ABSTRACT
Getting changed for physical education is a ubiquitous feature of secondary school experience for many young people. Fusco (2004) argues that the ‘common sense’ understanding of changing rooms might suggest that they are relatively unremarkable spaces and that they are used and managed in seemingly insignificant ways. However, in this chapter we draw upon the work of Bourdieu, in particular his concepts of field, capital and habitus, to identify the changing room as a site of juncture between a number of core fields (principally schooling, physical education and physical culture) and thus we argue that as a ‘changing place’ (both literally and metaphorically) changing rooms are in fact highly charged transitional spaces. Moreover, we argue that the changing room can be perceived as a valueladen site in which the proximity to other bodies facilitates (perhaps even necessitates) a process of comparison, surveillance and self-regulation. Fusco (2006) asks in these moments of undress, what is experienced?
