Bodies are not ‘Tools’: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis on Embodiment in Social Work
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Social work has historically focused on managing bodies without adequately addressing the implications of the mind/body split. As the social work profession is beginning to embrace embodiment practices, I was interested in learning how social work scholars understand the impacts of mind/body split, what practices are being suggested to re-negotiate this binary, and how certain discourses frame bodies as ‘tools’ for social work. Drawing from Foucauldian discourse analysis and genealogical methodology, I explore the roots of the mind/body split in white supremacy culture, settler colonialism, and neoliberal capitalism. By pointing to the history of social work's complicity in perpetuating the mind/body split and the need for a shift in theoretical perspectives around embodiment, I propose a critical embodiment theory to challenge existing paradigms and open new avenues for both micro and macro social work. While my research is focused on theory, it holds significant material implications. We stand at a pivotal moment where the integration of embodiment into social work practice could foster decolonial and resistance-oriented approaches, or continue to reinforce the mind/body split through perpetuating white supremacy culture and neoliberal practices.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.088 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.012 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".