Physical Cultural Research Articles

Listen, Tell, Show: Recreation and the Black and Decolonial Storytelling in Sport and Physical Culture Research

Stories are always grounded in personal, collective, and ancestral experiences and come in a variety of visual, performance, textile, and text-based forms. Physical culture participation and politics can be better understood by engaging with the stories of people facing ongoing colonial and epistemic injustices, intersectional oppressions, as well as structural and cultural racism. In contrast to dominant trends in the cultural politics of sport, this article offers an ontological, epistemological, and methodological alternative. Following Black and decolonial scholars, we must honor non-Western storytelling modalities to listen to, tell, show, and center many experiences to resist Western colonial culture's binary structures and hierarchies, introduce alternate theorizations, and inject other ways of knowing and being into the sport and physical cultures and into physical cultural studies. This article highlights several areas of Black and decolonial studies that will be essential to efforts at transformative justice in sport and sports scholarship: interdisciplinarity, the bios–mythoi relationship, counter-storytelling, and creation stories.

Whither (or Wither) the Humanities in Kinesiology?

This article assesses the state of the humanities in kinesiology. Programs variously referred to as sport history, sport philosophy, physical culture studies, and physical cultural studies have become endangered species within the field. In response, I highlight several scholars who are, in their own ways, stewards of a humanities-centered, interdisciplinary approach to understanding human movement. In learning from their work, humanists must do more to save themselves from extinction.

An Empirical Investigation of Engineering Students' Attitute Towards Sports and Physical Education, Cultural Activities and Stress Management

Abstract: This study gives an empirical perspective regarding engineering students towards sports and physical education, cultural activities and stress management. This research examines various motives for participation and non-participation in various activities. College students involved in lot of stress due to academic work, competition, daily hassles, parental expectations etc. Total sample of 270 respondents who were pursuing Bachelor of Engineering was selected. The students chosen for the study were from departments of Electronics and Telecommunication (E&TC), Computer Science (CSE), Mechanical Engineering (ME), Information Technology (IT) and Electrical Engineering (EE). Chi-square testing was used to taste the stated hypothesis in Research Methodology. This research concludes that students perusing engineering are actively involved in various activities because they are aware of benefit of active participation in sports, physical education and cultural events. At the same time they are also aware about stress management and what are most important causing factors of stress. Result of Hypothesis testing proves that Stress Management is directly proportional to EducationalPerformance & Parental Expectation. Sports activities found significant impact on Physical Fitness whereas participation in cultural events if directly related to Stress Management. Keywords: Stress Management, Physical Education, Cultural Events wellbeing, Sports Events, Mental health.

Physical culture and embodiment in the field of physical cultural studies

This article presents fundamental notions to understanding the emergent Physical Cultural Studies/PCS field. Through a descriptive-theoretical approach, the authors reflect on the genesis and development of PCS and focus on two key concepts: “physical culture” and “embodiment”. The discussions provide subsidies for approaches that are draw themselves as critical and committed to social changes, with a view to a fruitful dialogue between researchers who are involved with this field in the Brazilian scenario.

Physical Cultural Studies and possibilities for dialogue with the sociocultural and pedagogical subareas of Brazilian physical education in a local reality

ABSTRACT This essay explores Physical Cultural Studies (PCS) and shows how this field of studies raises challenges and possibilities for dialogue with the sociocultural and pedagogical subfields of the Brazilian physical education in a local reality. To this end, the text presents PCS based on theoretical productions by researchers who recognize themselves in this field of study, focuses on one of the basic concepts of PCS – physical culture – and how this concept is developed in Brazilian physical education, and bring autoethnographic narratives from experiences with PCS in a local reality. With this, I aim to inform how PCS is designed as a field of study that has impacted the way we produce knowledge and how it is fruitful to develop research in intersection with the sociocultural and pedagogical subfields of Brazilian physical education.

Assemblages and Co-emergent Corpomaterialities in Postsecondary Education: Pedagogical Lessons from Somatic Psychology and Physical Cultures

Building on a new materialist ontology, this article explores the significance of viewing the postsecondary institution and learner as assemblages co-emerging in material relationality. Bodies of thought from social cognitive neuroscience, somatic psychotherapy, and physical cultural studies inform an analysis of the evaluation culture predominant in Western postsecondary education. These disciplines are used to interrogate representational performativity and point to new possibilities for material-inclusive learning. A new materialist pedagogy holds possibilities to reconfigure learning architectures to recognise and attend to the corpomaterialities of learners while allowing for new and creative lines of flight in education, as illustrated by physical cultural practices such as sport training, dance, and capoeira.

Existence of Sobokartti Building as A Physical Culture in Semarang City in Law Anthropology Approach

Physical culture can be understood as objects created by human beings which are an embodiment of the growth and development of cultural values ​​in a particular society, in the form of buildings that have been designated as cultural heritage buildings in the city of Semarang. The building is the Semarang Sobokartti building on Jalan Dr. Cipto Semarang, which is a reflection of the development of humans to always preserve culture both Javanese culture and western or European culture
 The approach used in this research is an empirical approach and a comparative approach to law anthropology. In an empirical approach, the sobokartti building is a physical culture which is a historic building that accommodates traditional arts which are closely related to Javanese culture, namely karawitan training, puppetry routine, puppetry courses, host courses, dancing courses and batik training. It should be appreciated because the community can maintain its preservation until now by showing the existence of Javanese culture with a love for culture that deserves to be preserved and for the nation's successor generation. Likewise with a comparative approach, it is said that the existence of physical culture in the sobokartti building is expected by the government to have regulations on cultural heritage objects, namely historic buildings or ancient buildings of the Sobokartti Semarang building as outlined in the Cultural Heritage Law No. 11 of 2010 to protect cultural heritage buildings with the aim of preserving, utilizing, and maintaining the beauty of a cultural heritage building Sobokartti Semarang.
 Suggestions that will be used in this research that is the role of the Government and Society to maintain physical cultural wealth should be developed by the nation's next generation, with the utilization of the Sobokartti building can provide sustainable use. So that, the Government and the community have the desire to protect and preserve the function of the Sobokartti Semarang building.

‘Pain that hides’: poetic envisionment and the impact of COVID-19 on a runner’s final college season

ABSTRACT When one college athlete's final track season is canceled due to COVID-19, he returns to his family farm to process a lost season with poetry. The author examined how a senior college athlete from the Midwest communicated the impact of COVID-19 on his final season of competition while quarantined on his family farm through envisionment building [Langer, J. A. (2015). Envisioning knowledge: Building literacy in the academic disciplines. Teachers College Press] during poetic inquiry sessions [Faulkner, S. L. (2019). Poetic inquiry: Craft, method and practice. Routledge; Fitzpatrick, K. (2017). Poetry, poiesis and physical culture. In M. Silk, D. Andrews, & H. Thorpe (Eds.), Routledge handbook of physical cultural studies (pp. 515–527). Routledge; Richardson, L. (1992). The consequences of poetic representation: Writing the other, writing the self. In C. Ellis & M. G. Flaherty (Eds.), Investigating subjectivity: Research on lived experience (pp. 125–140). Sage; Richardson, L. (2000). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 923–948). Sage; Sparkes, A., & Smith, B. (2011). Inhabiting different bodies over time: Narrative and pedagogical challenges. Sports, Education and Society, 16(3), 357–370]. The poetry read and written during the final four weeks of the spring 2020 collegiate sports season shows the athlete moving across Judith Langer's envisionment stances with authors of sports-themed poetry as guides in revisiting memories, people, and themes of a college sports career. The findings highlight the potential benefits of reading and writing poetry as athletic identity exploration. The author encourages athletic directors, coaches, and athletes to consider using poetic inquiry as an arts-based method to support student-athletes negotiating critical events, relationships, and identity that include cognitive and affective dimensions of sport.

Doing feminist physical cultural research in digital spaces: reflections, learnings and ways forward

ABSTRACT In this article we draw on our varied experiences of conducting feminist sport and leisure scholarship in digital spaces to offer some reflections, learnings and ways forward for navigating the challenges of digital and social media research. The paper outlines our methodological and ethical relationships to doing feminist research with and about women and girls, taking Margaret McClaren’s activist lens as a starting point to consider issues of positionality and reflexivity when researching lived experiences of gender in digital spaces. We then analyse our own actions across four dimensions of the research process: (1) connecting with communities and participants, (2) conceptualising and managing data, (3) navigating the ethics of representation and (4) vulnerabilities and self-care. In sharing our learnings from a range of projects, this paper offers insights into the methodological implications of conducting digital research on the moving body, as well as practical considerations for those doing feminist research on sporting and physical cultures in digital spaces. This article contributes to emerging conversations amongst qualitative sport and physical activity researchers about the challenges of digitisation for feminist engagements with power, context and situated knowledges.

The Formation Process of Soviet Koreans' Transnational Identity as New Soviet Citizens from the 1920s to the 1930s1: The Physical Cultural Activities in Primorye as Recorded in the Soviet Korean Newspaper Sunbong (Avant Garde)2

As a multiethnic country, the early Soviet regime had to create a transnational identity, and it did so by arming Soviet citizens with socialism as a means to integrate the diverse ethnic groups in the country. Physical cultural activities were used as one of the tools to create this transnational identity. These early Soviet policies affected the local ethnic minority of Soviet Korean people in Primorye, USSR. As a communist party organ, the Soviet Korean newspaper Sunbong (Avant Garde) was the primary source used to observe the Soviet Koreans' Sovietization from 1923 to 1937 (from the birth of the USSR to the Soviet Korean Deportation). According to Sunbong, Soviet Korean physical cultural activities are classified into four main types: (i) socialist education for youth; (ii) national defense; (iii) health and hygiene; and (iv) presenting the new Soviet Korean Dano physical culture day. Therefore, Soviet Koreans focused on physical cultural activities to form a transnational identity – these activities served as a barometer of Sovietization and internationalization while simultaneously presenting and maintaining the Soviet Koreans' ethnic identity.

Archaeological Study of Islamic History in Minahasa

This article shed light on an archaeological study about the spread of Islam in the land of Minahasa of North Sulawesi Province. As the biggest ethnic group living in North Sulawesi Province, most of its people are Christians. Islam arrival in Minahasa carried by Arab traders, <em>habaib</em> from Hadramaut, and political prisoners (Kiai Modjo, Tuanku Imam Bondjol, Kiai Ahmad Rivai, and Tubagus Buang). As a discipline with a focus on ancient cultural heritage, archaeology works based on the material culture taking the form of artifacts, ecofacts, or features. This study enables an investigation on Islamic history in Minahasa based existing physical cultural. The archaeological study on the history of spread of Islam in Minahasa is of novelty since the previous researches of the same topic were mostly conducted through manuscript and archive study. The result of the field observation reveals that the influence of Islamic culture in Minahasa comprises of some Islamic settlements, mosques, and Islamic cemetery. The influence of Islamic culture in Minahasa has a different character between coastal and inland areas.

‘Doing’ competitive swimming: Exploring the skilled practices of the competitive swimming lifeworld

Despite a developing literature on various facets of sporting embodiment, there is currently a research lacuna with regard to in-depth analyses of actually ‘doing’ sporting activities within specific physical cultures. In this article, we address that gap by drawing on a developing theoretical literature in sociological phenomenology to investigate a particular physical–cultural domain. Here, we present and analyse data from an ethnographic study of competitive swimmers undertaken in the UK. Responding to calls to explore the domain of ‘body pedagogics’, we investigate the embodied work involved in the skilled practice of ‘doing’ and learning how to ‘do’ competitive swimming. This embodied work plays a key part in the swimmers’ ability to inhabit the competitive swimming lifeworld. In the analysis, we highlight how the acquisition and ‘habituation’ of these body techniques and skilled behaviours are not achieved simply through the repetitive rehearsal of coherent movements over time. These processes are complex, demanding practical experimentation, discovery and the ability to adapt constantly to changes in the environment and the swimmer’s own corporeality.

Championing Physical Cultural Sciences

Abstract The term “physical culture” is, first of all, associated (referring to the etymology of the word “culture” from the Latin “colo,-ere”, meaning “to cultivate”, “to inhabit” or “to honor”) with cultivation and taking care of the human “physis” – obviously in the context of social and natural environment. What matters in physical cultural reflection is not movement as such – as a purely physical phenomenon – but only such a form of movement which has been cultivated and attributed with conventionalized social values of symbolic and autotelic character. Biological sciences connected with the human being are traditionally – after MacFadden, among others – counted among physical cultural sciences. Because of the bodily foundations of human physical activity, they perform a significant cognitive function: they describe natural foundations of special forms of movement, but they are not offering knowledge of cultural character. As there are no values in the human being’s nature, the biological sciences within the institutional field of physical culture can with their separate methodological and theoretical assumptions only offer an auxiliary, supportive function. Physical cultural sciences are primarily dealing with the significant relations between humans in physical cultural practices, with knowledge of an axiological (ethical and aesthetical) and social (philosophical, sociological, pedagogical, historical or political) character. The alleged superiority of biological sciences within physical cultural sciences and the connected marginalization of the humanities – which constitute, after all, a necessary and hence an unquestionable foundation for cultural studies – is, therefore, a clear challenge in the institutional field of physical culture.

Feminist Knowledges as Interventions in Physical Cultures

This collection explores how feminist knowledges work as interventions in physical cultures and recognizes the considerable contribution of feminist theories and methodologies in understanding the power relations implicated in embodied movement. Our introductory piece weaves together questions about the gendered formation of physical cultures (across leisure, sport, the arts, tourism, well-being, and various embodied practices) with key issues raised by contributing authors, from disciplinary perspectives to theory-method approaches. Exploring questions of digital and physical cultures, more-than-human relations, post- and decolonial ways of knowing, and contemporary onto-epistemologies, this feminist collection aims to contribute to the movement of ideas within and across physical cultural studies. Bringing together diverse perspectives around our common focus we entangle physical cultures with a range of gendered problematizations and interventions that produce different ways of knowing, imagining and doing feminisms.

Exploring Prenatal Physical Activity at the “Postgenomic Turn”: A Transdisciplinary Journey

Within the life sciences, there has been a move away from genetic determinism toward an awareness of how the environment (from cellular to social) can impact gene expression and health outcomes. Significantly, exercise scientists are looking to this “postgenomic turn” to explore how prenatal physical activity and leisure might affect the fetal metabolic environment by altering offspring gene expression and preventing future obesity. In this article, we draw upon insights from feminist new materialist scholars to explore how and if the entanglement of the social and material promised by the postgenomic turn is realized in prenatal exercise interventions. After outlining how this is not the case, we reflect upon our attempt to promote a transdisciplinary dialogue that facilitates a social justice ethos and nonreductionist version of maternal-fetal health and physical culture. Our transdisciplinary journey contributes to the feminist physical cultural studies agenda of equity development in the realm of exercise and leisure.

Creating Distance from Body Issues: Exploring New Materialist Feminist Possibilities for Renegotiating Gendered Embodiment

The body’s active role in the production of gendered embodiments is a key focus for feminist cultural studies and leisure studies. The article draws on new materialist feminist scholarship to explore how gender relations are produced and negotiated in physical culture through one case study example taken from a wider study of young people’s experiences of the body and self-image over time. The article explores how gendered embodiment is assembled through the socio-material circumstances of everyday life. For one particiapnt, 'Ann', “creating distance” from appearance concerns was an embodied process which involved new practices and encounters (e.g., walking for leisure, reading feminist literature) and relationships and engagements with others (e.g., a partner, friends, family). The potential for feminism to open possibilities to imagine the body otherwise is also discussed in relation to recent efforts to foster social justice imperatives in leisure sciences and feminist physical cultural studies.

Bringing the ‘other half’ back: a place-specific intergenerational exploration of Indigenous physical cultural masculinities in Fisher River Cree Nation

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we introduce readers to the Indigenous Wellbeing of Boys and Men project, a 4-year research collaboration between scholars from the Universities of Manitoba and British Columbia and Fisher River Cree Nation (Ochékwi Sipi). We overview the research design of the project, paying particular attention to the foundational strategies that informed the research process. These strategies included, embedding the project within an Indigenous paradigm, rooting it within the place-specific context of Fisher River Cree Nation, and creating a community-wide and intergenerational dialogue about Indigenous physical cultures and masculinities. We then examine the first phase of the project, which involved sharing circles, to illustrate how these strategies informed the research process. We argue that this design enabled critical insights on the role that physical culture can potentially play in maintaining and revitalising place-specific Indigenous masculinities. This paper brings the burgeoning scholarship in Indigenous methodologies and Indigenous masculinities into conversation with the work in physical cultural studies and, in so doing, makes important contributions to each disciplinary area.

Bubbles & Squat – did Dionysus just sneak into the fitness centre?

ABSTRACTA Danish fitness chain recently introduced a new concept called Bubbles & Squat. Here, fitness training is combined with free champagne and music. In this paper, we examine this new way of bringing parties, alcohol and physical culture together by exploring the possible meaning of it through existential philosophical analysis. We draw in particular on Nietzsche’s distinction between the Apolline and the Dionysiac, as well as his account of great health. On this basis, we analyse Bubbles & Squat as a case of Dionysiac intoxication, excess and ecstasy sneaking into contemporary Apolline fitness culture. In the last part of the paper, we raise the question if adding parties and bubbles to fitness training may, perhaps paradoxically, be healthy for the participants in an existential sense because it contributes to existential balance between the Dionysiac and the Apolline. We conclude that the philosophical framework presented in this paper can contribute to a new understanding of a general physical cultural phenomenon that the case of Bubbles & Squat represents.

Beyond Boundaries: The Development and Potential of Ethnography in the Study of Sport and Physical Culture

Ethnographic approaches to the study of sport and physical culture have developed primarily within physical education and kinesiology programs and are typically framed in dialogue with sociological theorizing of agency, structure, power, and inequality. Beginning with reference to anthropology and sociology, we review the emergence, development, and subsequent transdisciplinary travels of ethnographic study of sport and physical culture. In doing so, we underscore the importance of theory, context, and disciplinary tradition in the development of sporting ethnographies. We then critically outline the place of ethnography in physical cultural studies (PCS). Rather than exhuming existing debates about the originality and uniqueness of the PCS enterprise, we highlight the need to decenter the hyper-reflexive researcher and advocate for the consideration of pleasure in ethnographic studies to achieve the interventionist goals PCS protagonists set themselves.

OS ESTUDOS DE CULTURA FÍSICA NA UNIVERSIDADE DE BATH-REINO UNIDO: DIMENSÕES DE UMA ABORDAGEM MUITO ALÉM DA FISICALIDADE

Nas últimas duas décadas, a análise da cultura física provocou uma série de respostas baseadas em diferentes orientações teóricas. Neste artigo, procuramos oferecer uma visão deste campo complexo por meio da análise de parte do trabalho produzido pelo grupo de pesquisa Physical Cultural Studies (PCS) na Universidade de Bath, Reino Unido, no intuito de entender como a cultura física é teorizada e de que modo os temas investigativos são materializados por essa abordagem. Compõe o percurso metodológico a análise de artigos científicos vinculados aos pesquisadores do referido grupo, entre 2009 e 2016, a qual resulta na organização dos dados em duas categorias temáticas: a) dimensões epistemológicas, ontológicas e metodológicas do PCS; b) temas investigativos em cultura física. Conclui-se que a abordagem teórico-conceitual da cultura física, longe de ser fixa, estrutura-se a partir de articulações múltiplas e complexas das relações sociais, dos discursos e das subjetividades dos corpos (in)ativos.