This paper explores the process of human-horse communication using ethnographic data of in-depth interviews and participant observation. Guided by symbolic interactionism, the paper argues that humans and horses co-create a language system by way of the body to facilitate the creation of shared meaning.This research challenges the privileged status of verbal language and suggests that non-verbal communication and language systems of the body have their own unique complexities. This investigation of humanhorse communication offers new possibilities to understand the subjective and intersubjective world of non-verbal language using beings-human and nonhuman alike.Within the social sciences there is scant research about the relationships humans share with their equine companions (Wipper, 2000;Lawrence, 1982 Lawrence, , 1984.Most of the literature available examines cowboys of the Old West and Indian warriors and the purpose horses served in their lives (

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In the past ten to fifteen years, feminist and queer theorists have taken a particular interest in the body as a topic for social theory. Much of this work has brought to the forefront the notion of the body as a site on which social, political, and cultural ideas are inscribed. The body is theorized as a cultural construct, and emphasis is placed on the body's locatedness and differentiation and the relationship between identity and particular forms of embodiment. Amid all this theorizing, however, qualitative research about lived corporeality-how embodiment is experienced in the everyday world-is in short supply. This essay reviews three books-two ethnographic works on body modification and one deep analysis of theoretical and public debates about the question of sexual citizenship-that attempt to illuminate how competing discourses shape the subjective experiences of embodiment. These are timely books; sexual citizenship, or the question of who will and who will not be REVIEW ESSAY

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