Suchergebnisse

Introduction --The strata : the formation of thought within a capitalist system -- The assemblage : sport, exercise and dance as cultural arrangements -- The rhizome : researching the physically active body from a Deleuzian perspective -- The body without organs : a purely intensive body -- Becoming : beyond identity politics -- Affect : understanding force -- Connecting : Deleuze on Foucault -- Topology of deterritorialization : Deleuzian approach to the moving body and social change.

The human body in motion is both a material body and a body inscribed with sociocultural meanings. The new materialist premise of examining phenomena, such as bodies in motion, as hybrids of matter and meaning now offers a pathway to seamlessly bring nature and culture together in a more unified research agenda. Barad's agentic realism, particularly, presents a promising option to analyze physically active bodies as socio-material practices through both natural science and social constructivist insights. This, however, requires rethinking the nature of natural and social scientific research to more fully comprehend the complexity of physical activity. To illustrate what such research might look like, I first present Barad's critiques of realist science and social constructivist representationalism to arrive at their suggestion of meeting the universe halfway, performatively, through a relational ontology of the production of material bodies. I conclude with my attempt to think with Barad's philosophical framework to consider how researchers of the moving human body may meet "halfway" to examine the materiality and mattering of the physically active body.

Employing a variety of theoretical approaches, feminist researchers have critiqued the fitness industry of its singular emphasis on the impossible, narrowly defined feminine body ideal that is likely to cause more mental (e.g., body dissatisfaction) and physical ill health (eating disorders, injuries) than improve fitness. With the focus on social construction of gendered identities, there has been less problematisation of the materiality of the fitness practices and their impact on the cultural production of the moving body. In this article, I adopt a Latourian approach to seek for a more complete account of the body in motion and how it matters in the contemporary world. A barre class as a popular group exercise class that combines ballet and exercise modalities offers a location for such an examination due to the centrality of a non-human object, the barre, that distinguishes it from other group exercise classes. I consider how exercise practices may be constituted in relation to a material object, the barre, and how the physical and material intersect, historically, with the cultural politics of fitness and dance from where the barre originates. To do this, I trace the journey of the barre from ballet training to the fitness industry to illustrate how human and non-human associations create a hybrid collective.

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, Pirkko Markula, a leading poststructuralist scholar, assesses the trajectory, challenges, and future for sociology of sport research on exercise, fitness and physical cultures. The trajectory of more openly politicized examinations of power in sport as cultural studies entered Anglo-American sociology of sport in the 1990s coincided with an expanded focus on the cultures of physical activity and exercise, notably with critique of the feminine body ideal in the fitness industry. Key challenges for the future include mending a 'disconnect' in the tensions between critical analysis and actual physical activity education and practices, furthering scholarly commitment to interdisciplinarity, and for poststructuralist theorizing to reach beyond sport studies to serve as a platform for thinking differently about exercise practices and scientific understandings of the moving body.

In this article, I aim to examine the possibilities for transcending neo-liberal individuality and the fixed construction of the feminine identity by engaging the force of the active, moving body. While poststructuralist theory has been helpful in terms of illuminating the problems with current attempts to initiate change, accounting for the body requires an added engagement with the materiality of the body and the mechanics of movement. Drawing from theoretical insights by Foucault, Deleuze, and Latour, I discuss my attempt to develop a movement practice informed both by social theory and the principles of anatomical and biomechanical analysis. Using my experiences as a fitness instructor, I explore if it is possible to practice movement differently beyond the biopolitics of neo-liberalism.

The purpose of this research was to examine semi-professional contemporary dancers' experiences with injuries. Similar to athletes, dancers are often injured. Much of the previous research on dance injuries, however, has focused on ballet where the professional requirements and high technical level create demanding work conditions. Semi-professional contemporary dance differs from this context due to its technique and work environment. In this study, I investigate how contemporary dancers experience injuries. From a Deleuzian perspective, I examine the connections between the body, injury, and the dancing identity within the culture of contemporary dance. The empirical material from semi-structured interviews revealed that while most participants suffered injuries, they generally ignored their injuries and continued to dance as, they argued, their passion for contemporary dance overrode the need for caring for their injuries. Consequently, the cultural environment for amateur dance facilitated injury experiences similar to professional dance.

This article traces a process of combining dance and narrative text into performance ethnography. It focuses on how interviews collected during an ongoing research project on serious contemporary dancers' experiences with injuries can 'be danced' in a research presentation. The author reflects how the empirical material from the interviews informed a narrative text that, combined with contemporary dance choreography interpreted through Deleuzian rhizomatic analysis, was included into live performance ethnography. The author concludes with a need for an on-going experimentation with the dancing body, theory, and writing in qualitative research.

This paper argues for a performative methodology that uses body's affect to create change in the current subjectivation to femininity. It locates this discussion into a context of fitness instruction to explore how a researcher can assume a role of a public intellectual through performative pedagogy. It is divided into four parts. The first part examines how critical pedagogy has been utilized previously within physical cultural studies to find ways to further understand how physical activity can be used for purposes of social change. The second part focuses on how physical education can inform critical body practices. The third part aims to link this discussion with feminist readings of critical pedagogy to further understand how femininity can be linked with practices of fitness instruction. It also introduces Deleuze's concept of affect. The final part discusses the implications of this literature for creating a performative pedagogy of the body through fitness instruction.

This article focuses on dance as a performance ethnographic project. It is grounded on Denzin's vision of a social science that resembles a performance to become a sociopolitical act. As inherently political, this performative social science allows us to move toward the spaces of "a progressive pragmatism." Furthermore, this article examines the possibilities of dance making to change social science thinking instead of using dance as a representational tool for research. It derives from Deleuze and Guattari's vision of art as sensitive knowledge and Massumi's notion of the body as a sensible concept.

This article examines the possibilities for resistant feminine body identity through the lens of Deleuzian feminism. To do this, the author relies on Deleuze's critique of philosophical thought that constructs identity as a series of dichotomous oppositions. According to Deleuze, this process takes place within three dominant strata—organism, significance, and subjectification—that limit the creative potential of theorizing bodily identity. The author further examines Deleuze's alternative, positive approach to disreading bodily identity through such concepts as plane of consistency, assemblange, and the Body without Organs. Finally, the author aims to illustrate the usefulness of Deleuzian philosophy to researchers of sport and exercise through an application into women's fitness practices. More specifically, the author analyzes how Pilates, as a set of exercise practices, might assist in a creation of a Body without Organs.

This article examines how fitness magazines address women's body image distortion (BID). The discussion derives primarily from three articles published in Self, Shape, and The New Weekly . The author briefly outlines how these magazines characterize BID as a common illness and how they advise their readers to improve their "out of whack" body image. From a Foucauldian feminist perspective, the author analyzes why the magazines devote space to counseling women with body image problems but continue to publish images of a narrowly defined body ideal that, as the magazines themselves establish, is one of the major causes for BID. To locate the magazine discourse on BID within a larger societal context, the author continues with a critical look at how the medical discourse treats this condition. The article concludes by drawing a parallel between the medical understanding of health as individual women's responsibility and the magazines' notion of image consumption as individual readers' responsibility.

"With the popularity of such reality TV shows as So You Think You Can Dance, dance has become increasingly visible within contemporary culture. This shift brings the ballet body into renewed focus. Historically both celebrated and critiqued for its thin, flexible, and highly feminized aesthetic, the ballet body now takes on new and complex meanings at the intersections of performance art, popular culture, and even fitness. The Evolving Feminine Ballet Body provides a local perspective to enrich the broader cultural narratives of ballet through historical, socio-cultural, political, and artistic lenses, redefining what many considered to be "high art." Scholars in gender studies, folklore, popular culture, and cultural studies will be interested in this collection, as well as those involved in the dance world."--