There was always more than one body in physiotherapy
When physiotherapists refer to the body, they're often referring to the body that's defined by biomedicine: organised into systems; physical; patho-anatomical; cellular; the place where injury and illness can be located; biological. But this only accounts for a small group of 'bodies' that we encounter in practice every day.
A recent conference announcement highlighted some of the bodies that Victorians were interested in, and many of these still interest physiotherapists:
busy bodies
body markings
disabled bodies
prosthetics
bodies behaving badly
the body as spectacle
fragmented bodies
queer bodies
raced bodies
disciplined bodies
animal bodies
circus & freak show bodies
bodies at work or play
bodies in contact
unlikely friendships/romances
sexy bodies
naked bodies
diseased bodies
vivisection
the anatomized body
dead bodies
body snatchers
embodiment/disembodiment
spirit bodies
mythical bodies
angels, monsters, and ghosts
the gendered body
intellectual women
odd women, blue stockings, New Women
the body of the insane, the eccentric
characters & caricatures
ugly bodies
corporate bodies
bodies of knowledge
bodies of evidence
bodies of work
colonial bodies
traveling bodies
and the body politic… (Source: Interdisciplinary 19th century studies conference)
Now clearly, not all of these bodies are relevant to physiotherapists, but there are also bodies here that are central to our work that we rarely ever think about, explore, discuss or research.
It reminds me of some of the great books on bodies in sociology that have been written over the last 20 years (see recommended readings below). If you are interested in bodies, as you'd imagine most of our colleagues should be, you could do worse than read some of the writings of people like Bryan Turner, Nick Fox, Debbie Lupton, Sarah Nettleton and Chris Shilling,
Shamefully, most of these authors never appear in the curricula of our college programs, because we remain fixated with only talking about the body-as-machine. Perhaps a broader approach to understanding something as fundamental as the body could be a fruitful way to imagine a bigger, brighter, more embodied professional future?
Some recommended readings on bodies plural
Blackman, L. (2008). The body the key concepts. Oxford; New York: Berg.
Carter, N. (2012). Medicine, sport and the body: A historical perspective. London: Bloomsbury.
Cregan, K. (2006). The sociology of the body mapping the abstraction of embodiment. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.
Crossley, N. (2001). The social body: Habit, identity and desire. London: Sage.
Fox, N. J. (2012). The body. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lupton, D. (2012). Medicine as culture: Illness, disease and the body in western society. London: Sage.
Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple : Ontology in medical practice. Durham: Duke University Press.
Nettleton, S. (2005). The sociology of the body. In W. C. Cockerham (Ed.), The Blackwell companion to medical sociology (pp. 43-63). London: Blackwell.
Samson, C. (1999). Biomedicine and the body. In Health studies: A critical and cross cultural reader (pp. 3-21). Oxford: Blackwell.
Scott, S. & Morgan, D. (2004). Body matters: Essays on the sociology of the body. London: Falmer Press.
Shilling, C. (2012). The body and social theory. Sage.
Turner, B. S. (1984). The body and society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Turner, B. S. (2008). The body and society: Explorations in social theory. London: Sage.
Williams, S. J. (2003). Medicine and the body. London: Sage.