1st Edition

Physical Culture, Power, and the Body

Edited By Patricia Vertinsky, Jennifer Hargreaves Copyright 2007
    278 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    280 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    During the past decade, there has been an outpouring of books on 'the body' in society, but none has focused as specifically on physical culture - that is, cultural practices such as sport and dance within which the moving physical body is central.

    Questions are raised about the character of the body, specifically the relation 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
    • 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 author’s muli-disciplinary backgrounds, demonstrate the widespread topicality of physical culture and the body.

    1. Introduction  2. Movement Practices and Fascist Infections: From Dance Under the Swastika to Movement Education in the British Primary School  3. Political Somatics: Fascism, Physical Culture and the Sporting Body  4. Sport, Exercise and the Female Muslim Body: Negotiating Islam, Politics, and Male Power  5. Producing Girls: Empire, Sport, and the Neoliberal Body  6. Entertaining Femininities: The Embodied Exhibitions of Striptease and Sport, 1950-1975  7. The Social Logic of Sparring  8. Disabled Bodies and Narrative Time: Men, Sport, and Spinal Cord Injury  9. 'It's Not About Health, It's About Performance': Sport Medicine, Health and the Culture of Risk in Canadian Sport  10. Welcome to the Sportocracy: 'Race' and Sport After Innocence  11. Race and Athletics in the 21st Century  12. Technologized Bodies: Virtual Women and Transformations in Understandings of the Body as Natural

    Biography

    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.