Sensemaking from the Body: An Enactive Ethnography of Rowing the Amazon

Abstract

Drawing on real-time video, an audio journal, interviews, and field notes from the first-ever attempt to scull the navigable Amazon, we explore the promise of carnal sociology to enrich our understanding of embodied organizational sensemaking. We investigate the body’s role in sensemaking from two vantage points: “of the body” and “from the body.” Using methodological and conceptual anchors provided in carnal sociology, we contrast what each approach tells us about the nature and process of sensemaking. Doing so helps us outline a complementary approach to embodied sensemaking that attends to (1) how a “new way of seeing” the body as sentient, sedimented, situated, and capable of suffering enables a more holistic understanding of the role of embodiment in sensemaking; (2) the importance this then places on the “who” of sensemaking; and (3) carnal sociology’s broader methodological implications for organizational sensemaking.

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