Jesse Couture

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | UIUC · Department of Kinesiology and Community Health

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the practice of digital self-tracking. Researchers have drawn attention to who self-tracks, why people self-track, and what it feels like to self-track in the context of sport and physical activity. To date, limited research has focused on self-tracking as a social practice and there has been mi...

In this chapter, we invite readers to consider both “sides” of the phenomenon of youth sport and physical activity. We highlight the sense in which youth sport is, for many, an important and positive influence in their lives, and for their broader communities. Drawing upon critical theory and the work of C. Wright Mills, we also explore some of the...

This paper draws upon data collected from a critical discourse analysis of CrossFit Kids Magazine (CFKM) and examines how children in/and physical activity are represented in this contemporary sporting (con)text. I propose that the magazine promotes physical activity among children and youth but in so doing relies upon and actively (re)produces cer...

This paper provides a critical look at the ways in which the female sporting body is discursively constructed within Triathlon Magazine Canada (TMC), Canada's only triathlon-exclusive magazine. By exploring both visual and narrative representations of the athletic female sporting body, this paper exposes some of the discursive tensions that seem to...

This article contributes to literature on the politics of sport facility provision through a case study of urban public golf courses in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Vancouver is consistently rated among the least affordable cities in the world. The city’s three primely-located public golf courses – McCleery, Langara, and Fraserview – have t...

In recent years, there has been considerable growth in the wearable fitness technology market, in part, as a response to what Millington (2018) describes as a ‘new fitness boom’ characterized by networked interactivity and the increased prosumption (Ritzer, 2014) of personal health data. Accordingly, a body of research has emerged in which various...

In this paper, we explore the ways in which CrossFit Kids Magazine (CFKM) constructs ideas about childhood and about children as agents. Specifically, we take up the particular political-pedagogical frameworks invoked [and (re)generated] in the narratives and images present in the magazine, and how they produce children as agents-in-waiting. Parado...