‘It's a part of me’: An ethnographic exploration of becoming a disabled sporting cyborg following spinal cord injury.

In much research dealing with sport technologies and the process of cyborgification there is a significant lack of attention given to the experiences of athletes themselves. This is particularly so for disabled athletes. Against this backdrop of neglect, we draw on data generated from a 4-year ethnographic study that explored the experiences and meanings of disability sport for those who became involved in it following a spinal cord injury, and here we focus specifically on the process of becoming a disabled sporting cyborg. Our analysis reveals the following phases in this process: from taken-forgranted to techno-survival cyborgs; rehabilitation centres and becoming a technically competent cyborg; everyday life as an embodied cyborg; becoming a disabled sporting cyborg. The dynamics of each phase, how they relate to each other, and how they shape body-self-technology relationships over time are considered in detail. In closing we offer some reflections on the consequences of cyborgification and the implications of this process for constructions of ability and disability. We also raise questions regarding the structural and ethical implications of cyborgification, particularly in terms of the validation of certain kinds of bodies at the expense of others and therole of technology in reproducing social inequalities

‘I am proud of my back’: an ethnographic study of the motivations and meanings of body modification as identity work among athletes with spinal cord injury

Little is known about why disabled athletes choose to modify their bodies and the meanings that these modifications have for them. Drawing on data from a larger 4-year ethnographic study, we focus on the motivations and meanings of five athletes who had become disabled due to spinal cord injury (SCI) for tattooing their bodies in specific ways. Our analysis illuminates the following key themes as being significant in the body modification choices of those involved: re-inscribing identity, subverting the ableist stare and embodying disability pride, articulating gendered sexuality, and enabling the process of narrative mapping between pre- and post-spinal cord injury periods. In considering these themes we reveal some important contrasts between ablebodied and disabled forms of engagement with body modification practices