FLESHY ENOUGH? NOTES TOWARDS EMBODIED ANALYSIS IN CRITICAL QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

This paper focuses on the challenges researchers face when focusing on embodiment in qualitative analyses. Using insights gained through a narrative study of middle-class South African women's childbirth narratives, the paper outlines theoretical-methodological strategies argued to be useful in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inGay and lesbian issues and psychology review Vol. 8; no. 2; p. 82
Main Author Chadwick, Rachelle Joy
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Melbourne The Australian Psychological Society Limited 01.08.2012
Subjects
Childbirth & labor
Health psychology
Narratives
Qualitative research
R&D
Reproductive health
Research & development
Studies
Theory
Womens health
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Summary:This paper focuses on the challenges researchers face when focusing on embodiment in qualitative analyses. Using insights gained through a narrative study of middle-class South African women's childbirth narratives, the paper outlines theoretical-methodological strategies argued to be useful in moving towards alternative, 'fleshier' representations of embodied subjects in critical qualitative research. These theoretical-methodological strategies include: (a) rethinking theories of the body-subject (b) problematizing transcription, and (c) using poetic methodological devices as tools of embodied analysis. The paper illustrates the usefulness of embodied analytic tools through an analysis of the 'fleshy eruptions' reproduced in/through women's homebirth narratives. The analysis shows how an embodied analytic framework enabled a focus on subversive and contradictory lines of storytelling, and facilitated the representation of birthing subjectivities as complex, paradoxical and embodied movements. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
ISSN:1833-4512
1833-4512