The ‘Body Work’ Landscape
of South Florida
Dr Carol Wolkowitz
Reader
Department of Sociology
University of Warwick
carol.wolkowitz@warwick.ac.uk
This selection of images is based on my article
in Visualising the Changing Landscapes of
Work and Labour, the May 2012 special issue
of Sociological Research Online, edited by
Phillip Mizen and Carol Wolkowitz.
The research seeks to:
• Develop further the concept
of ‘body work’ (Wolkowitz
2002; 2006; Wolkowitz, et
al 2013; Twigg et al 2011) in
terms of the activities and
interests that surround the
body work interaction.
Methodology
Preliminary findings
• Uses visual sociology to explore the ubiquity, density, scale and public image of the ‘body work
economy’ providing services for ageing population of retirees
• Dominance of local malls and highways by health care
and other services for the ageing
• Demonstrate the spatial
concentration of health care
services in a locality.
• Deploys still photographs as a form of ethnographic evidence, similar in status to quotations from
a fieldwork diary or interviews
• Close integration of health care services into the local
commercial economy
• Visual evidence is supplemented by interviews with enterprise managers and owners
• Explore the impact of
privatised health care on the
appearance of health care
services
• Visual evidence encourages readers/viewers to exercise some leverage in assessing or modifying an
author’s interpretations.
• Explicitness of body as a focus of work
• Show how topographies are
shaped by changing concepts
of the body (Sennett 1994)
• Future investigations to include ‘photo-elicitation’ interviews with service providers and users to
spark discussion of how care is envisioned, accessed and financed.
• Bodily care as a site for capital accumulation
• Profitability of services surrounding the body work
interaction