Table Of ContentBoys, Bodies, and Physical
Education
Using visual ethnography, this book explores the many forms of pleasures
that boys derive in and through the spaces and their bodies in physical edu-
cation. Employing the works of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, Gerdin
examines how pleasure is connected to identity, schooling and power rela-
tions and demonstrates how discourses of sport, fitness, health and mas-
culinity work together to produce a variety of pleasurable experiences. At
the same time, the book provides a critique of such pleasurable experiences
within physical education by illustrating how these pleasures can still, for
some boys, quickly turn into displeasures and can be associated with exclu-
sion, humiliation, bullying and homophobia.
Boys, Bodies, and Physical Education argues that pleasure can be seen
as an educational and productive practice in physical education but also a
constraint that both engenders and privileges some boys over others as well
as (re)producing narrow and limited conceptions of masculinity and plea-
sures for all boys. This book works to problematise these pleasures and their
articulations with gender, bodies and spaces.
Göran Gerdin is Senior Lecturer of Physical Education and Sport at Linnaeus
University, Sweden.
Routledge Critical Studies in Gender and Sexuality
in Education
Series Editors: Wayne Martino, Emma Renold, Goli Rezai-Rashti, Jessica
Ringrose and Nelson Rodriguez
1 Childhood Sexuality and AIDS Education
The Price of Innocence
Deevia Bhana
2 LGBT-Q Teachers, Civil Partnership and Same-Sex Marriage
The Ambivalences of Legitimacy
Aoife Neary
3 Masculinity and Aspiration in the Era of Neoliberal Education
International Perspectives
Edited by Garth Stahl, Joseph Derrick Nelson, and Derron O. Wallace
4 Boys, Bodies, and Physical Education
Problematizing Identity, Schooling, and Power Relations through a
Pleasure Lens
Göran Gerdin
Boys, Bodies, and Physical
Education
Problematizing Identity, Schooling, and
Power Relations through a Pleasure Lens
Göran Gerdin
First published 2017
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© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Göran Gerdin to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
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ISBN: 978-1-138-64997-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-62557-7 (ebk)
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I dedicate this book to my three children, Oskar, Charlie and
Olivia, may your lives be filled with pleasures and happiness,
surrounded by great friends and family!
Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgements xv
PART I
Background 1
1 Boys Will Be Boys? 3
2 Gender, Bodies, Spaces and (dis)Pleasures 16
3 Boys’ Visual Representations and Interpretations of PE 62
PART II
A Visual Ethnography of Kea College 87
4 Sporting and Masculinising Spaces: The Performative
and Pleasurable Spaces of Boys’ PE 89
5 The Production of Masculine (dis)Pleasures in Boys’ PE 121
6 ‘Sporty’, ‘Fit’ and ‘Healthy’: The Materialisation of
Pleasurable Bodies in Boys’ PE 154
7 The (dis)Pleasures of Learning in, through and
about Movement 182
Afterword 209
Index 212
Preface
School physical education (PE)1 continues to be critiqued for making ene-
mies with young people and having a negative impact on their lifelong phys-
ical activity habits and health (e.g., Engström, 2008; Tinning, 2010). It is
in particular the competitive and at times aggressive nature of PE built on
dominant notions of sport and masculinity (e.g., Azzarito & Hill, 2013;
Hickey, 2008) that is said to marginalise both girls and boys. Yet in my
ongoing research with boys, I have found that the majority enjoy participat-
ing in PE and even regard this as their favourite school subject.
So if most boys seem to enjoy PE, (why) is there a need to change it?
My response to this question in this book is to use a pleasure lens to inter-
rogate what it is that these boys find pleasurable and why. In other words,
how are these pleasures produced, and what power relations do they con-
stitute? I will argue that, yes, in one sense PE is enjoyable for many boys
because they learn how to perform gender in a way that aligns with stereo-
typical ideas about masculinity, sport, fitness and health. Although they are
deriving pleasure from such performances, they can also be seen to become
restricted in their way of embodying masculinities that simultaneously alien-
ate those boys who are not able or willing to live up to these notions. In this
way, PE is not only failing to make this subject more inclusive for everyone
but also failing to teach and promote a diversity of embodied masculinities
and movement pleasures.
However, at this juncture of the book, given that I cannot speak for
everyone else, I will provide an account of how my own conceptualisations
of sport, PE, masculinity and being gendered have been shaped by external
forces and developed over time. I believe that this form of researcher reflex-
ivity (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2000) is of particular importance because in
the study reported on in this book, I can be considered as the main ‘research
instrument’ (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983), and therefore it is vital for
the reader to know the origins of my understanding.
Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I was actively involved in
a range of sports, including table tennis, swimming, soccer, golf and tennis,
which enabled me to create a sense of self as closely connected with sport.
It was especially tennis that I excelled in and that was going to form an
Preface ix
important part of my identity. With this came various sorts of privileges;
for instance, I was often away from school playing tournaments and was
allowed time off during school hours for practice. In terms of PE, it meant
getting the highest mark possible (even though I probably did not deserve it)
merely because of my national ranking in the sport. However, in my home
country, Sweden, tennis is not considered a ‘real’ man’s sport the way, for
instance, ice hockey and soccer are, which meant that my gendered iden-
tity was created to some extent in opposition to dominant discourses of
masculinity.
Various sports stars played an important role when I was growing up,
with many boys wanting to be like our favourite sports stars. Whereas the
majority of ice hockey and soccer playing boys had stereotypically male
sports heroes, one of my heroes was tennis player Stefan Edberg, who con-
trasted starkly with some of the strong, aggressive and powerful ice hockey
and soccer players. Edberg’s modest and gentle manner, both on and off the
tennis court, was something I always tried to live up to (not that I always
did). As identified by Carr and Weigand (2001), our behaviour in PE was
shaped by the perception we had of our own sports stars. While I was trying
to be like Edberg, modest and gentle, many others were playing rough and
aggressive, as their sporting heroes did. This highlights how sporting heroes
as role models were an important influence on our gendered patterns of
attitudes and behaviour during PE (Carr & Weigand, 2001).
Nevertheless, I was one of the fortunate ones who always had an ‘easy’
time in PE and I guess was considered one of the ‘sporty’ ones. Through
playing many different sports from an early age, I had learned a variety of
sporting skills, which PE often privileged. Apart from PE and sport, I was
also highly focused on the more academic side of schooling. For as long as
I can remember, I have been ‘blessed’ with the ability to acquire new knowl-
edge/information quickly and demonstrate this in exams or other forms of
assessment. In terms of my own identity and peer group manoeuvring, this
meant that I was often able to blend in with both the ‘sporty’ and the ‘aca-
demic’ boys. However, at the time, I had very little empathy for those less
able in either domain when involved in either PE and sport or academic sub-
jects. When doing PE, I would have little understanding of those ‘less able’
boys (and girls) and would often think that they did not try hard enough
or that they did not like PE. Conversely, when studying for an exam or an
assignment, I would talk about how some of the sporty ones never studied
hard enough or that they just did not care about those sorts of things. This
divide between PE and sport and academics seemed to be a prevalent dis-
course when I was growing up and connected to dominant discourses of
gender. Being one of the ‘cool’ boys meant either being really good at sports,
training hard, trying to be the best at all times (especially during PE) and
winning awards/trophies or being ‘naturally’ smart at school, where you
would get the highest marks without being seen to try. Studying hard was
considered ‘nerdy’ for boys and something that ‘girls do’. In addition, a lot
