ABSTRACT
This chapter establishes embodiment as a core concern of consumer research, and draws an outline of what we might call the embodied consumer. It addresses the question of what it means to talk about the body, doing so by fleshing out our ideas around the natural body, the socially constructed body, and the lived body. The chapter delineates the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in respect of his concepts of the intentional arc and the corporeal schema, and the output of Pierre Bourdieu as it relates to habitus, field and capital. It also discusses the treatment of the body within consumer research around three key themes: bodies of/in representation, the body project, and the agency of bodies. Tattooing has also captured the imagination of consumer researchers. The body remains our most immediate means of interacting with the world.
