‘Ten Years Ahead of His Time’: The East End Elegance of Martin Peters

Martin Peters was a successful footballer whose public persona matched the way he played the game, without fuss or fanfare. A key English player of the 1960s, he does not usually feature in discussions about the connection between fashion and football in that decade. The focus is usually placed on players with celebrity status, especially George Best. This paper, working at the intersection of sport and fashion history and cultural studies, broadens the discussion by giving consideration to the non-celebrity-type player. This is done via an examination of the off-field dress and style of Martin Peters. The case is made, from studying the sartorial presentation of Peters, that we can recognize a connection between the player and other young men who favoured a low-key identification with the Mod culture of the time. This position supports a shift within the cultural historical study of British youth and masculine identity from the spectacular to the unspectacular

Ways of Seeing, Ways of Telling: From Art History to Sport History

Art and sport tend to be regarded as very dissimilar areas of human endeavour. Yet, the excellence of human achievement attained in both fields promotes a similarity of consideration that suggests a degree of commonality in the respective methodologies of scholars working on the history of art and the history of sport. A particular sensitivity for sport historians has involved wanting to appear to be doing more than telling stories about great sportspeople and sporting contests. While this is an understandable concern, sport historians risk engaging in something other than ‘sport history’ if they allow anxiety to compromise the discussion of their core subject matter. The history of the history of art reveals a related tension over the existence of a canon of great artists. This tension has not been, and need not be, resolved. Sport historians do well to consider its negotiation as they think through ways to enhance their own modi operandi

Accounting for Experience: Phenomenological Argots and Sportive Life-Worlds

According a to a certain position formulated within the philosophical school of post-structuralism, attempts to reconstruct forms of consciousness are themselves textual fabrications, and should be relinquished in favour of other, more 'textual' forms of analysis. This paper argues that phenomenologists should not reject this critique outright, for it compels them to think more carefully about the appropriateness of particular terminologies for the representation and comprehension of particular life-worlds. To this end, the vocabulary of Maurice Merleau-Ponty is delineated and considered as to its appropriateness for the study of sportive lifeworlds in particular, and that of soccer play more particularly. A Merleau-Pontian analysis of the latter is offered, and it is contended that whilst certain problems are attendant upon its use, it nonetheless stands as a vital resource for understanding such a form of activity. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 2, Edition 2 September 200

Beyond the boundary: The Sandpapergate scandal and the limits of transnational masculinity

The public outrage expressed when Australian cricket players admitted to cheating during a Test match by using sandpaper to alter the surface of the match ball was, for some observers, matched by an incredulity captured in variants of the question, “how did they think they could get away with it?” Drawing upon insights from recent work within masculinity studies, this essay offers an explanation into how the players could overlook the severity of their action as both an affront to the code of cricket and in regard to the response it would bring. The players are seen to be functionaries within an organizational network of ‘transnational men’, which characteristically tends to provide those within its institutional framework with a sense of impunity towards ethically questionable conduct. The essay also provides a means for questioning the wider cultural and organizational environment that gave rise to the Sandpapergate episode, by considering cricket as an ‘unsustainable institution of men’

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The Grad Post Program Spotlight For Fall 201

#hoops #basketballhistory @Hoops_Heritage: examining possibilities for basketball heritage within the context of higher education, critical museology and digital redirections

Until recently, social, economic and political investment into sport heritage in the United Kingdom has been sporadic, variable and inconsistent. This is particularly the case for sports conventionally not considered significant to popular national interest. In the UK, this classification extends to basketball and its heritage. The situation is changing, and development of the nation’s sport heritage is progressing. However, support for sport heritage cannot be guaranteed and continued efforts need to be individually and collectively made to advance its causes. Taking the nascent development of the National Basketball Heritage Centre (NBHC) located at the University of Worcester in the United Kingdom as its focus, this paper interrogates how sport heritage practices and progress might align with the nexus of shifts in Higher Education (in which the NBHC resides), critical museology and digital redirections. This intersectionality paradigm may yield exciting opportunities for sport heritage thought, production and action. Namely, by generating spaces of analysis, reforming modalities of production, and inspiring critical advocacy in representational praxis. Focusing on community identity and youth development, we envision the NBHC as a more than archival tome/tomb, but as a site of transformative social inquiry that (virtually) connects the physical practices of the past with politics of the present and beyond

The first ever anti-football painting: A consideration of the soccer match in John Singer Sargent’s "Gassed"

The paper presents a discussion of Gassed, a large oil painting by John Singer Sargent displayed at the Imperial War Museum in London. Completed in 1919, Gassed is the major achievement from Sargent’s commission as an official war artist at the appointment of the British War Memorials Committee during the latter period of World War I. Prominent in the painting is a group of soldiers, blinded by a mustard gas attack, being lead to a casualty clearing station tent. In the distant background of the painting, another group of soldiers can be seen kitted out in football attire playing a match. The significance of this football imagery is our point of enquiry. As our title suggests, some recent interpretations regard the painting as offering critical reflection, from the time, about the symbolic links between sport and war. However, while the painting may certainly be left open to this type of viewer interpretation, archival and secondary resource material research does not support such a critical intention by the artist. Yet, nor is there evidence that Sargent’s intention was the projection of war-heroism. Rather, Sargent’s endeavour to faithfully represent what he observed allows Gassed to be regarded as a visual record of routine activity behind the lines and of football as an aspect of the daily life of British soldiers during the Great War

APOL1 risk alleles are associated with exaggerated age-related changes in glomerular number and volume in African-American adults: an autopsy study

APOL1 genetic variants contribute to kidney disease in African Americans. We assessed correlations between APOL1 profiles and renal histological features in subjects without renal disease. Glomerular number (N-glom,) and mean glomerular volume (V-glom,) were measured by the dissector/fractionator method in kidneys of African-American and non-African-American adults without renal disease, undergoing autopsies in Jackson, Mississippi. APOL1 risk alleles were genotyped and the kidney findings were evaluated in the context of those profiles. The proportions of African Americans with none, one, and two APOL1 risk alleles were 38%, 43%, and 19%, respectively; 38% of African Americans had G1 allele variants and 31% of African Americans had G2 allele variants. Only APOL1-positive African Americans had significant reductions in N-glom and increases in V-glom with increasing age. Regression analysis predicted an annual average loss of 8834 (P=0.03, sex adjusted) glomeruli per single kidney over the first 38 years of adult life in African Americans with two risk alleles. Body mass index above the group medians, but below the obesity definition of >= 30 kg/m(2), enhanced the expression of age-related changes in N-glom in African Americans with either one or two APOL1 risk alleles. These findings indicate that APOL1 risk alleles are associated with exaggerated age-related nephron loss, probably decaying from a larger pool of smaller glomeruli in early adult life, along with enlargement of the remaining glomeruli. These phenomena might mark mechanisms of accentuated susceptibility to kidney disease in APOL1-positive African Americans

Nephron number, hypertension, renal disease, and renal failure

Essential hypertension is one of the most common diseases in the Western world, affecting about 26.4% of the adult population, and it is increasing (1). Its causes are heterogeneous and include genetic and environmental factors (2), but several observations point to an important role of the kidney in its genesis (3). In addition to variations in tubular transport mechanisms that could, for example, affect salt handling, structural characteristics of the kidney might also contribute to hypertension. The burden of chronic kidney disease is also increasing worldwide, due to population growth, increasing longevity, and changing risk factors. Although single-cause models of disease are still widely promoted, multideterminant or multihit models that can accommodate multiple risk factors in an individual or in a population are probably more applicable (4,5). In such a framework, nephron endowment is one potential determinant of disease susceptibility. Some time ago, Brenner and colleagues (6,7) proposed that lower nephron numbers predispose both to essential hypertension and to renal disease. They also proposed that hypertension and progressive renal insufficiency might be initiated and accelerated by glomerular hypertrophy and intraglomerular hypertension that develops as nephron number is reduced (8). In this review, we summarize data from recent studies that shed more light on these hypotheses. The data supply a new twist to possible mechanisms of the Barker hypothesis, which proposes that intrauterine growth retardation predisposes to chronic disease in later life (9). The review describes how nephron number is estimated and its range and some determinants and morphologic correlates. It then considers possible causes of low nephron numbers. Finally, associations of hypertension and renal disease with reduced nephron numbers are considered, and some potential clinical implications are discussed