ABSTRACT
Boxing presents a special and distinctive field of inquiry even within the study of sport. Boxing has a contradictory presence in contemporary culture and supporters are aware of the censure it provokes. Boxing research has to incorporate all the aspects: the public stage and the genealogy of the sport and its routine everyday practices. Getting 'inside' the routine and the local can present more problems for the researcher than investigating public boxing stories. An important example of ethnographic research into boxing carried out by men who have 'joined in', is that of Loic Wacquant. Hegemonic masculinity is based upon the exclusion and marginalization of any versions of selfhood in which frailty, weakness or lack of courage are implicated. Masculinity in sport in reinstated and enacted around the networks that are configured around the 'insider'–'outsider' relationship. Routine masculinities are built upon the configuration of an 'insider' world that is embedded in cultural collusion as well as body practices.
