Critical Readings in Bodybuilding

Critical Readings in Bodybuilding PDF Author: Adam Locks
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136675442
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Critical Readings in Bodybuilding is the first collection to address the contemporary practice of bodybuilding, especially the way in which the activity has become increasingly more extreme, and to consider much neglected debates of gender, eroticism, and sexuality related to the activity.

Critical Readings in Bodybuilding

Critical Readings in Bodybuilding PDF Author: Adam Locks
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136675442
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
Critical Readings in Bodybuilding is the first collection to address the contemporary practice of bodybuilding, especially the way in which the activity has become increasingly more extreme, and to consider much neglected debates of gender, eroticism, and sexuality related to the activity.

Little Big Men

Little Big Men PDF Author: Alan M. Klein
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 9781438409252
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Little Big Men is a study of competitive bodybuilders on the West Coast that examines the subculture from the perspective of bodybuilders' everyday activities. It offers fascinating descriptions and insightful analogies of an important and understudied subculture that has risen to widespread popularity in today's mass culture. Alan Klein conducted his field study of bodybuilding in some of the world's best-known gyms. In studying the social and political relations of bodybuilding competitors, Klein explores not only gym dynamics but also the internal and external pressures bodybuilders face. Central to his examination is the critique of masculinity. Through his study of "hustling" among bodybuilders, Klein is able to construct a social-psychological male configuration that includes narcissism, homophobia, hypermasculinity, and fascism. Because they exist as exaggerations, these bodybuilder traits come to represent one end of the continuum of modern masculinity, what Klein terms comic-book masculinity. This study is a rare foray into the critique of contemporary American macho.

Body Utopianism

Body Utopianism PDF Author: Franziska Bork Petersen
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030974863
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
This book investigates how desires to transform our bodies can bring utopia to the present, and how utopian practices often lead to distinctly dystopian or anti-utopian outcomes. It is the first comprehensive study to address the paradoxical relationship between bodies and utopianism. Franziska Bork Petersen discusses doping, bodybuilding and cosmetic surgery alongside practices such as retouching the ‘body as image’ on social media, and looks at how fashion modelling and performance ‘estrange’ the body. Techniques and technologies to transform our bodies are increasingly accessible and suggest an excessive identification of the body as lacking. To ‘be a body’ in a culturally meaningful way, we incessantly improve our bodily appearance and capacity. The book therefore addresses the utopianism inherent in a cultural understanding of bodies as increasingly controllable.

Online Doping

Online Doping PDF Author: Jesper Andreasson
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031302729
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
This book examines the bodies, communities, and cultures that evolve in different online doping spaces. By engaging in critical analysis of the interrelatedness of online and offline doped realities, the book provides a comprehensive analysis influenced by digital sociology and feminist theory. It focuses on the intersection of doping, bodies, and technology, and is structured around three interconnected themes prominent in doping research but less acknowledged in online environments: doping spaces and communities; gender and power relationships; and the relationship between online activities and offline social life. Building on extensive online research with different drug communities and doping spaces, the authors illustrate how the online world of doping has developed into a digital ecosystem, and present an argument for understanding doping as a cyborgified concept. It will be of interest to students and researchers of sport and digital sociology, media studies, social work, drug studies and gender studies

Arts and Power

Arts and Power PDF Author: Lisa Gaupp
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3658374292
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
The focus on concepts of power and domination in societal structures has characterized sociology since its beginnings. Max Weber’s definition of power as “imposing one’s will on others” is still relevant to explaining processes in the arts, whether their production, imagination, communication, distribution, critique or consumption. Domination in the arts is exercised by internal and external rulers through institutionalized social structures and through beliefs about their legitimacy, achieved by defining and shaping art tastes. The complexity of how the arts relate to power arises from the complexity of the policies of artistic production, distribution and consumption—policies which serve to facilitate or hinder an aesthetic object from reaching its intended public. Curators, critics and collectors employ a variety of forms of cultural and artistic communication to mirror and shape the dominant social, economic and political conditions. Arts and Power: Policies in and by the Arts brings together diverse voices who position the societal functions of art in fields of domination and power, of structure and agency—whether they are used to impose hegemonic, totalitarian or unjust goals or to pursue social purposes fostering equal rights and grassroots democracy. The contributions in this volume are exploratory steps towards what we believe can be a more systematic, empirically and theoretically founded sociological debate on the arts and power. And they are an invitation to take further steps.

Body Studies: The Basics

Body Studies: The Basics PDF Author: Niall Richardson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317692624
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Consideration of the body as a subject for study has increased in recent years with new technologies, forms of modification, debates about obesity and issues of age being brought into focus by the media. Drawing on contemporary culture, Body Studies: The Basics introduces readers to the key concerns and debates surrounding the study of the sociological body, cutting across disciplines to cover topics which include: Nature vs. Culture: how we ‘build’ and transform our bodies Conformity and resistance in bodily practice Issues of body image – beauty, diet, exercise and age Sporting bodies and the pursuit of ideals Enfreakment, disability and monstrosity Cyborgs and virtual online bodies With further reading signposted throughout, this accessible book is essential reading for anyone studying the body through the lens of sociology, cultural studies, sports studies, media studies and gender studies; and all those with an interest in how the physical body can be a social construct.

Sport’s Relationship with Other Leisure Industries

Sport’s Relationship with Other Leisure Industries PDF Author: Benjamin Litherland
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315404699
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
This innovative and timely volume of essays critically interrogates the shared histories between sport and a variety of leisure, entertainment and cultural pursuits. Utilizing a range of historical methods and sources, they describe how sport has interacted with a broad range of leisure forms, including tourism, shopping, theatre, circus, carnival and film.

Fitness Doping

Fitness Doping PDF Author: Jesper Andreasson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030221059
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
This book compiles several years of multi-faceted qualitative research on fitness doping to provide a fresh insight into how the growing phenomenon intersects with issues of gender, body and health in contemporary society. Drawing on biographical interviews, as well as online and offline ethnography, Andreasson and Johansson analyse how, in the context of the global development of gym and fitness culture, particular doping trajectories are formulated, and users come into contact with doping. They also explore users’ internalisation of particular values, practices and communications and analyse how this influences understandings of the self, health, gender and the body, as well as tying this into wider beliefs regarding individual freedom and the law. This insight into doping goes beyond elite and organised sports, and will be of interest to students and scholars across the sociology of sport, leisure studies, and gender and body politics.

Feminist Figure Girl

Feminist Figure Girl PDF Author: Lianne McTavish
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438454775
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Analyzes the author’s transformation from academic to figure competitor. Feminist Figure Girl chronicles the transformation of art history professor Lianne McTavish, from a university professor into an extraordinarily tanned and crystal-encrusted bikini-wearing “figure girl.” Figure competitions seek a softer appearance than traditional forms of bodybuilding but still require rigorous weightlifting, an extreme protein diet, and many hours of posing in high heels. While training for a figure show, McTavish combined autoethnographic methods, participant observation, and feminist theory to find new ways of thinking about physique culture and the female body. The author, who specializes in critical visual culture and the history of the body, explores such contemporary issues as body image, fat studies, identity politics, and “postfeminism,” while rethinking fitness culture, diet regimes, feminist politics, reproductive activism, performance art, and the social function of photography. Written in a lively personal style reminiscent of McTavish’s popular blog, she clearly explains the complex ideas stemming from the theoretical work of such writers as Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Iris Marion Young, Edmund Husserl, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The book also includes many photos documenting McTavish’s physical transformation. “Dieting and exercising with the goal of posing onstage in a bikini and heels is not what many think of when they think of feminism, but then those people have never read Feminist Figure Girl. Lianne McTavish brings figure competitions and feminism—two seemingly opposed things—together in this intellectually challenging, deeply personal book. This is a must read for anyone with a passion for feminism and fitness.” — Caitlin Constantine, editor of the Fit and Feminist blog

Gender and Popular Culture

Gender and Popular Culture PDF Author: Kusha Tiwari
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527543463
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
This collection of essays explores contemporary reflections on interactions between gender and culture. The 11 contributions focus on varied dimensions of popular culture that define, interpret, validate, interrogate and rupture gender conventions. There are discussions on how children react to gender expectations and how this reaction is reflected in their activities like drawing and games. There are also investigations of films, female bodybuilding in the USA, transgender identity in Greek and Indian mythology, and women breaking glass ceilings and pioneering social movements in developing countries like India. Specific chapters are devoted to British TV series and Hindi films that address issues related to masculinity. Essays on challenges that women face in the corporate world and the real world of social inequalities, especially in developing countries, give this volume rich thematic diversity. The collection will be of interest to literary critics, film critics, gender studies scholars, and poets.