Body Commons: Toward an Interdisciplinary Study of the Somatic Spectacular

Recently, many Western societies have indulgently produced and consumed a new theatre of corporeality. In this paper, we explore the explosion of corporeal (kinesthetic) forms as evidenced in mass-media discourse—as evoked by ‘reality’ television shows like Dancing with the stars and So you think you can dance?, and in contemporary agent provocateurs such as the spectacle and spectacular(ised) Lady Gaga. Drawing on Turner’s (1992) notion of the ‘somatic society’, Shilling’s (2006) theorizing on the body sociological, and McLaren’s (1995) Freire-inspired examinations of critical pedagogy, we argue that these forms share, we suggest, commonalities with the spectacularised and politicised physcailties of sporting bodies oft-polemicised by body sociologists, feminist critics, and cultural studies scholars (to name but a few). Each is thrust into public sphere is heretofore unimaginably spectacular ways; each is judged, subjected, and disciplined along performative norms; each is transformed into somatic currency for capital accumulation. Thusly, we offer a new lens toward a radically-contextually, anti-disciplinary, corporeally-engaged, critical (public) body pedagogic

Judging Jack: Rethinking Historical Agency and the Sport Hero

One aspect of the dizzying (aesthetic, cultural, linguistic, visual, and post-modern) ‘turns’ Sport history has taken in recent times has been the revision/deconstruction of sporting heroes and demystification of historical narratives. This, in turn, has attended to larger historical concerns about the centrality of agents and agency in narrative making. Encouraged by these directions, this paper reconsiders the primacy afforded agents and their agency within national Olympic history creation. I examine revered 1930s track athlete Jack Lovelock who features predominantly within New Zealand’s Olympic history. The paper aims to prompt contemplation about sport heroes. In particular, I argue sport historians should continue to decentre sport figures and bring alternate meanings, interpretations, and renderings of agents to the fore

Expert Comment: Response to Scottish FA’s head contact ban

Following the news that the Scottish FA is due to ban under-12s from heading footballs in training sessions, Dr Niki Koutrou (Programme Director for Sport Management) and Dr Geoff Kohe (Lecturer in Sport Management and Policy), have provided comment on how the head contact ban can be seen as a positive movement, yet sport organisations need to act beyond this to safeguard young people

For the Good of the Game? The Legacy of the Football Trust, the Football Pools, and the Dangerous Seduction of Political Promise

During the late twentieth century, the United Kingdom's football infrastructure and spectatorship underwent transformation as successive stadia disasters heightened political and public scrutiny of the game and prompted industry change. Central to this process was the government's formation of an independent charitable organization to oversee subsequent policy implementation and grant-aid provision to clubs for safety, crowd, and spectator requirements. This entity, which began in 1975 focusing on ground improvement, developed into the Football Trust. The Trust was funded directly by the football pools companies who ran popular low-stakes football betting enterprises. Working in association with the Pools Promoters Association (PPA), and demonstrating their social responsibility towards the game's constituents, the pools resourced a wide array of Trust activities. Yet irrespective of government mandate, the PPA and Trust were continually confronted by political and economic obstacles that threatened the effectiveness of their arrangements. In this paper the history of the Football Trust is investigated, along with its partnership with the PPA, and its relationship with the government within the context of broader political shifts, stadia catastrophes, official inquiries, and commercial threats. It is contended that while the Trust/PPA partnership had a respectable legacy, their history afforded little protection against adverse contemporary conditions

Zakon in vzročnost

Focusing on the problem of so called dispositional properties, the paper confronts the time slice type of ontology which Hume's rejection of the idea of necessary connection seems to amount to with the type whose ultimate entities are persisting and changing objects in the notion of which the transtemporal identity and the kinds of changing are already implied. This ontological scheme is shown to be correlated to the explanations in terms of nature of an object, and since this nature is specified by the actions and reactions, necessary for something to be an object of certain kind, the relation between existence and causal efficiency proves to be analytical. Thus the idea of necessary connection becomes justified both from ontological and epistemological point of view. For the conclusion, some striking nonhumean consequences are developed: regardless of necessary concatenation of natural events it's ultimately impossible to predict the subsequent event since it can never be known which objects we are concerned with - the missing evidence being obtainable from the subsequent event only; all possible worlds are governed by the same natural laws, the change of which would lead to the destruction of our world; there is only one possible world, the only trouble being in the impossibility of determining which one.Ob problemu dispozicijskih lastnosti je v prispevku ontološkemu tipu časovnih izsekov, ki ji je zavezana Humova zavrnitev predstave nujne zveze, zoperstavljen tip ontologije, katere zadnje entitete so predmeti, ki vztrajajo in se spreminjajo skozi čas. Ta ontološka shema ima svoj kore-lat v pojasnjevanju s pomočjo narave predmeta; ker pa je le-ta specificirana z odzivi, nujnimi, da bi bil nekaj predmet določene vrste, se odnos med tem, kar je in njegovo vzročno učinkovitostjo izkaže za analitičnega. Tako prejme predstava nujne zveze tako ontološko kot epistemološko utemeljitev. Na koncu je nakazanih nekaj presenetljivih nehumovskih implikacij: navkljub nujni uveriženosti naravnih dogodkov ni mogoče z vso zanesljivostjo napovedati naslednjega dogodka, saj brez podatkov o tem dogodku samem ne moremo dokončno vedeti, za kakšne stvari gre; v vseh možnih svetovih vladajo enaki naravni zakoni, katerih sprememba bi imela za posledico razpad našega sveta; obstaja en sam možni svet, edina težava je v tem, da ne moremo vedeti, kateri

The Possibility of Rhetorical Composition 2

　筆者は岡山大学において2001 ～ 2012 年の間に「レトリックと認識・発想」という教養教 育科目を計7 回開講した。そこではレトリック技法の概説と具体例の分析を行って基礎的知 識を身に付けるとともに，実際に文章を書いてみることによって，認識力と発想力の向上を はかろうとした。本稿では中村2007 のレトリック技法のうち付加と省略を取り上げ，技法 についての考え方，効果的な教材，指導上の問題点などについて考える

Still Playing Together(?): A Recall to Physical Education and Sport History Intersections

As academic disciplines, Physical Education and Sport History share interests in performance, participation, physique and the politics of corporeal praxis. Engendering unity between the two disciplines, however, has not been without concern. Scholars working within (and across) both fields have highlighted how the potential for shared knowledge production and meaning making has been, to a degree, stymied by epistemological and methodological criticism and trepidation. Issues over contextualization, rigour, narrative schemas, conceptualizations of the body, and notions of agency and power still, in particular, constrain our current educational and historical readings and renderings of physical culture(s). Scholarly schisms and methodological differences can be overcome, however, and need not prohibit disciplinary collaborations that might better address prevailing ethical questions and affect political cause; vis-à-vis the body, the physical and sport. This brief piece is, consequently, recourse to the scholarly symbiosis between Physical Education and Sport History and echoes the encouragement of our earlier colleagues to play, inquire, create and produce together

Making it ordinary : an unexceptional history of the early olympic movement in New Zealand

Making it ordinary presents an alternative history of the olympic movement in New Zealand. The crux of my argument is that the history of the local olympic movement is unexceptional given the contexts of international sport in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My approach is also alternative with respect to different aspects of the narrative. In the case of content, I employ a systematic model of historical context which, by complying with the conventions of the discipline, is unusual among historians of the olympic movement in New Zealand who have tended to write decontextualised, celebratory, hagiographies. My contextual model frames the content of the history that consists of two parts. In Part I (circa 1892-1911), I examine the conception of the olympic movement and its institutions; in Part 11 (circa 1911-1936), I investigate the consolidation of the movement. Both parts excavate the major forces, agents, ideology, and events I believe were significant to the early development of New Zealand's Olympic movement. With respect to the form of my narrative, my contextualisation is methodologically orthodox (i.e. I adhere to the analytical empiricism of mainstream history and employ a standard set of conceptual tools). However, I also adopt a deconstructionist sensibility throughout the thesis by foregrounding my narrative decisions and explicating my role as an author-historian. In Making it ordinary I propose that the development of the early Olympic movement was neither linear nor predetermined. Rather, it involved a complex interplay of forces, agents, ideologies, and events. While my thesis is essentially a contextual analysis, it is also involves remaking and playing with olympic memories. Lastly, in Part Ill, remembering olympic history, I draw on the politics of memory to argue that history is not necessarily about the end product but about the process by which it created (written/performed/presented). In my case, I set out to show the choices I made to create a particular narrative of New Zealand olympic history. There are multiple ways historians can remember and recraft New Zealand olympic history: Making it ordinary is one way of remembering anew

Crafting critical echoes in sport organizations: Oral histories of, and possibilities for, the New Zealand Olympic Committee

Sport organizations’ digital spaces (e.g. organizational websites, fanzines, blogs, electronic repositories and social media) are, potentially, rich empirical terrain in which sport narratives may be (re)presented, mobilised and challenged, and content disseminated to wider audiences. Drawing on New Zealand’s participation in the Olympic movement, and the national Olympic Committee’s efforts to embrace historical thinking, we consider the confluence of oral and digital approaches. More widely, we examine how sport organizations might utilise oral histories and digital spaces to engage audiences more effectively with critical understanding of the past. To note, progressive shifts in museum and heritage studies have advocated ideological and institutional redirection, critical reflection and radical departures from traditional representational practices. In these processes, oral histories have been identified as a key means to these ends. Presenting vignettes constructed from interviews with sport participants, we interrogate connections between oral history, narrative making and public heritage praxis