Moving materialities

Oceanic epistemologies and embodied knowledge production in Pentecostal women's health mentorship in Samoa

Bibliographic Data

ID2260055
AuthorsJ Hardin (0000-0001-5340-2933, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Rochester Institute of Technology New York USA, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume125
Issue2
Pages239-251
Publication date2023-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Anthropologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/aman.13837
OpenAlexW4362721842
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited85

This article employs Oceanic epistemological theories to explore the body as a site of knowledge production among Samoan Pentecostal women as they dance in a church-sponsored Zumba session, tracking foods, words, and feelings: I call thesemoving materialities. In their work together, these women contextualized health, sickness, and weight as generated from the circulation of these kinds of moving materialities. Their work theorizing health through material change is quite different from those imagined and circulated in the literatures on diabetes and obesity. The article orients critical studies of health toward an interrogation of the dynamic qualities of materiality, including both the moving body and materials that move between or within bodies. By expanding what might be considered material and movement in the context of health, this article offers an alternative to theories of metabolism that have come to dominate how we understand the body in terms energy expenditure. Ultimately, this approach calls for anthropologists to consider the circumstances in which theory is understood to be "culturally specific" or "generalizable

Aesthetics · Context (archaeology · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Materiality (auditing · Samoan · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Child Nutrition and Water Access · Gender Studies · History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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Open DOIOpen Access