This paper focuses on two important strands in the development of recent social theory. While arguments for reflexivity have tended to construct the researcher as a disembodied analytical consciousness, concerns with embodiment seem to focus on the bodies of others. This paper starts from the assertion that the researcher is an active embodied participant in social processes and this has important implications for the focus of analysis while offering opportunities for the development of social theory in relation to concepts of ‘community’, ‘social group’ and insiderness/outsiderness which seem to have been central concepts for considerations of identity.