The Body As Method: Researching Senses, Emotions, and Practices of Care

The body is best understood not as a passive object of study but as a site and agent of care and violence. We understand care broadly, drawing on Foucault's cura sui—a mode of attention and relation, a way of tending to ourselves, others, and the world through the body. Through our bodies, we (co)produce, learn and inhabit social life. Far from incidental to interaction—or intra-action—the body is woven into its very substance. Sensations and feelings are central to how social worlds are made and known, raising the question of how our methodologies can acknowledge this embodied co-production. Jointly organised by TG07 (Senses and Society) and R54 (The Body in the Social Sciences), this session places the body at the centre of methodological reflection. We invite contributions on research engaging collective and individual practices of care—including, but not limited to, yoga, meditation, sport, theatre, collective rituals—to ask how knowledge, relation, and feeling take shape through the body. We are especially interested in approaches grounded in collaboration and attentive listening, where the social energy of group practice becomes a resource for inquiry. We welcome empirical, methodological, and reflexive work, including autoethnographic and participatory approaches, addressing questions such as: How can we attend to what emerges when people sense and move together and render it as scientific data? Is the body a research tool, a field site, or both? How do we account for experiences at once individual and collective? How do physical and affective sensations shape findings and their presentation?