Physical Cultural Studies Overview

Course Key Concepts

• Physical Culture: Active, relational, and complex. Includes socio-structural, discursive, contextual, and collective aspects.
• Influences what is possible in physical culture and shapes constructions of identities.
• Physical Cultural Studies (PCS): Challenges dominant discourses in kinesiology, sport, and physical activity. Uses diverse theories and methods, grounded in real-world practices. Investigates how power operates in physical culture.
• Power: Power-over (institutionalized domination); Power-to (capacity for agency). Power shapes socio-historic conditions, social processes, and identities. Example: St. Jeromes (Indian Horse) and the Indian Act, showcasing government power over Indigenous communities.
• Physical Culture Sites: Spaces where power dynamics are played out, like sport centers and recreational areas. These sites reflect broader cultural and political forces.
• Foucault Insight: Encourages critical reflection on norms and practices by questioning their inherent assumptions.
• The Somatic turn: Focus shifts to the body in society, exploring its role in culture, consumerism, and daily life.

The Somatic turn

• How the body is central to culture, consumerism, and daily life.
• Modern Perspective: Body is seen as what it can do, not just what it is.

Reflexivity

• Researchers must examine their own positionality and influence on their studies.
• Theoretical frameworks shape research questions, methods, and interpretations.

Additional Concepts from Pages 2-10

• Helstein: Neoliberalism emphasizes complexity and difference in scholarship. Neoliberalism pressures scholars to adopt competitive and measurable values.
• King: Cautions about the unintended effects of critical approaches and frames. PCS positions risk marginalizing existing traditions.
• Adams: Political engagement is key, focusing on agency at various locations. Classrooms should foster political awareness.
• Rail: Advocates for humility and adaptability in diverse research.
• Jamieson: Focus is on utilizing different analytic frames to generate new knowledge. Productive conflict involves fission of perspectives, ideas, rather than new disciplines.
• Intersectional studies: Interconnected identities (e.g gender, race, class, sexuality, age) are analyzed. Categories are not isolated but are interconnected in shaping experiences of power. This framework recognizes that individuals hold multiple overlapping identities.
• Neoliberalism: Focuses on individual responsibility, productivity, privatization, and measurable outputs. It can marginalize marginalized groups, and critiques are evident.
• Methodologies: Qualitative research is often inductive, and constructivist/subjectivist, utilizing interpretivist methods to understand how people construct meaning in their lived experiences.
• Normativity: A focus on bodies. Normalcy is an absence of pathology. Normal is defined by existing cultures. This exclusionary perspective is based on assumptions from dominant cultures. Disciplining bodies by techniques of normalization and reproduction of normativity has a significant effect on the ability of others.
• Race and diversity in Kinesiology: An exploration of the outcomes of race and diversity in the discipline, its costs and benefits, problems, and issues related to inclusivity. Example: Racialized Minorities & Aboriginal students have little representation in curriculum.
• Kapernick's protest: Sport as a political act that has a visible impact.
• Gendered & Sexed Bodies: Gendered norms are produced, reproduced, and normalized. Women's entry into sport has been managed to conform to gender norms and expectations. Sports have become a source of norms and hegemonic masculinity and ideas about gender are evident in analysis of sports and sport practices. Gender creates social divides.
• Institutions: Rules shape behavior, production and interaction among people, and institutions often embody power relations and identity.
• Space (geography): Spaces are socially constituted, including health-focused spaces and facilities; often related to identity and health. Spaces are tied to emotion, and reflect social relations/hierarchies. Spaces are also political and often reproduce unequal access, based on identity (race, gender, class, ability)
• Geographical Imagination: Spaces are socially constructed, regulated, governed, and produced. Social relations, identities, health, and culture are shaped by spaces. Differing identities are assigned to differing spaces based on identity.
• Decentering the human: Consideration of the relationship between active human bodies and active non-human bodies.
• Environmental Managerialism: Minimal policies are enacted by governments with minimal impact on economic growth/environmental crises. This approach is often critiqued for inadequacy. Emphasis on integrating non-human actors into decision-making about environmental issues.
• Speciesism: Unjustified preference for humans over animals, leading to animal exploitation.

Explore the complex interactions within physical culture and how they shape identities and power dynamics. This quiz delves into key concepts such as Physical Cultural Studies, the role of power, and the significance of various physical culture sites. Understand the implications of these ideas in the context of real-world practices.