‘Being in your body’ and ‘being in the moment’: the dancing body-subject and inhabited transcendence

Sports studies is currently dominated by the intellectualist approach to understanding skill and expertise, meaning that questions about the phenomenological nature of skilled performance in sport have generally been overshadowed by the emphasis on the cognitive. By contrast, this article responds to calls for a phenomenology of sporting embodiment by opening up a philosophical exploration of the nature of athletic being-in-the-world. In particular, the paper explores the conceptualisation of immanence and transcendence in relation to the embodied practice of dance, engaging with Merleau-Ponty’s important insight that the body can be a source of transcendence. I also draw on data from in-depth qualitative interviews with professional contemporary dancers to explore dancers’ concepts of ‘being in your body’ and ‘being in the moment’, and to suggest that during the actual embodied practice of dance, dancers do not experience transcendence and immanence as they are conceptualised in philosophy. Rather, I argue, dancers experience a third mode of being that is somehow in-between these two binary terms. I have called this ‘inhabited transcendence’.     

Sport and the New Culture of the ‘Second Golden Age’: Amsterdam’s Sporting Entrepreneurs in the 1880s and 1890s

Abstract

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Amsterdam underwent important changes in its economic, social, and cultural life as the city entered what is often referred to as its ‘Second Golden Age’. Old elites gave way to new and a new more entrepreneurial culture emerged focused on mass, visible, and consumable activities, including sport, in which the body played a central role. This was especially apparent from the late 1870s and 1880s when spatial changes within the city helped to ensure that sport was increasingly the location for new kinds of associational activity and the development of new products, all underpinned by the potential for profit. Entrepreneurs such as Perry & Co., De Gruyter, and the Amsterdamsche Sport-Club were able to effect strategic combinations between the new body culture and consumerism, producing a range of new products and exploiting new technologies to create new markets. In seizing these opportunities, Amsterdam's entrepreneurs were also reproducing the concept of the trainable, measurable, and consumable body.     

Sex,sport and justice: reframing the ‘who’ of citizenship and the ‘what’ of justice in European and UK sport policy

Universalist claims are often made about sport which is, as a consequence, increasingly written into national and international policy as an entitlement of citizenship or even human right. Further, in most countries physical education (PE) is a compulsory component of children's education, and sport is seen as central to this. Consequently, in the interests of justice sport must aspire to be egalitarian, that is, relevant to and meaningful for boys and men, and girls and women. In this context three fundamental questions are asked in relation to sport: (1) Do all citizens want to participate? (2) Who counts as a citizen? and (3) What are justice and equality? Feminist political and citizenship theory particularly the work of Pateman, Lister and Fraser is used to explore these questions and interrogate the ‘who’ of citizenship and the ‘what’ of justice in relation to framing sport policy in Europe and the UK. It is argued that notwithstanding the extensive use of the Council of Europe definition of sport,¹1. ‘“Sport” means all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels' (CE, 1992 CE. (1992/2001). European sports charter. Retrieved from https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?Ref=Rec(92)13&;Sector=secCM&;Language=lanEnglish&;Ver=rev&;BackColorInternet=9999CC&;BackColorIntranet=FFBB55&;BackColorLogged=FFAC75 [Google Scholar]–2001 CE. (1992/2001). European sports charter. Retrieved from https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?Ref=Rec(92)13&;Sector=secCM&;Language=lanEnglish&;Ver=rev&;BackColorInternet=9999CC&;BackColorIntranet=FFBB55&;BackColorLogged=FFAC75 [Google Scholar]). and despite or even because of the widespread adoption of the language of gender equality and gender mainstreaming, although formal sport citizenship rights might be accorded to all individuals and regarded as gender neutral, this masks a discourse of androcentric sport citizenship. This has captured European and UK sport policy and provision and is hindering further progress towards gender justice in sport and therefore PE. Given the universal and compulsory aspirations of sport particularly within PE, gender justice should be conceptualised not only as cultural recognition, political representation and economic redistribution within the normalised frame of competitive performance sport or ‘sport for sports sake’; but also as a critical meta-political remapping and reframing of sport as sport and physical recreation or ‘sport for all’.     

The ‘origins of football debate’ and the early development of the game in Nottinghamshire

This article continues the debate on the origins of football. It contains new data which note early football activity and initial club formation in Nottinghamshire. The authors reach the conclusion that former public schoolboys were prominent in the development of football in that particular area and see this as further confirmation of their hypothesis that many of these individuals should be seen as important in the establishment of football as a modern sport.     

Macho men in a girls’ game: masculinities and the Otago men’s netball team

This article examines the experiences of seven men who play for the Otago men’s netball team (in Dunedin, New Zealand). Despite playing a sport that was initially invented as women’s basketball and in an association that has historically had a strong gay and trans* presence, they subscribe to rather hegemonic definitions of masculinity. All the players are both heterosexual and consider homosexuality incompatible with hegemonic masculinity. However, they also characterize homophobia as vulnerability and therefore a failure of masculine power. This suggests that there may be some shifts in definitions of hegemonic masculinity within this context. The traditional southern ‘hard man’ is therefore relegated to second-tier status: it is the man who tells his rugby mates that he likes netball that must ‘have a bit of bloody strength’.     

‘Supporters,not consumers.’ Grassroots supporters’ culture and sports entertainment in the US

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research with supporters’ groups in the US, this article explores how Ultra and other global models of fandom are being appropriated by soccer fans in the US and Canada. I argue that these fans enact more than stylistic expressions of fandom but instead contest the boundaries of locally accepted models fandom. Most notably, organized soccer supporters in the US reject the notion of being simply consumers of sports entertainment and see themselves instead as stakeholders in the teams they follow and as de facto constituents that the clubs need to be accountable to. At the same time, the global and local organizational structures and histories of professional soccer confront these fans with specific restrictions in how they are able to articulate their interest as fans.     

Kinematic and kinetic analysis of the goalkeeper’s diving save in football

Kinetics and full body kinematics were measured in ten elite goalkeepers diving to save high and low balls at both sides of the goal, aiming to investigate their starting position, linear and angular momentum, and legs' contribution to end-performance. Our results showed that goalkeepers adopted a starting position with a stance width of 33 ± 1% of leg length, knee flexion angle of 62 ± 18° and hip flexion angle of 63 ± 18°. The contralateral leg contributed more than the ipsilateral leg to COM velocity (p < 0.01), both for the horizontal (2.7 ± 0.1 m·s^?1 versus 1.2 ± 0.1 m·s^?1) and for the vertical component (3.1 ± 0.3 m·s^?1 versus 0.4 ± 0.2 m·s^?1). Peak horizontal and peak angular momenta were significantly larger (p < 0.01) for low dives than for high dives with a mean difference of 55 kg·m·s^?1 and 9 kg·m²·s^?1, respectively. In addition, peak vertical momentum was significantly larger (p < 0.01) for high dives with a mean difference between dive heights of 113 kg·m·s^?1. Coaches need to highlight horizontal lateral skills and exercises (e.g. sideward push-off, sideward jumps), with emphasis on pushing-off with the contralateral leg, when training and assessing goalkeeper’s physical performance.     

The Alpine Club of Canada’s ‘Mountain Heritage’: Adventure and Advocacy in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

Abstract

Founded in 1906, the Alpine Club of Canada (ACC) was a key proponent of mountain adventure and advocacy. This paper examines the club’s annual camps, physical culture, and conservation involvement as indicators to understand the integration of mountaineering and parks in Canada in the twentieth century. It surveys the club’s origins and highlights its shifting agendas. The ACC mountaineering camps and classic alpine ascents invented a tradition for middle-class sport and tourism in mountain parks, particularly in the Rockies and Columbia Mountains. The club advocated for climbers but also for conservation in wild places. It participated in contested debates on parks and resource use as a stakeholder on public lands. The paper argues the ACC was a leading proponent of mountain pursuits, conservation, and tourism in a complex political ecology of engaged land use for sport and recreation intertwined with physical spaces and the social production of mountain parks in Canada. Adventure and advocacy were its legacy as well as education on the land. Based on archives, alpine journals, and other published sources, the paper illustrates an integration of people and places in landscapes of sport as well as contemporary mountain adventure, tourism, and conservation issues in Canada and internationally.     

The inextricable link between sport and the press in the Victorian era: the example of the ‘Sentinel Cup’

During the Victorian era sport underwent what has been described by academics as a ‘revolution’. What began the nineteenth century as largely informal, recreational pastimes with few written rules and a small commercial fringe was transformed into a codified, commercialised, mass-spectator entertainment industry. During this period an inextricable link developed between sport and the press and both became mutually beneficial; sport provided a continuous conveyor belt of content for journalists to report whilst newspapers provided enhanced publicity and exposure in return. However, the press were not merely commentators and observers of sport and several publications took a more central role in its development and organisation. This is exemplified by the Staffordshire Sentinel, a regional newspaper that circulated across North Staffordshire and South Cheshire, which established the self-titled ‘Sentinel Cup’ in 1892. The competition was officially created to develop junior association football in the region, although key stakeholders also had other alternative motives, and it has been contested for 125 consecutive years, making it the longest continuous football cup in Britain. This paper uses the ‘Sentinel Cup’ as an exemplar of how the press became increasingly involved in sport during the Victorian era and explores the competition’s inauguration.     

‘Notwithstanding the Discomfort Involved’: Fordson's Cup Win in 1926 and How ‘the Old Contemptible’ Were Represented in Ireland's Public Sphere During the 1920s

In the new Irish Free State, soccer, a game that had previously been popular mainly in the metropolitan centres of Dublin and Belfast, was growing rapidly in the southern province of Munster. Simultaneously, there was a push among the grass roots of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) to rid itself of the ban on participation in foreign games. Many writing in columns and letters pages of the press at the time felt that this push within the GAA to remove the ban was a sign of a complacency that came from the granting of independence. Throughout the remainder of the decade a continuous debate surrounding Irish national identity and the place of soccer in the new state was played out in the national, provincial and radical presses. All the while, the popularity of soccer in Munster continued apace, and the victory of Fordson FC in the Football Association of the Irish Free State (FAIFS) Senior Challenge Cup final of 1926 cemented the popularity of both that club and the game in Cork for the period. By examining this particular victory and setting it against the wider backdrop of the debate on soccer, it is my contention that it displays strongly the gap between the Irish people's conception of their own sense of ‘Irishness’ and the Irish identity being promoted by many journalists, GAA and Gaelic League enthusiasts and many of the new political élite.     

The influence of the hand’s acceleration and the relative contribution of drag and lift forces in front crawl swimming

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of the hand’s acceleration on the propulsive forces and the relative contribution of the drag and lift on their resultant force in the separate phases of the front crawl underwater arm stroke. Ten female swimmers swam one trial of all-out 25-m front crawl. The underwater motion of each swimmer’s right hand was recorded using four camcorders and four periscope systems. Anatomical landmarks were digitised, and the propulsive forces generated by the swimmer’s hand were estimated from the kinematic data in conjunction with hydrodynamic coefficients. When the hand’s acceleration was taken into account, the magnitude of the propulsive forces was greater, with the exception of the mean drag force during the final part of the underwater arm stroke. The mean drag force was greater than the mean lift force in the middle part, while the mean lift force was greater than the mean drag force in the final part of the underwater arm stroke. Thus, swimmers should accelerate their hands from the beginning of their backward motion, press the water with large pitch angles during the middle part and sweep with small pitch angles during the final part of their underwater arm stroke.     

Clustering performances in the NBA according to players’ anthropometric attributes and playing experience

The aim of this study was: (i) to group basketball players into similar clusters based on a combination of anthropometric characteristics and playing experience; and (ii) explore the distribution of players (included starters and non-starters) from different levels of teams within the obtained clusters. The game-related statistics from 699 regular season balanced games were analyzed using a two-step cluster model and a discriminant analysis. The clustering process allowed identifying five different player profiles: Top height and weight (HW) with low experience, TopHW-LowE; Middle HW with middle experience, MiddleHW-MiddleE; Middle HW with top experience, MiddleHW-TopE; Low HW with low experience, LowHW-LowE; Low HW with middle experience, LowHW-MiddleE. Discriminant analysis showed that TopHW-LowE group was highlighted by two-point field goals made and missed, offensive and defensive rebounds, blocks, and personal fouls; whereas the LowHW-LowE group made fewest passes and touches. The players from weaker teams were mostly distributed in LowHW-LowE group, whereas players from stronger teams were mainly grouped in LowHW-MiddleE group; and players that participated in the finals were allocated in the MiddleHW-MiddleE group. These results provide alternative references for basketball staff concerning the process of evaluating performance.     

Requiem for the College Women’s Gymnasium: Disciplining the Female Body in Educational and Architectural Space

Abstract

The women’s college gymnasium’s geographical, architectural and spatializing arrangements have historically been important ingredients in the social constitution of the gendered body. It has provided a critical stage on which struggles within the profession of physical education and its relation to competitive sport have been enacted both within its own boundaries and at the level of the broader campus and its shifting priorities. This paper explores the rise and demise of women’s gymnasia on North American college campuses from the late nineteenth to the latter decades of the twentieth century to illuminate how the shifting academic landscape has reflected changing attitudes towards the perceived needs of female students and the nature of their training in physical education and movement sciences. The analysis focuses upon two women’s colleges in the United States remarkable for their architectural splendour and programme integrity: the University of California at Berkeley’s Phoebe Apperson Hearst Memorial Gymnasium for Women and the Anna Hiss Gymnasium at the University of Texas, Austin. It laments their gradual demise as academic institutions have increasingly shifted their priorities and the world of the female gymnasium has retracted to be reinserted into college campuses’ twenty-first century vision for student recreation and competitive sport.     

Ancient Greek ‘Amateurism’, the NCAA and the Courts

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has recently been the target of many lawsuits challenging its definition and regulation of amateurism, which it holds as providing unique moral and social benefits for both its scholar-athletes and society at large. This conception of amateurism is inherited from nineteenth-century models of ancient Greek athletics via figures such as John Mahaffy and E.N. Gardiner. This influence is evident in legal cases involving the NCAA or athletics in general, and hence amateurism is cited by judges and others as a long-standing Western cultural tradition which encourages moral and social development. This is problematic, however, as not only is it historically questionable, but also the citation of cultural heritage in legal dicta has seen legal criticism or reversal.     

For a ‘United’ Kingdom and a ‘Greater’ Britain: the British Olympic Association and the limitations and contestations of ‘Britishness’

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Home-Nations of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales joined forces in competing in the Olympic Games under the banner of ‘Great Britain’ (or deviations thereof). The Olympics served as an important symbolic site for fostering and promoting a broader ‘British’ national identity. In practice, however, the prevalence and persistence of competing national identities and allegiances roiled early attempts to create a unified British Olympic team. These counter-prevailing forces of nationalism further served to undermine the British Olympic Association's ambitious attempt to unite the British Empire in a ‘Greater Britain’ team for the 1916 Berlin Olympic Games. As this work will reveal, ‘Britishness’ was a layered, contested and racially homogenous term that was interpreted and applied differently across various parts of the British Isles and its Empire.     

Cuba’s Challenges Hosting the 1991 Pan-American Games and the Spectacle of the Revolution’s ‘Soft Power’

Abstract

This paper examines the confluence of global, regional, and national politics in the lead up to the 1991 Pan-American Games hosted by Cuba. Cuba’s contentious selection as host was wholly underpinned by the international politics of the time. Once selected, the preparations for the Games in Havana were surrounded by an unprecedented domestic economic crisis fueled by shifts in global politics. This paper analyzes how international politics informed the hosting of the 1991 Pan-American Games, and shaped the political challenge the Cuban government faced in hosting such an event. The Revolution’s use of sport domestically and internationally came to the forefront in its efforts as host and the results of those efforts proved to be providential given the emerging political economic contexts during and in the ensuing years after the Games.     

Purism and the category of ‘the aesthetic’: the drama argument

This paper examines one component of Stephen Mumford’s case for the claim that we should regard sport, art and the aesthetic as more closely connected than has tended to be the case, under the influence of the work of David Best, in recent years. Mumford’s rejection of what I call ‘the drama argument’ is examined in detail and it is argued that all but one element of his case fails to do the job he envisages.     

‘Intensive mothering’ in the early years: the cultivation and consolidation of (physical) capital

Growing pressure on parents to equip their children with the skills required for future success, coupled with an increased focus on providing quality learning experiences in the early years, has contributed to an upsurge in the enrolment of young children in formal (often privatised) activities. Moreover, in response to growing societal concerns over the perceived risks of obesity and sedentary lifestyles, parents are often acutely aware of the importance of providing plentiful physical activity opportunities for their children within this enrichment context. In this paper, the tendency for parents to provide copious developmental opportunities is referred to as ‘intensive mothering’ and is explored through the theoretical lens of Bourdieu, specifically his concepts of habitus and capital. This paper reports on a small-scale study undertaken within the UK, which sought to explore the impact of social class on access to early years' provision as well as parental attitudes towards physical activity and the provision of preschool physical development opportunities. Data were generated through a questionnaire (disseminated via early years settings) as well as three in-depth interviews with ‘middle-class’ parents and were analysed to draw out key themes relating to the cultivation and consolidation of (physical) capital. The data indicate that many parents perceive a ‘responsibility’ to aid their children's physical development and demonstrate a willingness to facilitate the acquisition of physical capital via the provision of play equipment, privatised classes and additional (informal) physical activity opportunities. Moreover, they suggest that ‘middle-class’ parents, in particular, articulate the need to invest heavily in enrichment activities, influenced by their own experiences, tastes and values. It is argued that ‘intensive mothering’ is illustrative of the reproduction of a class-based habitus and can be perceived as an attempt to maintain or improve social position through the cultivation, consolidation and, ultimately, conversion, of appropriate capital.     

Understanding the increase in parents’ involvement in organized youth sports

As part of an ethnographic study on young people and learning (the knowledge in motion across contexts of learning project, set in Norway), we interviewed a diverse sample of parents of young teenagers, many of whom were active in organized sports. The parents described their level of involvement in sport in a way that contrasted sharply to our own experiences participating in youth sports in the 1970s and 1980s. Back then most parents were absent from the sports fields. This new role of sports in the practice of parenthood is what we investigate in this study. The purpose is to further the understanding of the cultural processes that drive what we see as a marked generational change in the relationship between organized sports and the practice of parenthood. In contrast to previous studies, we also focus on the relationship between generational change and classed patterns in parenting. Our data suggest that across social classes, parents see involvement in sports as normal, and as a way to connect to the child emotionally and to further the child's development. We interpret the significance of sports in the parent–child relationship as related both to the normalization of youth sports that the parents experienced when they grew up, and to the new cultural ideas of parenthood that they encounter as adults. We find that there are tensions embedded in this new form of parenthood that are particularly evident in what we call ‘deep involvement’, an intensified form of parental engagement with youth sports that is practiced primarily by fathers in the economic fraction of the middle class. We conclude that the new role of sport in the practice of parenthood is a classed as well as a generational phenomenon.