British Sociological Association Annual Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland. 'Making sense of the body'. April 6-7th, 1998

Lucy Baxter & Lesley Fishwick - Essential differences: Gendered identities in sports organisations

Diana Summers - 'Play up, play up and play the game': The impact of nineteenth century discourses in public school games on sexual abuse in contemporary sport

Prof. Joseph Maguire & Stephanie Roberts - Less weight, more gain?: Pain/injury/diet issues in elite British female gymnastics

Prof. Edward Albert - Constructing physical injury as routine in the sport of cycling

Jenny Ryan - Muscling in : Gender and space in weight training culture

Greg Smith - Public Harassment and runners: The mutual implicativeness of techniques of neutralisation and techniques of body management.

John Horne - Theorising sport, active leisure and the regulation of bodies in Japan.

Kathleen Armour & Robyn Jones - Body-status in education: Challenging the discourse of the intellectual.

David McCarthy, Robyn Jones & Kathy Armour - Constructing images and interpreting realities : The case of the black soccer player on television

Be what you wanna be: A sense of identity down at the local gym

Lesley Fishwick, University of Northumbria, England

In recent years the body has been the site for much debate as arm-chair theorists boxed keep fit activities into the mould of conforming to norms of appearances associated with specific forms of masculinity. Such commentaries paint a picture of men and women who attend health clubs as passive dupes who are merely pawns in the commercialised and glamorised world of health-conscious nineties. An on-going ethnographic study on the social construction of the body challenges such notions of passivity. The empirical data do not match the theoretical images of dissatisfied women striving for the unobtainable size 8 or straining men struggling to achieve a GQ physique. Observations and interviews during an 18 month study at the local gym reveal a marked distinction between the marketing discourses of the fitness industry and the actual day-to-day experiences of gym clientele. There are men and women of all ages, body types and social locations at the gym broadening their experiences of their bodies and themselves. There is much more empirical evidence of active agents who are able to make sense of their participation in the gym. Recurring themes include setting priorities, empowering in terms of 'having a say', developing a sense of identity and for some restoring a sense of self-worth. The present paper explores the apparent ambiguities between theory and practice in terms of the body and the different subjectivites down at the local health club.

Essential differences: Gendered identities in sports organisations

Lucy Baxter & Lesley Fishwick, University of Northumbria, England

Popular sport culture in today's society offers gendered physical bodies as celebrated images of difference between men and women. Physical awareness of the body is a central component of sporting participation where physical signifiers, such as distribution of muscle, contribute to clear notions of difference between male and female athletes. Within the workplace physical differences continue to be a rationale for sex segregation at work. Such divisions are not 'natural', women are not automatically drawn to cleaning nor men to leading. This study examines whether the hierarchical institution of organised sport effects mechanisms of gender distribution across sport employment. Two case studies (one in a public leisure centre and one in a private sports equipment manufacturer) were completed to compare and contrast the ways in which gendered identities are produced and maintained within sport organisations. The leisure centre has been subject to compulsive competitive tendering whilst the private company has undergone a management buyout. This has meant that both organisations have experienced major re-structuring the arrangement of work for both men and women. Fifty five interviews were conducted with a cross-section of staff in both organisations. Initial findings that meanings attached to the biological body underpin staffs' perception of ability. Connell's (1987, 1995) work is used as a framework to analyse the daily practices and processes constructed around simple dichotomies of difference such as 'man equals strong so women equal weak'.

'Play up, play up and play the game': The impact of nineteenth century discourses in public school games on sexual abuse in contemporary sport.

Diana Summers, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, England

The body has increasingly come to be seen as a focus for sociological inquiry in its own right; as the place of interaction between the social and the self, where collective values are mediated and expressed by the subject. The body therefore, becomes the visual expression of compliance or resistance by the individual of collective values. Foucauldian conceptions of discourse include notions of shared meanings, or cultural reference points, within organisations and structural constraints that form parameters for discourss. As such, meanings and structures interweave to create and mark boundaries for conceptions of reality. The body can be seen as the interface, the canvas, on which individuals interpret and re-interpret the meanings of the cultures in which they are engaged and through which individual identity if re-cast and re0invented. Gender is one aspect of identity fashioned within and through organisational disciplinary techniques and discourses and expressed through embodiment. Cultural lexicons regarding the body, sexuality and identity have increasingly come to be affected by sport, an area explicitly gendered through organisation. This paper examines gendering and sexuality in seven contemporary sports. This is explored through an examination of the beginnings of modern organised sport, in the discourses of muscular Christianity in nineteenth century public schools and their effect on issues of sexuality and gendering, and the transformation of those discourses within contemporary sport. It is suggested these discourses are part of a culture of abuse that legitimises aggresive, heterosexual sexuality and which obscure sexual violence and exploitation against women and children and other less dominant sexualities.

Less weight, more gain?: Pain/injury/diet issues in elite British female gymnastics

Prof. Joseph Maguire & Stephanie Roberts, Loughborough University, England

This paper examines questions of pain/injury/diet issues in elite British female gymnastics. Indepth interviews were conducted and a questionnaire administered with retired elite female gymnasts. The main themes explored focused on the extent and types of pain endured, injuries sustained and weight control strategies employed. Pain was viewed as an integral part of the sport; injuries (more or less serious) were viewed as inevitable and something to be overcome and endured; and the use of a variety of weight control strategies (some quite hazardous to health) were frequent and described in quite graphic detail.

Constructing physical injury as routine in the sport of cycling

Prof.Edward Albert, Hofstra University, USA

The sport of cycling carries with it significant risks of bodily injury. In the US alone, cycling is estimated to be related to 900 deaths, 20,000 hospital admissions and 580,000 emergency room visits in 1996. This research began by asking how, given the objective risks participants confront, do cyclists deal with the danger. Using data gathered from interviews with riders who defined themselves as serious recreational or racing cyclists, extensive participant observation, personal accounts of cycling accidents posted on several Internet web sites, and content analysis of accident related items found in US cycling publications, riders were observed to engage in patterns of talk and behaviour that functioned to reaffirm what were seen to be central subcultural values related to the primacy of participation regardless of the risks, and to its correlate embodiement in the expression of a desire to return to participation following injury. Observed to specifically not attend to the degree to which risk and injury was an omnipresent feature of their talk, cyclists were found, nonetheless, to routinely engage in practices which served to minimise their actual exposure to risk-filled situations, defuse the perceived threat posed by close calls and accidents by treating them ironically and embedding them as expected and ongoing features of subcultural interactions, and treat the actual occurence and results of cycling crashes as normally expected signs of membership that, over time, are routinely used to chronicle one's career in sport.

Muscling in : Gender and space in weight training culture

Jenny Ryan, Manchester Metropolitan University, England

"I would like to look toned and sleek but am afraid of ending up looking like a body builder. Will this happen? I am 23, female and otherwise in good physical shape". (reader's letter to Style Magazine, Sunday Times 24/8/97)

The desire to sculpt the body without 'masculinising' it mirrors the ways in which the female musculature, and the exercises regimes which produce it, have been constructed within the spaces of fitness culture. Spaces can be conceptualised in terms of the social/physical spaces of the gym, the discursive spaces of fitness magazines and of fitness talk in everyday settings. The paper focuses upon ways in which the bodies as social discursive objects can be read in terms of the inscription of masculinity and femininity through the spaces of commodified fitness culture. At the same time, it emphasises that a Foucaldian analysis of the production of 'docile' bodies is sufficent to explore the potential that these spaces can afford for resistance and transgression. Following Elizabeth Grosz in pursuing questions of embodiment from both 'the outside in' and 'the inside out', the paper discusses the significance for both women and men of the commodification and heightened cultural centrality of weight training practices. It argues that the choice is not between seeing these practices in terms of either docility or empowerment, but of analysing the complex ways in which gender power is constructed and negotiated through the 'muscling' in of women into the weight training culture, and how, in the process, the spaces of this culture are transformed.

Public Harassment and runners: The mutual implicativeness of techniques of neutralisation and techniques of body management.

Based on data drawn from interviews with adult runners, observation and participation, this paper examines dimensions of the 'public harassment' (Gardner, 1995) of those who exercise in parks, on streets and other places where citizens are free to offer gratuitous evaluative commentary to passers-by. The paper identifies some of the significant gradients of discourtesy accorded to runners and considers the methods or techniques used to deal with the incivilities that are routinely encountered. It is suggested that these methods involve matters of mind (techniques of neutralisation [Matza, 1964] as well as body (techniques of body management [Mauss, 1979]). The intricate interweaving of these techniques permits a range of public harassment's to be readily handled and underlines one important aspect of the achieved status of the identities of those who succeed in exercising in public.

Theorising sport, active leisure and the regulation of bodies in Japan.

The paper will comprise three sections. The first section will make some theoretical comments on the development of a sociology of the body in Western sociology in the past 15 years. Bryan Turner's 'The Body and Society' (1984; 1996) and 'Regulating Bodies' (1992), Chris Shilling's 'The Body and Social Theory' (1993) and A. Giddens' 'Modernity and Self-Identity' (1991) will be considered as exemplary texts. Consideration will be given to the applicability of these theories to social formations such as Japan. The second section will briefly consider the growth of modern sport and leisure activities in Japan since the 1880s. Particular emphasis will be placed on the use that the Japanese state and business have made of sport and leisure, as a tool of internal regulation (especially through the school system) as a mechanism for gaining international recognition (especially through the hosting of global sports events and festivals) and, particularly since the 1960s, as a focal point for generating consumption. The importance of the mass media - both broadcast and print - for shaping conceptions of the 'ideal body' and for the spread of contemporary sports and leisure culture more generally in Japan will be assessed in the third and final section.

Body-status in education: Challenging the discourse of the intellectual.

Kathleen Armour & Robyn Jones, Brunel University, England

This paper analyses the status of the body within education, drawing upon international research which suggests that physical education and sport face intractable status problems in schools (Paul, 1996; Moreira, Sparkes & Fox, 1995; Stroot, Collier, O'Sullivan & England, 1994). As a practical, body-based subject, physical education is a casualty of the powerful discourse-of-the-intellectual which pervades education. Drawing upon a crude version of Cartesian dualism, the intellectual discourse privileges mind over body; theory over practice. In such a dialectic, both physical education and sport are firmly linked to the low-status body. In the case of physical education, its very name seems to mark it out as an educational fraud.

In order to counter its low status in schools, physical education has sought to gain acceptance within the intellectual discourse by highlighting its links to the mind. Manifestations of this include the separation of physical education and sport, the expansion of examinations, and claims for a unique role in pupils' social and moral education. Yet, the low-status of physical education endures. This paper argues for a challenge to the intellectual discourse and a reassessment of body-status in education. A suggestion is made that both physical education and sport should be reconceptualised within an holistic discourse of education which demonstrably values the 'whole child'.

Constructing images and interpreting realities : The case of the black soccer player on television

David McCarthy, Robyn Jones & Kathy Armour, Brunel University, England

Television, like any other medium of communication, stands between its audience and the event it portrays. Through its interpretation of events and subsequent creation of social reality, mediated sport is thus often seen to be presented within certain ideological discourses which reflect existing power structures. The aim of the study was to investigate this phenomenon through an analysis of the images constructed of the black soccer player by television commentators. The methodology employed was two fold. Firstly, using verbal content analysis (Sabo et al., 1996), 100 hours of football footage was scrutinised, with the descriptors used to portray both black and white players being coded appropriately. The descriptive categories comprised of (a) players and their performance, (b) the physical characteristics of players, and (c) the psychological characteristics of players. Through the subsequent use of focus group methodology (Wilson & Sparkes, 1996), the influence of the images portrayed on differing racial groups was also examined. Analysis of results centered on two principal issues. Firstly, the emphasis placed upon the 'physicality' of the black athlete within the data is discussed in relation to existing theory. Secondly, the meanings derived by differing racial groups in constructing identities from the televised images consumed, are investigated in terms of existing social power relations.