Appropriating bodies: Organ(izing) ideology and cultural practice in medical school

Abstract

The current study examines “appropriating bodies”; as a narratively performed cultural practice. A critical‐interpretive reading of medical students’ narratives concerning their training in how to perform gynecologic exams is used to understand how the professional medical ideology of excellence produces and is produced through material and symbolic activity. Medical students’ narratives reproduce, legitimate, and critique the traditional ideology of excellence through symbolic appropriation instantiated in a variety of narratives about the body, conflicts with teaching associates, and the performance of anesthetized exams during clinical situations. In particular, symbolic forms of appropriation are evidenced in temporal and spatial realms.