Embodying Sociological Mindfulness: Learning about Social Inequality through the Body

Abstract

THIS PAPER REPORTS on a teaching and learning technique that uses the power of everyday body language and proxemics to illustrate forms of social inequality. More significantly, the active learning exercises assist students to feel the fact that the making and maintaining of power relations is an intimate and visceral matter. In keeping with classroom approaches that attempt to bring sociology to life in unconventional ways (Bailey 1993; Mayer 1986; Schmid 1993) and to acknowledge an increasingly diverse student population (Hartung 1991), the exercises provide opportunities for students to actively engage their bodies in the subject matter of sociology. A number of approaches have been developed to facilitate the teaching of social inequality (for a summary see Davis 1992). Simulation games and role-play exercises create firsthand experiences of inequality to illustrate the structural barriers that maintain social stratification (Bell and Bradburn 1996; Brezina 1996). These approaches