ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author organized and distilled the bodies of theory and research into seven key concepts to discuss doing embodiment as an active engagement with reflexivity, sensuousness, and methods. The concepts are doing bodies, sensorium, embodied knowing, sticky web of culture, intersubjectivity, actants, and flux. The English language and Cartesian philosophy render the body the possession of the self, as equated with the mind. Neuroscience, social sciences, and philosophy have all contributed to a robust understanding of human senses that goes far beyond the basic conceptualization of five senses-sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. The concept of intersubjectivity helps to illuminate the common ground in which researchers and participants meet. Dominant cultural views of the body and self promote a relatively stable notion of identity and physicality. The author sketched a model of embodiment that draws on a wide range of theoretical traditions that overlap and have some common threads.