What Is a Body? Law, Health, and Well-being in Times of Emergency

This chapter addresses the foundational question ‘What is a body?’ from the perspective of legal epistemology, focusing on how the law conceptualizes, regulates, and transforms the human body in times of emergency, particularly during health crises. In these exceptional contexts, the body becomes both hyper-visible and structurally vulnerable, turning into a site of intervention, data extraction, and political scrutiny. Drawing on critical legal theory, Foucauldian biopolitics, and quantitative methodology, the chapter argues that the legal conception of the body is not fixed or universal but deeply shaped by the historical and technological conditions under which law operates. Emergency measures (such as lockdowns, biometric surveillance, and digital health tracking) disrupt the conventional distinction between public and private, rendering bodily autonomy increasingly contingent on collective imperatives and narratives. Particular attention will also be devoted to the concepts of ‘medicalisation’ and ‘healthism’, along with the political agendas they embody. Finally, through a specific focus on the ‘quantitative turn’ in health law and the rise of new digital technologies, the chapter demonstrates how moments of crisis tend to accelerate pre-existing trends toward the medicalisation and datafication of life, making the body the central axis around which legal and political transformations revolve.