| Embodiment | a concept referring to how we literally incorporate, biologically, the material and social world in which we live, from in utero to death; a corollary is that no aspect of our biology can be understood in the absence of knowledge of history and individual and societal ways of living. |
| As elaborated in this article, “embodiment” for epidemiology is best understood: |
| (a) As a construct, process, and reality, contingent upon bodily existence; |
| (b) As a multilevel phenomenon, integrating soma, psyche, and society, within historical and ecological context, and hence an antonym to disembodied genes, minds, and behaviours; |
| (c) As a clue to life histories, hidden and revealed; and |
| (d) As a reminder of entangled consequences of diverse forms of social inequality. |
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| Pathways of embodiment | structured simultaneously by (a) societal arrangements of power, property, and contingent patterns of production, consumption, and reproduction, and (b) constraints and possibilities of our biology, as shaped by our species’ evolutionary history, our ecological context, and individual histories—that is, trajectories of biological and social development. |
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| Cumulative interplay between exposure, susceptibility and resistance | expressed in pathways of embodiment, with each factor and its distribution conceptualised at multiple levels (individual, neighbourhood, regional, or political jurisdiction, national, inter-national or supra-national) and in multiple domains (for example, home, work, school, other public settings), in relation to relevant ecological niches, and manifested in processes at multiple scales of time and space. |
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| Accountability and agency | expressed in pathways of and knowledge about embodiment, in relation to institutions (government, business, and public sector), communities, households, and individuals, and also to accountability and agency of epidemiologists and other scientists for theories used and ignored to explain social inequalities in health; a corollary is that, given probable complementary causal explanations at different scales and levels, epidemiological studies should explicitly name and consider the benefits and limitations of their particular scale and level of analysis. |