Hospitality Work as Social Reproduction: Embodied and Emotional Labour during COVID-19

This article focuses on how the imaginary of a 'safe' environment was visualised and conveyed within the hospitality sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing on diaries and interviews with 21 workers in the UK. Our findings show increased workloads for hospitality staff, compounded by anxieties of risk and individualised COVID-19 regulation work. This includes workers' negotiations of corporeal boundaries and distancing from customers, the visible cleaning of communal areas and recuperation and care work for their own bodies and others in shared living spaces. We draw on conceptualisations of embodied and emotional labour to understand these experiences, reflecting on the importance of the actions performed by workers in maintaining community spaces and creating customer confidence in safely enjoying a 'hospitable' environment. This article contributes to social science scholarship of embodied and emotional labour, hospitality and social reproduction.

Remaking critical care: Place, body work and the materialities of care in the COVID intensive care unit

In this article, we take forward sociological ways of knowing care-in-practice, in particular work in critical care. To do so, we analyse the experiences of staff working in critical care during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. This moment of exception throws into sharp relief the ways in which work and place were reconfigured during conditions of pandemic surge, and shows how critical care depends at all times on the co-constitution of place, practices and relations. Our analysis draws on sociological and anthropological work on the material culture of health care and its sensory instantiations. Pursuing this through a study of the experiences of 40 staff across four intensive care units (ICUs) in 2020, we provide an empirical and theoretical elaboration of how place, body work and care are mutually co-constitutive. We argue that the ICU does not exist independently of the constant embodied work of care and place-making which iteratively constitute critical care as a total system of relations.

"My wife made me": motivations for body and beauty work among older Korean and Chinese migrant adults in Australia

This article examines how older Korean and Chinese migrants living in Perth, Australia, engage in various beauty, grooming and fitness practices to negotiate "successful ageing" in transnational contexts. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 30 men and women aged between 60 and 89, we examine what social meanings are attached to these practices, and how the transnational context of living in Australia has influenced the participants' perceptions of ageing and presentation of self in later life. Migration in later life is often considered in relation to the 'host' countries values and social practices, which can make it difficult for individuals to settle and feel a sense of belonging especially in later life. In this article, we will illustrate how gender, class, and cultural dispositions intersect and link with possibilities for defining and redefining successful ageing in migrant contexts. This study illustrates how successful ageing emerges as a malleable concept that draws on ideas of an ideal ageing body from the cultural values of the 'home' country, rather than the 'host' country. The findings illustrate how in everyday lived experience, the transnational habitus does not always necessarily result in a 'divided habitus' where the values of the 'home' country and that of the 'host' country are in conflict - even when the migration experience is relatively recent. Quite the contrary, the way the participants utilise everyday beauty, fitness and grooming practices to maintain a future-focused self in the context of 'home' country's age-appropriate body ideals to perform signifiers of 'successful migrant living' point to the positive aspects that appearance management can have on an individual in later life, particularly in migrant contexts.

Decoupling touch from sex: gender(ed) representations of physical intimacy in the cuddle industry

The present study explores the resistance to and potential transformation of hegemonic gender norms regarding intimacy and sexuality through an instrumental case study of the so-called "professional cuddlers", a category of body workers that have proliferated in Europe since 2015 offering paid sessions of non-sexual physical intimacy. Despite efforts to frame the service as a form of therapy, professional cuddling is often misunderstood as a front for prostitution, and practitioners must frequently deal with unwanted sexual advancements. Drawing from a 3-year online ethnographic study of cuddling services, the dataset includes 10 in-depth interviews informed by a previous qualitative analysis of 46 newspaper articles, 16 forum discussions, and 25 websites related to such practices. Findings demonstrate that the representational limbo experienced by practitioners could be better understood as a product of the "sexusociety". Though it is unclear whether professional cuddling has any significant impact on hegemonic gender norms, results show that it nonetheless deconstructs the normative landscape through the enactment of alternative scripts.

The invisible body work of 'last responders' - ethical and social issues faced by the pathologists in the Global South

This paper utilises empirical data to explore the value of 'body work' performed by last responders charged with the duty of dead body management, with a focus on the Global South. While frontline staff work to save lives, little is known about the experiences and roles of those who care for the dead in global health in times of crises and even during normal times. This paper discusses ethical and socio-cultural challenges pathologists face in 'working on the bodies of others' while conducting any form of post-mortem procedures - necessary for ascertaining and recording the causes of death. Identifying and reporting the cause of death have significant public health benefits and provide closure for bereaved families. Despite the foregoing, the pathology field does not attract funding from governments or donors, and it is overlooked compared to other disciplines. Autopsy procedure bears social stigma - as it is associated with body mutilation and therefore disrespecting the dead; certain cultural beliefs or taboos about impurity and death persist, further raising some social and ethical tensions. As a result, the dearth of autopsy procedures contributes to the cause of death uncertainty in global health.

A light touch intervention with a heavy lift - gender, space and risk in a global vaccination programme

Frontline workers (FLWs) in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative go door-to-door delivering polio vaccine to children. They have played a pivotal role in eliminating wild polio from most countries on earth; at the same time, they face significant bodily risk. STRIPE, an international consortium, conducted a mixed-methods study exploring the knowledge and experiences of polio staff in seven countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia and Nigeria). We surveyed 826 polio FLWs and conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 of them. We used a body work framework to guide analysis. Polio workers perform a different kind of body work than many other FLWs. Delivering a few drops of oral vaccine takes a light touch, but gendered spaces can make the work physically dangerous. Polio's FLWs must bend or break gendered space norms as they move from house-to-house. Navigating male spaces carries risk for women, including lethal risk, particularly in conflict settings. Workers manoeuvre between skeptical community members and the demands of supervisors which generates emotional labour. Providing FLWs with more power to make operational decisions and providing them with robust teams and remuneration would improve the likelihood that they could act to improve their working conditions.

Body Satisfaction and Associated Predictors Among Baby Boomer Women in Rural and Urban Manitoba

Purpose: This study examines body satisfaction, weight attitudes, dieting behaviours, and aging concerns of baby boomer women (BBW; born 1946-1965) from rural and urban Manitoba.Methods: Primary data collection occurred November 2015, and 1083 participants completed the Body Image and Food Choice Survey. Four strata of BBW were represented to examine differences between older and younger BBW and location of residence. Multinomial logistic regression models were fit to determine predictors of weight and appearance satisfaction. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals were considered significant at p ≤ 0.05.Results: Fifty-three percent of participants were satisfied with their appearance, whereas only 34% were satisfied with their weight. Ninety-one percent desired to lose weight (29.9 ± 29.3 lbs). Aging anxiety was evident for 46% of participants and associated with appearance satisfaction (χ² = 27.46, df = 4, p < 0.001). Body work and dieting behaviours were used to mitigate body dissatisfaction, and media influence was associated with both appearance (χ² = 76.17, df = 6, p < 0.001) and weight satisfaction (χ² = 67.90, df = 6, p < 0.001). Desired weight change, appearance stress, appearance importance, and self-rated health predicted both weight and appearance satisfaction.Conclusions: There is a need for greater awareness of aging women's body image concerns and the need for age-appropriate tools/resources to help dietitians support women achieve a healthy body image.

Sleep, body work and bodily capital: Sleep discourse in the magazines Men's Health and Women's Health

The subject of sleep has been receiving increasing attention in multiple arenas over the past decades, including in the social sciences and the media. However, only a few empirical studies have investigated how sleep is constructed within and by media discourses, and also whether and how these discourses are gendered. The present article explores how two popular lifestyle magazines, Men's Health and Women's Health, construct sleep. The analysis of online articles reveals that both magazines constitute sleep as a form of body work that enhances bodily capital, but they do so in gendered ways that reinforce patriarchal norms and expectations. This study shows that the magazines' discourse supports the neoliberal project, while also highlighting the malleability and adaptability of neoliberal discourses. The conclusion is that the ways in which the magazines' discourse constructs sleep might deepen both gender and class inequalities.

Bodies in yoga: tangled discourses in Canadian studios

This paper presents the preliminary results of a one and a half-year ethnographic study conducted in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The research focused on participants' experiences of their bodies in the context of yoga as a health practice-specifically how they conceptualised their musculoskeletal bodies in this practice through ideas of systems, fragments, and materiality. It argues that participants' larger narratives about health and healthy bodies inform how yoga as a health practice is embedded in discourses of body work where yoga, health, and particular notions of bodily-ness become a project for the transformation of the self into a particular idea of what a body is or should be.

Blood Work: Managing Menstruation, Menopause and Gynaecological Health Conditions in the Workplace

The menstrual cycle remains neglected in explorations of public health, and entirely remiss in occupational health literature, despite being a problematic source of gendered inequalities at work. This paper proposes the new concept of blood work to explain the relationship between menstruation (and associated gynaecological health conditions) and employment for women and trans/non-binary people. We build on and extend health and organisational literature on managing bodies at work by arguing that those who experience menstruation face additional work or labour in the management of their own bodies through the menstrual cycle. We discuss how this additional labour replicates problematic elements that are identifiable in public health initiatives, in that it is individualised, requiring individual women and trans/non-binary people to navigate unsupportive workplaces. We present findings from an analysis of qualitative survey data that were completed by 627 participants working in higher education, revealing that employees' blood work comprises distinct difficulties that are related to the management of painful, leaking bodies, access to facilities, stigma, and balancing workload. We suggest developing supportive workplaces and public health policies, which refocus the responsibility for accessible, equal workplaces that accommodate menstruating employees, and those with gynaecological health conditions.

Making body work sequences visible: an ethnographic study of acute orthopaedic hospital wards

Within health and social care, academic attention is increasingly paid to understanding the nature and centrality of body work. Relatively little is known about how and where body work specifically fits into the wider work relations that produce it in healthcare settings. We draw on ethnographic observations of staff practice in three National Health Service acute hospital wards in the United Kingdom to make visible the micro-processes of patient care sequences including both body work and the work contextualising and supporting it. Our data, produced in 2015, show body work interactions in acute care to be critically embedded within a context of initiating, preparing, moving and restoring and proceeding. Shades of privacy and objectification of the body are present throughout these sequences. While accomplishing tasks away from the physical body, staff members must also maintain physical and cognitive work focussed on producing body work. Thus, patient care is necessarily complex, requiring much staff time and energy to deliver it. We argue that by making visible the micro-processes that hospital patient care depends on, including both body work and the work sequences supporting it, the complex physical and cognitive workload required to deliver care can be better recognised. (A virtual version of this abstract is available at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_979cmCmR9rLrKuD7z0ycA).

The body-space relations of research(ed) on bodies: The experiences of becoming participant researchers

This paper heeds calls for reflections on how the research field is defined through embodied socio-spatial presence and immediacy. Focusing on classroom "body-training" observations that were part of a larger qualitative research project, and on the field notes and reflections of three researchers, we explore the transition from observer-researchers to participant-researchers. That is, we explore how, by researching others, we unexpectedly became researched on as our own bodies became instruments in the research process and were used to elicit knowledge on embodied learning, body-mapping and corporeal trace. As a methodological intervention, conducting research through the body, the positioning of bodies and body-to-body interaction, can tell us much about the often ignored embodied and emotional dimensions of the research field. But, in addition, it can elucidate the power relations between, and the fluidity of, researcher and researched positions in the jolting of secured researcher identity. Here we detail how different researchers performed different embodied and emotional subjectivities in different training research spaces. We explore how ontological anxieties of our own placed bodies, based around constructed notions of femininity, religion and researcher professionalism, shape this immediate body-to-body encounter and the subsequent research process.

Bodies Matter: Professional Bodies and Embodiment in Institutional Sport Contexts

Bodies are always present in organizations, yet they frequently remain unacknowledged or invisible including in sport organizations and sport management research. We therefore argue for an embodied turn in sport management research. The purpose of this article is to present possible reasons why scholars have rarely paid attention to bodies in sport organizations; to offer arguments why they should do so; and to give suggestions for what scholarship on bodies and embodiment might look like using various theoretical frameworks. Using the topic of diversity as an example, we explore what insights into embodiment and bodily practices the theoretical frameworks of Foucault, Bourdieu, Merleau-Ponty and Butler have to offer researchers and how these insights may lead to better understandings of organizational processes in sport.

The changing body work of abortion: a qualitative study of the experiences of health professionals

'Body work' has emerged at the nexus of sociologies of work and bodies as a means of conceptualising work focusing on the bodies of others. This article utilises this analytical tool in the context of contemporary abortion work. Abortion provision in Britain has seen significant change in the last 25 years, paralleling developments in medical methods, and the option for women under nine weeks' gestation to complete the abortion at home. These shifts raise questions around how abortion work is experienced by those who do it. We apply the conceptual lens of body work to data drawn from in-depth interviews with 37 health professionals involved in abortion provision, to draw out the character, constraints and challenges of contemporary abortion work. We explore three key themes: the instrumental role of emotional labour in facilitating body work; the temporality of abortion work; and bodily proximity, co-presence and changes in provision. By drawing on the conceptual frame of body work, we illuminate the dynamics of contemporary abortion work in Britain and, by introducing the idea of 'body work-by-proxy', highlight ways in which this context can be used to expand the conceptual boundaries of body work.

Assembling the salon: Learning from alternative forms of body work in dementia care

This article explores the labour and experiences of a hitherto entirely overlooked section of the dementia care workforce: care-based hairdressers. Reporting on findings from the ESRC-funded 'Hair and Care' project, the analysis and discussion focus upon the 'doing of hair' in the context of dementia care. The authors challenge existing assumptions and approaches to the management of appearance in dementia care, arguing for greater recognition of the subjective and culturally meaningful qualities of a visit to the salon. The article draws upon a wider debate on body work as a framework for the discussion, and considers the employment and working conditions of this largely hidden group of workers in the care system. The article offers an account of the praxis of care-based hairdressing, with particular attention paid to narrative, intercorporeal and place-making practices in the salon, showing how a particular approach to the body shapes the labour, relationships and activities that unfold within it. The authors argue that as an alternative form of body work much can be learned from hairdressing that can inform and enhance the provision of dementia care.

Corporal diagnostic work and diagnostic spaces: clinicians' use of space and bodies during diagnosis

An emerging body of literature in sociology has demonstrated that diagnosis is a useful focal point for understanding the social dimensions of health and illness. This article contributes to this work by drawing attention to the relationship between diagnostic spaces and the way in which clinicians use their own bodies during the diagnostic process. As a case study, we draw upon fieldwork conducted with a multidisciplinary clinical team providing deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treat children with a movement disorder called dystonia. Interviews were conducted with team members and diagnostic examinations were observed. We illustrate that clinicians use communicative body work and verbal communication to transform a material terrain into diagnostic space, and we illustrate how this diagnostic space configures forms of embodied 'sensing-and-acting' within. We argue that a 'diagnosis' can be conceptualised as emerging from an interaction in which space, the clinician-body, and the patient-body (or body-part) mutually configure one another. By conceptualising diagnosis in this way, this article draws attention to the corporal bases of diagnostic power and counters Cartesian-like accounts of clinical work in which the patient-body is objectified by a disembodied medical discourse.

The pharmacy gaze: bodies in pharmacy practice

The body is a central feature of pharmacy practice. Despite this and the increased sociological focus on bodies in health and social care practice, the nature of the body and the work undertaken upon it in pharmacy have not been explored. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with hospital and community pharmacists, this article explores the ways in which bodies are constructed and managed in these two practice contexts. It is argued that pharmacists see patients' bodies in particular ways given their expertise in medicines, which is conceptualised here as the pharmacy gaze. The notion of complexity, as a way of constructing the body, and the generation of algorithmic bodies, as a way of managing this complexity, are shown to be central to the pharmacy gaze in both hospital and community contexts. In hospitals, complexity was located in a singular body, that is, increasingly rationalised to reduce costs and toxicity. In community practice, complexity arose from the multiplicity of bodies with which pharmacists interact in their multifaceted role as retailers, dispensers and public health practitioners. The article concludes by reflecting on the ways in which current UK health policy may broaden the body work that English pharmacists undertake.

Body work in assisted conception: exploring public and private settings

Body work has been foregrounded in recent sociological writings on health and social care, particularly the emotional labour of patient care. In this article I explore the social and emotional dimensions of body work in assisted conception in private and public National Health Service (NHS) clinics. Drawing on an ethnographic study, I explore how tensions around bodily attributes, treatment costs, clinic performance and the extent of consumer sovereignty were managed in decisions about who to treat and in what manner. In NHS settings, body work involved efforts to standardise and constrain bodies in line with an ethics of justice that included the co-construction of protocols and performance measurement and a strong emphasis upon teamwork and influencing the behaviour of the sector as a whole. In contrast, body work in private settings was more overtly organised around an ethos of individual consumption that emphasised bespoke treatment together with an active critique of the regulator, based on a strong entrepreneurial ethos. Emotional labour in private settings was also more overt. I conclude by exploring the implications of my analysis for the study of assisted conception, the sociology of body work and the further marketisation and deregulation of medicine.

Aging and the Body: A Review

In this article, we examine the existing sociocultural research and theory concerned with the aging body. In particular, we review the body image and embodiment literatures and discuss what is known about how older adults perceive and experience their aging bodies. We analyse how body image is shaped by age, culture, ethnicity, gender, health status, sexual preference, and social class. Additionally, we critically elucidate the embodiment literature as it pertains to illness experiences, sexuality, the everyday management of the aging body, appearance work, and embodied identity. By outlining the key findings, theoretical debates, and substantive discrepancies within the body image and embodiment research and theory, we identify gaps in the literature and forecast future, much-needed avenues of investigation.