Feminist Cultural Studies: Uncertainties and Possibilities

Abstract

This collection of commentaries emerged from ongoing conversations among the contributors about our varied understandings of and desires for the sport studies field. One of our initial concerns was with the absence/presence of feminist thought within sport studies. Despite a rich history of feminist scholarship in sport studies, we have questioned the extent to which feminism is currently being engaged or acknowledged as having shaped the field. Our concerns crystallized during the spirited feminist responses to a fiery roundtable debate on Physical Cultural Studies (PCS) at the annual conference of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) in New Orleans in November 2012. At that session, one audience member after another spoke to what they saw as the unacknowledged appropriation by PCS proponents of longstanding feminist—and feminist cultural studies—approaches to scholarship and writing. These critiques focused not just on the intellectual moves that PCS scholars claim to be making but on how they are made, with several audience members and some panelists expressing their concerns about the territorializing effects of some strains of PCS discourse.

What is New About New Materialism for Sport Sociology? Reflections on Body, Movement, and Culture

“…Recently, for example, an emerging "intellectual project" (Silk, Andrews, & Thorpe, 2017, p. 1) termed physical cultural studies (PCS) has aimed to merge "expressions of active embodiment" (p. 1) beyond sport through a socio-cultural analysis. Drawing from previous calls to engage, more broadly, with physical culture (e.g., Hargreaves & Vertinsky, 2007;Ingham, 1997;Pronger, 1998), PCS has induced a stimulating debate regarding a need and direction for a "project" distinct from sport sociology (e.g., Adams et al, 2016;Atkinson, 2011;Giardina & Newman, 2011a, 2011bPavlidis & Olive, 2014;Silk & Andrews, 2011;Thorpe, 2011;Vertinsky, 2015). In their recent "definitional effort," Michael Silk, David Andrews, and Holly Thorpe (2017) explained that PCS evolved against the "bioscientization" of kinesiology/sport studies as well as the narrow disciplinary space of sport sociology.…”

“…Similarly, Michael Giardina andJoshua Newman (2011a, 2011b) imagined PCS as a meeting for 'body work scholars' from various social science and humanities disciplines. There are also scholars within sport sociology who question the need for a new "moniker" within a field that, among other scholarly orientations, already embraces the type of cultural studies research now advanced by PCS (Adams et al, 2016). To account for the diversity across the field, I refer to sport sociology in this article.…”

Feminist Knowledges as Interventions in Physical Cultures

“…The emergence of PCS ostensibly as an alternative framing to the more contained focus of sport sociology has elicited a range of responses that have begun to shape the direction of intellectual inquiry into how embodied movement is implicated in multiple power relations in ways that constrain and contest normalising imperatives (to look, act and become certain types of subjects). Within these debates feminists have called for critical approaches that engage more deeply with gendered forms of embodied movement and the onto-epistemological basis of theorymethodology to contest implicit assumptions about how bodies within PCS can default to an unacknowledged reliance on young, white, Western, masculine, middle class, heterosexual, ableness (Rich & Sandlin, 2017;Adams et al, 2016;Pringle & Falcous, 2016;Francombe-Webb & Silk, 2015;Markula, 2015;Vertinsky, 2015;Pavlidis & Olive, 2014;Pavlidis & Fullagar, 2014;Thorpe, 2014;Thorpe, Barbour & Bruce, 2011;Friedman & van Ingen, 2011). Feminist critiques of PCS have often centred on the politics of knowledge production -the unacknowledged debt to feminist theories of culture (Adams et al, 2016) and embodiment (Fullagar, 2017b), as well as relational notions of power and feminist praxis (Olive, 2017).…”

“…Within these debates feminists have called for critical approaches that engage more deeply with gendered forms of embodied movement and the onto-epistemological basis of theorymethodology to contest implicit assumptions about how bodies within PCS can default to an unacknowledged reliance on young, white, Western, masculine, middle class, heterosexual, ableness (Rich & Sandlin, 2017;Adams et al, 2016;Pringle & Falcous, 2016;Francombe-Webb & Silk, 2015;Markula, 2015;Vertinsky, 2015;Pavlidis & Olive, 2014;Pavlidis & Fullagar, 2014;Thorpe, 2014;Thorpe, Barbour & Bruce, 2011;Friedman & van Ingen, 2011). Feminist critiques of PCS have often centred on the politics of knowledge production -the unacknowledged debt to feminist theories of culture (Adams et al, 2016) and embodiment (Fullagar, 2017b), as well as relational notions of power and feminist praxis (Olive, 2017). Such questions about the feminist politics of knowledge are not merely questions about 'theoretical slippages', rather they also point towards academic labour practices (the citation practices of men citing other men) that marginalise women's (and in particular women of colour) contribution to thought (and often career prospects) (Ahmed, 2017;Ratna, 2018 Rose (2009, p. 12) suggests that a style of thought is "a particular way of thinking, seeing, and practicing" that enables objects and processes to become intelligible in terms of the assemblage of knowledge produced.…”

Transformative research and epistemological hierarchies: Ruminating on how the sociology of the sport field could make more of a difference

“…Advocates of disciplinary reformulation under the guise of physical cultural studies (PCS) (although not without criticism, see Adams et al, 2015) have also championed public intellectualism and political engagement (see Andrews, 2008; Silk and Andrews, 2011). Yet the promoters of PCS have also framed their critique, as Vertinsky (2015: 394) noted, to directly ‘challenge … the hegemony of science currently in place within kinesiology’.…”