Rolling with Pain – A Sociological Investigation Into the Meaning-Making of Physical Pain

Abstract: In this thesis, I investigate the experience of physical pain. Through an analysis and assessment of the data in the form of qualitative interviews collected for this thesis, the aim has been to show that meaning-making is fundamental to our experience of (physical) pain. At its core, this thesis contends that physical pain can not be reduced to physiological stimuli and that an investigation must consider not what pain is, but how pain is experienced and also, what pain does. In order to tackle the dynamics of pain, this thesis focuses on the empirical case of skateboarding. The methodology of this thesis draws on insights from phenomenology, both in choices of point of departure in relation to collected data, and as a way of accessing the data. The theoretical threshold follows this phenomenological vein paving the way for theoretical insights of author and scholar Sara Ahmed, namely her conceptualization of intensification, resurfacing and (re)orientation. The research showcases how and why the respondents experience pain the way they do. It finds that when a painful experience is experienced it sets in motion a meaning-making process through which pain is assessed through a multitude of factors such as narration, past experiences, feeling states, and more, prompting a (re)orientation of the body. Through this process pain, firstly, comes to be experienced as pain, and, secondly, is ascribed value and meaningful or meaningless meaning. I conclude by arguing that the way physical pain is experienced depends on the meaning ascribed to it through this process of meaning making. In a final discussion I consider claims of societal algophobia. I argue that both the pain experienced by the respondents, as well as their utilization of this pain is radical, as it breaks with the in-difference of an algophobic society in the way it produces difference as it shapes and reshapes surfaces, bodies and borders, i.e. worlds.