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Sociology of Sport Journal, 2011, 28, 135-144
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Physical Cultural Studies [Redux]
Michael Atkinson
University of Toronto
Congratulations to the editors and the contributing authors to this special edition of
the Sociology of Sport Journal for deftly underscoring the promises and prospects
of physical cultural studies (PCS). As a self-identified PCS enthusiast, I applaud
their probing, thought-provoking and penetrative analyses of the emerging field.
While PCS is a nascent field of inquiry, it is never too premature for boundaries,
parameters, mandates and definitions to be proposed and contested. Each of the
respective articles blends a range of theoretical traditions—from cultural studies to
poststructural to spatial to critical pedagogic—into the simmering PCS stew. The
separate articles in this edition of the SSJ illustrate active bodies as they are articulated in/through space, place, discourses and the research process in an intriguing
manner. The articles challenge readers and potential skeptics of the PCS oeuvre to
reflect seriously on the pressing need for sociocultural researchers of sport, physical activity, health and exercise to demarcate new paradigmatic boundaries in the
early twenty-first century.
Indeed, these are important definitional times within the academy. Both the
context and culture of academic research has changed, rather immensely I think,
over the past decade. Given the rise of audit cultures within universities and colleges;
the crumbling of traditional university business models and upsurge of neoliberal
practices of “fund raising”; a groundswell in conservative ideologies across many
Western landscapes; the ongoing redesign of sport, exercise and health faculties/
departments along kinesiological and neo-positivist lines; and a proliferating skepticism about the public utility of social research in Canada, the United States and
United Kingdom (as evidenced, for example, by the sweeping funding cuts to social
scientific teaching and research in British universities in 2010); a broadening of
the sociocultural study of sport, exercise, health, movement, dance and play is not
only timely, it is long overdue. The pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge
has most likely gone the way of the dinosaur, and social scientific units around the
world are forced to justify their existence, daily operation, staffing, funding and
future along lines of outcomes, deliverables, products or other empirical means-toan-end rationales. The survival of the “sociology of sport” subdiscipline, therefore,
may very well depend upon a new sense of praxis and communitas among us; one
including a reconceptualized understanding of what the hell it is we do every day
(and for whom).
Atkinson is with the Faculty of Physical Education and Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada.
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136 Atkinson
What particularly strikes me about this edition of the Sociology of Sport
Journal is how the papers unintentionally underscore to the impending demise of
the sociology of sport. Perhaps in some ways, the sociology of sport died some
time ago without receiving a public eulogy or penned obituary. Let me explain
briefly. I gained my PhD in Sociology in 2001 from a rather mainstream Canadian
sociology department. Until the latter part of the decade, I spent time teaching and
researching within prototypical sociology departments. I eventually left sociology
because, to this day, sport, physical activity and exercise are not on the sociological
radar screens in these departments or most others in North America; and, because
sociologists recoil when asked to be personally involved in or advocates for, social
change via the research process. The latter may explain, argues Cole (2001) and
Thiele (2005), the relative sharp decline in the popularity of sociology in the past
four decades. Further still, there are only a handful of “sociologists of sport” teaching in sociology departments globally (or, who gained a PhD in Sociology from a
sociology department), writing in/for general sociological journals, using dominant
American/British sociological theories in their work, or asking many of the staple
sociological questions posed and taught within sociological corridors. Rarely are
issues in sport and exercise presented in introductory sociology textbooks, and
social scientific funding agencies around the globe continued to be puzzled by the
academic merit/provided/point of the sociology of sport. Even internally, our most
seasoned colleagues routinely pause ask to why sociologists of sport are so rarely
called upon in public debates and dialogues to share critical insight, knowledge and
expertise regarding sport, physical activity and health. If sociocultural researchers of sport, exercise, health, movement, dance and play are self-reflexively and
unabashedly honest, we must recognize that our wonderful gaggle has been on its
own definitional terrain for some time.
If the sociology of sport exists at arms-length from the so-called parent discipline’s core, why retain the classifying moniker as we enter into the second decade
of the 21st century? Since the early 1990s, “sociology” [of sport] has been little
more than an academically recognized and accepted disciplinary umbrella term for
sociocultural researchers in the field drawing sporadic disciplinary influence from
sociology, anthropology, political science, history, economics, human geography,
health studies, epidemiology, media and communications, women’s studies, business and management and social psychology. Despite Ingham and Donnelly’s (1997)
description of our collective “unity in disunity” as a sociological subdiscipline,
there are scarce grounds to suggest that our academic community has evidenced
any consistent concern for being the sociology of sport for some time. Along these
lines and others, the time is past due for a redefinition of the collective enterprise.
The abandonment of the fragile, tentative and generally untended connections
to ebbs and flows in mainstream sociology may provide an important a way forward
during these definitional times. To be sure, papers presented in this special edition equally point to classic sociological concerns (i.e., the ways in which power,
ideology and dominant cultures work in/through/on social groups in the process of
producing and reproducing inequality and difference), and tread well-worn paths
in the sociology of body (i.e., the manners by which bodies are intextuated [de
Certeau, 1984] with/by dominant social relations and become tableaus of power),
but they also suggest much, much more in our emerging attempts to define the
field of physical cultural studies. The papers illustrate the importance of radical
Physical Cultural Studies [Redux] 137
contextualism, the prospect of integrative theoretical pursuits, the benefits of transdisciplinary thinking for “solving” (not just identifying) physical cultural problems,
the fundamental need for engagement with publics, an awareness of how ideology
hails people as subjects, and the outright importance of “taking sides” through the
research (and dare we say it, knowledge production) act. Such is an interesting turn
for me, because I was taught some time ago that sociologists should refrain from
writing how the world “ought to be” and simply recount “how the world is” in its
empirical reality. Maybe that’s why I rarely refer to my work as “sociological”
any longer. I am not comfortable with an only thinly veiled objectivist academic
mandate, and PCS thinking and research presented in this edition of the SSJ challenges the moral, ethical and interventionist aspects of our vocation and our roles
as publicly paid, funded and accountable intellectuals, workers and citizens. Here,
Thiele’s (2005, p. 214) words regarding the outdated, detached fence straddling
position cherished among sociocultural researchers ring true:
By taking strong politico-moral stands, the modern sociologists made themselves attractive to a huge audience willing to believe that they were making a
contribution to humanity built on a sound understanding of the nature of social
life. The work of Marx, Durkheim and Weber remained influential well into
the second half of the twentieth century because of this belief. But not even
sociologists believe this now, although they still make out that they respect
the moderns because if they don’t do this the history of sociology will have to
be radically reassessed. Sociologists … no longer have a public following, so
they end up talking to each other, often in a language that undercuts the very
idea that sociology can be a discipline. Does anyone outside sociology now
think that sociologists have something to offer because they understand social
life? Does anyone take notice of what sociologists have to say?
At a time when our colleagues are pressing us to justify, illustrate the benefits
of, or generally defend “critical” inquiry on moving bodies in sport, physical activity and exercise zones, here is our opportunity to redefine and move beyond far-too
detached critique—that, if Thiele is correct, no one is listening to any longer. Physical cultural studies must venture beyond the analysis of social problems pertaining
to “bodies” in some obscure sociological (read theoretical) sense; it might very
well be predicated on the need to facilitate or aid in the intervention process and
to employ theory, research and communication as matters of concatenated public
praxis. Political awareness, intense self-reflexivity, and ideological commitments to
justice are not enough. Exposing hegemony, reading the intextuated body and decrying structures of everyday oppression is futile. The future of the sociocultural study
of sport, physical activity, exercise, education and bodies may very well rest on our
adoption of an extrauniversity praxis role, especially in higher education climates
saturated with evaluative exercises, discourses, and metrics designed to scrutinize
the contribution researchers make in solving problems through translational efforts.
The merit, hope and future of the PCS movement, as a successor to the sociology of sport, then, lies in its collective call for engagement with real utopias,
democracy and social intervention; simply, for its call to committed praxis. While
each of the papers in this special edition highlight the path-breaking, critical essence
of PCS and its explicit emphasis on public intellectualism, I am reminded of Turner
138 Atkinson
who claims, (2005, p. 170), “We do not have public intellectuals because we do not
have a social role for them; we need to first look at the availability of social space
for intellectuals rather than asking questions about possible inhabitants.” Turner’s
pessimism about the future of a politically engaged [PCS] academic community
instructs that before any operational definition of PCS is negotiated among us, the
vocational terrain itself must be institutionally cleared. Such institutional spacemaking will not be an easy task, as the editors to this special edition remind us in
their opening article. Bairner (2009) remarks how the late modern university, as
a prison of measured time, allows for little in the way of public intellectual work
when it comes to faculty members’ annual report cards and review processes.
Let’s remember that those interested in public, interventionist academic work face
considerable internal pressures from above to publish in top-tier academic journals,
encounter yearly metrics designed to assess very traditional academic roles and
responsibilities, socialize with colleagues who often express little respect (or at a
minimum concern) for sociocultural research, and whose subversive and interventionist orientations jibe tangentially at best with the privatized timbres of our late
modern, corporate universities. How can this be reconciled with a developing PCS
mandate? If PCS is to succeed as a potential rival to the sociology of sport (and
for that matter, to body studies as well) and to win space as an important forum
of public intellectual work, committed scholars must strive to push the envelope
of research engagement, public communication, knowledge representation (dare
I say, “translation”). University administrators charged with measuring academic
“outputs” along very traditional lines poorly understand each of these tasks. Does,
then, the PCS research lead the proverbial double-life as a traditional scholar by
day and rogue researcher/activist by night? At least in the early days of PCS and
its cross-institutional genesis, probably yes.
At present, what is especially frustrating is that within department space little
refuge is to be found for the civically engaged PCS scholar. Andrews (2008) in
particular is critical of the transformation of kinesiological, physical activity, sport
and health science, human movement departments by neo-positivist health agendas, research protocols and pushes toward traditionally “scientific” (and privately
funded) research. Even more micrologically, within subdisciplinary space (the
sociocultural study of sport, sport policy studies, or the sociology of sport more
broadly) questions concerning the fetishization of preferred “critical” theoretical
readings of social life, nonempirically driven accounts of sport and leisure and mass
media research have done little to engender a public-oriented, praxis zeitgeist among
colleagues. A beleaguered focus on identity politics research (McDonald, 2007),
and underwritten preoccupation with representational practices over policy/change
driven research, is potentially crippling the subdiscipline. Couple these trends with
a general disregard for “translational” or “knowledge-exchange” research efforts,
a general lack of unique or widely accessible theory within the subdiscipline, too
few connections or dialogues with other disciplines within joint research efforts
(i.e., political science, economics, history, anthropology, philosophy, classics, media
studies and communication, human geography, criminology and others), and a
general treatment of praxis, interventionist research as a specialist enterprise, and
a gloomy forecast is easily predicted for sociocultural studies of sport, exercise,
health and physical activity.
Physical Cultural Studies [Redux] 139
But for once, let’s not be gloomy, dour or overly critical. There is incredible
potential in a decisive and collective turn to PCS. Given the above, and as I reflect
on definitions of PCS proposed in this special edition of the SSJ, I will seize at the
opportunity to offer one of my own:
Physical cultural studies [PCS] is an inter- and trans-disciplinary approach
to the analysis of human movement, embodiment and corporeal representation within and across social institutions and cultural groups. PCS research
is theoretically driven, empirically grounded and sensitive to the prospects of
working with diverse community partners to improve the social organization,
cultural prominence, impact, and collective experience of sport, exercise, play
and physical activity and education in the round. PCS researchers produce
local, national and cross-national analyses of how sport, exercise and physical
activity may be contexts where social inclusion, health, safety, human rights
promotion is evident and human physical, intellectual, artistic and moral
potentials are supported without fear or prejudice. PCS research recognizes
that existing social problems in sport and physical activity zones are materially
based and culturally mediated; strives to produce theoretically informed and
empirically verified suggestions for policy change; and, promotes models of
sport, physical activity and human movement as contexts of social integration that celebrate diversity. A practical and radical PCS may involve the
deconstruction and destabilization of identities, practices, logics, institutions,
and images of power in sports and health worlds, suggesting concrete policy
amendments, rule changes or progressive cultural adaptations to foster more
equitable and pleasurable sport, health and physical activity environments for
all. PCS ventures beyond philosophy and critique; it must engage with the
process of resolution.
The above definition builds on and extends definitional work across the papers
in this journal around several themes. If PCS is to provide a beacon of hope at a
time of uncertainty and threat for sociocultural research on sport, physical activity
and bodies, it might do so by whole-heartedly embracing the public academic/
intellectual role outlined by Burawoy (2003, 2004) some time ago, and as referred
to by Andrews and Silk in this special edition. Burawoy (2004) provides the following definition of public intellectualism (as public sociology):
As mirror and conscience of society, sociology must define, promote and
inform public debate about deepening class and racial inequalities, new gender
regimes, environmental degradation, market fundamentalism, state and nonstate violence. I believe that the world needs public sociology–a sociology that
transcends the academy–more than ever. Our potential publics are multiple,
ranging from media audiences to policy makers, from silenced minorities to
social movements. They are local, global, and national. As public sociology
stimulates debate in all these contexts, it inspires and revitalizes our discipline.
In return, theory and research give legitimacy, direction, and substance to public
sociology. Teaching is equally central to public sociology: students are our first
public for they carry sociology into all walks of life. Finally, the critical imagination, exposing the gap between what is and what could be, infuses values
into public sociology to remind us that the world could be different. (p. 610)
140 Atkinson
Burawoy views the public intellectual as a mirror and conscience of society,
deeply engaged in moral and ethical debates and venturing far beyond a banal and
culturally detached analysis of “social facts” or public/power criticism. His version
is a humanistic, moral and democratically socialist vision of public intellectual
research that defines and identifies real utopias and promotes understandings of
how the world might be a better place. Burawoy (2003, p. 19) argues that a public
sociology “[offers] a vision of socialism that places human society, or social humanity at its organizing center, a vision that was central to Marx but that was too often
lost before it was again picked up by Gramsci and Polanyi. If public sociology is
to have a progressive impact it will have to hold itself continuously accountable to
some such vision of democratic socialism.”
A critical, neo-leftist PCS cannot, by theoretical readings and applications
alone, move toward the brand of engaged activism-via-research model of inquiry
advocated by Burawoy and others (Atkinson and Donnelly, 2010; Donnelly et al.,
forthcoming). At present, PCS runs the very real risk of routinely resting on its
own intellectual laurels–emerging far too often as an exercise in the philosophical
reading of physical culture, power within social formations, or hegemonic representations of moving bodies and identities, and too infrequently as a concerted
and unapologetic ritual of transformative praxis. Critical PCS theories and related
research, in their most spirited manifestation, attend to and underscore the politics,
problems and possibilities of research as a lever of engaged praxis; as Tomlinson
(1989, p. 7) comments, a “… praxis in both the sense that human agents are the
architects of the world that they inhabit, and the sense that such agents can become
the architects of renewal, reform and change.” Critical theorizing, from this perspective, is more than the deployment of acerbic thought, proffered discourse on
the inequities of cultural domination, a vivisection of structured inequality, or a
disembodied rhetoric demanding social change. Critical theory and the research
it inspires must be a vehicle of engaged, committed, irreverent, and passionately
charged interventionist work (Atkinson and Donnelly, 2010; McDonald, 2002).
Seeing how discourse organizes, understanding one’s own place in the research
process, providing a platform for the voices of the marginalized or merely “being
there” might make one feel better about society, but it does not necessarily make
our societies better places for all. I argue, and with some critical response I would
imagine, that the mandate of a future PCS must be flavored by a political agenda
wherein researchers and their participants “take point” in the process of social
change; where research itself is a directed lever of social engineering. In the end,
our theories, concepts, and perspectives in PCS must be so attractive that they are
worth living by.
In thinking about my own definition of PCS, I confess to more than a degree of
inspiration from McDonald’s (2002) efforts at distinguishing between two potential
approaches in combining academic research with a political agenda—what he refers
to as the moralistic and the radical. Moralistic research collapses the boundaries
between research and social activism. Academics are involved in political struggles
using their research as a vehicle to reach political goals (Atkinson and Donnelly,
2010). By contrast, the radical approach is best understood as a politicized application of “critical” social research. Unlike moralistic social research, the radical
approach recognizes the distinction between political intervention and political
Physical Cultural Studies [Redux] 141
activism (2002, p. 115). For me, our PCS way forward is in McDonald’s (2002)
description of radical research.
Why? Because as “sociologists” remain predominantly unconvinced by
the appropriateness of adopting an invested, interventionist and engaged role as
advocated by McDonald (perhaps to their potential peril), there is a foreshadowing lesson to be learned by PCS researchers. Ingham and Donnelly (1990) called
for, some time ago, our work to be “practical” along decisively public intellectual,
even radical, lines. Calls by Carrington (2007) and Bairner (2009) echo with
such l tones and discourse. A treasure-trove of praxis-oriented research outside of
the sociology of sport provides examples for PCS researchers to emulate. David
Riesman’s (1950) seminal book The Lonely Crowd is, to this day, among the most
widely public sociological accounts of lived experience. Robert Blauner’s (1972)
Racial Oppression in America and Arlie Hochschild’s (1983) The Managed Heart
were both path-breaking public texts illustrating the enduring politics of race and
gender in American society. Mark Smith (1985) would shortly thereafter reinvestigate debates over the political and interventionist purpose of sociology in his
book, Social Science in the Crucible: The American Debate over Objectivity and
Purpose, 1918–1941. Robert Bellah’s (1985) Habits of the Heart and Ben Agger’s
(2000) Public Sociology: From Social Facts to Literary Acts equally call for a
sociology that addresses major public issues. Mitch Duneier’s (2000) Sidewalk is
arguably the most critically acclaimed public sociological account of the effects
of structural inequality on ethnic minorities, widely praised by even fervent skeptics of the [public] sociological enterprise. Venkatesh’s (2008) Gang Leader for a
Day: A Rogue Sociologist Crosses the Line has received similar critical attention
for its brashly “public” essence. We might do well to see the interventionist nature
of Dorothy Smith’s (1987) account of the politics of knowledge production and
dissemination in The Everyday World as Problematic, Paolo Friere’s treatise on
informal education in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) and Alain Touraine’s
research on collective social movements symbolized by his book Return of the
Actor (1988).
So what else stands in the way in the emerging PCS movement? Carrington
(2007), Atkinson and Young (2008) and Bairner (2009) all suggest that sociologists’
of sport continued preoccupation with and penchants for new social movement
identity politics and media studies have not translated well into engaged, interventionist research (see Andrews, 2008). There is no shortage of critical analysis
and theoretical readings of social problems, scathing dissections of late market
capitalism, neo-liberalism, inequality, homophobia, patriarchy, and racism in the
sport studies literature, but scholars mostly remain “critics without claws” (Mills,
1959). Perhaps these scholars question the form, purpose, legitimacy, content, and
explicit mandate of a radical PCS like the critics of public sociology, including
Craig Calhoun (2005), François Nielson (2004) and Jonathan Turner (2005).
The tallest and broadest hurdle is ultimately one of our collective commitments
to engaged intervention and willingness to openly take sides in the process of policy
development and reformation. Much of the current definitional writing in the PCS
literature rightly emphasizes the need for politically engaged, interventionist and
transformative research. Yet little evidence is ever given, and articles within this
special edition are essentially no different, of the actual manifestation of such
work. Carrington’s (2007) and others “calls” for interventionist and political work
142 Atkinson
beyond identity politics have potentially run their course. A radical PCS, it would
seem to me, is essentially the physical cultural study of social life manifesting into
and engaging with, as Burawoy writes (2004), the possibility/existence of better
worlds. Not only does this require a research to take sides, be involved, translate
theory, publish in a range of contexts, be an outspoken critic and take chances, it
requires one to take sides by advocating particular ethics and moralities. It requires
us to break new ground, transgress disciplinary boundaries, pursue policy research
with much vigor, and research beyond the comfortable subjects we so regularly
study and in the comfortable ways we study. It requires an invested and concerted
interest in matters of sport and physical activity for/as social development, movement cultures as potential solutions to broad gauge social problems, human rights in
sport and leisure contexts, visions of democratic humanism across physical cultures,
physical cultural “pastimes”, postsport physical cultures, issues in bioethics and
technology, youth development through mainstream and nonmainstream physical
activities, the pleasures of dance and aesthetic movement practices, experiences of
health, wellness, varied (dis)abilities, and illness as/in physical culture, global sport,
leisure and recreation management, and the sensual aspects of physical culture.
Perhaps more problematically, a recent trend in some “authoritarian” writing on what PCS is in practice has created a rather disturbing tone of boundary
demarcation and the discounting of research not fitting into a specific PCS mold.
At this juncture, while boundaries are most likely beneficial to the development
of PCS and its differentiation from other disciplines, the present time should be
one of open-mindedness, negotiation, and compromise. Debates regarding who
is “in” and who is “out” of the PCS canon may prove both polarizing and elitist.
Boundaries are critical, I argue for the long-term survival of PCS, but the idea of
widespread theoretical exclusion at this stage smacks with a style of hegemony
and stratification so regularly scorned by PCS scholars themselves. There is a real
danger from pursuing PCS as a squarely qualitative/historical enterprise. In reaching
out across borders, PCS researchers might find some merit in considering insight
on human bodies not neatly slotted into preferred PCS epistemologies and ontologies. I, for one, have been quite heavily influenced of late in my research on play
and leisure opportunities for children with developmental coordination disorder
(DCD) by neurological and behavioral research detailing the connection between
brains-bodies-performance-identities.
Finally, true to form in much of our research, there is often no possibility of hope
offered in much of the extant PCS research. Power oppresses. Structures dominate.
Identities are marginalized. Ideologies and pedagogies conceal and misrepresent.
Is there, however, a PCS of possibility and hope? Where are the PCS success stories? Is there nothing more tangible in the PCS world than critique? Are social and
cultural conditions that dire, politics so repressive, communities so fragmented,
and has neo-liberalism run so amuck? Are there no counter-discourses and local,
embodied practices of freedom, possibility and political hope in this current era?
Of course there are, and many have been studied ethnographically. Does the extant
physical cultural studies research teach us nothing other than we live in a society
of stark limitations rather than one of the limit experiences? Academic politics of,
and theorizations of, despair produce great text for justifying a more politically
engaged “sociology”, but are not always reality congruent. If PCS is to convince
in future, it might begin doing so by exploring the prospects of a future forward.
Physical Cultural Studies [Redux] 143
Finally, McDonald (2002) asks in his reflexive essay about research and
activism around the sport of cricket: “Is it possible to reconcile a commitment to
progressive political change with sound scholarship, or is the concept of academic
integrity itself politically charged?” (2002, p. 101). St. Louis (2007, p. 120) asks
along the same lines, “Is it possible, or even desirable, to build a form of understanding that combines conceptual precision and analytical rigor with an oppositional
value agenda and political commitment?” The answer to this question must be yes
for PCS to thrive. For the sake of PCS, I hope it is yes . . . without question, yes.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank David Andrews and Michael Silk for their
insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article, and to Peter Donnelly for our
continued deliberations about the future of a public sociology of sport
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