New Materialist Re-conceptions of Embodiment within Social Psychology

• In Event: 105 - Section on Body and Embodiment Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 03. Identity, Cognition, and Emotions in Embodiment

Abstract

Through an examination of the current literature within social psychology pertaining to the body I seek to explore how Feminist New Materialist approaches can re-conceptualize processes and the study of embodiment. The body is present in and fundamental to an array of different sociological interests and works however, it has recently been considered as a focus of study independently. The majority of work in social psychology has ignored or passed over the body to, rather, conceptualize the mind. Sociologists have often approached social psychology by applying a Cartesian mind/body split common in natural and psychological sciences. In this paper I examine how classical symbolic interactionist social psychology has attended or not attended to the body, how contemporary focuses of the self and identity within social psychology have taken up the body, how interdisciplinary work on the body has helped social psychological scholars re-conceptualize understandings of the body within sociology, and how queer and feminist approaches to the body can help scholars further examine the body within sociology specifically within the framework of feminist new materialist approaches by avoiding mind/body dualism. Furthermore I explore how brining New Materialist approaches to the study of embodiment can contribute to sexuality studies and disability studies.

Authors

• Justine Egner, University of South Florida

• Sara L. Crawley, University of South Florida