Kath Woodward

QUESTIONING IDENTITY (Understanding Social Change)

Boxing is a traditional sport in many ways, characterized by continuities in the form of practices and regulations and heavy with legends and heroes reflecting its traditional/historical values. Associations with class, hegemonic masculinity and racialized inclusions/exclusions, however, sit alongside developments such as women's boxing and involvement in Mixed Martial Arts. This book will be the first to use boxing as a vehicle for exploring social, cultural and political change in a global context. It will consider to what degree and in what ways boxing reflects social transformations, and whether and how it contributes to those transformations. In exploring the relationship it will provide new ways of thinking critically about the everyday.

Globalizing Boxing

Brigid McClure

Dr Tim Jordan

'Being in the zone' means performing in a distinctive, unusual, pleasurable and highly competent way at something you already regularly do: dancing or playing a viola, computer programming, tennis and much more. What makes the zone special? This volume offers groundbreaking research that brings sociological and cultural studies to bear on the idea of being in the zone. There is original research on musicians, dancers and surfers which shows that being in the zone far from being exclusively individualised and private but must be understood as social and collective and possibly accessible to all. The zone is not just for elite performers. Being in the zone is not just the province of the athlete who suddenly and seemingly without extra effort swims faster or jumps higher or the musician who suddenly plays more than perfectly, but also of the doctor working under intense pressure or the computer programmer staying up all night. The meaning of such experiences for convincing people to work in intense conditions, often with short term contracts, is explored to show how being in the zone can have problematic effects and have negative and constraining as well as creative and productive implications. Often being in the zone is understood from a psychological viewpoint but this can limit our understanding. This volume provides the first in-depth analysis of being in the zone from social and cultural viewpoints drawing on a range of theories and novel evidence. Written in a stimulating and accessible style, Culture, Identity and Intense Performativity: Being in the Zone will strongly appeal to students and researchers who aim to understand the experience of work, creativity, musicianship and sport. Issues of the body are also central to being in the zone and will make this book relevant to anyone studying bodies and embodiment . This collection will establish being in the zone as an important area of enquiry for social science and the humani

Being in the Zone

Culture, Identity and Intense Performativity

Sophie Woodward

Usually conceived in opposition to each other – birth as a hopeful beginning, death as an ending – this book brings them into dialogue with each other to argue that both are central to our experiences of being in the world and part of living. Written by two authors, this book takes an intergenerational approach to highlight the connections and disconnections between birth and death; adopting a relational approach allows the book to explore birth and death through the key relationships that constitute them: personal and social, private and public, the affective and social norms, the actual and the virtual and the ordinary and profound. Of interest to academics and students in the fields of feminism, phenomenology and the life course, the book will also be of relevance to policy makers in the areas of birth activism and end of life care. Drawing from personal stories, everyday life and publicly contested examples, the book will also be of interest to a more general readership as it engages with questions we all at some point will grapple with.

Experience, Ethics, Politics

Birth and Death

Tim Jordan

‘Being in the zone' means performing in a distinctive, unusual, pleasurable and highly competent way at something you already regularly do: dancing or playing a viola, computer programming, tennis and much more. What makes the zone special? This volume offers groundbreaking research that brings sociological and cultural studies to bear on the idea of being in the zone. There is original research on musicians, dancers and surfers which shows that being in the zone far from being exclusively individualised and private but must be understood as social and collective and possibly accessible to all. The zone is not just for elite performers. Being in the zone is not just the province of the athlete who suddenly and seemingly without extra effort swims faster or jumps higher or the musician who suddenly plays more than perfectly, but also of the doctor working under intense pressure or the computer programmer staying up all night. The meaning of such experiences for convincing people to work in intense conditions, often with short term contracts, is explored to show how being in the zone can have problematic effects and have negative and constraining as well as creative and productive implications. Often being in the zone is understood from a psychological viewpoint but this can limit our understanding. This volume provides the first in-depth analysis of being in the zone from social and cultural viewpoints drawing on a range of theories and novel evidence. Written in a stimulating and accessible style, Culture, Identity and Intense Performativity: Being in the Zone will strongly appeal to students and researchers who aim to understand the experience of work, creativity, musicianship and sport. Issues of the body are also central to being in the zone and will make this book relevant to anyone studying bodies and embodiment . This collection will establish being in the zone as an important area of enquiry for social science and the humanities.

"This book is an innovative and creative critique of the theories and practices of feminism for the twenty first century. Written by a mother and daughter, the book presents a dialogue across generations and instates a politics of difference and the importance of the category woman"--Provided by publisher.

feminism lost and found

Why feminism matters

Questioning Identity: Gender, Class, Ethnicity provides an accessible exploration of identity as a contemporary concern in everyday life and as a key concept in the social sciences. The world in the twenty-first century may be an increasingly unstable place, but changes offer new opportunities as well as new challenges. Drawing on work from a number of different disciplines and focusing on the key social divisions of gender, class, 'race' and ethnicity, this book shows how these challenges and opportunities work out in people's lives. What is happening when people identify with particular definitions of themselves or strike out and forge new identities? Do gender, class and ethnicity offer some stability and even security about who we are, or are these structures constraints on our freedom to choose our own identities? How far is it possible to forge new identities in changing times? This key text will be essential reading for students starting out in the social sciences and for anyone with an interest in the dilemmas of identity in contemporary society.

Gender, Class, Ethnicity

Questioning Identity

There is expanding global interest in the relationship between the psychological and the social. The bringing together of affect, emotion and feeling with social, political and cultural forces offers a creative, innovative and rich set of ways of understanding what Charles Wright Mills called the links between personal troubles and public issues. This book is an introduction to psychosocial studies. Drawing on different approaches to the field, the book introduces the main theoretical influences on psychosocial studies and their development and impact, through – for example – concepts such as the unconscious, self and identity, affect, emotion and the cultural and social unconscious. It explores the theoretical frameworks of psychosocial studies, and psychosocial research methods. The book offers examples of case studies which illustrate the diversity of psychosocial studies and what makes it distinctive. It asks: what is social about the inner worlds of the psychological? What is psychological and psychic about social worlds and social life? This clear, accessible introduction will be of interest to students and researchers across the social sciences and humanities, in particular in sociology, psychology, cultural geography, social policy and politics and cultural studies.

An Introduction

Psychosocial Studies

Sport is all about time -the pressure of time, timing, 'extra time', but whilst records are kept and histories written, there is little engagement with what time is or how and why it matters so much in sport. Uniquely written in 'real time', against the backdrop of the 2012 London Olympics, this book examines the idea of 'time' in sport, using time as a conceptual lens to explore movement, bodies, memory, disability, gender, sports reporting, technology and the role of the past and the future in sport as well as more obvious aspects such as determining the length of a match and measuring and setting records. Written by one of the leading scholars in the field, during the London Olympics, this book advances time and temporality as key features of sport in order to contribute to wider debates about time and mobilities, proving that we all live in sporting times.

Sporting Times

Usually conceived in opposition to each other - birth as a hopeful beginning, death as an ending - this book brings them into dialogue with each other to argue that both are central to our experiences of being in the world and part of living. Written by two authors, this book takes an intergenerational approach to highlight the connections and disconnections between birth and death; adopting a relational approach allows the book to explore birth and death through the key relationships that constitute them: personal and social, private and public, the affective and social norms, the actual and the virtual and the ordinary and profound. Of interest to academics and students in the fields of feminism, phenomenology and the life course, the book will also be of relevance to policy makers in the areas of birth activism and end of life care. Drawing from personal stories and everyday life and publicly contested examples the book will also be of interest to a more general readership as it engages with questions we all at some point will grapple with.

Nicholas Thoburn

Penny Harvey

Eleanor Conlin Casella

Gillian Evans

Hannah Knox

Christine McLean

Elizabeth B. Silva

There is broad acceptance across the Humanities and Social Sciences that our deliberations on the social need to take place through attention to practice, to object-mediated relations, to non-human agency and to the affective dimensions of human sociality. This Companion focuses on the objects and materials found at centre stage, and asks: what matters about objects? Objects and Materials explores the field, providing succinct summary accounts of contemporary scholarship, along with a wealth of new research investigating the capacity of objects to shape, unsettle and exceed expectations. Original chapters from over forty international, interdisciplinary contributors address an array of objects and materials to ask what the terms of collaborations with objects and materials are, and to consider how these collaborations become integral to our understandings of the complex, relational dynamics that fashion social worlds. Objects and Materials will be of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities, including in sociology, social theory, science and technology studies, history, anthropology, archaeology, gender studies, women’s studies, geography, cultural studies, politics and international relations, and philosophy.

Kath Woodward

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