THE BODY IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: FROM DISEMBODIED KNOWLEDGE TO CORPOREAL PRAXIS
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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3307-452X
Abstract
This article advances a reconceptualisation of qualitative inquiry by positioning the body as a foundational condition of knowledge production rather than a peripheral concern. I argue that sociological and methodological traditions have historically privileged abstraction, cognitive detachment, and normative assumptions about the “ideal” academic body. These tendencies obscure the sensory, affective, relational, and situated processes through which research is actually conducted and knowledge is produced, reinforcing the illusion that inquiry can be separated from the embodied researcher. Against this backdrop, the article argues that embodiment should be understood not merely as an object of study but as a constitutive feature of qualitative research itself. The article makes three key contributions. First, it develops and consolidates Embodied Inquiry as a coherent theoretical framework grounded in phenomenology and hermeneutics, emphasising experience as inherently embodied, interpretive, relational, and situated within social and material contexts. Second, it introduces and elaborates the concept of corporeal praxis as the methodological and practical extension of Embodied Inquiry. Corporeal praxis translates embodied theory into research practice by foregrounding the researcher's bodily engagement, reflexivity, sensory awareness, and responsiveness as integral to data generation, interpretation, and analysis. Third, the article identifies the epistemological, methodological, analytical, ethical, political, and practical contributions that corporeal praxis offers to qualitative research, demonstrating how embodied engagement enriches both the conduct and evaluation of inquiry. Through this framework, the article redefines methodological rigour as embodied reflexivity rather than disembodied neutrality. It also exposes how the “normal academic body” functions as an implicit methodological standard that shapes inclusion, authority, credibility, and legitimacy within knowledge production, with significant implications for disability, inequality, and institutional power. In doing so, the article shifts embodiment from a descriptive concern to a transformative epistemological, ethical, methodological, and political intervention in qualitative research.
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