7. Embodied Care: Care & Our Bodies

Welcome to the module "Embodiment: Care & the Body" in the subject Transforming Lives through Care!

 In previous modules, we have considered care through angles of society & culture, kinship, the Gift, social reproduction, gender, and more-than-human. Now we turn our attention to our bodies through the concept of embodiment. The idea is that our bodies are cultural bodies. Culture shapes the way our bodies move and care.

🎯 Learning Goals

• Understand how care is lived and experienced through the body.
• Explore the anthropological concept of embodiment as a way of analysing care.
• Recognise how routine bodily practices—rather than abstract feelings—can express deep commitments to others.

🚦 Introduction: Embodiment

Caring is always embodied. When I cuddle a crying baby, two bodies are involved. This may seem obvious, but what happens when we take that fact seriously?

What if, instead of starting with the idea that “I think therefore I am,” we begin with “I have a body that is in space, moved and moved by others”? From this perspective, consciousness, identity, and care emerge not just in thought, but through physical being: suckling, holding, wiping, cleaning, feeding.

This is the starting point for anthropological theories of embodiment. Rather than treating the body as an object, anthropology treats it as the medium through which care happens. The basic idea is this:

culture 'gets into our muscles' and shapes the way we experience and interact with the world,

And this includes the way we care.\

📘 Essential Materials

Visit: Phenomenology & Embodiment, Lived Experience — an introduction to the idea of embodiment.

Watch: Herriman, "Embodiment" "Embodiment"

Read "Introduction: An Invitation to Care", which is the first chapter from  Aulino, F. (2020) Rituals of care : karmic politics in an aging Thailand. Read  pages 1-9, finishing at the heading "Structures of  Adjustment" Infrastructures of Care of Care"

📚 Recommended Materials

This presentation might provide the background you need to understand Aulino's rituals of care idea:

Read pages 1-9 of "Introduction: An Invitation to Careof  Aulino, F. (2020) Rituals of care : karmic politics in an aging Thailand. Read  pages 1-9.

Boonyuang " takes hold of her mother by the armpits and yanks her up to the top of her bed with several rapid, forceful movements. A slight grimace passes over the older woman’s face and is quickly gone. It is the first changing of the day, and, softly muttering “dirty, dirty”..Boonyuang gets on with her routine."

Notes: Aulino invites us into a modest household in Chiang Mai, where a daughter cares for her aging mother through daily bodily routines—lifting, cleaning, wiping. These are not framed by grand emotions, but by small, practiced movements that accumulate meaning through repetition.

Aulino invites us into a modest household in Chiang Mai, where a daughter cares for her aging mother through daily bodily routines—lifting, cleaning, wiping. These are not framed by grand emotions, but by small, practiced movements that accumulate merit (not meaning) through repetition.

This fascinating article, which has a similar title to the essential reading, does not use the idea of embodiment. But it is a really useful complement to required reading.  

🏁 Conclusion

Summary: This week we have seen how care is not just about love, intention, or ethics—it is also about the body. Anthropologists like Aulino show us that ordinary acts like wiping and lifting are not beneath analysis; they are at the heart of what care looks and feels like.

Significance: Taking the body seriously changes how we understand care. It brings attention to what often goes unnoticed—routine, fatigue, repetition, and quiet attunement. This is a crucial shift away from seeing care as only an emotional or moral act, and toward seeing it as something practiced and lived.

What’s Next: Next week, we explore how gender shapes who is expected to care, and how caregiving roles can both reinforce and challenge gender norms.

🔎 Further Research

Ramirez, M., Janke, E. A., Grant, M., Altschuler, A., Hornbrook, M., & Krouse, R. S. (2019). Cancer Survivorship at the Intersections of Care and Personhood. Medical Anthropology, 39(1), 55–68.

Sanz, C. (2017). Out-of-Sync Cancer Care: Health Insurance Companies, Biomedical Practices, and Clinical Time in Colombia. Medical Anthropology, 36(3), 187–201.

📘 Essential Materials

Visit Phenomenology & Embodiment, Lived Experience. This is a blog post from a subject I teach on the Body & Mind in anthropology. The post will provide you with an introduction to the idea of embodiment. 

Watch Herriman "Embodiment"

🏁 Conclusion

Summary: This week we have seen how care is not just about love, intention, or ethics—it is also about the body. Anthropologists like Aulino show us that ordinary acts like wiping and lifting are not beneath analysis; they are at the heart of what care looks and feels like.

Significance: Taking the body seriously changes how we understand care. It brings attention to what often goes unnoticed—routine, fatigue, repetition, and quiet attunement. This is a crucial shift away from seeing care as only an emotional or moral act, and toward seeing it as something practiced and lived.

What’s Next: Next week, we explore how gender shapes who is expected to care, and how caregiving roles can both reinforce and challenge gender norms.

🔎 Further Research

Ramirez, M., Janke, E. A., Grant, M., Altschuler, A., Hornbrook, M., & Krouse, R. S. (2019). Cancer Survivorship at the Intersections of Care and Personhood. Medical Anthropology, 39(1), 55–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2019.1642886

Sanz, C. (2017). Out-of-Sync Cancer Care: Health Insurance Companies, Biomedical Practices, and Clinical Time in Colombia. Medical Anthropology, 36(3), 187–201. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2016.1267172