Chapter 1: Integrating Experiences: Body and Mind Moving Between Contexts

We propose a model of the relation between mind and society, and specifically the way in which individuals develop and gain agency through society. We theorize and demonstrate a two-way interaction: bodies moving through society accumulate differentiated experiences, which become integrated at the level of mind, enabling psychological movement between experiences, which in turn mediates how people move through society. For this, we build on our previous theoretical and empirical work.

We start with four basic assumptions. First, and most basically, humans are embodied (Clark, 1998). The skin is an important boundary (Farr, 1997) which both connects and separates people from their material and symbolic environment. Humans experience the social world first and foremost through their own bodies. Bounded bodies perceive and feel—they are the location of emotional experience (James, 1890). It is also in bounded bodies that humans move between contexts.