pain can go about capturing, representing, and analyzing the body in pain.

Author

• Sara Rubin, UCSF