ABSTRACT

The corporeal turn toward critical, empirically grounded studies of the body is transforming the way we research physical culture, most evidently in the study of sport. This book brings together original insights on contemporary physical culture from key figures working in a variety of disciplines, offering a wealth of different theoretical and philosophical ways of engaging with the body while never losing site of the material form of the research act itself.

Contributors spanning the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, communications, and sport studies highlight conceptual, methodological, and empirical approaches to the body that include observant-participation, feminist ethnography, autoethnography, physical cultural studies, and phenomenology. They provide vivid case studies of embodied research on topics including basketball, boxing, cycling, dance, fashion modelling and virtual gaming. This international collection not only reflects on the most important recent developments in embodied research practices, but also looks forward to the continuing importance of the body as a focus for research and the possibilities this presents for studies of the active, moving body in physical culture and beyond.

Physical Culture, Ethnography and the Body: Theory, method and praxis is fascinating reading for all those interested in physical cultural studies, the sociology of sport and leisure, physical education or the body.

chapter |22 pages

Introduction

Physical culture, ethnography, and the body

part I|73 pages

Theoretical Movements

chapter 1|23 pages

Sporting embodiments

Sports studies and the (continuing) promise of phenomenology

chapter 2|16 pages

Physical capital and situated action

A new direction for corporeal sociology

chapter 4|14 pages

From embodiment to emplacement

Re-thinking competing bodies, senses and spatialities

part II|85 pages

Methodological movements

chapter 5|17 pages

Ethnography as precarious work

chapter 6|15 pages

Feminist ethnography and physical culture

Towards reflexive, political, and collaborative methods

chapter 7|14 pages

Habitus as topic and tool

Reflections on becoming a prizefighter

chapter 8|17 pages

Moving in the margins

Active urban bodies and the politics of ethnography

chapter 9|21 pages

The embodied experience

Dance ethnography and the dancing body

part III|64 pages

Empirical movements

chapter 10|15 pages

Methods that move

Exploring young women’s embodied experiences of femininity & exer-games

chapter 11|17 pages

Research on the run

Moving methods and the charity ‘thon’

chapter 12|16 pages

Competing masculinities

South Asian American identity formation in Asian American basketball leagues

chapter 13|15 pages

(Auto)ethnography and cycling