A Performative Feel for the Game

Applying a cultural sociology of performance, this book interrogates how the meaning of sport intersects with gender. Trygve B. Broch points out uncertainties in the causal arguments made by key figures in the cultural studies tradition, instead advancing a meaning-centered study of sports as involving both a social and an athletic performance. Sports not only reflect or reverse social realities, but capture and keep our attention when we use and experience them as a means to reflect on social life, injustice, and hierarchy. More specifically, blending approaches from media studies with ethnography, Broch explores the women-dominated sport of handball in Norway, a country that considers gender equality a basis of democracy. As such, the analyses here show how broadly available meanings about sameness and equality are mediated and experienced through a performative feel for the game .

Uniquely combines ethnography, media studies, and sociology to explore understandings of cultural dynamics and diversity Challenges dominant discourse in critical sports sociology by applying anthropological and performance theories Sensitive to both the minutiae of social life as well as media-driven national narratives around sport

Auteur
Trygve B. Broch is Associate Professor at the Department of Public Health and Sport Sciences, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway. He is also a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University, USA.

Résumé

"I found it to be a challenging read. ... I would encourage anyone with an interest in sport and gender to read this book, challenging as it might be, primarily for the stories about the lives and interactions of the young handball players." (Alan Bairner, idrottsforum.org, June 18, 2020)

Contenu
Chapter 1: Sport, Meaning and Gender.- Part I.- Chapter 2: Media, sport enchantment and gender.- Chapter 3: Enchanted fusion: bringing together game play and gender.- Part II.- Chapter 4: Socialization, sport felicity and gender.- Chapter 5: Throwing like a handballboy: enchanted flows of power.- Chapter 6: By way of conclusion.