Alex Channon
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 259443 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Alex Channon |
| NOMBRES | Alex |
| APELLIDO | Channon |
| FIRMA | CHANNON A |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Brighton |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0536-8440 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 21 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 149 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 21 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2013 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
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…
Theoretical and Conceptual Development in and through Martial Arts Studies
This article provides an outline and rationale for a special issue of Martial Arts Studies concerning the development of concepts and theories from within the field of martial arts studies. Based on a series of short contributions from the authors whose work constitutes the special issue, the piece foregrounds the importance of concept development with respect to the identity, maturation, growing independence, and wider academic impact of the fie…
Comparing Mental Health Outcomes of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and CrossFit Training among Trauma-Exposed Professionals
In this paper we compare the mental health outcomes of Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) and CrossFit training among military veterans and emergency services personnel participating in 60-day programmes in either modality, using standardised questionnaires (n=60/n=40) and semi-structured interviews (n=20). We measured changes in anxiety, depression, PTSD, sleep quality, and general wellbeing between baseline, mid-point, and endpoint of the 60-day trainin…
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…
Role Demands and Psychological Factors Underpinning Performance in Mixed Martial Arts Refereeing
This paper offers a discussion of the role demands facing referees working in mixed martial arts (MMA), as well as the factors that determine their performance in managing them. To do so, it uses data derived from a qualitative, ethnographic investigation based on field observations carried out at 16 competitive MMA events, plus interviews with 7 referees, 6 of whom had extensive experience of working at the highest international levels of the sp…
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…
‘The man in the middle’
Mixed martial arts (MMA) competition involves one-on-one, full-contact fighting, most often held within the spatial confines of a steel cage and in front of a paying audience. The spectacular entertainment value of this sport, as well as its intrinsic psychological appeal to competitors, is steeped in risk. While the perspectives of athletes and fans on this issue are reasonably well-researched, little is known about a crucial third party in the …
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…
Just Existing Is Activism”
This study focuses on transgender experiences in martial arts. Interviews with three Finnish and two British transgender martial artists were thematically analyzed, and findings were interpreted through the lens of queer theory. Two themes were identified related to the ways that transgender martial artists experience their sporting contexts, namely martial arts as an empowering and inclusive context and the challenges related to being transgende…
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…
Edgework and Mixed Martial Arts
Martial Arts Studies publishes the highest quality academic work on any aspect of martial arts studies. It aspires to stimulate and enrich the development of research and scholarship in martial arts studies by publishing the highest quality interdisciplinary work in the emergent field
Teaching with Sociological Imagination in Higher and Further Education
The influence of competitive co-action on kata performance
Social facilitation is a phenomenon that can help explain performance outcomes in competitive sports. Previous research has shown that performing in the presence of others may increase physiological arousal and that performance can be either facilitated or inhibited depending on the skill level of the performers and the complexity of the skill performed. Although extensive research on this phenomenon has been reported in the sport psychology and …
Pink Gloves Still Give Black Eyes
This article considers the gendered significance of women’s participation in combat sports, with a specific focus on the performances of femininity by female combat athletes. Against lines of argument which posit that women’s enactment of femininity is the result of restrictive, coercive, and ultimately conservative cultural pressures, respondents in two separate studies suggested that a purposeful, selective enactment of femininity, when underst…
Between Homohysteria and Inclusivity
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…
Legends’ in ‘Lingerie’
This paper explores the representation of female athletes within the Legends Football League (LFL; formerly ‘Lingerie Football League’) in 2013. Specifically, the study seeks to understand the vision of women’s sport, and female athletes, which the LFL propagates. Drawing on a combined content and semiotic analysis of the commentary and visuals featured in 26 LFL matches broadcast online in 2013, our data suggests that the LFL presents apparently…
Doing real world research in sports studies
Review of Doing real world research in sports studies, edited by Andy Smith and Ivan Waddington, Abingdon, Routledge, 2014, 230 pp., first edition, £27.99 (pbk), ISBN 978-0-415-50526-0
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…
Towards the “Undoing” of Gender in Mixed-Sex Martial Arts and Combat Sports
This paper addresses sex integration in martial arts and combat sports, discussing the implications of mixed-sex training for challenging orthodox Western constructions of gender. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 37 long-term martial arts practitioners from around the English East Midlands between 2007–2011, the paper argues that restrictive, essentialist and hierarchal conceptions of sex difference can be challenged through integrated trai…
The Rules of Engagement
Within the sociology of sport and its related disciplines, martial arts have become increasingly popular sites for research on embodiment, gender and society. While much previous work in this area has focused upon the embodied experiences of either male or female practitioners, relatively few studies have directly addressed the social significance of mixed-sex practice. In this empirically-focused paper, we draw on qualitative, semistructured int…
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 Rules of Engagement
Within the sociology of sport and its related disciplines, martial arts have become increasingly popular sites for research on embodiment, gender and society. While much previous work in this area has focused upon the embodied experiences of either male or female practitioners, relatively few studies have directly addressed the social significance of mixed-sex practice. In this empirically-focused paper, we draw on qualitative, semistructured int…
Between Homohysteria and Inclusivity
Towards the “Undoing” of Gender in Mixed-Sex Martial Arts and Combat Sports
This paper addresses sex integration in martial arts and combat sports, discussing the implications of mixed-sex training for challenging orthodox Western constructions of gender. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 37 long-term martial arts practitioners from around the English East Midlands between 2007–2011, the paper argues that restrictive, essentialist and hierarchal conceptions of sex difference can be challenged through integrated trai…
Pink Gloves Still Give Black Eyes
This article considers the gendered significance of women’s participation in combat sports, with a specific focus on the performances of femininity by female combat athletes. Against lines of argument which posit that women’s enactment of femininity is the result of restrictive, coercive, and ultimately conservative cultural pressures, respondents in two separate studies suggested that a purposeful, selective enactment of femininity, when underst…
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…
Legends’ in ‘Lingerie’
This paper explores the representation of female athletes within the Legends Football League (LFL; formerly ‘Lingerie Football League’) in 2013. Specifically, the study seeks to understand the vision of women’s sport, and female athletes, which the LFL propagates. Drawing on a combined content and semiotic analysis of the commentary and visuals featured in 26 LFL matches broadcast online in 2013, our data suggests that the LFL presents apparently…
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…
Edgework and Mixed Martial Arts
Martial Arts Studies publishes the highest quality academic work on any aspect of martial arts studies. It aspires to stimulate and enrich the development of research and scholarship in martial arts studies by publishing the highest quality interdisciplinary work in the emergent field
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…
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…
Role Demands and Psychological Factors Underpinning Performance in Mixed Martial Arts Refereeing
This paper offers a discussion of the role demands facing referees working in mixed martial arts (MMA), as well as the factors that determine their performance in managing them. To do so, it uses data derived from a qualitative, ethnographic investigation based on field observations carried out at 16 competitive MMA events, plus interviews with 7 referees, 6 of whom had extensive experience of working at the highest international levels of the sp…
The Rules of Engagement
Within the sociology of sport and its related disciplines, martial arts have become increasingly popular sites for research on embodiment, gender and society. While much previous work in this area has focused upon the embodied experiences of either male or female practitioners, relatively few studies have directly addressed the social significance of mixed-sex practice. In this empirically-focused paper, we draw on qualitative, semistructured int…
Towards the “Undoing” of Gender in Mixed-Sex Martial Arts and Combat Sports
This paper addresses sex integration in martial arts and combat sports, discussing the implications of mixed-sex training for challenging orthodox Western constructions of gender. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 37 long-term martial arts practitioners from around the English East Midlands between 2007–2011, the paper argues that restrictive, essentialist and hierarchal conceptions of sex difference can be challenged through integrated trai…
Legends’ in ‘Lingerie’
This paper explores the representation of female athletes within the Legends Football League (LFL; formerly ‘Lingerie Football League’) in 2013. Specifically, the study seeks to understand the vision of women’s sport, and female athletes, which the LFL propagates. Drawing on a combined content and semiotic analysis of the commentary and visuals featured in 26 LFL matches broadcast online in 2013, our data suggests that the LFL presents apparently…
Doing real world research in sports studies
Review of Doing real world research in sports studies, edited by Andy Smith and Ivan Waddington, Abingdon, Routledge, 2014, 230 pp., first edition, £27.99 (pbk), ISBN 978-0-415-50526-0
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…
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…
Pink Gloves Still Give Black Eyes
This article considers the gendered significance of women’s participation in combat sports, with a specific focus on the performances of femininity by female combat athletes. Against lines of argument which posit that women’s enactment of femininity is the result of restrictive, coercive, and ultimately conservative cultural pressures, respondents in two separate studies suggested that a purposeful, selective enactment of femininity, when underst…
Between Homohysteria and Inclusivity
Teaching with Sociological Imagination in Higher and Further Education
The influence of competitive co-action on kata performance
Social facilitation is a phenomenon that can help explain performance outcomes in competitive sports. Previous research has shown that performing in the presence of others may increase physiological arousal and that performance can be either facilitated or inhibited depending on the skill level of the performers and the complexity of the skill performed. Although extensive research on this phenomenon has been reported in the sport psychology and …
Edgework and Mixed Martial Arts
Martial Arts Studies publishes the highest quality academic work on any aspect of martial arts studies. It aspires to stimulate and enrich the development of research and scholarship in martial arts studies by publishing the highest quality interdisciplinary work in the emergent field
Just Existing Is Activism”
This study focuses on transgender experiences in martial arts. Interviews with three Finnish and two British transgender martial artists were thematically analyzed, and findings were interpreted through the lens of queer theory. Two themes were identified related to the ways that transgender martial artists experience their sporting contexts, namely martial arts as an empowering and inclusive context and the challenges related to being transgende…
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 man in the middle’
Mixed martial arts (MMA) competition involves one-on-one, full-contact fighting, most often held within the spatial confines of a steel cage and in front of a paying audience. The spectacular entertainment value of this sport, as well as its intrinsic psychological appeal to competitors, is steeped in risk. While the perspectives of athletes and fans on this issue are reasonably well-researched, little is known about a crucial third party in the …
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…
Role Demands and Psychological Factors Underpinning Performance in Mixed Martial Arts Refereeing
This paper offers a discussion of the role demands facing referees working in mixed martial arts (MMA), as well as the factors that determine their performance in managing them. To do so, it uses data derived from a qualitative, ethnographic investigation based on field observations carried out at 16 competitive MMA events, plus interviews with 7 referees, 6 of whom had extensive experience of working at the highest international levels of the sp…
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…
Comparing Mental Health Outcomes of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and CrossFit Training among Trauma-Exposed Professionals
In this paper we compare the mental health outcomes of Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) and CrossFit training among military veterans and emergency services personnel participating in 60-day programmes in either modality, using standardised questionnaires (n=60/n=40) and semi-structured interviews (n=20). We measured changes in anxiety, depression, PTSD, sleep quality, and general wellbeing between baseline, mid-point, and endpoint of the 60-day trainin…
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…
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…
Theoretical and Conceptual Development in and through Martial Arts Studies
This article provides an outline and rationale for a special issue of Martial Arts Studies concerning the development of concepts and theories from within the field of martial arts studies. Based on a series of short contributions from the authors whose work constitutes the special issue, the piece foregrounds the importance of concept development with respect to the identity, maturation, growing independence, and wider academic impact of the fie…
Sociology (18 obras) · Psychology (15 obras) · Sports, Gender, and Society (15 obras) · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts (13 obras) · Doping in Sports (12 obras) · Martial arts (12 obras) · Political science (12 obras) · Art (10 obras) · Law (9 obras) · Social Psychology (9 obras)