Managing Meanings of Embodied Experiences Theory: Toward a Discursive Understanding of Becoming Healthier

Abstract

We advance a new theoretical approach for interpreting health communication from an embodied, intersubjective perspective. We propose individuals experience the world as bodied beings and must make sense of their embodied experiences by managing meanings of who they are in the world (being), the actions they perform (doing), and who they want to become (directed becoming). We call this theory managing meanings of embodied experiences (MMEE). Guided by the philosophies of phenomenology, pragmatism, and feminism, we provide a three-fold framework for exploring individuals' management of health meanings during interactions with others in society. The first layer-being-demonstrates a mutually constituting, intersubjective presence with others, whereby we attend to our own and another's embodied expressions accomplished communicatively. The second layer-doing-appreciates experiences directed by personal and social values both perceived and conceived during the unfolding of coordinated communicative events. The third layer-directed becoming-highlights our ability to mindfully direct changes to our identity and actions through critical reflection; it is the transformative potential of our reflective synthesis of being and doing.

Reflexive embodied ethnography with applied sensibilities: methodological reflections on involved qualitative research

“…what works, what doesn't work, what alternatives are available)?' I regarded WWAD as a place where providers and participants were rewriting a different script about healthcare, a script that did not underestimate embodiment accompanied by social interaction (Field-Springer and Striley, 2018). As William storied:…”

“…WWAD is a program that carves out a space where ongoing relationships between healthcare providers and participants are fostered. Taking these walks together contributed to empowering ourselves actively through community to become the healthy persons we desired to be (Field-Springer and Striley, 2018).…”

“…These insecurities strengthened my process of observation, that is, I used my bodily senses as a familiar mechanism for understanding my own and other's embodied interactions. I established an awareness and need to interrogate my own and others' descriptions, assumptions, and transformations of embodied selves in the field early on during the research process, due to my own embodied self-doubt and partly due to the mission of the program that directed bodies to become healthy (Field-Springer and Striley, 2018). For instance, as my relationships deepened with participants, I recognized the importance of bodies in flux (Deleuze, 1994), and how meanings that my participants and I inscribed about embodied interactions with each other changed over time and through space.…”

Toward pluralizing ecology: Finding common ground across sociocultural and scientific perspectives

“…People, of course, relate with each other and their physical environments, and they transform materials, energy, information, and meanings through those relationships. Lived experience and embodied experience thus become key parts of understanding the human world (Field‐Springer & Margavio Striley, 2018; King, 2018). Hence, where and how people live, work, and play, in addition to how they construct meaning as parts of households, communities, groups, and polities, are key parts of various social–ecological worlds as well (cf.…”

Blurring the Paradigmatic Edges: Navigating the Boundaries Between Critical-Interpretive and Interpretive Approaches to Health Communication Research

“…For instance, the culture-centered approach draws from both structuration and subaltern theories to interrogate localized health meanings and address disparities for marginalized communities (Dutta, 2018; see also Dutta, 2008). Other CIHC scholars have invoked narrative, problematic integration, and embodiment theories (for exemplars, see Parsloe and Babrow, 2016;Ellingson and Borofka, 2018;Field-Springer and Margavio Striley, 2018). Drawing from other theoretical perspectives broadens a researcher's interpretive repertoire, empowering them to explore how concepts can be deployed in multiple ways, and acknowledge what both CHC and IHC offer for developing knowledge claims (Ellingson, 2009;Lynch and Zoller, 2015;Manning and Denker, 2015).…”