This article contributes to recent debates between supporters of the concept of hegemonic masculinity, as exemplified by R. W. Connell, and a new generation of gender scholars, as to how best explain the dynamic and fluid relationships between men, and men and women, in the early 21st century. Here, the author concurs with many of Connell's critics and proceeds by arguing that recent feminist extensions of Bourdieu's original conceptual schema-field, capital, habitus, and practice-may help reveal more nuanced conceptualizations of masculinities, and male gender reflexivity, in contemporary sport and physical culture. This author examines the potential of such an approach via an analysis of masculinities in the snowboarding field. In so doing, this article not only offers fresh insights into the masculine identities and interactions in the snowboarding field but also contributes to recent debates about how best to explain different generations and cultural experiences of masculinities.A debate has recently emerged between supporters of the concept of hegemonic masculinity, as exemplified by R. W. Connell, and a new wave of gender scholars, as to how best explain the dynamic and fluid relationships between men, and men and women, in the early 21st century.

Feminist theorizing in the sociology of sport and physical culture has progressed through ongoing and intense dialogue with an array of critical positions and voices in the social sciences (e.g., Judith Butler, R.W. Connell, Michel Foucault). Yet, somewhat surprisingly, the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu—arguably one of modern sociology’s “most important voices of social critique and theoretical innovation” (Krais, 2006, p. 120)—has gone largely unheard among critical sports scholars interested in gender (notable exceptions include Atencio, Beal & Wilson, 2009; Brown, 2006; Kay & Laberge, 2004; Laberge, 1995). In this paper I introduce recent feminist engagements with Bourdieu’s original work to a critical sports sociology readership via a case study of snowboarding culture and female snowboarders. I begin by briefly examining the efficacy of three of Bourdieu’s key concepts—capital, field and habitus—for explaining gender and embodiment in snowboarding culture. I then consider how the habitus-field complex can illustrate the “synchronous nature of constraint and freedom” (McNay, 2000, p. 61) for women in contemporary physical culture.

No abstract

Existing research into the depiction of female athletes has indicated that while they remain under-represented across traditional and online media outlets, social media is a potential tool for female athletes to redress this lack of coverage, and even contest and rework normative gender and sexual identities in sport. This paper challenges such arguments by offering a feminist thematic analysis of how five international female athletes are using social media to present their sporting and feminine selves within a neoliberal post-feminist moment characterised by individual empowerment and entrepreneurial subjecthood. Adopting a feminist critique of neoliberalism, and critically engaging Banet-Weiser's gendered “economies of visibility”, our findings demonstrate that, in a social media environment, female athletes are adopting new strategies for identity construction that capitalise on tropes of agentic post-feminist subjecthood to market themselves, including self-love, self-disclosure and self-empowerment. This paper advances the emerging field of inquiry into athlete social media usage by focusing on the ideological workings of neoliberalised gender discourse not only in the crafting of contemporary sporting femininities in digital spaces, but in recasting feminism as an individualised endeavour firmly located in the market.

An important and mounting issue for the contemporary Olympic Movement is how to remain relevant to younger generations. Cognizant of the diminishing numbers of youth viewers, and the growing success of the X Games-the 'Olympics' of action sport-the International Olympic Committee (IOC) set about adding a selection of youth-oriented action sports into the Olympic program. In this article we offer the first in-depth discussion of the cultural politics of action sports Olympic incorporation via case studies of windsurfing, snowboarding, and bicycle motocross (BMX). Adopting a post-subcultural theoretical approach, our analysis reveals that the incorporation process, and forms of (sub)cultural contestation, is in each case unique, based on a complex and shifting set of intra-and inter-politics between key agents, namely the IOC and associated sporting bodies, media conglomerates, and the action sport cultures and industries. In so doing, our article illustrates some of the complex power struggles involved in modernizing the Olympic Games in the 21st century.

No abstract

No abstract

Abstract:In this paper, we take seriously the challenges of making sense of a sporting (and media) context that increasingly engages female athletes as active, visible and autonomous, while inequalities pertaining to gender, sexuality, race and class remain stubbornly persistent across sport institutions and practices. We do so by engaging with three recent feminist critiques that have sought to respond to the changing operations of gender relations and the articulation of gendered subjectivities, namely third-wave feminism, postfeminism and neoliberal feminism, and applying each to the same concrete setting -the social media self-representation of Hawaiian professional surfer Alana Blanchard. In aiming to conceptually illustrate the utility of these three feminist critiques, we are not advocating for any single approach. Rather, we critically demonstrate what each offers for explaining how current discourses are being internalized, embodied and practiced by young (sports)women, as they make meaning of, and respond to, the conditions of their lives.The challenge of how to best theorize issues related to media representation of female athletes has long occupied feminist researchers. The on-going challenges of this project are evident in the size of the research corpus, which includes many thousands of published articles dating back to the 1970s. However, the emergence of new forms of femininity that embrace 'girl power', in tandem with the advent of social media technologies such as Facebook and Instagram, have radically altered the ways in which media depictions of athletes are produced, disseminated and interpreted.Indeed, as Karlyn (2010) argues, "popular culture infuses the world in which today's