David H K Brown

Cardiff Metropolitan University | cardiffmet · Cardiff School of Sport and Health Sciences

While the concept of charisma is widely used in the social sciences, its embodied nature is less thoroughly explored and theorised. This paper revisits the key embodied characteristics of Weber's sociology of charisma and re-interprets these using Shilling's (2005, 2013) umbrella notions of the body as a source and location of and means for society...

This paper builds on a growing body of literature on the promise of practice theory in understanding and promoting behavior change in society and develops upon Blue (2017) and Spotswood et al.’s (2019) rationale for evolving theories of practice into the domain of contemporary physical activity research. We begin by considering the intersectional n...

This paper provides a critical analysis of the Chartered Institute for Management of Sport and Physical Activity's (CIMSPA) transformative aspirations for UK Higher Education (HE) based Sport and Physical Activity Vocational Education and Training (SPAVET) provision. In doing so, we apply selected elements of Giddens’ Structuration theory to offer...

Johnston and Klandermans [...]

As well as introducing the articles in the ERQ special issue on «Cultures of Combat. Body, Culture, Identity», this extended editorial provides a conceptual discussion of the idea of cultures of combat and how, through these, embodied cultural identities emerge. First we highlight a composite term «cultures of combat» as an alternative way of artic...

Palestre popolari (‘people’s gyms’) are flourishing in contemporary Italy. These gyms are run by leftist grassroots organizations (ANTIFA), which promote an alternative boxing style: boxe popolare (‘people’s boxing’). Drawing on a three-year ethnography, this article focuses on body usages in boxe popolare. Connecting Mauss with Bourdieu, the study...

This article explores coaching in boxe popolare (people's boxing) – a style of boxing codified by leftist grassroots groups in contemporary Italy. The paper presents a micro-sociological analysis of data collected during a three-year multi-sited participant observation focusing on Patrick (pseudonym), who is the leading coach of a boxe popolare tea...

In this chapter, we argue that ‘forms’ (variously known as poomse, hyeong (형, 품새 (pre 1987) 품새 (post 1987), 틀), patterns, kata (型 or 形), formas or tàolù (套路)), constitute a particular and important type of pedagogy common among the traditional Asian martial arts (and their global derivatives), which are used as powerful body ‘pedagogics’ (Shilling...

Recent evidence has highlighted intrasexual competition as a potential influence on anabolic−androgenic steroid use; however, the potential impact on other substance use behaviors has yet to be explored. This study examined the potential role of intrasexual competition on alcohol consumption at a university, an environment where excessive consumpti...

The increasing prevalence of eating disorders has motivated a burgeoning of research from narrative methods to illuminate the cultural and social aspects of disordered eating habits. A seemingly new eating disorder, Orthorexia Nervosa, has gained visibility through the internet sphere and popular media, though scholarly attention has been scarce. T...

This paper reports on a qualitative ethnographic study undertaken on a small rural village community in Cornwall, UK with a significant population of local surfers. It focuses on these local surfers' interactions with the wider rural community they co-exist with, and in which ways this group might contribute to the formation, maintenance and identi...

This study examined university gym use by staff and students using mixed methods: participant observation and an e-survey. Research in three UK universities entailed 16 observation sessions and an e-survey that reached 3396 students and staff. The research focused on gym use, the gym environment, the presentation of the self, and social interaction...

Qualitative evaluations of school-based interventions for physical activity promotion are seldom undertaken, but can provide important insights into unforeseen limitations and consequences of interventions. These understandings can help the refinement of those aspects of school intervention implementation that are not easily identified a priori via...

This closing Keynote presentation highlights the contribution the idea of social practice can make to tackling the problems in Physical Education for vulnerable populations (with specific reference to gender). Firstly, it argues that there has been a convergence of agreement over the importance of social practice from a range scientific fields. Nex...

Wayfinding has often been seen as being about the quickest or shortest possible route between two points (Hölscher et al 2011; Tam 2011; Haque et al 2006). Moreover, this process has very often been seen as a cognitive one, with the experiential nature of wayfinding and with the embodied, emotional and sociocultural aspects of this experience consp...

Time Educational Supplement article written by Adi Bloom from an interview with David Brown about the delivery of spirituality on the school curriculum.

This chapter first outlines the conceptualization of the practice-habitus concept and in so doing focuses on one often raised contention of how habitus changes. By way of a response to this contention, we then daw on a pragmatist perspective on how habits, and we shall argue, habitus might be challenged and changed through moments of crisis and cre...

This paper uses documentary research techniques to analyse the use of kata, forms, in the Japanese martial arts. Following an introduction on the existence of kata practice, using existing sources of information the paper first examines the spiritual developments of bushido, secondly, the social changes that led to the redevelopment of bujutsu into...

The discipline of Tai Chi, rooted in the Taoist tradition, has much to show us about the development of spirituality through movement. This chapter outlines an alternative perspective on relationships between religious and holistic spirituality that emerge from an examination of Tai Chi Chuan, the popular martial and health promoting art and its co...

This paper uses documentary research techniques to analyse the use of kata, forms, in the Japanese martial arts. Following an introduction on the existence of kata practice, using existing sources of information the paper first examines the spiritual developments of bushido, secondly, the social changes that led to the redevelopment of bujutsu into...

Internet based methods of communication are becoming increasingly important and influencing researchers’ options. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technologies (such as Skype and FaceTime) provide us with the ability to interview research participants using voice and video across the internet via a synchronous (real-time) connection. This paper...

This essay, inspired by the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, explores meanings and definitions of the term ‘cultural heritage’ as it may be applied to dance. UNESCO’s effort to include many different types of human expressions in its lists is commendable and an important attempt to safeguard the aspects of...

Recently, environmental sociology and in particular the sociology of climate change have presented strong arguments asserting the view that while climate change is a phenomenon taking place in the natural world it is social problem in so far as it is substantially caused and accelerated by unsustainable patterns of social organisation and consumpti...

This paper offers insights into the increasing dichotomy that exists between official forms of opportunity and access and the actual ‘lived experience’ of young peoples' trajectories towards careers in the UK's market-orientated Sport-Fitness and Physical Education employment sectors. It does so by drawing on data generated by an 18-month ethnograp...

This article reports on findings from an ethnographic study (2008–09) conducted in a village with a significant population of local surfers in Cornwall (Southwest England). Stimulated by Goffman’s (1961) interpretation of the concept of career and elaborated by the work of Stebbins (1970) on “subjective career,” Stebbins’s (1982) framework of “seri...

This article focuses on a defining concept of modern surfing: localism. Using a qualitative ethnographic approach, the data for this study were collected using participant observation, field notes and interviews between 2008 and 2009 with a significant population of local surfers in a village location in Cornwall, South West of England, UK. Develop...

This article presents one analytical theme emerging from a bibliometric and content analysis of an annotated bibliography, compiled by the first author, comprising 1564 Asian martial arts monographs published in Spain between 1906 and 2009. The analysis reveals that the use of Asian martial arts and religio-spiritual self-cultivation practices, whi...

Prior to the subtraction of Section 28 from the 1988 Local Government Act in 2003, a substantial amount of research was published that specifically examined the experiences of lesbian physical education (PE) teachers. This article contributes to the existing academic literature by exploring the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual teache...

In this article, we present a case study analysis of data gathered on the practice of the art of Taijiquan (Tai Chi Chuan) in one UK context. Our interest in looking at this physical culture was in exploring if/how physical cultures of shared embodied experience and practice may help “sow the seeds of environmental awareness”. In so doing, we illus...

This paper explores the layered transitional experiences of a semi-professional athlete named Jack (a pseudonym) between the fields of professional sport and further and higher education. Our analysis is framed by the quadripartite framework of structuration and focuses on Jack’s ‘in-situ’ practices at his college and university in order to illustr...

One feature of the spread of the Asian martial arts is that it is accompanied with a growth in bibliographic production resulting from increasing information intended for and demanded by new practitioners and scholars. The aim of the study article reports on was to present some of the Asian martial arts bibliographies and analyse their main feature...

Introduction: The problem of the martial habitus

This paper argues that we might learn from the ways in which Eastern movement forms with a self-cultivation focus approach the development of spirituality through physicality. It also argues that these movement forms have potential to assist in the development of children’s spirituality in school and Physical Education (PE) settings. First, the pap...

This article analyses negative experiences in physical education and sport reported during qualitative interviews of a group of inactive adolescent Spanish boys and girls. The purpose of this analysis is twofold. First and most important, it seeks to give voice to these young people reporting negative experiences and connect them to contexts of phy...

While Weber implicates the body in his descriptions of charismatic qualities and actions it is surprisinglyunderdeveloped in his own work on the sociology of religion. However, perhaps more surprising is that,while a range of classic sociological theory has been considerably recast in light of the generally agreed ‘re-emergence of the body’ in soci...

Body lineage: Conceptualizing the transmission of traditional Asian martial arts (in the West) This paper presents some recent developments in an ongoing qualitative research project exploring Eastern movement forms as body-self transforming practice in the West. In particular, the article documents our preliminary conceptual explorations of the na...

Drawing on data generated from a six-year ethnographic study of one Wing Chun Kung Fu Association in England, this article explores the ways in which this martial art is constructed as a form of religion and functions as a secular religious practice for core members of this association. Two key features of this process are identified. The first inv...

This article explores the sociological dynamics of pedagogic transition that occur with the passage of newly qualified teachers (NQTs) of Physical Education (PE) into their first posts. It draws its empirical illustration from life history and ethnographic data collected in 2006, from two first-post NQT status PE teachers with contrasting experienc...

This article draws on data generated from a 3-year ethnographic study of “jock culture” at one university setting in England to illuminate the ways that specific kinds of bodies are located in social space so as to construct a range of identity positions that facilitate the maintenance of this culture over time. These positions are as follows: the...

Unlike the spectacular diffusion of modern Western sporting forms, Eastern movement forms (martial arts, Eastern dance, Yoga, meditation, Tai Chi Chuan, Qigong, etc.) have been quietly entering the fabric of everyday Western life over the past few decades. Adopting a structurationist approach that seeks to retain relationships between macro-, meso-...

A public presentation at the London Science Museum’s Dana centre which overviews some of the key sociological themes and perspectives emerging from the study of traditionally focused martial arts.

Boundaries, as described by Frank (2004), are cultural conventions that separate what is close—on "our side" of the boundary—from what is distant and potentially unap-proachable, risky, and problematic. As such, boundaries are partly about distancing practices that have consequences. Indeed, our side of the boundary means us (insiders) as opposed t...

Abstract Drawing on qualitative sports research, we present two stories in this article to explore how researchers may orient to boundaries within research encounters and perform boundary crossing and re-crossings. The performative narrative analysis of the stories highlights the fluidly shifting dynamics of sustaining and crossing boundaries and h...

This essay is driven by foregrounding the performing body in Asian martial arts films. This focus leads to the emergence of three simple but important categories of performing body within the genre: the martial-artist-as-actor, the actor-as-martial-artist and the ‘enhanced’ martial-artist-as-actor. These emergent categories are then explored by foc...

Background: Teaching styles in physical education (PE) found prominence through Muska Mosston’s teaching styles ‘Spectrum’ model. Mosston’s Spectrum has been remarkably successful and its logic currently underpins the conceptualisation of teaching styles in many PE practices in Western education systems, including those in the United States, Austra...

This paper explores the transformation of a dualistic mind-body relationship as reported by participants in a recent qualitative study involving modern yoga and meditation practitioners. The stories of the practitioners focused strongly on transforming a body-self that was configured as a result of living a life in Western cultural contexts where p...

This article explores a number of insights generated from a three-year ethnographic study of one university setting in England in which a ‘jock culture’ is seen to dominate a student campus. Drawing on core concepts from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of culture, it illustrates the unique function of the body in sustaining jock culture through the hie...

© 2006 Human Kinetics, Inc This article explores the central thesis of one of Pierre Bourdieu’s last texts before his death in 2001, La Domination Masculine (1999). This text was subsequently translated and published in English in 2001 as Masculine Domination. I present the view that this text is not merely his only sustained commentary on gender r...

Surfing has emerged from ancient roots to become a twenty-first century phenomenon - an 'alternative' sport, lifestyle and art form with a global profile and ever-increasing numbers of participants. Drawing on popular surf culture, academic literature and the analytical tools of social theory, this book is the first sustained commentary on the cont...

Drawing upon popular surf culture, academic literature and the analytical tools of social theory, this book is the first sustained commentary on the contemporary social and cultural meaning of surfing. Core themes of mind and body, emotions and identity, aesthetic's, style and sensory experience are explored through a variety of topics including: e...

This article draws on the life history of an elite, black, male bodybuilder to explore the social meanings of muscle in the construction and confirmation of specific forms of masculine identity. Attention is given to childhood experiences in a hostile environment and how this initiated a quest for a hyper-muscular body. Having successfully achieved...

This paper draws on Pierre Bourdieu's embodied sociology to construct a conceptual view of gender relations in Physical Education (PE) in England and Wales as one of a cultural economy of gendered practice. The argument presented retains, considers, and applies the interdependent concepts of field, habitus and capital that lie at the heart of Bourd...

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This article considers some of the sociologically significant changes to jūdō in its process of transformation from a Budō based martial art into a modern competitive spectator sport. Taking the period of time from 1946 until the Sydney Olympics, an examination is undertaken using Giddens’s notion of reflexive modernization in whi...

Drawing on illustrations from a recent life history study that focused on male student teachers as they negotiated their way through a 1-year postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) physical education teacher training course at a university in England, this paper explores how teachers are implicated in the social construction of gender relatio...

Qualitative research is rapidly changing as a result of the deployment of Information Technologies (IT). Practices that have taken decades to evolve are being redefined by contemporary computing power. Since the 1990s one of the buzzwords in the computing, communications and technology industries has been "Digital Convergence"—the digitizing of dif...

The practice of the self-defense martial arts has much to offer physical education. In this paper we draw on Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory of the Logic of Practice to present a case that when viewed as a social practice, these movement forms generate certain, specific, practically oriented schemes of dispositions or habitus in the practitio...

This paper draws on data collected from a life history study to consider the social significance of masculine identity in teaching physical education (PE). Using Connell's (1995) theory of multiple masculinities and gender power relations from a critical post‐structuralist perspective, notions of hegemonic masculinity are problem‐atized. It is argu...

This paper reflects and theorises upon the engagement in a 'self-refelxive body project' by five male bodybuilders as they experience becoming, and being a bodybuilder. Using a life history approach, the notion of 'process' is opened up by contextualising the participants' bodybuilding biographies in a social, cultural and historical framework. Sub...

Thesis (Ph.D.)