Legitimacy and Respectability on the Skin

Bruises, Women's Rugby and Situational Meaning

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5086544
AutoresCharlotte Branchu (0000-0003-1514-3605, University of Liverpool, autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Volume29
Fascículo4
Páginas53-78
Data de publicação2023-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoBody & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1357-034X • E-ISSN: 1460-3632
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1357034x231201941
OpenAlexW4387639995
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas48

Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, this article explores amateur rugby women's reflexive negotiation of the bruises they earn as a result of the physicality of the game. On one hand, participants take pride in body marks that confirm their athletic strength and rugby identity and which grants them respect and belonging. On the other hand, these body marks can be anchors of stigma, signalling women's rugby bodies as 'deviant' to non-initiated audiences. The article unpacks this tension between bruises as empowering or disempowering artefacts by demonstrating the situational and interactional nature of gendered dispositions and expectations. I show that the moral and symbolic order of entrenched gendered expectations is perpetuated in the flesh, but that it must be understood as being produced and reproduced in situ through intercorporeal processes. Through the analysis of bruises, I argue that to study bodies is to study (social) space

Aesthetics · Amateur · Art · Ethnography · Identity (music · Legitimacy · Meaning (existential · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Pride · Reflexivity · Situational ethics · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Law · Psychology · Psychology of Social Influence · Social Psychology · Sports, Gender, and Society