Among widening social anxieties about practices and performances of contemporary masculinity are questions about the place of hyper-masculine (contact) sports, such as games of football. Foremost are concerns about some of the values and attitudes that appear to circulate within such contexts. With their historical leaning towards character…

Our paper illustrates how males of Chinese descent in British Columbia (BC) have historically been victims of overt and subtle forms of discrimination, and describes how racism is and was integrally linked to notions of class, gender and the body. Highlighted in our historical overview are issues around race and masculinity for Chinese males as…

Drawing on data generated by a two-year ethnographic study in a high security Spanish prison, this article explores the multiple meanings given to the social practices of sport and physical activity. We provide details of the following key themes that emerged from the analysis: (a) escaping time; (b) perceived therapeutic benefits; (c) social…

Why would boys want to dance? Why would anyone want to dance? The argument prosecuted in this paper is that dance educators have tended to see dance as a self-evidently good thing with self-evident benefits for children who learn to dance. In other words, dance educators tend to concern themselves with why students should dance rather than why…

The article uses an episode from the television series "The Sopranos" to illustrate how embodied experiences of sporting practices such as high-school football involve both conscious and unconscious dynamics. It outlines how cultural practices such as masculinist sport are psychically incorporated into the body through the process of…

This article concerns the central role of organised sport in the construction of masculinity amongst Year 6 boys (10 to 11-year-olds) at an English independent (fee-paying) junior school. The data come from an ethnographic study of one year's duration that investigated constructions of masculinity among two classes. The formal school culture…

The objective of this study was to analyse sex stereotypes in Spanish high-school students. Three hundred boys and girls from 12 to 17 years old participated in this study by completing a 41-item survey about their preferences for different body types. The survey was applied using a set of visual triggers. Analysis of data showed that body…

This article explores a number of insights generated from a three-year ethnographic study of one university setting in England in which a "jock culture" is seen to dominate a student campus. Drawing on core concepts from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of culture, it illustrates the unique function of the body in sustaining jock culture…

This article focuses on the involvement of boys and girls in playground football. It is based on research conducted with 10- to 11-year-old pupils at two state primary schools in London. Boys and girls were found to draw on gender constructs that impacted variously on their involvement in playground football. The performance of masculinity through…

Although there is much debate about the positive effects of active sporting pursuits for the young, in reality many young people are still excluded or deterred from taking part as much as they would like. There are still particular bodily performances which are considered more suitable for taking part in mainstream sport, and invariably one of the…

Writings on "the female" under the Third Republic in France provide evidence of the profound changes taking place in the social representation of femininity and masculinity during the period. They correspond to dramatic changes in the socio-economic context in parallel with those in the scientific models being used to describe human…