Leo Hopkinson
Biographic Data
| ID | 662010 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Leo Hopkinson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Leo |
| FAMILY NAME | Hopkinson |
| SIGNATURE | HOPKINSON L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8438-3501 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 7 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Boxing family
Anthropologists have often conceptualized competition by contrasting it with cooperation, even when collective ends are sought and achieved by competing. This approach tells us little about the qualities of the relationships and subjectivities that competition sustains. I explore the qualities of competitive relationships and subjectivities among Accra boxers, many of whom feel a constant, simmering sense of competition with one another. Boxers d…
Punching is a sickness
Men who box professionally in Accra recognize that bouts are physically harmful and that they involve violently subordinating one another. Yet they also share a sense that bouts can be spaces of mutual becoming and affirmation. To navigate the tension between harm and affirmation, boxers and coaches couch their work between the ropes in idioms of care and mutual support. These idioms reflect their understanding that their lives and futures are mu…
Competition and mis/trust in Africa and beyond
Competition has rarely been an explicit theme in ethnographies of African settings, despite being a familiar dynamic to ethnographers in the field. Trust and mistrust, although prominent themes, tend to feature in discussions of their relationship to cooperation. Re-reading ethnographic and historical accounts of diverse competitive practices on the continent invites a closer attention to the subtle ways in which competition - as a specific genre…
Introduction
Anthropologists, like neoliberal economists, have often assumed that competition (re)orders society in broadly predictable ways. By contrast, we contend that competition always facilitates changes beyond its anticipated outcomes and disciplinary effects. We argue that the outcomes of competition are contingent on the varied and co-existing interpretations of audiences, arbiters, and competitors about the nature of competition, what is worth compe…
Only one Mayweather
Professional boxing offers hope of vast wealth and global mobility for aspiring athletes in Accra, hopes bolstered by the understanding that Ghanaians are particularly suited to boxing's attrition. However, when boxers become active in the global industry, they encounter power relations which locate them as cheap, subordinate labour, and stymie their championship hopes. As boxers build lives through the sport, they reflect critically on the role …
Stay Home, Stay Safe
From March to May 2020 in the UK, measures that became known across the world as 'lockdown' curtailed personal freedoms in order to curb the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus. While initial criticisms of lockdown focused on the adverse impacts of social isolation on wellbeing, this research article explores how lockdown creates new and altered proximities and intimacies as well as distances. During the initial UK lockdown, the 'household' and …
Descartes' shadow
This article explores the body and self engendered through a boxer's training, drawing on fieldwork conducted in boxing gyms in Montreal and Edinburgh. Contrary to contemporary anthropological accounts of the sport, I argue that training practices in these gyms instill a dualistic sense of self, evocative of Cartesian dualism. Paradoxically this is not alternative to, but concurrent with, a sense of embodied knowledge and selfhood in proficient b…
Only one Mayweather
Professional boxing offers hope of vast wealth and global mobility for aspiring athletes in Accra, hopes bolstered by the understanding that Ghanaians are particularly suited to boxing's attrition. However, when boxers become active in the global industry, they encounter power relations which locate them as cheap, subordinate labour, and stymie their championship hopes. As boxers build lives through the sport, they reflect critically on the role …
Punching is a sickness
Men who box professionally in Accra recognize that bouts are physically harmful and that they involve violently subordinating one another. Yet they also share a sense that bouts can be spaces of mutual becoming and affirmation. To navigate the tension between harm and affirmation, boxers and coaches couch their work between the ropes in idioms of care and mutual support. These idioms reflect their understanding that their lives and futures are mu…
Descartes' shadow
This article explores the body and self engendered through a boxer's training, drawing on fieldwork conducted in boxing gyms in Montreal and Edinburgh. Contrary to contemporary anthropological accounts of the sport, I argue that training practices in these gyms instill a dualistic sense of self, evocative of Cartesian dualism. Paradoxically this is not alternative to, but concurrent with, a sense of embodied knowledge and selfhood in proficient b…
Stay Home, Stay Safe
From March to May 2020 in the UK, measures that became known across the world as 'lockdown' curtailed personal freedoms in order to curb the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus. While initial criticisms of lockdown focused on the adverse impacts of social isolation on wellbeing, this research article explores how lockdown creates new and altered proximities and intimacies as well as distances. During the initial UK lockdown, the 'household' and …
Descartes' shadow
This article explores the body and self engendered through a boxer's training, drawing on fieldwork conducted in boxing gyms in Montreal and Edinburgh. Contrary to contemporary anthropological accounts of the sport, I argue that training practices in these gyms instill a dualistic sense of self, evocative of Cartesian dualism. Paradoxically this is not alternative to, but concurrent with, a sense of embodied knowledge and selfhood in proficient b…
Stay Home, Stay Safe
From March to May 2020 in the UK, measures that became known across the world as 'lockdown' curtailed personal freedoms in order to curb the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus. While initial criticisms of lockdown focused on the adverse impacts of social isolation on wellbeing, this research article explores how lockdown creates new and altered proximities and intimacies as well as distances. During the initial UK lockdown, the 'household' and …
Introduction
Anthropologists, like neoliberal economists, have often assumed that competition (re)orders society in broadly predictable ways. By contrast, we contend that competition always facilitates changes beyond its anticipated outcomes and disciplinary effects. We argue that the outcomes of competition are contingent on the varied and co-existing interpretations of audiences, arbiters, and competitors about the nature of competition, what is worth compe…
Only one Mayweather
Professional boxing offers hope of vast wealth and global mobility for aspiring athletes in Accra, hopes bolstered by the understanding that Ghanaians are particularly suited to boxing's attrition. However, when boxers become active in the global industry, they encounter power relations which locate them as cheap, subordinate labour, and stymie their championship hopes. As boxers build lives through the sport, they reflect critically on the role …
Boxing family
Anthropologists have often conceptualized competition by contrasting it with cooperation, even when collective ends are sought and achieved by competing. This approach tells us little about the qualities of the relationships and subjectivities that competition sustains. I explore the qualities of competitive relationships and subjectivities among Accra boxers, many of whom feel a constant, simmering sense of competition with one another. Boxers d…
Punching is a sickness
Men who box professionally in Accra recognize that bouts are physically harmful and that they involve violently subordinating one another. Yet they also share a sense that bouts can be spaces of mutual becoming and affirmation. To navigate the tension between harm and affirmation, boxers and coaches couch their work between the ropes in idioms of care and mutual support. These idioms reflect their understanding that their lives and futures are mu…
Competition and mis/trust in Africa and beyond
Competition has rarely been an explicit theme in ethnographies of African settings, despite being a familiar dynamic to ethnographers in the field. Trust and mistrust, although prominent themes, tend to feature in discussions of their relationship to cooperation. Re-reading ethnographic and historical accounts of diverse competitive practices on the continent invites a closer attention to the subtle ways in which competition - as a specific genre…
Sociology (6 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Political science (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · Economics (3 works) · Social Psychology (3 works) · Sports, Gender, and Society (3 works) · Business (2 works)