The birds and the bees : gender performance in Grandville's Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux

Published between 1840 and 1842, J. J. Grandville’s Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux is a hybrid work of satirical allegory that stages the scandals, polemics, and power struggles of the July Monarchy through a collection of illustrations by Grandville and stories written to accompany them. The printed image significantly disrupted artistic hierarchies of the period and sparked heated debates about both the expertise of illustrators and the possibilities of the image, described by Philippe Kaenel as an “instrument of seduction”. Scholarly engagement with Scènes des animaux has all but ignored gender, yet the increased visibility of women in the publishing industry during the July Monarchy permanently altered the terms of modern artistic legitimacy. In this paper, I demonstrate that gender has been conceptualized, represented, and reified in terms of animality and evolutionary discourses in Grandville’s text. Drawing on Alexandra Wettlaufer’s analysis of the dialectic between word and image at play in Scenes des animaux, as well as Bakhtinian polyphony and Eve Sedgwick’s concept of erotic triangles, I consider the work in terms of a triple dialectic between word, image, and gender. Through the figures of bird and bee and their associated verbal tropes, Grandville, Hetzel, and Balzac all link women to consumerism, materialism, stupidity, and sensuality. This set of associations distance women from the field of “legitimate” literary production and disempowers them as sociopolitical agents. At the same time, the overdetermined containment strategies employed by the contributors reveal that they rely on women as their primary reading public and clientele. Economic anxiety has been displaced onto the body of the animal-woman, and the contributors dress up their objections with the accoutrements of conservative morality. In titling this project “The Birds and the Bees” —a euphemism used to explain sex and courtship to small children— I call attention to the persistence of animal metaphors related to gender and sexuality in contemporary culture.Comparative Literatur

Bulgarian sport policy 1945-1989: A strategic relation perspective

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games have stimulated discussions about the success of different sport systems and the Chinese model in particular. Revisiting explanations of sport in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe during the Cold War seems timely, as the current Chinese model of sport was largely designed after the Soviet example established in this period. This paper examines Bulgarian sport policy between 1945 and 1989. It employs a Strategic Relation approach (Jessop, 1990) to analyse sport policy making as a strategic relation closely linked to the dominant state project of building a new stateness. It goes beyond ideological interpretations and argues that the state represents a strategic terrain where these relations have to be established in struggles, the outcomes of which are always uncertain. Furthermore, past and present struggles and their outcomes create various socio-political environments that presuppose the forms of state selectivity and intervention in sport. The process of constructing sport policy was influenced by two main categories of strategic relations: intra-state, including political, organisational and personal relations between the Party, state apparatus and various sport and non-sport organisations and their managers, and transnational, concerning ideological, political, economic and organisational relations with both communist and western countries and international sport organisations

Is there a link between previous exposure to sport injury psychology education and UK sport injury rehabilitation professionals' attitudes and behaviour towards sport psychology?

Objectives: The use of sport psychology strategies during sport injury rehabilitation can lead to several positive outcomes such as improved adherence and self-efficacy. The purpose of this study was to compare the sport psychology related attitudes and behaviours of UK sport injury rehabilitation professionals (SIRPs) who had studied the psychological aspects of sport injury to those who had not. Participants and design: Ninety-four SIRPs (54 physiotherapists and 40 sports therapists with a mean of 9.22 years' experience of working in sport) completed an online survey and were grouped according to their level of previous exposure to sport injury psychology education at an undergraduate/postgraduate level. Analyses were undertaken to establish whether there were any differences in sport psychology related attitude (MANOVA), usage (MANOVA), and referral behaviours (chi square) between the groups. Results: The MANOVA and chi square tests conducted revealed that those who had studied the psychological aspects of sport injury reported using significantly more sport psychology in their practice and making more referrals to sport psychologists. Conclusions: It was concluded that sport injury psychology education appears to be effective in increasing the sport psychology related behaviours (use of sport psychology and referral) of SIRPs and should be integrated into professional training

The impact of a sport psychology education intervention on physiotherapists

The purpose of this study was to measure the impact of an online sport psychology education module on the attitudes and behaviours of qualified sports physiotherapists in the UK. Ninety-five sport physiotherapists studied either a sport psychology module or a control module, and their attitudes and behaviours towards sport psychology were measured prior to studying the module and at three points over a six-month period following its completion. It was found that those who had studied the sport psychology module demonstrated an improvement in their attitudes towards sport psychology immediately following its completion that was significantly higher than those who had studied the control module. Use of sport psychology also increased following the sport psychology module, with significant differences seen between the intervention and control group on the sport psychology subscale, indicating that those who had studied the sport psychology module were integrating more sport psychology techniques into their practice than those who had studied the control module. It was concluded that the online sport psychology module was effective in improving the attitudes and behaviours of UK physiotherapists and that more sport psychology education opportunities should be made available

Exploring Effects of School Sport Experiences on Sport Participation in Later Life

This paper presents findings on the relationship between high school sport participation and involvement in sport as adults. The data are provided by a survey of a large representative national sample of adult Canadians. For different age subgroups among women and men, we tested the school sport experiences hypothesis that sport involvement during the high school years contributes to later adult involvement in sport. The measurement of sport involvement in the high school years is concerned with intramural and inter-school activities. Adult sport activity has three measures: sport involvement per se, involvement in an organized setting, and competitive involvement. The results are consistent with the school experiences hypothesis. High school sport involvement, for inter-school sport activities, is a comparatively strong predictor of adult sport involvement. The effects of high school involvement persist after controlling for correlated social background factors. Moreover, the effects of school sport experiences hold across age and gender subgroups. Although diminished with temporal distance from the high school years, the effects of high school involvement nonetheless extend even to respondents aged 40–59 (i.e., those approximately 22 to 42 years beyond their school years) among both genders. Interpretations of the results are discussed

Value of a community football club

Research background The Centre for Sport and Social Impact (CSSI) at La Trobe University was commissioned by AFL Victoria to determine the social value of a \u27typical\u27 community football club; specifically its social, health and community impact. Research design The research design comprised two stages: Conducting nine case studies on the activities and outcomes of football clubs in various locations across Victoria developed through 110 in-depth interviews with club and community members; and A survey sent to all members of AFL Victoria football clubs across the state (with 1677 returned) examining individual health, well-being, trust and social connectedness. It is important to note that this research includes the views of people outside of football clubs. The research design deliberately sought to confirm the views of football club members with those in their communities in developing the case studies and comparing the results of the survey of football club members with the general community

Plato makes the team: the arrival of secondary school sport academies.

Since sport captivates many young people in Aotearoa New Zealand, it is not surprising that it is being situated in a new form of educational setting. This is evidenced through the emergence of secondary school sport academies over the last four years. The first academy was established in 1997 at Aranui High School in Christchurch and now there are over 70. This paper examines the changing role of sport in secondary education, discusses the emergence of sport academies and comments on the development of three of these. The academies provide the context - where sport takes place - which is crucial to the education and sport nexus (Gerdy, 2000). Clearly, if sport can achieve educational purposes through sport academies, then we must explore their operation as an educational tool

The School Sport Co-ordinator Programme: Changing the Role of the Physical Education Teacher?

Over the last decade or so, young people have increasingly become a focus of UK sport policy. Fuelled in part by concerns such as the increasing levels of childhood inactivity and obesity, and the lack of international success in sport, a plethora of policy initiatives aimed at young people have been developed. In April 2000, the government published its sport strategy document, A Sporting Future for All, pulling together all the threads of recent policies, and in it, restating its commitment to youth sport, sport in education, excellence and sport in the community. One such policy initiative, the School Sport Co-ordinator programme, is the focus of this paper. The School Sport Co-ordinator programme, currently being introduced into schools in England, is an initiative that involves two government departments (sport and education) and a number of other agencies, reflecting the government's current agenda to ensure 'joined up policy' thinking. It aims to develop opportunities for youth sport through co-ordinated links between PE and sport in schools, both within and outside of the formal curriculum, with those in local community sports settings. The essence of the School Sport Co-ordinator programme is to free up nominated teachers in schools from teaching to allow them time for development activities, specifically to encourage schools and community sports providers to work in partnership. This paper draws on data from an ongoing research project examining the implementation of one School Sport Co-ordinator partnership, 'northbridge'. Drawing on in-depth interviews, it explores the perceptions of the newly established School Sport Co-ordinators of their changing role. The paper highlights some of the initial tensions and challenges for them in their task of working across different educational and sporting contexts

Emotion and memory in nostalgia sport tourism: Examining the attraction to postmodern ballparks through an interdisciplinary lens

Nostalgia sport tourism, one of Gibson’s (1998) three forms of sport tourism, appears to have received little scholarly attention in contrast to active sport tourism and event sport tourism (Fairley, 2003; Gibson, 2002, 2003; Ritchie & Adair, 2004). Despite this apparent lack of research relative to the other two domains, insightful and thought-provoking scholarship has emerged within nostalgia sport tourism. Sociology, which is one of sport tourism’s parent disciplines, has influenced much of this scholarship (Gibson, 2004; Harris, 2006). Among other things, this epistemological orientation has yielded the importance of emotion and memory to nostalgically oriented experiences. This paper considers the emergence of emotion and memory within nostalgia sport tourism and, in so doing, continues this sociological emphasis. In particular, it argues that interaction ritual (IR) theory (Collins, 2004), a micro-sociological perspective, can be used to provide scholars with a deep understanding of tourists’ and excursionists’ motivations for engaging in nostalgically oriented experiences. Three additional constructs from the field of sport geography – place, placelessness (Relph, 1976), and topophilia (Tuan, 1974) – are posited as useful supplements to IR theory that can enable sport tourism scholars to develop a more nuanced conceptualization of those elements inherent within nostalgically oriented sport sites. These theoretical positions are synthesized and used as a framework to examine sport tourists’ and excursionists’ attraction to the recent ‘throwback’ aesthetic of contemporary Major League Baseball park design

Women and children first? Child abuse and child protection in sport

Child welfare and women's rights both feature prominently in contemporary debates on equal rights. Whereas gender equity has been a policy objective for the past thirty years in sport organizations, however, child abuse and protection have only recently emerged as a sport ethics issues. Arguably, child protection has now leapfrogged over gender equity as a policy priority. The chapter opens with a discussion of the role of children in sport in relation to opposing ideologies of social control and personal freedom, and outlines the development of child protection and gender equity initiatives in sport, including the establishment of the not-for-profit Women’s Sports Foundation (UK) and the first national women in sport policy in England, and of a dedicated Sport England/NSPCC Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU). The shift in theoretical focus from ‘women’ to ‘gender’ has been accompanied by a widening of the general social policy attention away from solely heterosexual interests. Sport organisations have responded comparatively slowly to the new rights agenda for gay men, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people but it is argued here that the arrival of the CPSU not only gave huge impetus to the institutionalisation of child protection in sport but also forced sports bodies to address ethics and equity agendas more forcibly than they had done before. In this way, the issue of child protection has acted as a kind of ethical Trojan horse in sport. The paradox of child protection in sport, however, is that it has simultaneously drawn public attention to issues of abuse and exploitation and deflected attention away from the specific issue of women’s rights in sport