Greg Downey

Producing pain : Techniques and technologies in no-holds-barred fighting

Starting in 1993, the Ultimate Fighting Championship broadcast ‘no-holds-barred’ fights, pitting athletes trained in a variety of combat sports against each other. While critics were scandalized by the permissiveness of these contests, aficionados were stunned by the effectiveness of relatively non-violent fighting techniques. The matches revealed how resilient a trained fighter’s body might become. Fighters had to adapt to several waves of changes in fighting strategies and to strategic revisions of match regulations intended to make them more obviously violent. Seemingly minor changes in the tools available to contestants - ‘mundane technology’ such as the structure of the fighting space, standardized clothing and lightweight gloves - shifted radically how contestants’ bodies could be used. In addition, fighters modified their own bodies to make them better suited for the activity, for example, altering perceptions of pain. Ironically, the mass-mediated presentation of deregulated fighting revealed that, instead of being humanity’s natural state, it was technically demanding, dependent upon substantial enculturation of athletes’ bodies, and far from instinctual.

Apprenticeship as method: embodied learning in ethnographic practice

Apprenticeship, the process of developing from novice to proficiency under the guidance of a skilled expert, varies across cultures and among different skilled communities, but for many communities of practice, apprenticeship offers an ideal ethnographic point of entry. For certain kinds of anthropological fieldwork, such as studies of bodily arts, apprenticeship may offer an essential research method. In this article, three anthropologists discuss their experiences using apprenticeship in fieldwork and consider the practical and theoretical issues of apprenticeship as a site of ethnographic inquiry. As a channel for achieving social inclusion, apprenticeship offers anthropologists opportunities to navigate and chart interpersonal power, access to emic types of knowledge, first-hand experience of the pedagogical milieu, and avenues to acquire cultural proficiency. Because apprenticeship itself includes mechanisms to socialize emerging skill, such as disciplining the generation of variation that is inherent in each individual’s rediscovery or reinvention of skill, apprenticeship encourages our subjects to collaborate with us by allowing them to critique the ethnographer’s performance and provide feedback in familiar, locally-meaningful ways.

Being Human in Cities: Phenotypic Bias from Urban Niche Construction

Cities are sites of intense investment in niche construction, substantially altering ecological dynamics. Although novel in evolutionary terms, cities have distinctive epidemiological and demographic effects on human mortality and phenotype. Cities, however, do not affect all of their inhabitants identically, especially with a trend toward greater inequity with increased urbanization; the urban landscape offers a set of stratified behavioral niches to inhabitants. An examination of meninos de rua (street children) in Brazil highlights the opportunities available in urban landscapes and the demands placed on residents: a radically simplified foraging landscape, availability of energy-dense food resources, decreased activity levels, and challenges to mental health. Considering urbanization as niche construction highlights the embodied and psychological consequences of urban life not just on individuals but also over generations as urbanization creates phenotypic and developmental bias. The niche construction perspective blurs the divide between biological and cultural approaches to human variation and draws attention to the biological consequences of the built environment and socioeconomic structures underpinning urban life. Using street children in Brazil as a case study, this paper outlines the theoretical implications of urban adaptation as an example of niche construction dynamics leading to rapid changes in diet, morphology, and mental health.

Profiling Australian snowsport injuries: a snapshot from the snowy mountains.

Snowsport tourism provides a major economic contribution to the rural and regional areas surrounding the major resorts in Australia. One of the barriers to snowsport participation is that people perceive snowsports as dangerous and so fear being injured. Understanding snowsport injuries will help managers to diminish the risk of injuries, and marketers to address perceptions of danger. This study explored snowsport-related injuries to participants aged 18 years and older in the Snowy Mountains, Australia, over 31 days during winter 2006. Of 497 injured snowsport participants surveyed, 76.3% were visiting the area for a holiday, while 16.9% were working in the area for the snow season; 45% were women, 55% were men; 33.2% were aged 18–24 years; with 49.3% being alpine skiers and 46.1% snowboarders. For skiers the main injury was to the knee (75.6%), while for snowboarders the wrist was the main injury location (84.6%). The primary location where injuries occurred was on-piste at the resort (47.5%) with the main mechanism of injury being falling over (38.2%). Most injuries, as reported by the respondents, were either bruises or sprains (72%). Most people did not wear any protective equipment while participating (73.2%). Of the two main activity groups, skiers had the highest proportion who did not wear any protective equipment (78.8%) while snowboarders were most likely to wear helmets (18.8%). Results from this study will be useful to inform future snowsport safety messages and strategies that target various factors that may contribute to snowsport injuries including behaviours and attitudes before and during participation.

‘Habitus in Extremis’: From Embodied Culture to Bio-Cultural Development

Loïc Wacquant argues for a radicalization of the habitus concept provided by Pierre Bourdieu, suggesting that habitus is a site and mode for conducting research, not simply an explanatory or theoretical mechanism. Taking seriously this call to examine skills and communities of practice through apprenticeship, however, requires that the theoretical account of habitus be subject to empirical testing. Moreover, enquiry into communities of practice, especially the subtle psychological, behavioural and even neurological consequences of skill acquisition, means that claims about the habitus can be scrutinized by fields such as psychology, neurology and even human biology. Habitus as a truly open path of inquiry will demand, not wholly novel concepts, but a recognition of when claims about practice are simultaneously testable, and falsifiable, by other forms of empirical enquiry, including the human sciences.

‘All of us together in a blurred space’: principles for co-creating curriculum with international partners

ABSTRACT This paper shares an innovative methodology to ‘co-create’ a curriculum with eleven international community development organisations from seven countries to prepare undergraduate students for international work-integrated learning activities. The co-creation process was complex, messy, and always evolving. Here we reflect on and document the process, identifying three key methodological principles that might guide the co-creation process for others. These principles embrace the unpredictable, emotional, and personal reality of bringing together diverse ideas and perspectives, as well as opening up possibilities for more creative ways of communicating and listening to what is seen, heard, and felt.

Cultural variation in elite athletes : does elite cognitive-perceptual skill always converge?

Anthropologists have not participated extensively in the cognitive science synthesis for a host of reasons, including internal conflicts in the discipline and profound reservations about the ways that cultural differences have been modeled in psychology, neuroscience, and other contributors to cognitive science. This paper proposes a skills-based model for culture that overcomes some of the problems inherent in the treatment of culture as shared information. Athletes offer excellent cases studies for how skill acquisition, like enculturation, affects the human nervous system. In addition, cultural differences in playing styles of the same sport, such as distinctive ways of playing rugby, demonstrate how varying solution strategies to similar athletic problems produce distinctive skill profiles.

Globalizing Higher Education Policy Practice: Internationalizing Education Through Learning Transformations in Knowledge Construction

This chapter raises provocative ideas, moving briskly through them inviting engagement in further research and teaching in local/global education policy practice. A new generation of local/global education is warranted if higher education academics and students are to explore the deep fractures in the politics and the economics that are dividing nations, internally and externally. University students (and academics) now live in a world where authoritarianism is on the rise as public faith in democracy declines, environmental degradation and policy dilemmas increase, and racism furthers these crises. These crises are integral to the increasing disconnection between economic growth and real material improvements in their own work/life trajectories. The nature of these challenges is such that making an intergenerational shift in local/global education is now necessary.

From One Songline to Another: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students’ Study Tour Journey of Indigenous Connection and Solidarity

This chapter examines the experiences of eight Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander preservice teachers on a study tour with a focus on Indigenous Studies to a Canadian university. Educational activities included: cultural exchange with First Nations Elders, academics, and students; introduction to Canadian Indigenous Studies; and field trips to significant cultural sites. Through semistructured interviews and photo elicitation the participants in this case study reflected upon their experiences of personal and professional development. The analysis of the students’ retrospective accounts reveals emergent themes of connection, identity, language, healing, and action. The students’ interpretations indicate the transformative potential of overseas educational experiences to inform their future teaching practices and foster connections to Indigenous identities and cultures locally and abroad. The sense of shared historical experiences made the inter-cultural connection not just one of solidarity, but also a validation of students’ own experiences of marginalization. The findings speak to the importance of these types of inter-Indigenous exchange as well as a design of outward mobility experiences that recognize the potential for solidarity and healing. The students’ experiences of connection and identity generate the sorts of reflection that are part of a broader global movement amongst Indigenous groups towards cultural renewal.

Developing Global Perspectives: Responding to the State of International Education in Australian Universities

The volume of university students travelling overseas has increased rapidly in recent decades. Student flows are asymmetrical: Students from wealthy nations disproportionately study in the Global North, and students from developing economies travel to more industrialized countries, especially English-speaking, to pursue degrees. This pattern, however, is shifting towards Asia, with a growing sense that students need greater cross-cultural skills and familiarity with the region. Ambitious university targets to increase outbound student mobility require international offices to create new types of short-term placements, especially to democratize international study opportunities. The sector needs to better share hard-earned knowledge about how to design and administer these increasingly diverse programmes. This chapter discusses this volume’s origin in “strategic priorities” set by the Australian Government’s Office of Learning and Teaching.