(En)gendering Agency and Body Politics

This book details what athletes and patients do to create recuperative encounters with physiotherapists. Play is the point of departure, tying Gadamer s hermeneutics and Goffman s everyday life dramaturgy together as a theoretical underpinning. Participants tell of bodily changes and well-being following verbal, bodily and hands-on dialogues. Dialogues are precariously constructed, self presentation carefully enacted. Taking pain is action; an exemplar of how verbal, bodily and hands- on communication, self presentation and gender intersect in physiotherapy. Independent of age and gender or bodily concerns, boundaries are negotiated to enhance personal well-being and/or to reach personal objectives. When social disruptions occur in therapy, recuperative interaction is at risk. This may be laughed at; which is interpreted as signs of embarrassment. Athletes and patients try to create recuperative encounters and avoid embarrassing situations. Their strategies are alike; their accounts interpreted as intentional human agency and body politics, which create new body idioms of health/illness.