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Coordination and Embodiment in the Operating Room

Centre for Health Service Research, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

In this article, I investigate the process of coordination between three ‘bodies’ of surgery: the patient-ensemble(s) constructed in pre-operative activities; the surgeon-body constructed with these ensembles in the operating room; and the body-world inhabited by the surgeon. This investigation is done through an ethnography of a neurosurgical clinic, with an analytical focus on the relationship between the spatial configuration of the body of the surgeon and the embodied practices of operating that this configuration demands. My argument is that coordination between those three bodies is organized in the layered space into which the multiple ensembles of surgery are assembled. This relationship, I suggest, lies at the core of the power and technical expertise held by surgeons, and constitutes a challenge for explorations of other forms of articulation between subject body-worlds and the embodiment of power in subject-bodies.

Key Words: agency • distributed activity • neurosurgery • space • subjectivity • surgical skill

Body & Society, Vol. 10, No. 1, 109-129 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/1357034X04042169


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