Written by leading social scientists working in and across a variety of analytic traditions, this ambitious, insightful volume explores interpretation as a focal metaphor for understanding the body’s influence, meaning, and matter in society.


Interpreting body and embodiment in social movements, health and medicine, race, sex and gender, globalization, colonialism, education, and other contexts, the book’s chapters call into question taken-for-granted ideas of where the self, the social world, and the body begin and end.


Encouraging reflection and opening new perspectives on theories of the body that cut through the classic mind/body divide, this is an important contribution to the literature on the body.

Contributions by: Ben Spatz, Kathryn Linn Geurts, Sefakore Komabu-Pomeyie, Sweta Rajan-Rankin, Mrinalini Greedharry, Lee Monaghan, Piper Sledge, Erin Johnston, Brittney Miles, Chandra Russo, Annemarie Jutel