Paper short abstract:

Within sport, unexpected movement can realize something transformative. I propose a taxonomy of transformative movement as: 1) progressive, 2) transcendent, or 3) transgressive. I then use the slapskate as a case to explore movement at the intersection of technology, danger and power.

Paper long abstract:

Movement is highly prescribed within sport. And yet, the history of athletics is punctuated by moments in which unexpected movement realizes something transformative. This is fodder for sport journalists' "greatest of" or "most important" lists. But it is also the stuff of classic anthropological analysis: it reveals the power and danger inherent in disrupting boundaries. I propose a taxonomy of transformative movement as: 1) progressive, 2) transcendent, or 3) transgressive. For instance, Bannister's four-minute mile was progressive movement: it did not shatter the very idea of what running is; nonetheless his achievement challenged notions of the body's material limits. But now consider the claim that footballer, Pelé, is the only player "who surpassed the boundaries of logic". Or that watching Federer play tennis is "a religious experience." These quotes suggest a sporting body that incarnates profundity or even holy mystery. Finally, there is transgressive movement within sport. Transgressive movement threatens representations and violates boundaries; it is movement that employs dangerous forms. In the 1996/1997 racing season, the international speed skating world was rocked by three Dutch women donning novel skates. The American team called these slapskates "machines" that jeopardized the tradition and purity of their sport. Two decades later, however, no long-track speed skater is without a hinged skate. How can this be accounted for? I examine the history of the slapskate in order to explore transformative movement at the intersection of technology, danger and power.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I use Olympic Weightlifting as a case study for how athletes learn requisite movements and techniques for their sport. I contrast training (when athletes engage in ritual movement) with competition (when athletes enact performative movement).

Paper long abstract:

To perform the competitive lifts in Olympic Weightlifting athletes assume positions and postures that novices find awkward and uncomfortable. Alongside postural discomfort, the competitive lifts require athletes to enact rapid, explosive movements with balance and flexibility. The patterns entail precise movements and orientations of the body with the bar. Coaches provide lifters a myriad of cues during their training sessions, instructing them about where to position body parts, and what to do with said body parts (e.g., "keep your shoulders over the bar", "let your arms loosely hang"). Novices can feel overwhelmed at the complexity of the movements, and prioritising and fulfilling the coaches' commands can be a struggle. Athletes often first approach the movements as an abstract, intellectual problem. Coaches describe the what and how of the movement. Athletes attempt to enact what they have heard; to embody the commands. Coaches provide reinforcement, and athletes gradually begin to approximate the "correct" movements (they learn to feel the movements). With diligent effort, the athletes train away postural discomfort, become stronger, and achieve technical proficiency. Mastery comes through training, but, the intent of training is competition. In the gym, "ritual movement" requires work that is routinized, internalised, and repetitive. On the platform, in competition, the athlete must purge distraction, avoid intellectual parsing of coaches' cues, and overcome emotions and feelings of doubt and uncertainty. Competition demands a "performative movement", dealing with weights that exceed previous personal bests, the athlete find success by abandoning herself to the pattern.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the experiential and contextually bounded nature of ‘able-bodiedness’, or ‘disability’, in people who are navigating relatively invisible limitations both within and beyond sport and offers a theorization of how an individual may be more or less able bodied across contexts.

Paper long abstract:

My PhD research is informed theoretically by previous studies which highlight the contingent nature of biology, as well as the fluidity of identity. This literature emphasizes that bodies can change over time and space, but often leaves the mechanics of change unexplored—a limitation which a robust anthropology of sport can begin to overcome. Given that sport produces unique configurations of bodily ability, it follows that sport also constitutes contextually specific forms of disability. My larger project explores how contextually specific identities are configured through the entanglement of social fields and individuals in boxing. For the purposes of this paper, my empirical discussion will focus on a brief auto-ethnographic reflection on distance running in which I will offer some preliminary contributions towards a theorization of how an individual may be more or less able bodied across social spaces. My unique position as both a formerly competitive track athlete (who can no longer compete because of complications following surgery for compartment syndrome) and an anthropologist will allow me to highlight the experiential nature of 'able-bodiedness', or 'disability', in people who are navigating relatively invisible limitations. Thus, this paper seeks to open up a space in which to challenge the often binary and patronizing presentation of 'disabled' individuals while at the same time investigating the ways in which bodily ability and performance are contextually bounded both within and beyond sport.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the ideology of sex verification in international elite athletics.

Paper long abstract:

The institution of elite athletics is not generally a site of socially progressive dynamics. Despite this fact, or in part precisely because of it, the crisis of sex verification disrupts longstanding presumptions about sex-dichotomy. This paper examines how elite athletics exposes the strange difficulties of scientific attempts to verify a female athlete's sex. Given the rather stubborn performance gap between male and female world records across a range of athletic events (consistently, male athletes are 10% faster), various techniques and technologies have been in place since the 1930s to verify sex in order to ensure fairness in competition.

Despite its initial promise, genetic testing failed to secure effective means for verifying sex difference; more recent methods therefore look to endogamous testosterone production in order to differentiate sex and physical capacity. However, in response to the banning of female athletes diagnosed with "hyperandrogenism," a 2015 law suit successfully challenged the very commitment of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to define "woman" for the purposes of sport. The very shift in focus from genes to hormones dramatizes the key point that the markers of male/female are not reducible to biology alone but rather emerge out of biosocial discourse. These markers, moreover, are demanding, since they require—in contingent, contradictory ways—that genes, androgens or other measurable elements provide the burden of proof for "sex."