Elizabeth Pike

Goffman Goes Rock Climbing: Using Creative Fiction to Explore the Presentation of Self in Outdoor Education

Outdoor education literature has a recent history of examining its practice through a variety of sociological, philosophical, psychological, and anthropological lenses. Following this trend, this paper explores the face-to-face social interaction of a fictional introductory rock-climbing course. The analysis of this creative fiction draws on Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical framework, as described in his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). The discussion highlights how participants and instructors on a practical skill development weekend are involved in the complex endeavour of projecting and sustaining impressions for each other. Goffman’s concepts regarding the ways in which humans conceal and reveal information about themselves may offer outdoor education instructors and researchers a helpful perspective through which they can consider how individual participants’ actions are influenced by the perceived expectations of the different audiences they encounter.

‘Doctors Just Say “Rest and Take Ibuprofen”’ A Critical Examination of the Role of ‘Non-Orthodox’ Health Care in Women’s Sport

While sociologists have confirmed that athletes normalize illness and injury, there remains limited research into the practices of sports medicine. A two-year ethnographic study of female rowers shows that medical support for these athletes was both insufficient and inadequate. The rowers experienced a lack of medical care, and several had stories to tell of incompetent diagnoses and over-reliance on drug prescription. Many of the women turned to non-orthodox health care, which has been considered more ‘feminine’ than orthodox practices, and also empowering in terms of the active involvement of the client in the treatment process. This article critically evaluates the extent to which non-orthodox care is an authentic ‘alternative’ to traditional medical approaches, and the contention that such treatment facilitates the continued presentation of self as both ‘athlete’ and ‘female’ at a time when these identities are challenged by the injury or illness experience.

Aquatic antiques: Swimming off this mortal coil?

In recent years it has become widely accepted that one of the greatest demographic challenges facing most developed societies is the shift to an ageing population. Older people are often constructed as dependent and over-burdening societal resources, with many consequently experiencing marginalization, discrimination and social isolation. Public health messages, promoted through various national and international policies, suggest that physical activity may be a ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of becoming elderly. This article draws on the stories of Masters swimmers, all aged over 60, identifying the enabling and constraining factors influencing their involvement in this sport. The findings suggest that, for those with sufficient capital, swimming enables a challenge to perceptions of the burden and dependency of older people. In particular, swimming facilitates the development of a socially desirable identity, and is used as a form of resistance to the stigma of an ageing body. However, it is possible that this reinforces an individualistic healthist discourse and simultaneously reproduces the privileges of youth and social class.

The 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games and Brazil’s soft power

The economic growth of nations such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa starred a new order into the global power balance. For Brazil, winning the rights to host sport mega events gave the country recognition and symbolic power in the international arena. The ensuing expectation is to increase these achievements while staging the events and to sustain the profits to a remarkable level of ‘soft power’. Using the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic election as a starting point, this paper aims to reveal how sport has been used as a strategy of foreign policy to improve the countrys soft power. After reviewing some key features of the Brazilian political and economic context, and the foreign policy agenda in the 2000s and the 2016 election, it is shown that sport mega events support and reflect the intention of many Brazilian political officials intention to increase the status of Brazil in the international sphere.

A Critical Interactionist Analysis of 'Youth Development' Expeditions

Abstract Raleigh International is a British youth development charity that offers structured overseas expeditions ‘to inspire young people…to discover their full potential’. The expeditions involve three different projects: adventurous activity, community service and environmental conservation. This paper examines the experiences of a group of venturers who participated in a 10‐week expedition to Ghana. Data were collected through a series of interviews and participant observation. The analysis of the participants’ motives for engaging in the projects is informed by the interactional principles of Erving Goffman. The study participants indicated that their involvement with the organisation was primarily a form of face‐work: to enhance their credibility as they anticipated entering the adult world of employment. In particular, they were concerned with building aspects of character that resonate with Goffman’s elements of courage, gameness, integrity and composure. Raleigh International as the organisational body is seen to display elements of a ‘total institution’, providing the rules and values that govern the social encounter, during the time of which actors live in relative isolation from broader society. This study identifies two areas of concern for these young venturers. First, there was a failure to recognise that their desire for ‘risk’ to develop character was limited by the boundaries placed around their activities by Raleigh International, reflecting a broader culture of caution. And, second, their sense of ‘service’ to a developing nation contained elements of stigmatisation of the people with whom they worked.

Assessing the sociology of sport: On the trajectory, challenges, and future of the field

On the fiftieth anniversary of the International Sociology of Sport Association and the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, the three guest editors for this special fiftieth anniversary issue of the IRSS, current ISSA president, Elizabeth CJ Pike, the immediate past president, Steven J Jackson, and current IRSS editor, Lawrence A Wenner, introduce the issue’s genesis and theme: ‘50@50: Assessing the trajectory and challenges of the sociology of sport’. In considering the trajectory of the sociology of sport, the ISSA and the IRSS, they reflect on the early development of the field and the founding of an international association and journal aimed at understanding sport in the social and cultural dynamic; they note early and ongoing challenges concerning the academic seating of the field, its legitimacy and impact, and its engagement with the public sphere and the ‘sociological imagination’. Speaking to the challenges of fashioning a special issue to represent the breadth of 50 years of the sociology of sport, the editors outline how a ‘50@50’ strategy was implemented to bring perspectives from 50 notable scholars and to ensure that a diversity of voices was heard, not only on a range of themes, theories and methods, but from diverse identities and locales. Addressing two overarching challenges – the global dominance of English as the lingua franca of scholarly discourse and the need to advance interdisciplinarity and engagement with scholars beyond the sociology of sport – will be key to broadening dialogue to help ensure the future sustainability and progress of the sociology of sport.

The role of fiction in (mis)representing later life leisure activities

The study of ageing is becoming increasingly prominent in academic research, the media and policy debates with the rapid growth of the world’s ageing population. In particular is the perception that older people should engage in active leisure pursuits to address the actual and perceived effects of the ageing process. However, there remains limited understanding of the experiences of ageing, longevity and lifestyle choices. This paper addresses this by drawing on fictional accounts of ageing, which are viewed as an important gerontological resource for understanding how ideas about ageing are shaped by culture, and how alternative images of ageing may be constructed and made possible through literary fiction. This paper is framed by a critical interactionist perspective. Fiction, whether written, sung or acted, is itself a form of symbolic interaction, since the audience members use their imagination to interpret the script according to their own sense of self and ideas about social life; in this way, fictional representations of ageing may develop understanding of the personal and social aspects of growing older. I will explore the ways in which fictional representations of older people might perpetuate and/or challenge stereotypes of ageing and influence involvement in leisure activities in later life.

Assessing the sociology of sport: On age and ability

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, a leading scholar on ageing, sport and physical activity, ISSA President Elizabeth Pike, considers the increasing numbers of “Third Age Societies” and the trajectory, challenges and future directions of sociological research on sport, age and ability. Noting longstanding interest in sport and ageing dating back to the late 1800s, the trajectory of research in this area has accelerated with both longer life spans and evidence of a more “heroic” model of the possibilities of ageing. A continuing challenge for sociologists of sport is to critique dominant perceptions of ageing that suggest many activities are inappropriate for the ageing body. Future inquiry in the area of sport, age and ability needs to expand in coming years in recognition that people over 60 constitute the fastest growing segment of the population in many societies and many received conceptions about the roles and possibilities for physical activity and sport need more careful interrogation in companion with more nuanced understandings of both the populations and processes.

‘What on Earth are They Doing in a Racing Car?’: Towards an Understanding of Women in Motorsport

Abstract Motorsport is an under-researched area of socio-historical study. There is particularly limited academic understanding of female involvement in the social world of motorsports. Therefore, this paper focuses on the role of the media in presenting and establishing motorsport for women. In particular, a documentary analysis of articles published by a UK national newspaper group from 1890, and a case study of an all-female UK-based motor-racing championship are used to account for gendered processes that have influenced attitudes and behaviours towards women motor racers. The motor car emerged through technological progress in an overtly masculine-dominated industrial period. Traditional assumptions and biologically deterministic attitudes towards women were used by men to position motoring and motor-racing as a male preserve. Newspaper reporting throughout the 1930s suggests an era of heightened success for women motor racers as a result of gaining access to a key resource in the form of Brooklands motor-racing circuit. Following the Second World War, there was increasing commercialization and professionalization of male-dominated motorsport, as well as renewed marginalization and trivialization of female participants within the newspapers. These processes continue to influence perceptions of women in contemporary motorsport.

Physical Activity and Narratives of Successful Ageing

There is considerable research evidence that indicates that the process of ageing and those who belong to the older population have long been defined as a threat to social values and interests (Critcher, 2003). From Ancient Greece when old age (geras) was mostly viewed as ugly, mean and tragic, through to the Byzantine Empire, later life was believed to be accompanied by economic vulnerability, physical frailty and social marginality. Medieval societies often took a more positive stance that old age was the end of life’s journey toward wisdom and redemption (Gilleard, 2002, 2007a, b). In modern neoliberal societies, the large ‘baby boom’ generation born after the second World War is now reaching retirement with expectations of long life, and they are variously described through powerful (if misleading) metaphors such as a tsunami or an ‘apocalypse of ageing’ (Haber, 2004: 515).