Bodies, Embodiment and Male Nurses

Abstract

This chapter seeks to uncover the significance of bodies within the profession of nursing. Bodies have long been a neglected area of research in organization studies — often invisible despite their centrality in any work context. In this respect, we are our bodies and they are therefore deployed to greater and lesser extents in the work we do. It is consequently surprising that the significance of bodies has largely been overlooked — exceptions including those instances where some form of manual labour is required or where bodies are the focus of work. This ‘conceptual blindspot’ (Grosz, 1994) in mainstream thinking about gender and organization may reflect the Cartesian mind/body dualism in which men and masculinity, through associations with rationality and the higher order of the mind, have been rendered ‘bodiless’. Bodies have thus been inferiorized, deviant and visibly tied to the realm of women.