Flesh-and-blood knowing

The body is not only a field of studies but a mean of study as well. The embodied practice-based research is an inquiry style to access the tacit texture of social action and cognition.

Practical implications

Embodied practice-based research may impact qualitative researchers’ education and the way to report methodological proceedings and data report.

Originality/value

The core contribution of the paper is the introduction of a new research style able to change how researchers’ bodies may be used in qualitative management research.

Qualitative research; Interpretation; Affect; Carnal sociology; Embodied practice-based research

Properties	Description
Structure
Sentied	The agent is not only endowed with senses, exteroceptive, proprioceptive, and interoceptive; she also makes sense of what her sensorium captures. She is both capable of feeling and conscious of those feelings; and the body is the synthesizing medium of this feeling awareness (Wacquant, 2015Wacquant, L. (2015). For a sociology of flesh and blood. Qualitative Sociology, 38, 1-11, p. 3)
Suffering	The agent is exposed to the threats and blows of the natural and social worlds; she has needs, yearnings, and desires that do not get fulfilled; she is constantly subjected to the judgment of others and faces the inescapable coming of death. As such, she lives in anguish, distress and pain, and yet she endures (Wacquant, 2015Wacquant, L. (2015). For a sociology of flesh and blood. Qualitative Sociology, 38, 1-11, p. 3)
Skilled	The social agent can “make a difference” because, through experience and training, she acquires capacities to act and the dexterity to do things competently (Wacquant, 2015Wacquant, L. (2015). For a sociology of flesh and blood. Qualitative Sociology, 38, 1-11, p. 3)
Sedimented	All of these elements, our senses, suffering, and skills are not given at birth, generic, or constituted in a solipsistic relation to self. Rather, they are implanted, cultivated, and deployed over time through our engagement in the world, and they are gradually deposited in our body as the layered product of our varied individual and collective histories (Wacquant, 2015Wacquant, L. (2015). For a sociology of flesh and blood. Qualitative Sociology, 38, 1-11, pp. 3-4)
Situated	This sedimentation is shaped by our unique location and peregrinations in physical and social space, precisely because we are both protected by and locked in the fragile physical envelope of our mortal organism, which cannot be at two places at a given time but integrates the traces of the many places we have occupied over time (Wacquant, 2015Wacquant, L. (2015). For a sociology of flesh and blood. Qualitative Sociology, 38, 1-11, p. 4)

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[1] *Corresponding author Marcelo de Souza Bispo can be contacted at: marcelodesouzabispo@gmail.com