INTRODUCING THE BODY IN

SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY

Fascination with the body, or what Kirsten

Simonsen (2000: 7) calls ‘body fixation’, is

burgeoning in the English-speaking academy.

Indeed, ‘the body’ is no longer a construct with a

singular corresponding material entity. Rather,

‘the body’ refers to an abstract ‘thing’ associated

with multiple and varied discursive formations

that inscribe corporeal vessels signifying human

being(s). In this sense, there is no single, universal

body; there are only multiply differentiated

bodies. And it is the processes that differentiate

bodies that are holding the attention of scholars

throughout the humanities and social sciences.

One of the most popular notions of differentia-

tion as a process is embodiment, most often cast

as lived experience. Scrutiny of ‘the body’ as

myriad discursive formations, ‘bodies’ as concrete

entities, and embodiment as lived experience

involves exploring links between conceptualiza-

tions of the body (not ‘the body’) and states of

bodily being, bodily experiences and bodily

activities. Together, body and embodiment are

key concerns in theorizing human experience,

subjectivity and the relations of power through

which difference is constructed and regulated. In

geography, space and place necessarily are

central in analyses that take issues about the

body seriously, thus contributing to spatializing

and embodyingsocial geography.

Several coalescing interests are feeding into

the attractiveness of body and embodiment as

sites for theory building, not only about bodies

but also about knowledge arising from bodily

experiences, and are often cited as justifications for

studying the body. It makes sense to identify some

of these trends so that we can better understand

the context within which theories of the body

emerge. Social change at a variety of scales –

local, regional, global – is shaping the way bodies

and societies articulate. Rising costs of health-

care, linked both implicitly and explicitly to

enormous financial investments in biotechno-

logy, set parameters for determining what is, can

be and should be a ‘healthy’ body. Enhanced

technological and pharmaceutical control of bodily

functions, with regard to organ replacement,

performance-enhancing drugs and fertility

procedures, are redefining limits to the capacities

of bodies. Improvements in global goods distrib-

ution networks continue to deplete natural and

human resources and threaten the social and

economic welfare of people in the south. In these

contexts, social change is transforming how bodies

exist within, relate to and constitute societies.

Interest in such social change enhances curiosity

about the multiple facets of physical and cultural

bodies – both the materiality of actual bodies and

their discursive inscriptions.

Rapid economic change throughout the last

quarter of the twentieth century transformed the

nature of paid work, unpaid work and leisure.

Demands of manual labour have moved from

muscle, mass and strength to dexterity, flexibil-

ity and endurance. Factory floors are now

corded-off machine areas where workers, posi-

tioned spatially at the margins, oversee produc-

tion from glassed-in cubicles, wherein the

machines’ controls are safely encased. With the

explosion of the tertiary and quaternary sectors,

cubicles are the most common spatial configura-

tion leading to a more atomistic labour process,

intensifying the alienation of workers. Concur-

rent with these drastic changes in paid work,

unpaid work associated with social reproduction

has too transformed. Commodified forms of

caring work in prenatal care and birthing, daycare

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Embodying Social Geography

Pamela Moss and Isabel Dyck

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