Physical Culture, Power, and the Body
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Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:37 25 September 2013 Physical Culture, Power, and the Body During the past decade, there has been an outpouring of books on ‘the body’ in society, but none has focused as specifically as this one on physical culture – that is, cultural practices such as sport and dance within which the moving physical body is central. The way in which bodies are emblematic of the social, mediate biological and social processes, are invested with power, and create social and cultural power are themes running throughout the book. It is intended to challenge old certainties about the body and physical culture and to investigate changing knowledge about the body and the ways in which it has been, and is, experienced, understood and transformed. Every essay in the collection throws light on how the body in physical culture is assigned meaning and influences identity. Throughout the book, questions are raised about the character of the body, spe- cifically the relations between the ‘natural’ body, the ‘constructed’ body and the ‘alien’ or ‘virtual’ body. The themes of the book are wide in scope, including: • physical culture and the fascist body • sport and the racialised body • sport, medicine, health and the culture of risk • the female Muslim sporting body, power, and politics • technological bodies and virtual women • experiencing the disabled sporting body • embodied exhibitions of striptease and sport • the social logic of sparring • sport, girls and the neoliberal body. Physical Culture, Power, and the Body aims to break down disciplinary boundaries in its theoretical approaches and its readership. The authors themselves come from different disciplinary backgrounds, demonstrating the widespread topicality of physical culture and the body. Their very varied contributions highlight the complexities, contradictions, and very indeterminacy of the body in physical Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:37 25 September 2013 culture. Jennifer Hargreaves is Visiting Professor of Sport and Gender Politics at Brighton University, UK. Patricia Vertinsky is Professor of Human Kinetics and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Routledge Critical Studies in Sport Series Editors: Jennifer Hargreaves and Ian McDonald University of Brighton The Routledge Critical Studies in Sport series aims to lead the way in developing the multi-disciplinary field of Sport Studies by producing books that are interrogative, interventionist and innovative. By providing theoretically sophisticated and empiric- ally grounded texts, the series will make sense of the changes and challenges facing sport globally. The series aspires to maintain the commitment and promise of the critical paradigm by contributing to a more inclusive and less exploitative culture of sport. Also available in this series: Understanding Lifestyle Sports Consumption, identity and difference Edited by Belinda Wheaton Why Sports Morally Matter William J Morgan Fastest, Highest, Strongest A critique of high-performance sport Rob Beamish and Ian Ritchie Sport, Sexualities and Queer/Theory Edited by Jayne Caudwell Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:37 25 September 2013 Physical Culture, Power, and the Body Edited by Jennifer Hargreaves and Patricia Vertinsky Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:37 25 September 2013 First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2007 selection and editorial matter, Jennifer Hargreaves and Patricia Vertinsky; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Physical culture, power, and the body / edited by Jennifer Hargreaves and Patricia Vertinsky. p. cm – (Routledge critical studies in sport) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Physical education and training—Social aspects. 2. Sports—Social aspects. 3. Body, Human—Social aspects. I. Hargreaves, Jennifer, 1937–II. Vertinsky, Patricia Anne, 1942– III. Series. GV342.27.H37 2006 306.4′83–dc22 2006015082 Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:37 25 September 2013 ISBN10: 0–415–36351–9 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–36352–7 (pbk) ISBN10: 0–203–01465–0 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–36351–8 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–36352–5 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–01465–3 (ebk) Contents List of illustrations vii Notes on contributors viii Acknowledgements xi Series editors’ preface xiii 1 Introduction 1 JENNIFER HARGREAVES AND PATRICIA VERTINSKY 2 Movement practices and fascist infections: from dance under the swastika to movement education in the British primary school 25 PATRICIA VERTINSKY 3 Political somatics: fascism, physical culture, and the sporting body 52 IAN McDONALD 4 Sport, exercise, and the female Muslim body: negotiating Islam, politics, and male power 74 JENNIFER HARGREAVES 5 Producing girls: Empire, sport, and the neoliberal body 101 LESLIE HEYWOOD 6 Entertaining femininities: the embodied exhibitions of striptease and sport, 1950–1975 121 BECKI L. ROSS Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:37 25 September 2013 7 The social logic of sparring: on the body as practical strategist 142 LOÏC WACQUANT 8 Disabled bodies and narrative time: men, sport, and spinal cord injury 158 ANDREW C. SPARKES AND BRETT SMITH vi Contents 9 ‘It’s not about health, it’s about performance’: sport medicine, health, and the culture of risk in Canadian sport 176 NANCY THEBERGE 10 Welcome to the ‘sportocracy’: ‘race’ and sport after innocence 195 GAMAL ABDEL-SHEHID 11 Race and athletics in the twenty-first century 208 JOHN HOBERMAN 12 Technologized bodies: virtual women and transformations in understandings of the body as natural 232 KATE O’RIORDAN Index 253 Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:37 25 September 2013 Illustrations 4.1 Rakia Al-Gassra from Bahrain in the 100-metre heats at the Athens Olympics, 2004 87 5.1 The GoGirlGo! homepage, www.gogirlgo.com 108 7.1 Busy Louie sparring with Ashante 145 12.1 ‘Digital beauties’, as dubbed by Wiedemann (2001) in a book of the same name, which catalogues such virtual women 236 12.2 Digital Beauties, book cover 2 237 Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:37 25 September 2013 Contributors Gamal Abdel-Shehid is Assistant Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University, Canada. His teaching and research interests include cultural studies of sport and leisure, popular culture in the black Diaspora, as well as queer and gender studies. He is the author of Who Da’ Man? Black Masculinities and Sporting Cultures. Jennifer Hargreaves is Visiting Professor of Sport and Gender Politics at the University of Brighton, in the UK. Among her many publications are the edited text, Sport, Culture and Ideology (1982); Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women’s Sports (1994), awarded the best sports sociology book of the year by the North American Society of Sports Sociology; and Heroines of Sport: the Politics of Difference and Iden- tity (2000). In 2006, she received the Max and Reet Howell Award from the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH). Jennifer is joint editor of the book series, Routledge Critical Studies in Sport and co-editor of this book Physical Culture, Power, and the Body. She has worked as a guest professor in Germany, Hong Kong and Japan, lectures in venues around the world, does editorial work for journals and publishers, and consultancy work for sport organisations and the media. Leslie Heywood is Professor of English and Sport Studies at State University of New York, Binghamton. She is the author of, among others, Built to Win: The Female Athlete as Cultural Icon, Dedication to Hunger: The Anorexic Aesthetic in Modern Culture and Bodymakers: A Cultural Anatomy of Women’s Bodybuilding, and the sports memoir, Pretty Good for a Girl. John Hoberman has been active in sports studies and sports journalism for thirty years. He is the author of Sport and Political Ideology (1984); The Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 05:37 25 September 2013 Olympic Crisis: Sport, Politics and the Moral Order (1986); Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport (1992); Dar- win’s Athletes: How Sport has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race (1997); and Testosterone Dreams: Rejuvenation, Aphrodisia, Doping (2005). He is Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas where he has taught courses on Race and Sport, and Race and Contributors ix Medicine. Since 2001, he has been a visiting researcher in doping studies at the University of Southern Denmark. Ian McDonald teaches sociology, politics and sport policy at the University of Brighton, UK. He has published widely on race and anti-racism in sport, the sporting body in India, and on the politics of sport policy. Ian is co-editor with Jennifer Hargreaves of the Routledge Critical Studies in Sport book series. Kate O’Riordan is on a research secondment at the Centre for the Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics, Lancaster University, for three years, to work on the Flagship Project, Media, Culture and Genomics. She is seconded from the University of Sussex, where she is a Lecturer in Media Studies.