Physical Culture, Ethnography and the Body

The corporeal turn toward critical, empirically grounded studies of the body is transforming the way we research physical culture, most evidently in the study of sport. This book brings together original insights on contemporary physical culture from key figures working in a variety of disciplines, offering a wealth of different theoretical and philosophical ways of engaging with the body while never losing site of the material form of the research act itself. Contributors spanning the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, communications, and sport studies highlight conceptual, methodological, and empirical approaches to the body that include observant-participation, feminist ethnography, autoethnography, physical cultural studies, and phenomenology. They provide vivid case studies of embodied research on topics including basketball, boxing, cycling, dance, fashion modelling and virtual gaming. This international collection not only reflects on the most important recent developments in embodied research practices, but also looks forward to the continuing importance of the body as a focus for research and the possibilities this presents for studies of the active, moving body in physical culture and beyond. Physical Culture, Ethnography and the Body: Theory, method and praxis is fascinating reading for all those interested in physical cultural studies, the sociology of sport and leisure, physical education or the body.

Michael D. Giardina is an Associate Professor of Media, Politics, and Physical Culture in the Department of Sport Management at Florida State University, USA. He is the author or editor of 18 books, including Sport, Spectacle, and NASCAR Nation: Consumption and the Cultural Politics of Neoliberalism (with Joshua Newman), Sporting Pedagogies: Performing Culture and Identity in the Global Arena, and Qualitative Inquiry in Neoliberal Times (with Norman K. Denzin). He is Editor of the Sociology of Sport Journal, Special Issues Editor of Cultural Studies<=>Critical Methodologies, co-editor (with Brett Smith) of the Qualitative Research in Sport and Physical Activity book series (Routledge), and co-editor (with Norman K. Denzin) of the ICQI book series (Routledge) Michele K. Donnelly is an Assistant Professor in the School of Foundations, Leadership, and Administration at Kent State University, USA. Her research focuses on qualitative research methodologies, as well as sport policy and women onlyness in sport and physical culture. She is a member of the editorial board of the Sociology of Sport Journal and on the Board of Directors for the Women's Flat-Track Derby Association (WFTDA)

Section I: Theoretical Movements 1. Sporting embodiment: Sports studies and the (continuing) promise of phenomenology 2. Physical capital and situated action: A new direction for corporeal sociology 3. What is this 'physical' in physical cultural studies? 4. From embodiment to emplacement: Re-thinking competing bodies, senses, and spatialities Section II: Methodological Movements 5. Ethnography as precarious work 6. Feminist ethnography and physical culture: Towards reflexive, political, and collaborative methods 7. Habitus as topic and tool: Reflections on becoming a prizefighter 8. Moving in the margins: Active urban bodies and the politics of ethnography 9. The embodied experience: Dance ethnography and the dancing body Section III: Empirical Movements 10. Methods that move: Exploring young women's embodied experiences of femininity and exer-games 11. Research on the run: Moving methods and the charity 'thon' 12. Competing masculinities: South Asian American identity formation in Asian American basketball leagues 13. (Auto)ethnography and cycling