Embodiment
Much of my work has focused on the bodily facets of lived experience. In my most recent book, Traversing, I examine our ways of seeing, experiencing, and moving through the world, and how these shape the kinds of people we become. Drawing from philosophical concepts developed by two phenomenological philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Jan Patočka, and putting them in conversation with ethnographic analysis of the lives of contemporary Czechs, I examine how embodiment is crucial for understanding our being-in-the-world.
In an earlier project, Senses and Citizenships, I explored the intersections between sensory phenomena and national and supra-national forms of belonging, introducing the new concept of sensory citizenship. Expanding upon contemporary understandings of the rights and duties of citizens, the volume presents anthropological investigations of the sensory aspects of participation in collectivities such as face-to-face communities, ethnic groups, nations and transnational entities
In my work on political violence, first articulated in my book, State of Suffering, I traced the intimate, bodily sensations of communities undergoing violence as well as the fear of violence. Throughout this examination, I focused on the collective social process through which violence is embodied, articulated, and silenced by those it targets.
