New Directions in Social Theory, Education and Embodiment

This book exemplifies the nurturing spirit of inter-discursive debate with a view to opening up new theoretical and empirical insights, understanding, and engagement, with debates on issues relating to pedagogy, policy, equity and embodiment. From a variety of social science perspectives, an international force of contributors apply a multitude of concepts to research agendas which illustrate the multiple ways in which ‘the body’ both impacts culture and is simultaneously and seamlessly positioned and shaped by it, maintaining social reproduction of class and cultural hierarchies and social regulation and control. They attest that once we begin to trace the flow of knowledge and discourses across continents, countries, regions and communities by registering their re-contextualisation, both within various popular pedagogies (e.g., newspapers, film, TV, web pages, IT) and the formal and informal practices of schools, families and peers, we are compelled to appreciate the bewildering complexity of subjectivity and the ways in which it is embodied. Indeed, the chapters suggest that no matter how hegemonic or ubiquitous discursive practices may be, they inevitably tend to generate both intended and unexpected ‘affects’ and ‘effects’: people and populations cannot easily be ‘determined’, suppressed or controlled.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport, Education and Society.

John Evans is Professor of Sociology of Education and Physical Education at the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, UK.

Brian Davies is Emeritus Professor at the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, UK.