Embodiment and Vulnerability in Policy-Making

Rebecca Hewer
Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society
The University of Edinburgh

The summer of my doctoral fieldwork, which took place almost entirely in London, was hot. And – given that London is ill-prepared for extreme weather – it was also red-faced-and-sticky. My enduring memory of that time is of standing in Liverpool Street Station, staring up at black and yellow departure boards, as sweat dripped down the back of my legs. This is, in all probability, the synthesis of many memories: I was frequently in Liverpool Street Station, a hub for travel across a city I daily traversed in search of new participants. Casting my mind back to that time, I am also reminded of a measure of pain. On the hottest day of the year, as temperatures teetered on the precipice of 40 degrees centigrade, a close friend called to say that the cancer she had long been fighting had won, that she had stopped treatment, and was preparing to die. On the hottest day of the year, I closed the curtains and stayed at home. And towards the end of my fieldwork, I injured a tendon in my left foot and became entirely dependent on crutches. Unable to negotiate the vastness of London, I returned to my home, Edinburgh, and finished my final interviews via the less-than-ideal medium of Skype.