Liberating the semantics: Embodied work(man)ship in construction

Book chapter, 2018

Human bodies are under-researched in organisational theorising. This chapter brings out the perceived experiences and emotions of a physical body-in-context. Using a narrative approach and life-story analysis, the authors examine the interplay between strongly entrenched masculine corporeal inscriptions of an ideal (normal) body and the embodied performances of one female construction site manager as she makes active choices to appropriate and occupy viable subject positions made available by her engagement with deeply entrenched semantically gender-burdened meanings. To do this, she purposefully enacts multiple bodies, mobilising masculine and feminine gender strategies to craft her identity and subject position. The chapter shows that construction is a rich and fertile empirical site for challenging and expanding social science theorising of the body and of work.