Sport Masculinities And The Body

This groundbreaking work explores masculinity and the body within sports. Sports continue to retain expectations for presentations of specific forms of masculinity. The body is central to these presentations. These everyday bodily performances are rehearsed and performed either successfully or unsuccessfully - and the consequences of these actions play a significant part in the ability of the individual to continue to take part. Through participant observations, sporting life-history interviews (with over forty men) and research with children, this book examines the ways in which 'appropriate' sporting masculinities are learned and enacted to varying degrees of success. Wellard highlights the social processes which impact upon individual constructions and formulations of masculine identity and reviews these in relation to broader debates on gender, embodiment and sporting participation. This book contributes not only to the academic fields of sport and gender, but also to the efforts to confront continued forms of 'accepted' gender discrimination.

The papers in this collection consider how the study of masculinities in sport can be integrated with critical feminist studies, how to deal with the tendency to over-emphasize negative outcomes and the increasing trend to violence in sport.

Based on interviews with a diverse group of former high school, college, and professional athletes, Power at Play examines the important role sports play in defining masculinity for American men.

The reader, whether a professional health care worker, researcher, clinician, or concerned individual, will obtain a clearer perspective on the connections between men′s health and gender, along with a broader conceptualization of the experiences of men in contemporary society. --Choice Men′s Health and Illness contextualizes men′s health issues within the broader theoretical framework of the new men′s studies. This framework focuses on the profound influence of gender on social life and individual experience. The editors and chapter contributors of this groundbreaking volume argue that gender is a key factor for understanding the patterns of men′s health risks, the ways men perceive and use their bodies, and men′s psychological adjustment to illness itself. Part I introduces readers to men′s studies perspectives and explains their relevance for understanding men′s health. Part II explores the linkages between traditional gender roles, men′s health, and larger structural and cultural contexts, and Part III examines the implications of multiple masculinities for health issues. The scope of this volume is both multidisciplinary and international. The authors use quantitative and qualitative research methodologies which provide a well-rounded analysis of the subject matter. Taken collectively, the contributions to Men′s Health and Illness reflect current efforts by men′s studies practitioners to develop theoretical explanations of men′s lives that also refer to the influences of class, race, ethnicity, sexual preference, and age. This collaborative effort in presenting research and theories is so significant that it should become part of the literature studied by advocates of women′s studies and men′s studies. The reader, whether professional healthcare worker, researcher, clinician, or concerned individual will obtain a clearer perspective on the connections between men′s health and gender, along with a broader conceptualization of the experiences of men in contemporary society. Upper-division undergraduate through professional." --Choice

This groundbreaking work explores masculinity and the body within sports. Through participant observations, sporting life-history interviews, and research with children, Wellard highlights the social processes which impact upon individual constructions and formulations of masculine identity and reviews these in relation to broader debates on gender, embodiment and sporting participation.

Though an integral element of sport sociology, the study of masculinities in sport has been largely confined to Western sports such as American football. This book provides a more expanded view, offering tantalising insights into sport and manliness from culturally and geographically distinct perspectives. Editors Jorge Knijnik and Daryl Adair, along with a group of international researchers, articulate how various types of masculinities can be played out in different sports by drawing from personal experiences of athletes, investigating the cultural -- and even global -- impact of male achievements in sport, and comparing men's experiences in sport with women's. While maintaining the body's pivotal role in the social construction of gender, Embodied Masculinities provides the sport sociological literature with an innovative and truly global perspective on what it means to "be a man", whether on the field, on the court, or in the saddle.

As sport has grown, progressively replacing religion, in its power to excite passion, provide emotional escape, offer fraternal (and increasingly sororital) bonding, it has come to loom larger and larger in the lives of Europeans and others. It has become an inescapable reality linking public environment with intimate experience and thus offers the historian an opportunity to inspect and attempt to grasp all the dimensions of the recent past and their relative share in individual and collective experience. This collection considers the evolution of modern sport in Europe and examines its role in shaping masculine identity.

Over the past two decades there has been a rapid transformation of masculinities in the West, largely facilitated by a decline in cultural homophobia. The significant changes in the expression of masculinity, particularly among younger generations of men, have been particularly evident in men’s team sports, which have become an increasingly diverse and inclusive culture. Drawing upon work from a wide range of established and emerging international scholars, this handbook provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary analysis of the contemporary relationship between masculinity and sport. It covers a range of areas including history, media, gender, sexuality, race, violence, and fandom, considering how they impact a range of different sports across the world. Students and scholars across many disciplines will find the unparalleled overview provided by these specially commissioned chapters an invaluable resource.

This important new book brings together gender studies and sexuality studies to provide original and critical insights into processes of identity formation in a wide range of sport-related contexts. The authors draw on contemporary debates concerning gender and identity from a range of disciplines including sociology, social and cultural geography, media studies and management studies, to address key issues in masculinity, femininity and sexuality: Part 1: Representing masculinities in sport analyses media representations of men’s sports, exploring the variety and complexity of concepts of masculinity. Part 2: Transgressing femininities in sport makes use of case studies to examine the experiences of women in male-dominated sporting arenas. Part 3: Performing sexualities in sport analyses the role of queer theory in sport studies, explores experiences of and responses to homophobia in sport, and examines the significance of the Gay Games. This book will be of particular interest to students and academics working in sport studies, leisure studies, gender studies, queer and sexuality studies, social and cultural geography, and sociology.

This is a book about boys’ bodies, masculinities, and the ways in which boys navigate their lives from early childhood through to the beginning of adolescence. Drummond focuses on sport, health and physical activity, and adds context to the history of male bodies, the social construction of masculinity and the role of sport as a potential rite of passage for young males. Using rich descriptive interview data with 33 boys from the ages of 5 to 13, collected over an 8- year period, Boys’ Bodies identifies important issues including the significance of muscularity and strength as signifiers of masculinity and the need for boys to be involved in “blood sports” as well as “beat girls” in sporting competitions. The meaning of health and the perception of boys’ changing bodies over time are central to the discussion. The book will appeal to researchers, teachers, practitioners, policy makers and parents.