Physical Cultural Studies Research Articles

Anti-Black Racism and Soccer in Canada: Is It Because I’m Black, Ref?

This study critically examines the experiences of members of a sub-Saharan African men’s recreational soccer club with anti-Black racism in a Western Canadian city. Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork, and working at the intersections of Critical Race Theory and Physical Cultural Studies, our analysis focuses on how team members navigate a racial hierarchy that privileges Whiteness and cements their status as outsiders through both overt and subtle forms of racism on the pitch, and the laborious, retraumatizing challenges of “proving” these racist incidents to those in positions of institutional power. We underline the need for anti-racist and anti-oppressive policies and training, and independent judiciaries to monitor and address racist incidents and systemic racism—and its intersections with other forms of oppression—in Canadian sport cultures.

МІСЦЕ АДАПТИВНОЇ ФІЗИЧНОЇ КУЛЬТУРИ В ПРОЦЕСІ ПІДГОТОВКИ МАЙБУТНІХ ФАХІВЦІВ З ФІЗИЧНОГО ВИХОВАННЯ ВЗАРУБІЖНИХ КРАЇНАХ

The purpose of the research was to analyze the place and content of adaptive physical culture in the programs of training bachelors in physical education in foreign countries (based on the material of English-speaking countries). Material and methods. We searched for educational programs for obtaining a bachelor's degree in physical education available in 2024 in the USA, Great Britain and Ireland using the online service. The search was carried out by setting the following filters: Field of study - "Education", in particular, "Teaching", "Physical education"; Location - USA, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Ireland; Degree type – "Bachelor", "Bachelor of Science", "Bachelor of Arts". In total,8 educational programs were analyzed, in particular, 6 in the USA and 1 each in Great Britain and Ireland. The following methods were used in the research process: summarization of data from scientific and methodical literature and Internet sources, analysis and synthesis of the obtained information. Results and key conclusions. The vast majority of bachelor's degree programs in the USA, Great Britain and Ireland are designed for 2, 3 or 4 years of higher education and include at least 120 credits. At least 2.5 % of ECTS credits from the total volume of the educational program are allocated to the study of adaptive physical culture (between 3 and 6 ECTS credits). The content of educational programs in English-speaking countries (USA, Great Britain, Ireland) includes the study of adaptive physical culture by students within such disciplines as "Adaptive physical education", "Physical education for students with disabilities", "Introduction to adaptive physical education", "Adaptive physical culture and sport", "Assessment and Program Evaluation in Adapted Physical Education", "Inclusive sport and physicalactivity", "Adaptive physical education and physical activity".

Medico-biological aspects of physical training of students of higher education institutions

The article analyzes the medical and biological aspects of the physical training of students of higher education institutions. The organizational and methodical principles on which the innovative educational technology of implementing the health-forming orientation of modernized physical education is based are highlighted.
 It was established that the level of physical culture of young people is determined, first of all, by special education in this field, the perceived need to use physical exercises and other types of motor activity for the purpose of strengthening health and comprehensive self-improvement. On the basis of the analysis of a complex of literary sources, the goal of physical education is summarized, which consists in improving the health, education and education of student youth.
 The use of medical and biological aspects for the study of physical culture and health measures, where physical training is considered from the standpoint of the formation of skills of motor activity of the individual and the biological properties of the human body, is substantiated.
 The typological characteristics of the modern system of physical education in higher education institutions of Ukraine are determined; the interaction of medical, biological and cultural aspects of physical culture, which contribute to increasing the productivity of educational and physical culture and health activities, is scientifically substantiated.
 Medical-biological aspects include the study of health problems and the physical condition of people, their use for the study of physical culture and health measures is determined by the fact that physical training is considered from the point of view of the formation of motor activity and biological properties of the body.
 The specificity of the motivational and value component of the medical and biological training of future specialists was investigated on the basis of a questionnaire of higher education applicants.
 It has been proven that more attention should be paid to the promotion of sports and physical culture in the institution of higher education, to fully provide classrooms for classes with modern sports equipment and inventory, to actively include student youth in the process of physical education and mass sports events.

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.

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.

РАЗВИТИЕ РОССИЙСКОЙ СОЦИОЛОГИИ ФИЗИЧЕСКОЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ И СПОРТА КАК НАУЧНОГО НАПРАВЛЕНИЯ И УЧЕБНОЙ ДИСЦИПЛИНЫ

For over a century, Russian sociologists have been engaged in the study of physical culture and sport, with a particular focus on the mass and professional spheres. Physical education and sport are integral parts of social, cultural as well as socio-political life. Motivation, socialization through sport, education and health improvement, attitudes to physical education, the problems of Olympic and mass sports movement, etc., have come to the fore in different historical periods. All this can be found in the scientific publications of Russian sociologists and other social and humanitarian scientists. In the meantime, the analysis of sociological publications on this topic and their systematization, with the exception of the work of Russian sociologist O. A. Milstein, have not been carried out in a practical manner. In this paper, a scientific analysis of a variety of sources was carried out using two distinct approaches: comparative-historical and problem-chronological. The sources included brochures, articles and monographs, dissertations, and periodicals. Consequently, the principal thematic orientations of sociological inquiry into physical culture and sport in Russia, as well as the distinctive characteristics of sociological research across different historical eras, are elucidated. The institutionalization of the sociology of sport is considered in close connection with the institutionalization of Russian sociology. Moreover, experts examine the teaching of courses on the sociology of physical culture and sport in Russian universities. The process began in the 1920s and was subsequently interrupted. It can be stated that there has been an increase in the number of scientific publications on the sociology of physical culture and sport during the 2000-2020s. Furthermore, a number of textbooks on this subject have emerged during the same period.

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.

Diffracting the Special Issue: The Co-Emergence of Response-Able Collaboration

In this introduction to the special issue, we (a) describe the unconventional and iteratively constitutive processes by which this special issue came into being and (b) provide a brief overview of how the body-focused research “nodal points” featured therein contribute to the fields of education, social theory, arts, gender studies, and sport and physical cultural studies. We outline a process whereby, in seeking to “diffract the special issue,” contributors to this project engaged in an ongoing process of creating more affirmative, response-able, generative relations between academic texts, people, places, ideas, and bodies. The purpose in so doing, and potential benefit to the reader, is to foreground not only the contents of the special issue but also to map out the ethico-onto-epistemological foundations of the diffracted special issue and to provide some detail as to how ethico-onto-epistemologies surfaced in the praxis of the special issue’s becoming.

Physical Cultural Studies and the challenges for the construction of its Brazilian/Latin American tones

Resumo Este artigo explora o Physical Cultural Studies (PCS) como potente campo de investigação relacionado ao corpo e à cultura física, desenvolvido no Brasil por pesquisadores/as em contextos locais. O texto aborda o surgimento do PCS como desdobramento do Cultural Studies, as lutas disciplinares nos departamentos de cinesiologia norte-americanos e a virada para a cultura física no interior da sociologia do esporte. Ao mesmo tempo, o estudo discute o PCS a partir das dimensões empírica, contextual, transdisciplinar, teórica, política, qualitativa, autorreflexiva e pedagógica, articulando-as a práticas locais de pesquisa e de intervenção de pesquisadores/as brasileiros/as. Por fim, o estudo lança desafios à construção de um PCS com tons brasileiros, quiçá, latino-americanos.

From Couch…to Coach…to Ninja Warrior

Dixie Stanforth, Ph.D., FACSM,is a recently retired professor of instruction in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education, The University of Texas at Austin. She developed and directed the Health Fitness Instructor, Community Health & Wellness, and Medical Fitness/Rehabilitation Specializations for undergraduates. She serves as a provost's teaching fellow emerita, is an associate editor for ACSM's Health & Fitness Journal®, and is a frequent presenter at ACSM's International Health & Fitness Summit and other national conferences. Erin Crownover, M.S.,is a former collegiate basketball player who recently completed her Master's degree in Exercise Physiology in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education, The University of Texas at Austin. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at UT Austin in the Physical Culture and Sport Studies program. Erin is passionate about exercise and sport, especially the intersection of exercise science with physical culture, sport history, sport economics, and sport/international relations. Disclosure:The authors declare no conflict of interest and do not have any financial disclosures.

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.

Social Justice Through Sport and Exercise Studies: A Manifesto

This manifesto reimagines social justice in physical cultural studies by renaming, broadening, and building new characterizations of the body, dis/ability, mental health, exercise, social oppression, and sport. We problematize embedded ‘myths’ in exercise and sports studies scholarship for purposes of informing praxis-based research, and emancipatory practical agendas. These ‘myths’ include the embodied tragedy myth, the myth of bodily control, the sport for peace/development myth, the exercise is medicine myth, the healthism and exercise myth, the compulsory ablemindedness and exercise myth, and the exercise is cost-effective myth. Using intersecting and diverging theories, we propose new ways of knowing these taken for granted notions to springboard a new, socially just, emancipatory approach to research and practice.

The Latest Prescription

Dixie Stanforth, Ph.D., FACSM,is a Professor of Instruction in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education, The University of Texas at Austin. She developed and directs the Health Fitness Instructor, Community Health & Wellness, and Medical Fitness/Rehabilitation Specializations for undergraduates. She serves as a provost's teaching fellow, is an associate editor for ACSM's Health & Fitness Journal®, and is a frequent presenter at ACSM's International Health & Fitness Summit and other national conferences. Erin Crownover, M.S.,is a former collegiate basketball player who recently completed her master's degree in Exercise Physiology in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education, The University of Texas at Austin. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at UT Austin in the Physical Culture and Sport Studies program. Erin is passionate about exercise and sport, especially the intersection of exercise science with physical culture, sport history, sport economics, and sport/international relations. Disclosure:The authors declare no conflict of interest and do not have any financial disclosures.

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.

Dynamax

Dixie Stanforth, Ph.D., FACSM, is a Professor of instruction in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education, The University of Texas at Austin. She developed and directs the Health Fitness Instructor, Community Health & Wellness, and Medical Fitness/Rehabilitation Specializations for undergraduates. She serves as an associate editor for ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal® and is a frequent presenter at ACSM’s International Health & Fitness Summit and other national conferences. Erin Crownover, M.S., is a former collegiate basketball player currently completing her master’s degree in Exercise Physiology in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education, The University of Texas at Austin. She will be pursuing her Ph.D. at UT Austin in the Physical Culture and Sport Studies program starting in fall 2021. Erin is passionate about exercise and sport, especially the intersection of exercise science with physical culture, sport history, sport economics, and sport/international relations.

‘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.

A "Copa das Copas"

O objetivo da pesquisa foi analisar, por meio de estratégias textuais, como se deu o uso político-ideológico do futebol na propaganda do governo federal "Isso é ser brasileiro. Essa é a Copa das Copas", veiculada na mídia televisiva, em 2014. Para isso, utilizamos os pressupostos do Physical Cultural Studies. A análise evidenciou que o esporte foi utilizado pelo governo federal com fins político-ideológicos. Assim, identificamos o reforço ao sentimento de patriotismo, a presença de intencionalidades visando promover aceitação da realização da Copa do Mundo no Brasil e, relações intertextuais que visavam transmitir uma ideia positiva do governo petista, partido então no poder do Estado e que concorreria à reeleição em 2014.

Практико-ориентированный подход при изучении физической культуры и спорта

Практико-ориентированный подход при изучении физической культуры и спорта

Genealogical study of female physical beauty culture in postwar Japan, focusing on the appearance of hattoushin as “excited body” and “cosmetic gymnastics”

Genealogical study of female physical beauty culture in postwar Japan, focusing on the appearance of hattoushin as “excited body” and “cosmetic gymnastics”

Sport Sociology, In Question1

In this article, which is an expanded and updated adaptation of the 2018 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Presidential Address, I look at the challenges and opportunities presented to the field by the Sokal 2.0 hoax. Specifically, I look at issues of epistemology and politics as expressed in, and produced through, the field(s) of sport sociology, physical cultural studies, and critical studies in/of sport. I conclude with a discussion regarding how sport sociologists and scholars in related fields might look to form new associations as they continue to produce politically-meaningful scholarship and seek social justice and social equality there through.