Citation

Adair VC. Sociol. Compass 2008; 2(5): 1655-1671.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00135.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Class theorists of embodiment in Sociology point to and illuminate both an over- and an under-exposed body and experience that ultimately mark the bodies of the poor as ideologically, discursively and materially abject. In this essay, I map out theories of the bodies of the poor, including those of Marx, Engels, Elias, Bourdieu, Foucault, Donzelot and Adair. I suggest that an understanding of the ways in which the bodies of the poor are positioned as abject can facilitate a flexible and reflexive heuristic through which we can negotiate epistemic shifts between material and discursive categories, as well as providing us with a template through which we can come to understand even the most profoundly abject bodies, those of poor women in a welfare state, as potential sites of embodied agency and resistance, all central to the ethical and holistic study of sociology.