1,721,102 research outputs found
A Breath of Fresh air: Breathing stories of the lived experiences of asthma and sporting embodiment
No full textThe purpose of this study is to conduct an investigation of the lived experiences of asthma and sporting embodiment in non-elite sportspeople of different ages and levels of ability, involved in a range of sports. Asthma is characterised as a breathing disorder and the aim of this research is to add to embodied literature by providing ‘fleshy’ realities of the moving, sweating, sensuous sporting body, which holds meanings, purposes and interests for people who experience sport with asthma. Breathing is not only a physiological process, but it is also cultural and people may deal with their asthma symptoms in ways that reflect cultural attitudes embedded in sport. This qualitative study addresses five exploratory questions: 1) How do sportspeople experience asthma? 2) How do sportspeople negotiate their asthma and sporting identities? 3) How do emotional dimensions play a role in sportspeople’s asthma and sporting experiences? 4) How do perceptions of environment and illness shape one another by examining the relationship between the body, the self and environment? 5) What is the role of trauma in sportspeople with asthma? 6) How do key senses (sound) play a role in sportspeople’s asthma and embodied sporting experiences? Through a symbolic-interactionsist and phenomenological-inspired approach, this research places emphasis on the mind-body-self nexus in relation to sensory experiences with a focus upon the centrality of the ‘visceral’ body in the relationship between self-consciousness and the self. A bodily disruption (e.g., asthmatic attack) is likely to heighten awareness of the body-self and contingency and may amplify how sportspeople listen to their own embodied selves when engaged in sporting action. Therefore, sportspeople may become even more acutely aware of, and attuned to, their breathing in ways that link the physiological, the psychological, the social and the environment. This may lead to a permanent re-ordering/negotiation of identities (e.g., athletic identity - asthma identity) through ‘emotion work’ and ‘somatic (auditory) work’ in which a concern with the body is central. The findings are represented as a typology consisting of Conformers, Contesters and Creators, which may be used as a framework to assist health care and sporting professionals in developing more appropriate and effective rehabilitation regimes for sportspeople, in order to improve the quality of treatment and outcomes
Emotions, interaction and the injured sporting body.
Full text linkThis is a pre-print, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport. Copyright © 2005 International Sociology of Sport Association and SAGE Publications. The definitive publisher-authenticated version (Vol.40 (2), 2005 pp. 221-240) is available online at: http://irs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/40/2/221Based on a collaborative autoethnographic research project, this article explores the emotional dimension of the injured sporting body. It takes as its analytic focus the journey, rehabilitative, emotional and narrative, of two middle-aged, non-elite, middle/long-distance runners who experienced serious, long-term knee injuries. The study examines the interactional and narrative elements of the rehabilitative journey, focusing on dimensions of the emotion management, emotion work, and emotional intersubjectivity of the researcher/author and her training partner as they struggled to contend with the liminality of the injured athletic role, and to maintain positive identities in the face of serious threat to their running selves
Running into injury time: distance running and temporality
No full text© 2003 Human Kinetics, Inc.Despite a growing body of research on the sociology of time and, analogously, on the sociology of sport, to date there has been relatively little sports literature that takes time as the focus of the analysis. Given the centrality of time as a feature of most sports, this would seem a curious lacuna. The primary aims of this article are to contribute new perspectives on the subjective experience of sporting injury and to analyze some of the temporal dimensions of sporting "injury time" and subsequent rehabilitation. The article is based on data derived from a 2-year autoethnographic research project on 2 middle/long-distance runners, and concludes with some indicative comments regarding the need for sports physiotherapists and other health-care practitioners to take into account the subjective temporal dimension of injury and rehabilitative processes
Occupational Identity on the Edge: Social Science Contract Researchers in Higher Education
No full textThis is a pre-print, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Sociology. Copyright © 2004 BSA Publications Ltd. The definitive version is available at: http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/38/2/313Throughout the higher education sector in the UK, recent decades have witnessed the increasing use of fixed-term and part-time labour, to the extent that around 50 percent of academic staff are currently employed on fixed-term contracts and in excess of 90 percent of researchers are employed on fixed-term contracts. Despite the importance of their contribution to the sector as a whole, relatively little research has been undertaken on the lived experience of undertaking contract research. The objective of this article is therefore to explore the reality and complexities of contract researchers’ working lives and the occupational identities and self-images that contract researchers construct and maintain
Emotions, interaction and the injured sporting body
No full textBased upon a collaborative autoethnographic research project, this article explores from a sociological perspective the emotional dimension of the injured sporting body. It takes as its analytic focus the journey, rehabilitative, emotional and narrative, of two middle-aged, non-élite, middle/long-distance runners who encountered serious, long-term knee injuries. The paper examines in particular the interactional and narrative elements of the rehabilitative journey, focussing on dimensions of the emotion management, emotion work, and emotional intersubjectivity of the researcher/author and her training partner as they struggled to contend with the liminality of the injured athletic role, and to maintain positive identities in the face of serious threat to their running selves
Working at a marginal ‘career’: the case of UK social science contract researchers
Full text linkThis a pre-print, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in The Sociological Review. Copyright © Blackwell publishing 2003, Published on behalf of Keele University. The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.comContract researchers constitute a significant occupational group within the UK higher education system, and the products of their labour are crucial to the research profile of the institutions in which they work and to the sector as a whole. Given the ‘marginality’ of the contract researcher role, with its attendant insecurities and inferior employment conditions in comparison with ‘permanent’ faculty, it is perhaps not surprising that relatively few individuals manage to sustain any continuity of employment resembling a career path. The fact that some researchers do succeed in achieving this is therefore worthy of investigation. This paper examines and charts some of the ways in which contract researchers manage their everyday work routines and construct a presentation of self in order to maximise opportunities for ‘staying in the game’
Running the routes together: co-running and knowledge in action
No full textThis is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography following peer review. Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Vol. 37(1), Feb 2008, pp.38-61 is available online at: http://jce.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/37/1/38 . 12 month embargo by the publisher. Article will be released February 2009.The mundane, concrete practices of social life have remained underanalyzed, unproblematized, even taken for granted by some social theorists, despite their being constitutive of the very foundation of social life. Despite a growing corpus of ethnographic studies within the sociology of sport, little analytic attention has been devoted to the concrete practices of actually "doing" sporting activity. Based on data derived from a collaborative auto-ethnographic study of distance runners, this article analyzes the ways in which two runners jointly accomplish running-together. The article also examines and "marks" some of the knowledge in action that underpins the production of running-together, analyzed in relation to three specific areas: ground and performance, safety concerns, and "the other," in the form of training partner(s), highlighting the importance of aural and visual components. It concludes with a call for more detailed analytic descriptions of sporting practices to better ground more abstract generalizations about sporting phenomena
Social Science Contract Researchers in Higher Education: perceptions of craft knowledge
No full textCopyright © 2008 by BSA Publications Ltd. This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Work, Employment and Society following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version (Vol. 14 (1), pp. 159-171) is available online at: http://wes.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/14/1/159The past two decades have witnessed a trend towards the use of fixed-term and part-time contracts in higher education in the UK, where over a third of routine academic work is now carried out by staff on fixed-term contracts (Ainley 1994). As Kogan et al. (1994: 53) have noted, this increased casualisation of academic labour has been driven by the need for universities and colleges to reduce labour costs. The move towards a more ‘flexible’ and cheaper workforce is largely a response to governmental resource restrictions and the need to cope with increased student numbers (Kogan et al. 1994). In order to cope with financial pressures, universities have increasingly sought to diversify their funding and become more entrepreneurial in attracting income from sources other than the government (Wasser 1990; Ziman 1991). External research grants and contracts play an increasingly important role in the finances of many institutions, with a concomitant rise in the number of researchers employed on fixed-term contracts
Capturing contracts: informal activity among contract researchers
No full textThis is the author's pre-print version of an article accepted for publication in the British Journal of Sociology of Education. Copyright © 2008 Taylor & Francis Group. The definitive publisher-authenticated version of this paper is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0142569980190403Contract researchers constitute an expanding occupational group in UK higher education and contribute significantly to national research output. Despite recent concern and debates over their marginal status and inferior conditions of employment, little is known about the actual complexities of contract researchers' working lives. Drawing upon qualitative interviews, an attempt is made to remedy this lacuna, by portraying certain kinds of occupational knowledge and practices utilised by social science contract researchers. The paper focuses on the understandings and strategies which are developed and refined as researchers attempt to sustain employment in a highly insecure realm. What is portrayed is not the technical expertise required for this kind of research, but rather the knowledge, acumen and action which are more informal, tacit and indeterminate. This paper examines the cognitive and interactional processes which need to be developed and combined with technical expertise, if employment is to be maintained in such a competitive and insecure field
Runners’ tales: Autoethnography, injury and narrative
Full text linkThis is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Auto/Biography.This paper examines the importance of narrative activity in the construction of the injured and rehabilitated sporting body and the successful reconstruction of positive athletic identity. It is based on autoethnographic research undertaken by the authors, both of whom are middle/long-distance runners, during a two-year period of injury and gradual rehabilitation. The paper delineates certain narratives which were generated during the process of injury and recovery, commencing with narratives of suffering and sacrifice, through those of pilgrimage and blame to the more positive narratives of compensation and subsequent empowerment and progress. We examine the role played by these narratives in enabling us to make sense phenomenologically of our injuried bodies, to achieve momentum and to maintain positive running identities in the face of threat to the running selves. Via narrative exchanges, as ‘co-tellers’ we achieved a high degree of intersubjectivity which was crucial to our eventual return to full running fitness and athletic identity
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