Christopher R Matthews
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 211244 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Christopher R Matthews |
| NOMBRES | Christopher R |
| APELLIDO | Matthews |
| FIRMA | MATTHEWS C R |
| AFILIACIONES | Nottingham Trent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8561-2863 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 35 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 129 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 35 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1998 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
A Relatively Rational Analysis of Interpretative Analysis
This essay takes aim at normal academic practice in interpretative analysis. Specifically, the ways methodological discussions are often stilted, wooden and don’t sufficiently attempt to trace the intellectual journeys which scholars have traveled to arrive at their understandings. Based on this I consider some of the epistemological under-laboring that sits at the foundation of social scientific analysis of much qualitative data. With a sound un…
Theorising Violence through and within Martial Arts Studies
In this paper we offer an analytical definition of the term “violence”, constructed relative to the notion of a “violence paradox” within martial arts: that is, the question of how something broadly understood as destructive and antisocial can be refigured in martial arts spaces as a conduit for positive, productive and edifying outcomes. Here, we treat violence as a characteristic of human interaction, proposing the concept be approached through…
Periods, Pains, Pills, and Performance—Fighting Blood, Bodies and Biology
This paper draws on various data from long‐term immersion in combat sports to explore the period experiences of cis women fighters. We blend theoretical ideas from the social scientific literature on menstruation and the sociology of medicalization, pain and injury. Based on rich empirical data and theoretical tools, we argue that the “ontological pervasiveness” of periods resulted in women “fighting” parts of their own biology within traditional…
Children’s rights, human development and play – rejecting performance-orientated youth sport
This commentary is distinctly personal for us. We think it should be likewise for all scholars, leaders and organisers involved in youth sport. This is because, to our minds, at the core of most people’s ways of approaching and promoting these supposedly healthy activities to children and young adults, is an apparent well-meaningness which centres on wanting the best for current and future generations. Unfortunately, while we accept such good int…
Doing Good Social Science
Approaching, Contacting, and Grasping
Social scientific methods are not as they should be. In this extended essay, I offer a way of framing and writing about methodological discussions that can tackle some of the problems I have been butting my head up against for some time. Building on a twin paper recently published in Qualitative Inquiry and extracts from an unpublished, pre-peer-reviewed manuscript, I offer commentary and explanatory annotations. The main thrust of the work is to…
What Do We Do When We Do Social Science
It is important to understand what we do when we do social science. While this might sound obvious, it is quite challenging to produce relatively detached knowledge of our research. One way that I have supported people in doing just that is via three overlapping, interrelated but intellectually distinct ideas-approaching, contacting, and grasping. In this essay, and its twin which is to be published elsewhere in Qualiative Inquiry , I outline how…
Feeling or Funding? Critical Coproduction, Rationality, Emotionality, and Axiological Reflections
Coproduced research is at risk of becoming, and has perhaps already become, a 'mere buzzword', separated from its social and academic value. We argue this is connected to two things: the structuring of contemporary, particularly Global Northern, academia, and the traditional, dichotomous, and false intellectual separation of rationality from emotionality. Our modest attempt to tackle these problems come in the form of an extended critical discuss…
A typological understanding of medical support in sport
This article develops a typological understanding of medical support in sporting contexts. Based on the findings of a narrative literature review of social scientific studies, it outlines how medical support in sport can be usefully framed by four interrelated but conceptually distinct ideal types. These include affiliated , transient , independent and pseudo medical support. This understanding leads to the introduction of several avenues for fur…
All work and no play
Towards a ‘single-minded’ social science that matters
Social science is not as it should be – I think we have lost contact with what matters. Many scholars have made similar laments and directed their attention at disciplines in an attempt to mark out a more virtuous and effective future. Such attempts are valuable, but in taking aim at this disciplinary level they miss two important features of academic life. That is, while the social sciences are clearly more than the sum of their parts, they are …
Getting Back on the Bike
A clear and consistent finding across three decades of sociological work focused on performance sports is that various sports can be considered social spaces in which risk, pain, and injury are accepted, normalized, and valorized. In recent years, the emergent scientific and popular concern around the short- and long-term consequences of sport-related concussion has seen a resurgence in the use of classic sociological ideas to help understand why…
It's sort of help yourself' - DIY medical care and team-doctoring in amateur women's sport
It has become something of a truism, that within various athletic subcultures pain and injury are regularly normalised as 'part of the game'. One clear consequence which flows from this empirical reality is that athletes often need medical care in various forms. Recent developments in the gendered structuring of sport means that sportswomen are increasingly centred within this process. Yet, there is a broad consensus from sportswomen and academic…
Is gender equality in brain damage 'progress' for women and sport
This commentary sits within a context of growing cultural concern over brain damage that occurs in many of the Western world's most popular, profitable and prized sports. After laying out evidence demonstrating this point, we discuss the increasing inclusion of women within sports which involve regular and routinised brain injuries. We problematise this apparent 'progress' with the title of our commentary. In particular, rather than offering some…
Boxing, myths and reality building in sport for development programmes
The training regimes which are associated with boxing are thought to impart lessons in discipline that are particularly valuable for social groups often associated with the sport. This leads to a variety of sport for development programmes that seek to leverage this potential in one way or another. Research which is conducted on such programmes is often produced internally without academic support. We argue it is possible, and perhaps likely, for…
Athletes’ understanding of concussion – uncertainty, certainty and the ‘expert’ on the street
Several scholars have examined the uncertainties faced by sport medicine professionals surrounding their diagnosis, treatment and management of concussion. Yet, recent evidence suggests that combat sport athletes seem to have ‘reasonably good concussion knowledge’. How, then, have athletes gained such an understanding when medical professionals have not? We argue that this logical inconsistency is most likely an artefact of inflexible, ‘snapshot’…
Communicating consent in sport
This paper provides a systematic attempt to empirically describe the ways in which athletes' consent to take part in sport is socially constructed, communicated and understood by others. Due to a notable lack of prior research on this topic, we draw on insights from sex research to theorise consent as a communicative social practice, specifically applying this notion to interpreting the world of competitive combat sports. To do so, we combine dat…
He may not be qualified in it, but I think he's still got the knowledge
Several studies have examined the provision of medical care in a variety of competitive sport settings. These are important contributions, but the majority of this work has focused on elite sports that tend to have a group of medical health professionals as part of the team, with little attention given to sports that lack access to such services. This lack of dedicated medical support may result in athletes being more likely to engage in 'team-do…
The intersubjective accomplishment of power by medical professionals within unregulated combat sports
The lack of power experienced by medical professionals working in various sport settings has been consistently evidenced by sociologists researching the provision of medical care to athletes. In this paper, which focuses on the work of medical professionals within unregulated combat sports in England, we extend this discussion by focusing on the means by which such professionals attempt to (re)construct power within contexts where it cannot be ta…
The fog soon clears
Boxing is 'all about bodies'; beautiful bodies, broken bodies and, sometimes, brain-damaged bodies. And while a lot of research has explored the physiological side of 'punch drunk' syndrome, far less work has attempted to consider how boxers experience brain injuries. Perhaps surprisingly, considering the sports historical and symbolic ties to concussion and degenerative brain diseases, contemporary socio-cultural explorations of the sport tend t…
Food assessment
Objective: Obesity rates are increasing faster in men than in women, with particular concerns raised regarding older men. However, men are less likely than women to engage in weight-loss activities such as dieting, typically constructed as a feminine practice. Previous research has argued that men’s food consumption is notably different and unhealthier than women’s. The novel contribution of this article is an analysis of food assessments in orde…
Drugs and supplements in amateur boxing
This research, which is based on the thoughts and experiences of coaches, athletes, officials and others involved in amateur boxing, explores the use of recreational drugs, supplements and performance-enhancing drugs in the sport. After providing some context through a discussion of ideologies that shape elite sport, some key methodological issues are briefly described. The findings explore the manner in which ideologies of performance are shaped…
On (not) becoming
Within this chapter I discuss my reading of Elias’s approach to understanding the production of knowledge. I use this as a basis from which I explore the development of my long-term ethnographic involvement in boxing. After briefly exploring Elias’s writings, which reconceptualize ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ methodologies, I use extracts from my personal diary and recent interviews to detail my shifting immersion within the sport. The goal here, is …
Pastiche
This entry briefly explores the development of pastiche as an idea within postmodern cultural studies before examining its usage within sociological research. In redeploying pastiche to help understand social identities and hegemonic power, sociologists have departed in important ways from its original usage. In this way, they have developed a useful and nuanced account of social power that focuses on reflexive microsociological interactions as t…
Markan Grapplings
The Tyranny of the Male Preserve
Within this paper I draw on short vignettes and quotes taken from a two-year ethnographic study of boxing to think through the continuing academic merit of the notion of the male preserve. This is an important task due to evidence of shifts in social patterns of gender that have developed since the idea was first proposed in the 1970s. In aligning theoretical contributions from Lefebvre and Butler to discussions of the male preserve, we are able …
It Is What It Is
In this article we make use of inclusive masculinity theory to explore online media representations of male homosexuality and masculinity within the increasingly popular combat sport of mixed martial arts (MMA). Adopting a case-study approach, we discuss narratives constructed around one aspirational male MMA fighter, Dakota Cochrane, whose history of having participated in gay pornography became a major talking point on a number of MMA discussio…
Biology Ideology and Pastiche Hegemony
As knowledge about the biological foundation of the modern patriarchal gender order is increasingly challenged within late-modern social worlds enclaves persist in which men and women can attempt to recreate understandings of the 'natural' basis of sex difference. Within 'Power Gym,' male boxers were able to symbolize their bodies and behaviors in such a manner. The language and logic of popular scientific discourses authored and authorized notio…
Gender, Media, and Mixed Martial Arts in Poland
Recent growth in the media visibility of female combat sport athletes has offered a compelling site for research on gender and sport media, as women in deeply masculinized sports have been increasingly placed in the public spotlight. Although scholars in the Anglophone West have offered analyses of the media framing of this phenomenon, little work has been done outside these cultural contexts. Thus, in this article, we offer a qualitative explora…
It's Only Sport'-The Symbolic Neutralization of 'Violence
Within the commodified world of professional ice hockey, athletes sell their bodily performances in return for a salary. A central feature of this transaction is the very real risk of physical injury-a risk inherent within most contact sports, but particularly so within those that feature seemingly 'violent' confrontations between competitors, as ice hockey is widely reputed to do. Yet, within the spectacle of sport, where physicality can be cons…
The intersubjective accomplishment of power by medical professionals within unregulated combat sports
The lack of power experienced by medical professionals working in various sport settings has been consistently evidenced by sociologists researching the provision of medical care to athletes. In this paper, which focuses on the work of medical professionals within unregulated combat sports in England, we extend this discussion by focusing on the means by which such professionals attempt to (re)construct power within contexts where it cannot be ta…
The fog soon clears
Boxing is 'all about bodies'; beautiful bodies, broken bodies and, sometimes, brain-damaged bodies. And while a lot of research has explored the physiological side of 'punch drunk' syndrome, far less work has attempted to consider how boxers experience brain injuries. Perhaps surprisingly, considering the sports historical and symbolic ties to concussion and degenerative brain diseases, contemporary socio-cultural explorations of the sport tend t…
Communicating consent in sport
This paper provides a systematic attempt to empirically describe the ways in which athletes' consent to take part in sport is socially constructed, communicated and understood by others. Due to a notable lack of prior research on this topic, we draw on insights from sex research to theorise consent as a communicative social practice, specifically applying this notion to interpreting the world of competitive combat sports. To do so, we combine dat…
He may not be qualified in it, but I think he's still got the knowledge
Several studies have examined the provision of medical care in a variety of competitive sport settings. These are important contributions, but the majority of this work has focused on elite sports that tend to have a group of medical health professionals as part of the team, with little attention given to sports that lack access to such services. This lack of dedicated medical support may result in athletes being more likely to engage in 'team-do…
Body dissatisfaction, appearance investment, and wellbeing
Most research on male body image to date has focused on young men using quantitative methods. The study reported here is based on qualitative interviews with a sample of older obese men (n = 30) on a weight management programme, and we asked them about body-related feelings. The interviews were all transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Our results indicate that although body weight was typically minimised, body image was a key concern…
Getting Back on the Bike
A clear and consistent finding across three decades of sociological work focused on performance sports is that various sports can be considered social spaces in which risk, pain, and injury are accepted, normalized, and valorized. In recent years, the emergent scientific and popular concern around the short- and long-term consequences of sport-related concussion has seen a resurgence in the use of classic sociological ideas to help understand why…
Boxing, myths and reality building in sport for development programmes
The training regimes which are associated with boxing are thought to impart lessons in discipline that are particularly valuable for social groups often associated with the sport. This leads to a variety of sport for development programmes that seek to leverage this potential in one way or another. Research which is conducted on such programmes is often produced internally without academic support. We argue it is possible, and perhaps likely, for…
Feeling or Funding? Critical Coproduction, Rationality, Emotionality, and Axiological Reflections
Coproduced research is at risk of becoming, and has perhaps already become, a 'mere buzzword', separated from its social and academic value. We argue this is connected to two things: the structuring of contemporary, particularly Global Northern, academia, and the traditional, dichotomous, and false intellectual separation of rationality from emotionality. Our modest attempt to tackle these problems come in the form of an extended critical discuss…
The appropriation of hegemonic masculinity within selected research on men's health
Connell's hegemonic masculinity thesis (HMT) has occupied a relatively dominant position within contemporary research exploring the lives of men. Messerschmidt has conducted a review of recent literature that purports to use HMT, he describes in detail some of the ways Connell's work has been appropriated. Taking Messerschmidt's lead, this paper explores a small selection of men's health research that employ HMT as a central organising theme. Suc…
What Do We Do When We Do Social Science
It is important to understand what we do when we do social science. While this might sound obvious, it is quite challenging to produce relatively detached knowledge of our research. One way that I have supported people in doing just that is via three overlapping, interrelated but intellectually distinct ideas-approaching, contacting, and grasping. In this essay, and its twin which is to be published elsewhere in Qualiative Inquiry , I outline how…
It's sort of help yourself' - DIY medical care and team-doctoring in amateur women's sport
It has become something of a truism, that within various athletic subcultures pain and injury are regularly normalised as 'part of the game'. One clear consequence which flows from this empirical reality is that athletes often need medical care in various forms. Recent developments in the gendered structuring of sport means that sportswomen are increasingly centred within this process. Yet, there is a broad consensus from sportswomen and academic…
Is gender equality in brain damage 'progress' for women and sport
This commentary sits within a context of growing cultural concern over brain damage that occurs in many of the Western world's most popular, profitable and prized sports. After laying out evidence demonstrating this point, we discuss the increasing inclusion of women within sports which involve regular and routinised brain injuries. We problematise this apparent 'progress' with the title of our commentary. In particular, rather than offering some…
Pastiche
This entry briefly explores the development of pastiche as an idea within postmodern cultural studies before examining its usage within sociological research. In redeploying pastiche to help understand social identities and hegemonic power, sociologists have departed in important ways from its original usage. In this way, they have developed a useful and nuanced account of social power that focuses on reflexive microsociological interactions as t…
Motivate’
The purpose of this study was to examine whether an innovative, inclusive and integrated 12-week exercise, behaviour change and nutrition advice-based weight management programme could significantly improve the cardiovascular risk factors of overweight and obese men and women over the age of 35. One hundred and ninety-four men and 98 women (mean age = 52.28 ± 9.74 and 51.19 ± 9.04) attending a community-based intervention delivered by Notts Count…
Presenting Archaeology to the Public
Love at First Sight
Love at First Sight:The Velocity of Victorian Heterosexuality Christopher Matthews (bio) In mainstream twentieth-century culture, the phenomenon of love at first sight—as romantic trope, Hollywood staple, biochemical wonder—has resided squarely in the realm of what we might call a feminine epistemology. In his 1955 study of the "logical forms" people use to justify their actions, philosopher E. A. Gellner noticed that the "question [of] whether t…
Motivate’
The purpose of this study was to examine whether an innovative, inclusive and integrated 12-week exercise, behaviour change and nutrition advice-based weight management programme could significantly improve the cardiovascular risk factors of overweight and obese men and women over the age of 35. One hundred and ninety-four men and 98 women (mean age = 52.28 ± 9.74 and 51.19 ± 9.04) attending a community-based intervention delivered by Notts Count…
Biology Ideology and Pastiche Hegemony
As knowledge about the biological foundation of the modern patriarchal gender order is increasingly challenged within late-modern social worlds enclaves persist in which men and women can attempt to recreate understandings of the 'natural' basis of sex difference. Within 'Power Gym,' male boxers were able to symbolize their bodies and behaviors in such a manner. The language and logic of popular scientific discourses authored and authorized notio…
Body dissatisfaction, appearance investment, and wellbeing
Most research on male body image to date has focused on young men using quantitative methods. The study reported here is based on qualitative interviews with a sample of older obese men (n = 30) on a weight management programme, and we asked them about body-related feelings. The interviews were all transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Our results indicate that although body weight was typically minimised, body image was a key concern…
It Is What It Is
In this article we make use of inclusive masculinity theory to explore online media representations of male homosexuality and masculinity within the increasingly popular combat sport of mixed martial arts (MMA). Adopting a case-study approach, we discuss narratives constructed around one aspirational male MMA fighter, Dakota Cochrane, whose history of having participated in gay pornography became a major talking point on a number of MMA discussio…
The appropriation of hegemonic masculinity within selected research on men's health
Connell's hegemonic masculinity thesis (HMT) has occupied a relatively dominant position within contemporary research exploring the lives of men. Messerschmidt has conducted a review of recent literature that purports to use HMT, he describes in detail some of the ways Connell's work has been appropriated. Taking Messerschmidt's lead, this paper explores a small selection of men's health research that employ HMT as a central organising theme. Suc…
The Tyranny of the Male Preserve
Within this paper I draw on short vignettes and quotes taken from a two-year ethnographic study of boxing to think through the continuing academic merit of the notion of the male preserve. This is an important task due to evidence of shifts in social patterns of gender that have developed since the idea was first proposed in the 1970s. In aligning theoretical contributions from Lefebvre and Butler to discussions of the male preserve, we are able …
Gender, Media, and Mixed Martial Arts in Poland
Recent growth in the media visibility of female combat sport athletes has offered a compelling site for research on gender and sport media, as women in deeply masculinized sports have been increasingly placed in the public spotlight. Although scholars in the Anglophone West have offered analyses of the media framing of this phenomenon, little work has been done outside these cultural contexts. Thus, in this article, we offer a qualitative explora…
It's Only Sport'-The Symbolic Neutralization of 'Violence
Within the commodified world of professional ice hockey, athletes sell their bodily performances in return for a salary. A central feature of this transaction is the very real risk of physical injury-a risk inherent within most contact sports, but particularly so within those that feature seemingly 'violent' confrontations between competitors, as ice hockey is widely reputed to do. Yet, within the spectacle of sport, where physicality can be cons…
Markan Grapplings
On (not) becoming
Within this chapter I discuss my reading of Elias’s approach to understanding the production of knowledge. I use this as a basis from which I explore the development of my long-term ethnographic involvement in boxing. After briefly exploring Elias’s writings, which reconceptualize ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ methodologies, I use extracts from my personal diary and recent interviews to detail my shifting immersion within the sport. The goal here, is …
Pastiche
This entry briefly explores the development of pastiche as an idea within postmodern cultural studies before examining its usage within sociological research. In redeploying pastiche to help understand social identities and hegemonic power, sociologists have departed in important ways from its original usage. In this way, they have developed a useful and nuanced account of social power that focuses on reflexive microsociological interactions as t…
Food assessment
Objective: Obesity rates are increasing faster in men than in women, with particular concerns raised regarding older men. However, men are less likely than women to engage in weight-loss activities such as dieting, typically constructed as a feminine practice. Previous research has argued that men’s food consumption is notably different and unhealthier than women’s. The novel contribution of this article is an analysis of food assessments in orde…
Drugs and supplements in amateur boxing
This research, which is based on the thoughts and experiences of coaches, athletes, officials and others involved in amateur boxing, explores the use of recreational drugs, supplements and performance-enhancing drugs in the sport. After providing some context through a discussion of ideologies that shape elite sport, some key methodological issues are briefly described. The findings explore the manner in which ideologies of performance are shaped…
The intersubjective accomplishment of power by medical professionals within unregulated combat sports
The lack of power experienced by medical professionals working in various sport settings has been consistently evidenced by sociologists researching the provision of medical care to athletes. In this paper, which focuses on the work of medical professionals within unregulated combat sports in England, we extend this discussion by focusing on the means by which such professionals attempt to (re)construct power within contexts where it cannot be ta…
The fog soon clears
Boxing is 'all about bodies'; beautiful bodies, broken bodies and, sometimes, brain-damaged bodies. And while a lot of research has explored the physiological side of 'punch drunk' syndrome, far less work has attempted to consider how boxers experience brain injuries. Perhaps surprisingly, considering the sports historical and symbolic ties to concussion and degenerative brain diseases, contemporary socio-cultural explorations of the sport tend t…
Athletes’ understanding of concussion – uncertainty, certainty and the ‘expert’ on the street
Several scholars have examined the uncertainties faced by sport medicine professionals surrounding their diagnosis, treatment and management of concussion. Yet, recent evidence suggests that combat sport athletes seem to have ‘reasonably good concussion knowledge’. How, then, have athletes gained such an understanding when medical professionals have not? We argue that this logical inconsistency is most likely an artefact of inflexible, ‘snapshot’…
Communicating consent in sport
This paper provides a systematic attempt to empirically describe the ways in which athletes' consent to take part in sport is socially constructed, communicated and understood by others. Due to a notable lack of prior research on this topic, we draw on insights from sex research to theorise consent as a communicative social practice, specifically applying this notion to interpreting the world of competitive combat sports. To do so, we combine dat…
He may not be qualified in it, but I think he's still got the knowledge
Several studies have examined the provision of medical care in a variety of competitive sport settings. These are important contributions, but the majority of this work has focused on elite sports that tend to have a group of medical health professionals as part of the team, with little attention given to sports that lack access to such services. This lack of dedicated medical support may result in athletes being more likely to engage in 'team-do…
Boxing, myths and reality building in sport for development programmes
The training regimes which are associated with boxing are thought to impart lessons in discipline that are particularly valuable for social groups often associated with the sport. This leads to a variety of sport for development programmes that seek to leverage this potential in one way or another. Research which is conducted on such programmes is often produced internally without academic support. We argue it is possible, and perhaps likely, for…
All work and no play
Towards a ‘single-minded’ social science that matters
Social science is not as it should be – I think we have lost contact with what matters. Many scholars have made similar laments and directed their attention at disciplines in an attempt to mark out a more virtuous and effective future. Such attempts are valuable, but in taking aim at this disciplinary level they miss two important features of academic life. That is, while the social sciences are clearly more than the sum of their parts, they are …
Getting Back on the Bike
A clear and consistent finding across three decades of sociological work focused on performance sports is that various sports can be considered social spaces in which risk, pain, and injury are accepted, normalized, and valorized. In recent years, the emergent scientific and popular concern around the short- and long-term consequences of sport-related concussion has seen a resurgence in the use of classic sociological ideas to help understand why…
It's sort of help yourself' - DIY medical care and team-doctoring in amateur women's sport
It has become something of a truism, that within various athletic subcultures pain and injury are regularly normalised as 'part of the game'. One clear consequence which flows from this empirical reality is that athletes often need medical care in various forms. Recent developments in the gendered structuring of sport means that sportswomen are increasingly centred within this process. Yet, there is a broad consensus from sportswomen and academic…
Sociology (24 obras) · Psychology (23 obras) · Political science (14 obras) · Sports, Gender, and Society (14 obras) · Epistemology (13 obras) · Social Psychology (10 obras) · Computer Science (9 obras) · Doping in Sports (9 obras) · Law (9 obras) · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts (9 obras)