(Actor-net) working bodies and representations: Tales from a training field

Abstract

This article seeks to locate the body and embodiment more centrally among the concerns of actor-network theory by exploring working bodies. Using a newly introduced national system of vocational training as an exemplary case, it explores the tension between representations of skilled human bodies - 'competencies' - as given to trainers and the ways in which these representations are incorporated into their everyday practice. Vocational training has had a long struggle with the apparent separability of subject and object - between what can be felt and experienced as distinct from what can be stated, measured, and expressed in words. The argument is made that paying attention to bodies in voca..