Identity, physical capital and young men's experiences of soccer in school and in community‐based clubs

Abstract

This article engages with four key informants from a school into the meaning of soccer in the lives of the informants and the disparity between the school's practice and the cultural meanings attached to soccer, at the school and community‐based clubs. We will demonstrate how their ability and the cultural knowledge developed through playing club soccer over most of their lives provided them with an identity and meaningful membership in communities built around soccer. Drawing on Bourdieu (1884), we see this physical and cultural knowledge as embodied capital. While it provided them with meaningful membership, social status and position within the communities of their soccer clubs, it had far less value at school. Within the community of the school, their embodied cultural capital provided them with few opportunities to develop a sense of social distinction, personal identity, self‐expression and self‐determination.