Understanding Disability and Cultural (Re)production: An Ethnography of Coaching Practice in High Performance Disability Sport

Abstract

This ethnographic study draws on the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu to illustrate the production and reproduction of disability through the social practices of high performance disability sport. We illustrate how, through the pedagogic action of the coaches, disability was continually inscribed in the habitus of the athletes through a focus on structure and routine. As such, social differentiation was ever-present as a way of ordering the social space of coaching. The coaching process comprised a number of mechanisms for the exchange of cultural capital and the accumulation of social competencies through a focus on lifestyle and behaviour change. Together, these practices closely resembled the workings of symbolic violence, in particular its social reproduction of cultural reproduction function. By outlining how the socialising conditions of major institutions can naturalise systems of social differentiation, this article brings together and extends sociological theorising of the disabled body through engagement with disability sport.