Within qualitative research in the social sciences, the last decade has witnessed a growing interest in the use of visual methods. Visual Methods in Physical Culture is the first book in the field of sport and exercise sciences dedicated to harnessing the potential of using visual methods within qualitative research. Theoretically insightful, and methodologically innovative, this book represents a landmark addition to the field of studies in sport, exercise, the body, and qualitative methods. It covers a wide range of empirical work, theories, and visual image-based research, including photography, drawing, and video. In so doing, the book deepens our understanding of physical culture. It also responds to key questions, such as what are visual methods, why might they be used, and how might they be applied in the field of sport and exercise sciences. This volume combines clarity of expression with careful scholarship and originality, making it especially appealing to students and scholars within a variety of fields, including sport sociology, sport and exercise psychology, sociology of the body, physical education, gender studies, gerontology, and qualitative inquiry. This book was published as a special issue in Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise.
2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title The moving body—pervasively occupied by fitness activities, intense training and dieting regimes, recreational practices, and high-profile sporting mega-events—holds a vital function in contemporary society. As the body moves—as it performs, sweats, runs, and jumps—it sets in motion an intricate web of scientific rationalities, spatial arrangements, corporate imperatives, and identity politics (i.e. politics of gender, race, social class, etc.). It represents vitality in its productive and physiological capacities, it drives a complex economy of experiences and products, and it is a meaningful site of cultural identities and politics. Contributors to Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body work from a simple premise: as it moves, the material body matters. Adding to the burgeoning fields of sport studies and body studies, the works featured here draw upon the traditions of feminist theory, posthumanism, actor network theory, and new materialism to reposition the physical, moving body as crucial to the cultural, political, environmental, and economic systems that it constitutes and within which is constituted. Once assembled, the book presents a study of bodies in motion—made to move in contexts where technique, performance, speed, strength, and vitality not only define the conduct therein, but provide the very reason for the body’s being within those economies and environments. In so doing, the contributors look to how the body moving for and about rational systems of science, medicine, markets, and geopolity shapes the social and material world in important and unexpected ways. In Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body, contributors explore the extent to which the body, when moving about both ostensibly active body spaces (i.e., the gymnasium, the ball field, exercise laboratory, the track or running trail, the beach, or the sport stadium) and those places less often connected to physical activity (i.e. the home, the street, the classroom, the automobile), is bounded to technologies of life and living; and to the political arrangements that seek to capitalize upon such frames of biological vitality. To do so, the authors problematize the rise of active body science (i.e. kinesiology, sport and exercise sciences, performance biotechnology) and the effects these scientific interventions have on embodied, lived experience. Contributors to Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body will be engaging a range of new and emerging theoretical perspectives, including new materialist, political ecology, developmental systems theory, and new material feminist approaches, to examine the actors and assemblages of movement-based material, political, and economic production. In so doing, contributors will vividly and powerfully illustrate the extent to which a focus on the fleshed body and its material conditions can bring forth new insights or ontological and epistemological innovation to the sociology of sport and physical activity. They will also explore the agency of the body as and amongst things. Such a performative materialist approach explicates how complex assemblages of sport and physical activity—bringing into association everything from muscle fibers and dietary proteins to stadium concrete or regional aquifers—are not only meaningful, but ecological. By focusing on the confluence of agentive materialities, disciplinary technologies, vibrant assemblages, speculative realities, and vital performativities, Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body promises to offer a groundbreaking departure from representationalist tendencies and orthodoxies brought about by the cultural turn in sport and physical cultural studies. It brings the moving body and its physics back into focus: recentering moving flesh and bones as locus of social order, environmental change, and the global political economy.
'Giving the bst of yourself' in sports : the Catholic Church's attention to sports in past and present / Dries Vanysacker -- Holy marathon : 'running religion'? : religious interpretations of body vulnerability in the context of marathons / Kristin Graff-Kallevåg and Sturla J. Stålsett -- Gaining balance in religious training : what might sports and physical culture coaches learn from this? / David Torevell -- Corporeal enhancement and sport's spiritual dimension : a virtue ethics proposal / Tracy J. Trothen -- Training the body (stretching the mind) and moulding the spirit : sport, Christian asceticism and life as self-gift / Paul Rowan -- Towards an A to Z of faith in sport / Simon Lee -- Aesthetics and symbolism in artistic gymnastics : from martial discipline to ritual practices embodied in performance / Clive Palmer -- The metaphysical framework of transformational combat in Eastern religions and martial arts : implications for sports and physical culture training / David Torevell -- On the bodies of children : the troubling messages of American youth sports / Annie Blazer -- Jewish women and physical culture training at various Jewish Ys in early twentieth-century American culture / Linda J. Borish -- Promoting western sport and PE ideas in China : lessons learned and future directions / David Grecic -- Concluding remarks : making connections -- Questions for discussion and reflection.
Sport|Fitness|Culture focuses on the influences of culture and society on human movement, such as sport, physical activity, and fitness. The text introduces and analyzes current issues of importance for those concerned with human movement and culture, whether it is in the context of teaching physical education, coordinating/ marketing sport and recreational programs, coaching or serving the general population – young and old – with any form of physical activity. Sport|Fitness|Culture incorporates interdisciplinary, cutting-edge work reflecting various research paradigms from these theoretical perspectives: sociology, psychology, history, philosophy, anthropology, gender and race studies and cultural studies. The fact that more and more people of all ages are participating in sport and physical activity means that serious attention must be paid to increasing awareness of the positive as well as the negative effects of such involvement. Indeed, sport has become a major socio-cultural factor in people’s lives. In the USA, there is hardly anyone who is not touched by this movement; however, people have very different experiences based on their cultural and socio-economic background, including gender, race/ethnicity, age, ability, as well as their sexual and religious orientations. This book will educate people about the importance of socio-cultural as well as psychological factors influencing people’s choices, opportunities, experiences and limitations in the domain of human movement.
Physical culture can be crudely defined as those exercise practices designed to physically change the body. In modern parlance we may associate physical culture with weightlifting, physical education, and/or calisthenics of various kinds. While the modern age has experienced an explosion of interest in gym-based activities, the practice of training one’s body has a much longer, and fascinating, history. This book provides an engaged and accessible historical overview from the Ancient World to the Modern Day. In it, readers are introduced to the training practices of Ancient Greece, India, and China among other areas. From there, the book explores the evolution of exercise systems and messages in the Western World with reference to three distinct epochs: the Middles Ages and Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and its aftermath and the nineteenth to the present day. Throughout the book, attention is drawn not only to how societies exercised, but why they did so. The purpose of this book is to provide those new to the field of physical culture an historical overview of some of the major trends and developments in exercise practices. More than that, the book challenges readers to reflect on the numerous meanings attached to the body and its training. As is discussed, physical culture was linked to military, religious, educational, aesthetic, and gendered messages. The training of the body, across millennia, was always about much more than muscularity or strength. Here both the exercise systems, and their meanings are studied.
This book examines the relationships between the Nordic social democratic welfare system (‘The Nordic Model’) and physical culture, across the domains of sport, education, and public space. Presenting important new empirical research, it helps us to understand how the paradoxical blend of social democracy and liberalism in the Nordic countries influences physical culture, which in turn contributes to a quality of life that ranks highest in the world. Drawing on perspectives from sociology, cultural studies, history, education, political science, outdoor studies, and urban studies, the book explores topics such as dance education for sport students, doping in cross-country skiing, outdoor education, the active body, and the ideology of public parks. It includes research material from across the region, including Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, and Denmark. This is fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in physical culture, sport studies, leisure studies, or outdoor studies, as well as sociologists or political scientists with an interest in Nordic politics, culture, and society.
This is the first book to examine the body in training in the context of religion, sport and wider physical culture, offering important insight into the performative, social, cultural and gendered aspects of somatic discipline and exercise. The book presents a series of fascinating thematic and case-study led chapters from around the world, examining topics including the martial discipline and symbolism of artistic gymnastics; religious interpretations of body vulnerability in the context of marathons; the religious language of corporeal training in sport and martial arts. Drawing on multi-disciplinary perspectives, from sport, religion, history and philosophy, the book explores the often contested and sometimes over-zealous application of training in both sport and religion and the ways in which this can cause harm to athletes or adherents. This is fascinating reading for any advanced student or researcher with an interest in the body, physical cultural studies, the ethics and philosophy of sport, the sociology of sport, religious studies, Asian studies or philosophy.
This book is the first to deal with physical culture in an Irish context, covering educational, martial and recreational histories. Deemed by many to be a precursor to the modern interest in health and gym cultures, physical culture was a late nineteenth and early twentieth century interest in personal health which spanned national and transnational histories. It encompassed gymnasiums, homes, classrooms, depots and military barracks. Prior to this work, physical culture’s emergence in Ireland has not received thorough academic attention. Addressing issues of gender, childhood, nationalism, and commerce, this book is unique within an Irish context in studying an Irish manifestation of a global phenomenon. Tracing four decades of Irish history, the work also examines the influence of foreign fitness entrepreneurs in Ireland and contrasts them with their Irish counterparts.
History and Philosophy of Sport and Physical Activity, Second Edition With HKPropel Access, seamlessly blends the historical and philosophical dimensions of the study of human movement. The text follows a chronology of human movement from our origins as hunter-gatherers to the present, offering philosophical and ethical analyses alongside explorations of cultural shifts that have emerged from different ethnic, racial, gender, and national traditions. The second edition of History and Philosophy of Sport and Physical Activity is ideal for instructors who teach history and philosophy in a single course. Each chapter provides a historical scaffolding that leads into philosophical discussions about the issues raised. The text eschews dense blocks of text in favor of accessible writing and an interactive student experience. Updates to the latest edition include expanded coverage of diversity, equity, and inclusion topics; a deeper exploration of epistemology; a discussion of alternate forms of physical activity; and new material about the ethics of research. Contemporary topics of discussion such as the Exercise Is Medicine (EIM) movement, athlete biodata collection, and transgender and nonbinary athletes in sport are thoroughly explored. Discussion questions and study questions at the end of each chapter challenge students to reflect on the course material and share their ideas. Historical profile sidebars throughout the chapters allow students to gain greater insight into historical figures and events. Throughout the text, students are prompted to access related online activities in HKPropel. These short exercises connect philosophical inquiry to historical events and modern-day issues and serve as important tools for improving students’ reasoning skills. Instructors are supported with a comprehensive instructor guide that includes sample responses to the downloadable student exercises, section references for the downloadable study questions, and sample discussion and assignment prompts related to the discussion questions. The instructor guide also includes ideas and instructions for semester-long student projects. History and Philosophy of Sport and Physical Activity, Second Edition, presents a thorough integration of philosophy and history, capitalizing on the strengths of both disciplines. Note: A code for accessing HKPropel is not included with this ebook but may be purchased separately.
