For a Carnal Social Work: A Review of the Body in Social Work Literature

Abstract Social work practice is charged with concerns related to the body; health, age, gender, sexuality, race, abuse and violence, to name a few. Despite this, the body itself is strangely invisible in social work literature, its experiences often indirectly addressed. The present scoping review seeks to explore how the body is situated and conceptualised within the peer-reviewed social work literature between 2012 and 2022. The wide scope of this review captures a range of articles (n = 148) in many different journals (n = 56), with few tackling the same questions. Moreover, the stories of many bodies are not yet represented in social work literature. Seven broad relational categories were identified: relationship to oneself; interpersonal concerns in health; systemic and structural concerns in health; therapeutic relationships; the body in intervention; embodied structures; and the body in social work education. The results point to the need for a framework through which to see and interpret the body, promoting a more central position in research and practice. Wacquant’s carnal sociology (2015) is proposed as an appropriate scaffold for bringing the body into view within social work practice and research.