Sport, Education and Society, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp.

85–102, 2002

Book Reviews
The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of the Diffusion of
an Ideal
J. A. Mangan
Frank Cass Publishers, London, 2nd edition (1998)
239 pp., ISBN 0 7146 4399 8, £14.50

It is generally accepted that England is the country which contributed most to the
development and the diffusion of modern sport, especially with regards to several of the
most popular modern world games, during the second part of the nineteenth and the Ž rst
quarter of the twentieth centuries. In the later part of the nineteenth century modern
sport was developed in part within an imperial educational, economic, social and
political context in order to support imperialism. The result was that the nineteenth
century was not only an era of great prosperity, colonisation and the ‘imposition of
Europe’ on other continents, but the century of the establishment of modern sport in
European education, society and the international community. Here is to be found the
early moments of the globalisation of sport.
In his introduction to The Games Ethic Mangan explains that the monograph is ‘not to
be catalogued under “Games” … (it) is concerned with much more … with ethnocentric-
ity, hegemony and patronage, with ideals and idealism, with educational values and
aspirations, with cultural assimilation and adaptation and, most fascinating of all, with
the dissemination throughout the Empire of a hugely in uential moralistic ideology’
(p. 17). The book is rich in evidence and analysis and as such is of interest to historians
of sport, and especially of colonialism and culture. The Games Ethic has seven chapters, the
Ž rst of which describes the basic ideals of the British Empire as they were preached to
the public schoolboy. The second chapter addresses images of the empire for these public
schoolboys, the associated concepts of duty and the alluring prospects of adventure. The
third, fourth, Ž fth and sixth chapters are case studies covering the Sudan, West Africa,
Tropical Africa, India and Canada. The seventh and last chapter (which could be an
independent monograph) is entitled ‘Christ and the imperial games Ž elds: evangelical
athletes of the Empire’ and discusses the relationship between sport, religion and empire.
There is a valuable bibliography, chapter notes and index.
One strong virtue of The Games Ethic lies in the fact that Mangan demonstrates the
political importance attached to games as instrument of imperial ‘bonding’ in colony and
dominion. The games of the English public school were used as instruments of ‘cloning’
to make black, brown, yellow—and sun bronzed in the Antipodes and other places—
ready and willing to rule and be ruled ‘English gentleman’. Mangan examines various
aspects of the use of games in British imperialism and helps the reader answer a rather
interesting hypothetical historical question—how successful would the British colonial
administration system have been without the special priority attached to games? For
Mangan, the decline of the British Empire happened not because of this administrative
system and its use of games but because of the function of the catalytic diachronic
1357-332 2 print; 1470-126 X online/02/010085-18 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1357332012011359 4
 Book Reviews

historical law of decline itself. The same happened in the ancient Greek cities which
declined in spite of the fact that they had developed a perfect physical educational and
military system. According to Mangan, the independence of India, the Sudan and
Canada was a result of growth to conŽ dent ‘maturity’ and not because of the failure of
sport as a means of imperial persuasion. However, Mangan states: ‘The outcome of
Waterloo would certainly have been the same without the existence of the Eton
wall-game: the nature of the Empire would scarcely have been the same without the
public school games ethic’ (p. 19).
It is Mangan’s view that the games ethic or cult had a profound cultural not political
outcome; to a very considerable extent it gave birth to the modern global culture of
sport. The compelling conclusion of Mangan’s book is that sport and education were
never a successful political panacea: they were rather a part of the creation of a
serendipitous cultural revolution. In The Games Ethic Mangan contends that these games
were rationalised as educational practices as the ‘… wheel around which moral values
turned’ (p. 18). They became the essence of an imperial ethical code of conduct and by
assimilating this code the public schoolboy ‘supposedly learnt inter alia the basic tools of
imperial command: courage, endurance, assertion, control and self-control’. However,
there was a further and important dimension to this education into ‘manliness’, as
already mentioned earlier: ‘its relevance to both imperial dominance and deference’
(p. 18).
Mangan describes not only the way that games were used for sincere ethical purposes,
but also the mechanisms by which they were used to support British imperialism around
the world. They were used in the training of administrators, soldiers and teachers. Above
all, however, they were the tools of headmaster and schoolmasters. With games at the
core, ‘Ethics, education and Empire formed a closed circle …’ At the centre of this core
was Edmond Warre, headmaster of Eton from 1884 to 1905, who ‘… saw the house as
merely a piece of the school and the school as merely a piece of the Empire’ (p. 23). He
was not alone. Witness, for example, Cecil Earle Tyndale-Biscoe in Kashmir discussed
by Mangan in Chapter 7.
However weakly the echoes of the past resonate today, the schools in their Golden Age
were repositories of the sacred elements of a secular trinity of ‘militarism, athleticism and
imperialism …’ (p. 159). Mangan considers the famous public schools of Eton, Hailey-
bury and Cheltenham among others, and explains why and how these institutions were
‘ … closely linked to imperial destinies’ and adds that in this analysis ‘it is instructive to
follow the process of proselytism for the imperial idea in the pages of the Eton
Chronicle …’ (p. 58). On this he is certainly correct. Mangan points up the conjunction
of imperial idealism with public school morality by quoting a speech of Earl Grey,
Governor-General of Canada in 1909 to Toronto public school cadets: ‘I want you boys
to remember what Empire Day means … Empire day is the festival on which every
British subject should fervently remember that British empire stands out before the whole
world as the fearless champion of freedom, fair play and equal rights’ (p. 148).
We see very clearly that while the public schools sustained the empire, the headmasters
educated the pioneers that took the games ethic to colony and dominion. Indeed they
themselves were part of the pioneering exodus. Mangan observes ‘these men … represent
many unsung and forgotten enthusiasts, who transported the public school games and
the games ethic across the Atlantic’ (p. 165). They responded willingly, for example, to
the call of Sir John Colbourne, founder of Upper Canada College whose ambition was
‘to foster in the new institution a love of the old, manly British Ž eld sports, a love which
had always been a characteristic of English Public school men’. They were ‘… men of

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scholarship but more importantly men who would encourage and stimulate among the
boys a love of “healthy and manly games” and good sportsmanship’ (p. 151). Public
school headmasters ‘played the role of agents of hegemonic persuasion … they exerted
powerful moral authority’ (p. 22). Support for the imperial idea was typical of ‘headmas-
ters of all persuasions and backgrounds: radicals and reactionaries, intellectuals and
hearties, clerics and laymen …’ (p. 23). These men served as instruments of British rule:
‘It was their duty to bring the magnitude and dignity of the British Empire continuously
before their pupils …’ (p. 36).
Mangan sees the headmasters as ‘Platonists who saw, or claimed to see, virtue in the
efforts of athletes. Such efforts epitomised in their myopic eyes late Victorian Christian
manliness!’ (p. 147). He presents Hely Hutchinson Almond, the famous headmaster of
Loretto School, as an exemplar of this kind of attitude. In Almond’s opinion physical
capacity illustrated moral quality: ‘From health came courage, temperance and esprit de
corps—a trinity of moral virtues which comprised his Sparto-Christian ideal. One end of
this idea was service—to God and Country …. He saw his Lorettonians as wholesome
and manly, carrying the banner of the cross to distant lands, and with strong
arm … winning Christian Victories among natives and coarse traders …’ (p. 25). George
Parkin, the headmaster of Upper Canada College from 1895 to 1902, was another cast
in the same mould. According to Mangan, ‘Parkin was a consummate synthesist—blend-
ing imperialism, education and Christianity in a rich evangelical mixture’ (p. 149).
Mangan also illustrates that it was not only imperial headmasters but also imperial
administrators who preached Spartan–Christian idealism. Frederick Lugard (1858–1945)
made an important contribution to British imperialism in both Hong Kong and Nigeria.
Lugard ‘… desired to take the ideals and structure of English upper class education to
the African continent …’ and his ‘superiority, his restricted vision and his complacent
assumptions were wholly Victorian’ (p. 101). Mangan shows us that ‘The English concept
of manliness changed dramatically in connotation during the Victorian period. To the
early Victorians it meant the successful transition from Christian immaturity to maturity
demonstrated by earnestness, sel essness and integrity: to the late Victorian it repre-
sented neo-Spartan virility as exempliŽ ed by stoicism, hardiness and endurance—the
pre-eminent virtues of the late Victorians English public school’ (p. 147). It was for this
reason that the muscular Christian headmasters and administrators of the period were
so well equipped for the task of promoting games in empire.
Finally, we see that if public schools and their headmasters sustained the British
Empire, the public schoolboy ruled it. On this Mangan quotes Welldon, the staunch
imperialist Harrow headmaster, who said of the empire: ‘The boys of today are the
statesmen and administrators of tomorrow …’ (p. 36). Mangan shows conclusively that
‘The English public schoolboy ran the British Empire. He was its ruler and guardian,
and not infrequently its teacher and its missionary. He was intrinsically linked in an
assortment of roles with the New Imperialism of the late nineteenth century … the
schools were the training grounds of generations of committed imperialists pledged to the
survival of the Empire which proverbially the sun never set’ (p. 44). The symbolic
imperial hero was Tom Brown.
The outstanding feature of Mangan’s always readable and brightly illuminating book
is his intricate descriptions of how as a means of moral education, social control and
leadership training, schoolmasters used sport. The headmasters ‘… promulgated games
for reasons of control, afŽ liation, idealism and elitism’ (p. 153). These schoolmasters were
‘Men who personiŽ ed good social standing, linked magically to saleable concepts of
Christian chivalry …’ (p. 171). They gave a Christian character to sport. They were

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frequently missionary educationalists and as such ‘took cricket to the Melanesians,

football to the Bantu, rowing to the Hindu, athletics to the Iranians’ (p. 174). They
carried ‘both gospel of Christ and the gospel of games to most distant corners of the
Empire and even beyond’ (p. 175) with certainty in the value of their message.
Among the ‘imperial games’ (soccer, boxing, rowing, canoeing, swimming, ice hockey
and others), cricket seems to have been the most important: ‘Cricket was an early and
important feature of school life and the suggestion has been made that it was played not
simply because it was English but rather because it was considered to possess features
which “educators within a school of high prestige and notable moral training wished to
engender” ’ (p. 151). Consequently, it ‘was the pre-eminent instrument of moral training’
(p. 134) and became ‘the umbilical cord of Empire linking the mother country with her
children’ (p. 153).
I conclude my comments on this book by endorsing Allen Guttmann’s (1999) recent
comment on it: ‘Mangan’s Ž ne book has encouraged many scholars, including me, to
follow him into a Ž eld—the diffusion of modern sports in the Age of Imperialism—that
he was the Ž rst to explore.’

Reference
GUTTMAN, A. (1999) Review of ‘The Games Ethic and Imperialism’, International Journal of the
History of Sport, 16, p. 167.

SOTIRIS G. GIATSIS
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Greece

Games, Sports and Cultures

Noel Dyck (Ed.)
Berg, New York (2000)
224 pp., ISBN 1 85973 312 3 (cloth), £42.99; 1 85973 317 4 (paper),
£14.99

Games, sports and cultures adopt a timely but challenging task that is made explicit at
the outset: the text, as the title suggests, attempts to bring a distinctively anthropological
approach to the study of sports and games in a range of contemporary cultural settings.
The book is organised into four parts. The Ž rst section explores methodological issues
and theoretical frames. Dyck’s opening chapter identiŽ es some of the distinctive ontolog-
ical, methodological and theoretical contributions that anthropologists might make to the
interdisciplinary discourse of sports studies. Rather than supposing the reduction of the
cultural study of sport to anthropology, the case is made that ethnography, through
‘contextualization, speciŽ city, and comparison’, provides a powerful medium through
which to shape substantive accounts and provide theoretical insights that complement those
generated by other disciplinary approaches. I think this strengthens sport anthropology’s
case for acceptance. Examining the various aspects of sports activity in terms of ‘games,
bodies, celebrations and boundaries’ marks sport as a site of anthropological concern and

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provides intelligible reading for both anthropologists new to the study of sport and those
in the sports sciences unfamiliar with sports ethnographies.
Susan Brownell’s chapter suggests that sports anthropology is set to beneŽ t from the
development of theories of postcolonial studies, practice theory, feminism, transnational
theory, and an interest in the body. Using insights from these approaches Brownell
provides an instructive example of the potential of sports ethnographies, to address large
and pressing problems; in this instance the emergence of Chinese nationalism within the
context of increasing transnational sporting involvement and the Olympic Games.
George Mentore’s chapter, whilst more ethnographic in orientation, demonstrates how
the ostensibly ‘separate’ areas of modern and indigenous competitive forms of sport
provide useful analytical juxtapositions. The inquiry is grounded in a detailed ethno-
graphic account of the body techniques within the formalised archery contest among the
Waiwai, a people who live in the forests of Southern Guyana and Northern Brazil.
Mentore suggests that the elements that produce socially valued differences are essentially
the same in Waiwai archery as in the Olympics, tracing the ways in which this society
retrieves through the athlete’s body the substances for celebrating its own existence. In
suggesting that society and culture create and prescribe gendered roles and artefacts for
these competitors however, I am left wondering something signiŽ cant: how do these
individuals accept, resist or negotiate these roles? Where does their agency Ž gure in these
processes?
I am left hoping that the section ‘Prominence of the politics of identity within sport’
might address these issues. Joseph Alter’s chapter demonstrates how ‘internationalism’ in
sport can be incorporated as a vital component of ‘nationalism’ using the case of India’s
national sport, Kabaddi. Transformed from the traditional game of touch-tag into a
highly organised and regulated sport through the level of ‘formal standardization,
structured organisation and ofŽ cial recognition’ Kabaddi has become a locus point in the
discourse and practice of competing projects for shaping and articulating Indian
nationalism. On the one hand actively promoted as indicative of Indian National
character, but also rendered ‘Indian’ so that it conforms to Western sport models. In
highlighting ‘formal conformity’ of traditional sports so that they can be exported to the
rest of the world, I found myself considering a key interdisciplinary issue: what happens
to the class and ethnicity that are so signiŽ cant to indigenous cultural forms in the
context of such nationalism?
Up until Philip Moore’s chapter, I remained concerned about the crucial omission of
people’s resistance, negotiation and heterogeneity in these processes. Focusing on soccer
and the politics of culture in Western Australia, Moore underscores the limitations of a
state’s power to take control of sport away from the people and the cultural processes and
purposes that sustain it. Soccer in Australia is positioned as an ‘ethnic’ sport, marginal
to Australian rules football, and associated with ‘New Australians’. The appropriation of
‘our game’ by a number of European immigrants alludes to their efforts to retain and
mark their ethnicities. Moore highlights the state authorities’ attempts to de-ethnicise
soccer in line with new state policies and deŽ nitions of ‘multiculturaism’. The delineation
of the ensuing vigorous political contestation provides a more refreshing sense of the
dynamic between state authorities, structure, and individuals, challenging the ‘ethnographic
refusal’ to engage with internal politics within resisting group, and the complexities
interwoven at the local organisation and understanding of the sport.
These chapters prompted me to re ect upon my own positioning within a Western
sportised discourse, and how it is we view and appropriate indigenous sports cultures; I
have little doubt others within sports studies might do the same. These re ections were,

89
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however, most strongly reafŽ rmed through the presence of photographic imagery
embedded throughout the text. Whilst the written text stimulated contemplation, it was
the visible image that invoked a heightened feeling and response; the text made me think,
the photos made me feel. I therefore felt that more of these images might strengthen these
sections.
The third part might be most appealing to those in sports studies, exploring the
organisation and cultural meanings of sport for child and youth athletes and their
families, contributing to the relatively underdeveloped area of the relationship between
children and sport. Dyck’s chapter on organised community sport for children in Canada
alludes to the disjunctions between the ideological premise of sport as ‘good for children’
and actual commonplace experiences in children’s sport. Despite parents dissatisfaction
with some areas of children’s sports, Dyck suggests they remain responsive to the sports
bureaucracies since they became part of the processes of secular theodicy; they put up
with a system that disappoints them since sports offers a culturally attractive product,
despite the disjuncture between what is promised and what might be delivered.
Moreover, the notion of secular theodicy suggests that disputes and disagreements, read
‘politics’, don’t belong in children’s sport and is at the cost to children’s playing time,
etc., alluding to the social costs of challenging the status quo. This focus continues with
Yngve Georg Lithman’s chapter on children’s elite sport in Sweden, re ecting on how
participants in this Ž eld engage in joint acts of creating cultural meaning. Lithman argues
that there is little evidence of children’s elite level sport fostering ‘communitas’ or a sense
of belonging which transcends individuality. For the sports sociologist, there are valuable
ethnographic details about the pervasiveness of the discourse of individualism in this
paper. In explaining how the athlete’s body serves as a boundary and a sign, Lithman
points to the emergence of what he terms the ‘one-dimensional’ view of the body where
the intellectual/moral and the bodily/physical is seen as fused. The coupling of the
child’s athletic achievement with the total evaluation of the child as a person raises some
serious issues about such elite level sport. In Chapter 8 Melford S. Weiss provides a
speciŽ c case of elite level sport, raising some key questions concerning the efŽ cacy of
sport as an appropriate medium for the ‘socialisation’ of children and youth; a popular
ideological justiŽ cation for participation. Exploring the social worlds of American women
gymnasts, the use of stylised case histories of ‘Jane gymnast’ and ‘Suzy Student’ makes
for captivating reading, and is a more playful methodology. Weiss suggests that by the
time a competitive gymnast’s sports career is reaching conclusion, other high school
students are commencing adult lives for which they have prepared themselves quite
differently than elite gymnasts.
The Ž nal section analyses sport as a complex form of cultural performance. The
recreation of the baseball diamond featured in the 1989 Hollywood Ž lm Field of Dreams
by a Japanese freelance essayist in a rice paddy outside Hiroshima features in Chapter
9. Charles Fruehling Springwood’s account alludes not only to the popularity of baseball
in Japan but a Japanese fascination with the elements and processes of American culture.
Finally, in ‘Sport, celebrity and liminality’, Synthia Sydnor presents an ethnography of
the Michael Jordon monument in Chicago, reporting the various readings gathered from
visitors and written sources. An exploration of the interconnections between classical
anthropological themes and postmodern theorising of the dynamics of contemporary life
provides a Ž tting end to the text. The capacity for sport to produce objects of global
consumption and contemplation, she reminds us, warrants the attention of contemporary
social theorists as well as anthropologists of sport. Syndor concludes that the liminal
spaces of sport and celebrity are not temporary but ever-present conditions that script

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life; these liminal spaces might allow us to provocatively view sport in manifestations not
usually studied in anthropology.
The work is a serious contribution to the vibrant and growing anthropology of sport,
showing sport and games to be a useful window through which to study areas such as
family relations, child rearing, transnationalism, state governance, multiculturalism,
nationalism, tourism, business, international politics, ethnicity, gender, the body, health,
and identities. In reading such a synthesis, it is difŽ cult to not imagine the many areas
of interdisciplinary work that might emerge in the context of sports studies. The
theoretical rigour and methodological concern, without the loss of ethnographic detail,
is a feature throughout. Verdict: an accessible and enjoyable read that will appeal to a
broad audience and is a welcome step forward in incorporating work from a diverse
range of sources, attempting to bridge theoretical, methodological and cultural divides.

EMMA RICH
Loughborough University
UK

Values in Sport
Torborn Tannsjo & Claudio Tamburrini
E & FN Spon, London (2000)
271 pp., ISBN 0 419 25360 2, £22.99

The philosophical foundations needed to provide greater academic rigour to the study
of sport have gained signiŽ cant strength over the last decade or so. This has led to the
recognition by many in educational circles of the importance of philosophy as an integral
part of the study of sport in its own right and as a means for developing the crucial
analytical skills for any sub-disciplinary perspective on sport. At the same time, amongst
sport’s administrative hierarchies, there exists a growing recognition of the cash value of
ethical legitimacy. This changing outlook promises to place the kinds of external
demands on some professionally trained sports ethicists previously only familiar to the
ranks of sport’s empiricists.
Against this backdrop of increased moral awareness, Values in Sport, the second edited
volume in Routledge’s Ethics in Sport series, is the latest offering to augment what has
been until now a small but in uential sub-discipline. It represents a deliberate and
measured attempt by the series editors to  esh out the literary and scholastic terrain
appropriate to the ethical study of sport and compliments the existing volume by Parry
and McNamme (1998) and the forthcoming contributions from Loland and Bracken-
ridge. Its impact will be considerable. For scholars already specialising in the philosophy
of sport it provides a welcome addition to a growing list of books specialising in the ethics
of sport and reinforces the scholarly bonds for the converted. For the recreational sports
philosopher and undergraduate student it provides an accessible entry point into the
serious study of sport’s ethical dimension.
The book’s Gothenburg University based editors, Torbjorn Tannsjo and Claudio
Tamburrini, expand and extend the philosophical literature on sport in a number of
ways. First of all, it is signiŽ cant to note that the diverse mix of contributors matches the

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eclectic and balanced mix of essays—the Scandinavian core is topped up by the work of
British and North American authors. More importantly, in addition to scholars special-
ising in ethics of sport, a signiŽ cant number of the authors, including the editors
themselves, are mainstream philosophers. This kind of vibrant interaction between
philosophical parent and child represents a healthy state of affairs. It indicates a maturing
level of mutual academic appreciation and is an important landmark towards disciplinary
parity.
The central theme of the book suggests that sport, or at least the elite institutionalised
levels of sport including its professionalised ranks and the Olympic Games, has arrived
at a point where its own moral shortcomings may threaten its future progress and, in
some cases, its continued existence. This moral thesis represents a signiŽ cant departure
from the standard mantras about ‘what’s wrong with sport’ primarily because it pushes
ethical views based on utopian ideals as to the nature of sport to the theoretical margins.
By focusing on sporting practices at the elite level, the book deliberately moves beyond
concerns such as the moral sagacity of competition, violence in sport, and the wrongness
of cheating that have occupied ethical thinkers and provided the standard for compila-
tions on ethics in sport for such a long time (Morgan & Meier, 1996). The absence of
traditionally popular ethical topics is certainly no weakness, for an interesting range of
new and revamped issues worthily take their place engaging the reader in equally
animated debates about cutting-edge moral issues that impact contemporary sport.
The editors have approached their task by differentiating Ž ve themes, which constitute
the book’s Ž ve parts. Each part consists of three essays. The themes are elitism,
nationalism, gender equity, the rules of the game, and the scientiŽ c manufacture of
winners. Both the chosen themes and the tone and blend of the essays are innovative and
re ect the extent to which the subject matter of sports ethics continues to evolve. The
themes of elitism, nationalism and the scientiŽ c manufacture of winners deal with ethical
issues that are particularly refreshing and advance the existing literature. The authors
have worked hard to provide an appetising blend of viewpoints in each theme. Each of
the three essays compliments each other in different ways. For example, Tannsjo, in his
provocative opener ‘Is it fascistoid to admire sports heroes?’, argues that strands of Nazi
ideology are inherent to sport. Tamburrini counters in ‘Sports, fascism, and the market’,
with the utilitarian argument that all beneŽ t from appreciating different sporting
excellences produced by elite performers. Loland’s follow up, ‘The logic of progress and
the art of moderation in competitive sports’, offers a different perspective, arguing that
as long as we demand performance progress in sport, the pre-eminence of sporting elites
and the questionable social–political morality their support systems promote will con-
tinue. His solution is that only by recognising that ‘less is more’ can we potentially
recapture sporting values that re ect the humanistic joy of sports.
In different ways, each of the three essays that make up each theme constitutes an
integral part of a conversation as a whole. The adversarial format also provides an
invaluable insight into the art of public debate—the heart and soul of the philosopher’s
craft. However, in some of the themes, for example, the rules of the game, the
conversation format deviates from the more typical point–counterpoint pattern. Here,
Breivik, Loland and McFee all offer different insights into the roles of the rules of games.
Breivik champions increased uncertainty as opposed to arbitrariness of outcome as a just
ethic for sports. Loland celebrates the inherent ludic nature of sports and applauds those
sports with rules that tolerate the more or less random in uence that chance may have
on the outcome. McFee argues that the formal written rules of sport are underwritten
and informed by a more important set of fair principles. Appeals to these principles

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should inform the legislative decisions of ofŽ cials and administrators, particularly in cases
of ‘spoiling’, where no relevant formal rule exists.
The progressiveness of the subject matter is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than
in the Ž nal section, ‘The scientiŽ c manufacture of winners’. Here Schneider and
Butcher’s ‘A philosophical overview of the arguments on banning boxing’, and Tambur-
rini’s ‘What’s wrong with boxing?’ provide succinct representations of two familiar
sides of the drugs issue. The debate on drugs is crystallised with the third essay,
Christina Munthe’s ‘Selected champions: making winners in the age of genetic technol-
ogy’. This article suggests that given elite sport’s perpetual pursuit for performance
improvement, the pharmaceutical advances that provide the winning edge today will
be replaced by genetic manipulations of the future. The moral issue, however, remains
unchanged by changes in technology. Like drug use, genetic manipulation is contro-
versial because it raises concerns as to the nature of personhood and competition
in sport. This essay is Ž tting as the Ž nal offering for not only does it sharply illustrate the
moral precipice on which sport now stands, but it also completes a philosophical
full circle, for it asks the reader to do some fundamental philosophical thinking—
to re ect back on one of the most basic philosophical questions, what does it mean to
be human?
Another positive aspect of this volume is the important contextual and empirical
substance it gives to ethical theory. An issues driven text will be particularly welcomed
by readers whose frequent complaint is that philosophy is too dry, too abstract and lacks
relevance in the real world. Here, however, each essay has direct application, talking
either about ethical issues that have arisen in the past, ones that dominate discourse at
present or ones that are likely to engage us in the future. Nowhere is this better illustrated
than in Berit Skirstad’s excellent ‘Gender veriŽ cation in competitive sport: turning
research into action’.
Though the text is issues driven, this is not to say that it is theoretically lightweight or
unchallenging. While the concrete underpinnings are not always emphasised, strong
deontological, utilitarian, and virtue ethical doctrines run through the contents of the
book and provide academic rigour. So in addition to the largely pragmatic stance the
authors take towards their subject matter, the text can be a rich source for distinguishing
different theoretical approaches to be adopted in ethics.
While the book is highly critical of the overall evolution of the moral landscape sport
at the dawn of the new millennium, the dismal outlook broadly designated for contem-
porary elite sports culture nevertheless discloses a number of emancipatory possibilities.
One constant message throughout the volume is that more joyful and pleasurable
sporting experiences are possible in non-elite sport, and occasionally at the highest level
itself. Though the moral Ž bre of the sporting landscape may have become increasingly
monotone and dull, pockets of resistance, articulated by dedicated practitioners, con-
cerned administrators, and discriminating spectators, continue to make sport, even at the
elite level, a ‘moral laboratory’—an arena in which moral discourse is central to sport’s
vitality.
On reading the collection of essays, the general impression one is left with is that
though the progress of time suggests that some ethical issues become passé, one can be
certain that other compelling moral concerns will continue to emerge as the technologi-
cal and economic imperatives foisted on sport intensify. The anthology, therefore, is a
timely and welcome addition that re ects sport’s increasingly complex and unpredictable
moral terrain.

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 Book Reviews

References
BRACKENRIDGE, C. (2001) Understanding and Preventing Sexual Exploitation in Sport (London, E &
FN Spon).
LOLAND, S. (forthcoming) Fair Play in Sports Competition (London, E & FN Spon).
McNAMEE, M.J. & PARRY, J. (Eds) (1998) Ethics and Sport (London, E & FN Spon).
MORGAN, W.J. & MEIER, K.V. (Eds) (1996) Philosophic Inquiry in Sport (2nd edn) (Champaign,
IL, Human Kinetics).

ALUN HARDMAN
Cheltenham & Gloucester College of Higher Education
UK

Sport in Australasian Society: Past and Present

J. A. Mangan & John Nauright
Frank Cass Publishers, London (2000)
362 pp., ISBN 0 77146 8112 (paper), £17.50

Receiving my copy of Sport in Australasian Society: Past and Present for review during the
week following the death Sir Donald Bradman seemed timely. The Tribute Edition of
The Australian on 27 February 2001 (p. 1) announced that ‘The Don is dead’. For weeks
following his passing Australians were bombarded daily by media testaments that
recognised both his incomparable achievements as a cricketer and his remarkable status
as a cultural icon. As Brett Hutchins noted on 7 March in The Australian, ‘Media coverage
of the sad death of Sir Donald Bradman earlier this week enriched his reputation as an
unrivalled Australian icon’. The media response to the passing of The Don highlighted,
not only the signiŽ cance of sport in Australian culture, but also the change that has
occurred since Bradman’s days at the crease. Following The Don’s death media
outpourings of nostalgia for an almost mythical sporting past highlighted some of the
tensions that exist between a ‘traditional’ ideal of sport as a moral concern adopted from
the nineteenth century English public schools and the reality of contemporary, commer-
cial model of sport. Tributes to Bradman’s achievements and the meanings attached to
them communicated a sense of longing for what Tara Magdalinski refers in her chapter
on the Sydney Olympics as a mythical sporting past, an ‘imagined mono-cultural
paradise’ when sport was unsullied by Ž nancial concerns.
As J. A. Mangan points out in the editorial, this book sets out to explain the ‘sea
change’ that sport in Australasia has undergone. It is thus divided into two parts to
contrast sport in early Australasian society with its practice and meaning in contempor-
ary society. The bulk of the writing in Part Two deals with the profound changes that
have been taking place in sport in Australasian society over the past 30–40 years. These
are, of course, also changes that are taking place in other developed capitalist societies
but which may differ according to the speciŽ c histories of sport within particular
contexts. Most of the writing in this book offers a welcome and overdue critical analysis
of the massive changes in Australian and New Zealand sport over the past 30–40 years.
Many of the writers who have contributed to the book represent a new breed of scholars
who take a socially critical approach to sports history. Their focus on social history

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produces critical analyses of gender, class and ethnicity and this should make much of
the work presented in this book attractive to the broad interests of readers of Sport,
Education and Society.
The book draws on a range of authors to highlight some of the tensions between two
different models of sport in Australasia. In doing so it also presents two quite different
approaches to sports history and I could not help feeling that this detracts from the
book’s appeal as a critical analysis of change. Although most chapters in the second
section of the book identify the changing practice and meaning of sport in Australasia,
this issue often receives less attention than it deserves and the book would have beneŽ ted
from a tighter editorial focus on this. In some chapters, changing practices and meanings
are identiŽ ed, but appear almost incidental and change is treated as almost unproblem-
atic. Given some of the passionate and, at times, vitriolic public responses to restructuring
and economic rationalism in the Australian Football League (AFL) and the National
Rugby League over the past two years, this is clearly not the case.
During a period of great change in England during the nineteenth century sport was
used to develop patterns of behaviour and new moral codes. Sport was seen by the state
in Australia and New Zealand as performing a similar function and particularly so in
schools. The chapters by Crotty, Mangan and Hickey, and by Kirk deal with the role
that sport played in the development of social order and moral training through the
institution of schooling. Crotty, Mangan and Hickey show how sport was used in the
colonies of Australia and New Zealand to develop ‘manly’ men and develop the
‘character’ needed for war. Kirk’s chapter follows on from Crotty to examine how sport
was used in Australian schools during the Ž rst half of the twentieth century to legitimate
dominant versions of masculinity and femininity and, in positioning these as opposites,
acted to conŽ rm and reproduce gender inequality. Given that much of this book is
concerned with the emergence of commercialised sport and the tension created with the
‘traditional’ model of sport as a form of moral education, it is disappointing that there
was not a chapter dealing with the manifestation of this tension in contemporary
Australian and/or New Zealand schools.
Horton’s chapter on the role of the Irish-Australians in the development of Australian
sporting culture usefully identiŽ es the strong in uence of Irish culture in Australian sport
culture. Given the signiŽ cance of cricket in the development of Australian national
identity in particular, I was disappointed with the lack of attention paid to it in the book,
but Frazer Andrews provides an interesting examination of what he argues is the
commodiŽ cation of cricket through its broadcasting on radio in the 1930s. He contends
that this involved cricket acting as a vehicle for the dissemination of a modernist rhetoric
of technological progress and highlighted the gender inequalities evident in pre-war
Australian society. The chapters by Hess and Jobling round out the Ž rst section with
chapters on Australian football and Australia’s Olympic pioneers. Both of these chapters
seemed to lack the critical social analysis evident in much of the other writing in the
book. In outlining the part that women played in the development of Australian football
Hess does little to address the part that football has played in the reproduction of unequal
gender relations through the reinforcement of hegemonic beliefs about the roles of
women in Australia society. However, this issue is dealt with comprehensively in a
valuable contribution from Angela Burroughs and John Nauright. Through an historical
examination of the construction of an ‘ideal femininity’ and focused on embodiment,
Burroughs and Nauright illuminate the central role that sport has played in the
reproduction of gender inequality. They examine how women’s engagement in sport has
operated to constrain movement and extend male control over the female body in space.

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Within this chapter they examine the development of netball and the promotion
of other women’s sport that does not challenge what Connell (1995) calls the gender
order.
Through an examination of post-war Australian football’s transformation into a
‘thoroughly commercialised’ and commodiŽ ed sport Ian Andrews identiŽ es the con-
 ict between Australian football’s ‘cultural role’ and its contemporary economic
imperatives. In doing so he highlights the tensions that have been created between the
AFL’s desire for national expansion and the traditional support base built on local
community identity. These are tensions that would likely Ž nd clear parallels elsewhere
in other sports such as soccer in the UK. Bob Stewart and Aaron Smith look at similar
changes that are taking place in Australian sport by viewing them as manifestations of
postmodernism. Stewart and Smith present a convincing argument and this represents a
useful way of looking at change in sport. However, I felt that their tendency to focus on
the economic dimensions of this process ignores the tensions that are created by such
change as identiŽ ed by Andrews. The contribution from Murray Phillips and Frank
Hicks on contesting humanist/technological coaching approaches opens up a new area
of inquiry for research on sport and would have much to offer researchers in the physical
education Ž eld with its focus on contesting forms of knowledge. Doug Booth’s chapter on
surf life-saving presents a fascinating examination of a very signiŽ cant aspect of
Australasian cultural life. Tara Magdalinski’s chapter on the Sydney Olympics and
Malcolm MacLean’s social critique of rugby in New Zealand are Ž ne examples of the
work in the social history of sport being produced by some of the emergent scholars
presented in this book. A chapter on indigenous sport in Australia would have
strengthened the book.
As most readers of a multidisciplinary journal such as Sport, Education and Society
would recognise, an historical dimension is often required in social analyses of sport
to fully understand the development of social practices and change. Indeed, Elias
(1982) suggests that without some understanding of history the study of social
relationships is ambiguous and empty. To this end Sport in Australasian Society makes
a valuable contribution to the literature on sport in general and on Australian and
New Zealand sport in particular. In contrast to much of the writing on the history
of Australasian sport that tends to be descriptive, celebratory and mythological,
it offers a collection of writings on sport that, in the main, offer socially
contextualised critical analyses that will appeal to many readers of Sport, Education and
Society.

References
CONNELL, R. (1995) Masculinities (Sydney, Allen & Unwin).
ELIAS, N. (1982) State Formation and Civilization: The Civilizing Process, Volume II (Oxford, Basil
Blackwell).
HUTCHINS, B. (2001) The media, man and the myth, The Australian, Media Supplement, 7
March, p. 3.

RICHARD LIGHT
University of Melbourne
Australia

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 Book Reviews

Bodily Knowledge: Learning about Equity and Justice with

Adolescent Girls
Kimberly L. Oliver & Rosary Lalik
Peter Lang Publishing, New York (2000)
xx 1 133 pp., ISBN 0 8204 4458 8, £16.00

Most research on adolescents’ bodies consists of medical studies using quantitative

methods looking at general trends in physical development. There are all too few
sociological studies looking at the ways individuals, particularly young people, relate to
their own bodies and the importance of the social and cultural aspects in this relation-
ship. In this respect Bodily Knowledge helps to Ž ll a gap in our understanding.
Bodily Knowledge is a research-based account of how Kimberly Oliver worked with four
13–14-year-old girls in a high school in a city in the south east of the United States. The
book begins with a biographical preface within which Kimberly Oliver discusses her
memories of adolescence and the importance of the body to herself and her friends
during her time at high school. Acknowledging how the deep and sometimes devastating
insecurities of adolescence are carried forward into later life led her to ‘wonder whether
girls could ever grow up without being pressured to worry about what their bodies looked
like’ (p. xv), a question she hopes Bodily Knowledge may answer. A brief biography of each
of the authors is presented, explaining their position in relation to the narrative of the
text in terms of their age, race, class and adolescent experiences, allowing the reader to
consider the role of their subjectivities in subsequent analysis. The preface concludes with
an explanation of what writing the book has meant to each author and how important
it is to them that the voices of the four girls are central throughout the book. This is
evident from the very beginning as the introduction opens with a quote from each of the
four girls. The introduction then outlines the main aims of the book, which are to
understand: ‘(a) how the girls experience their bodies; (b) where and how they resist
oppressive forms of enculturation; and (c) how, as concerned adults and teachers, we can
create curriculum that assists them in resisting oppression and creating more healthy and
just possibilities for themselves and others’ (p. 4).
Chapters 2 and 3 outline the theoretical and methodological issues, respectively,
involved in the writing of this book. Chapter 2 presents a rather scathing view of previous
studies of adolescent development and body image. In my view, the authors are right to
point out that much of the medical literature on problems such as eating disorders tends
to be overly reductionist, leading unhelpfully to a blame of the ‘victim’ approach.
However, while acknowledging these limitations more recognition might have been given
to the important role which this research has played in highlighting and publicising a
problem which many otherwise may have ignored. For example, the research of Grogan
(1999), which, whilst largely quantitative, does recognise the role of society in the
development of body dis/satisfaction and does offer important insight.
This chapter also problematises the focus of previous research on the ‘dominant
group’, i.e. white, middle-class girls, and highlights the need for research with ‘the other’,
such as African American girls. It goes on to explain how ‘girls of color’ may feel the
need to look and act ‘white’ in order to be accepted. Whilst this is important and may
be true, this section may also have beneŽ ted from some further discussion and analysis
of the converse. The trend for white, middle-class youth to ‘act black’ is evident across

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 Book Reviews

youth culture. Ways to look and act, traditionally associated with the ‘black ghetto’, are
now commonplace youth fashions (Bettie, 2000), and recognising this is in my view
crucial to an understanding of some of the issues raised by the girls in Bodily Knowledge.
Chapter 2 also considers constructions of health, feminist understandings of the body
and the problems of dichotomous thinking within Western culture. Whilst an under-
standing of these concepts is vital and helpful, by discussing both the need to research
‘others’ and the problems of dichotomous thinking, the authors fall, almost inevitably,
into the trap of both criticising dualisms whilst creating one themselves. The dualism they
create, between white girls and black girls, is carried on throughout the book.
Chapter 3 describes the research process and how Kim worked with the girls. It is
written in the Ž rst person, including extracts from Kim’s research diary, allowing the
reader to understand how the relationship developed between Kim and the girls.
Self-written descriptions of the girls are also included. Two of the girls are described as
black, middle-class, one as black, lower-middle-class and one as white, lower-middle-class
from a single-parent family. All four girls are from the high academic-track programme.
The research consisted of group discussion sessions with the girls for 50 minutes a day
for 25 days over a period of 15 consecutive weeks and also involved the girls keeping
personal diaries.
The next three chapters consist of analysis of the interviews and material collected
from the girls and the narrative is developed around themes identiŽ ed by the girls
themselves. Chapter 4, ‘Fashion in and fashion out’, is written in the genre of a
researcher’s journal. This works especially well as the reader is in the same position as
Kim in having no previous understanding of the way the girls view their world. The girls
split people into two categories, ‘fashion in’ and ‘fashion out’, depending on hair, clothes,
body shape and femininity. Chapter 5 develops this and describes why the girls feel it is
important to be ‘fashion in’, and the importance of boys’ opinions. Whilst these two
chapters present an illuminating but rather depressing view of girls’ relationships with
their bodies, Chapter 5 concludes with a ‘glimmer of hope’ with a discussion of the
various ways the girls resist ‘oppressive forms of enculturation’ (p. 65).
Discussion of the importance of race is present throughout the book, but Chapter 6,
‘Color-blind’, deals speciŽ cally with this issue. Titled by the girls themselves, this chapter
is almost solely based around the words of the three black girls in the group. They
describe how image and language differ between black and white people, often explain-
ing why black is ‘better than white’. This chapter also considers the position of the
researcher and the one white girl in the group, explaining how they may be considered
‘color-blind’.
The book concludes in Chapter 7, ‘Nurturing critique and agency’, by questioning the
role schools should play in encouraging critiques of cultural representations of the body,
and suggests an integrated curriculum approach including critical study of the body
across subjects, whilst also stressing the importance of keeping adolescents’ voices central.
No doubt this will be easier said than done in school systems which still trade heavily in
conventional, segmented, teacher centred curricula, and which rarely let the word
‘critical anything’ trip off their collective tongues.
A book such as this, then, is long overdue and is to be warmly welcomed, but I have
two main reservations about its content. First, it is somewhat surprising, given that this
is sociological research, that so little attention is given to the importance of context (both
spatial and temporal) in the analysis overall. Images and cultural ‘ideals’ considered
within the book focus rather discursively (and hence dismissively) on general ‘Western
culture’ and there is little recognition of the presence of youth sub-cultures. For example,

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when the girls themselves discuss the importance of being ‘fashion in’ it is to maintain
status within their peer group, which the girls themselves describe as being black: ‘this
is a black school, it’s in a black neighbourhood … so then white people would try to Ž t
in since it’s more Black people popular’ (p. 87). Following this quote, the book quickly
returns to considering the girls through the lens of ‘white supremacy’ and there is no
further discussion of this issue which is integral to the book, especially when considering
the role of the one white girl, Alysa, within the group. In the one chance Alysa gets to
speak about race, she says: ‘I always Ž gure that Black people would want to be like
everybody, to be the same, you know, not really worry about the differences, ‘cause that’s
how I feel’ (p. 96). While this does show some tendency to consider ‘everybody’ as being
white, the fact that Alysa goes on to say “cause that’s how I feel’ demonstrates her
position as a white girl in a black school just wanting ‘to be like everybody’. The book
would gain from further discussion of Alysa’s role within the group. Its merit, perhaps,
is that it may prompt teachers and others to engage in discussions of this kind.
Secondly, I question whether this research is on ‘the other’. Being black girls in a
predominately black school places three of the girls in the majority group. In addition
to this, the girls were selected following written exercises as the authors felt that in order
for the research to be successful it was important for the girls to ‘be able and willing to
communicate in writing’ (p. 28). I would consider pupils of low academic ability to be
‘others’ rather than these girls. This also raises problems for the suggestions made at the
end of the book about including critical thinking in school curricula. Having worked with
adolescents of this age in schools in an inner city area in the UK, across abilities, I am
aware that illiteracy is a problem for some pupils. Implementing critical study in the form
of reading and writing would be impossible with these pupils. The methodology of a
critical education clearly needs as much thought and attention as does its curriculum.
Having said that, in terms of providing ideas for working with pupils of similar ability,
Bodily Knowledge is excellent and is to be warmly recommended. The sections describing
how Kim developed her relationship with the girls, the tools she used to elicit responses
and the ethical problems she faced are required reading for anyone who is to do research
with adolescents.

References
BETTIE, J. (2000) Women without class: chicas, cholas, trash and the presence/absence of class
identity, Signs, 26(1), pp. 1–35.
GROGAN, S. (1999) Body Image: Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women and Children
(London, Routledge).

BETHAN EVANS
University of Liverpool
UK

It is within a society that is becoming increasingly saturated with images, generated and
transmitted through the pervasive in uence of the media, that young people are engaging
in the process of self-formation. As they attempt to make sense of the social world around
them, and determine their place and role within it, they both encounter and are
in uenced by dominant social discourses. In recent years the importance of the body in
generating an understanding of self has been widely documented (Foucault, 1977;

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Bourdieu, 1978; Giddens, 1999), and the notion of the body as an ‘incomplete project’
in need of work somewhat embedded. More recently concern has been expressed at the
in uence of this on young women, and the degree to which idealised images of the
female body serve to reproduce and perpetuate the oppression of women (Shilling, 1991;
Wolf, 1991).
Grounded within these concerns, and inspired in part by personal experience, is the
‘collaborative story’ that is Bodily Knowledge. Utilising critical and feminist pedagogies, and
building upon the work of researchers such as Bordo, Fine, hooks, and Greene, Oliver
and Lalik express concern at the taken-for-granted assumptions and demeaning concep-
tions of the body offered to young women. The intentions of the text therefore are to
determine how girls explore their bodies, how and where they can resist oppression
within culture, and how new curricular can be developed to assist this opposition,
providing hope for a brighter future. They argue that the promotion of literacy within
schools can facilitate the development of girls as ‘active agents’, generating knowledge of
their bodies and allowing them to critique their own situations in terms of equity and
justice.
Bodily Knowledge is the end result of research conducted with four girls aged between
13 and 14 years, three of whom identiŽ ed themselves as ‘people of color’ and one as
Caucasian. The girls, described as collaborators by the authors, are positioned at the
forefront of the research. Their voices are given preference and their ideas acknowledged
and incorporated into the text, in an attempt to ensure that their experiences and
opinions are presented accurately. The book itself presents the information in a logical
progression. From the preface, outlining how interest in the project was generated, the
research is then described and developed through seven chapters. The Ž rst three chapters
provide an introduction, some theoretical background, and a methodological description,
with the Ž nal chapter presenting Ž ndings and suggested implications. The central
chapters form the core of the text and deal with the analysis of the data. Each chapter
refers to a theme identiŽ ed and labelled by the girls through the research activities:
‘Fashion in and fashion out’, ‘Being noticed’, and ‘Color-blind’.
The Ž rst of these chapters, written from the perspective of a researcher journal, relates
to the girls’ understanding of ‘looking right’ and ‘being normal’. Critical interpretation
of the transcribed conversations touches on issues of racism, sexism and class, and
reinforces other research in citing the importance of the peer network (e.g. Hendry et al.,
1993; Adler & Alder, 1998). The concept of normality is presented as a form of false
consciousness constraining young women, although at the same time providing a
‘springboard for re ection and critique’. This balance between repression and oppor-
tunity provides a recurring theme throughout the text. ‘Being noticed’ refers to the ways
in which the body, as a site for the exploration of identity, allows the girls to actively
manage the way that they present themselves in order to compete for male attention.
The acceptance of dominant cultural storylines results in the use of beauty as a ‘currency’
(Wolf, 1991), wherein the body becomes a source of ‘capital’ and the object of routine
surveillance and self-management. In this respect this text bears similarities to the work
of Goffman (1969), Bourdieu (1984, 1978) and Foucault (1977). In particular, the use of
magazines as a source of information to young people corresponds strongly with the work
of Tait (2000), in which the work of Foucault is used to show how young people are
encouraged to engage in self-management work as part of a process of governmentality.
The Ž nal themed chapter, ‘Color-blind’, touches upon issues of race and racism as
encountered through the girls’ experiences of their bodies. Domination of white ideals is
found to give rise to a complex situation in which racial pride and oppression co-exist

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 Book Reviews

in an uneasy relationship. It is perhaps the most powerful and challenging section of the
book, providing insight and promoting re ection in the reader, as it did with the
researchers themselves.
One of the most interesting aspects of this text is the activist methodological approach
that has been taken. Various techniques and activities were combined in order to create
practical and innovative ways of generating conversation, and encouraging critical
thinking. Time maps, journals, personal biographies and magazine exploration tasks
formed an extensive programme, intended to contrast with the narrow-focused, restric-
tive methods identiŽ ed in previous research. The data generated were then analysed
thematically using transcripts of the conversations, copies of the girls’ journals and
researcher Ž eld notes. Throughout the text the emergent nature of the research is
highlighted, and its  exible approach promoted as allowing movement between previous
and current topics of conversation. It was as a result of this  exibility that the authors
were made aware of the importance of race to the young women involved. As a result
the topic ‘color-blind’ became not only an important and informative topic of conver-
sation, but also a core theme upon which one chapter was based. The signiŽ cance of this
episode in the research process is indicated by the use of a Ž rst person account in the
writing of this particular chapter.
The methodological approach and the style of the writing both allow the voice of the
young people to be placed at the heart of the text. The use of the girls’ own wording for
themes and chapter headings, the extensive quoting of conversations, as well as the use
of extracts from the ‘private space’ of the journals seems to foreground their story and
reafŽ rm the validity of the research. The emphasis on ‘story’ is made repeatedly
throughout the text, and endorses the increasingly accepted view that this methodological
approach has many beneŽ ts in understanding individuals social experience (e.g. Sparkes,
1997). The authors themselves highlight aspects of the research process deemed to have
helped develop critique and agency. These include tapping into the girls’ speciŽ c
interests, listening respectfully to what they had to say, and providing safe spaces (the
journals) in which they could write more re ectively. They are not alone in some of these
conclusions, however; the need to listen to young people in order to understand their
experiences is becoming increasingly recognised (Nettleton & Watson, 1998).
Amid such a positive review it would be remiss to say that the research is without  aw.
The authors make a point of noting that their interpretation is ‘partial and perspectival’,
and they themselves identify a number of limitations. As well as a lack of time and a
small number of ‘collaborators’, issues of gender and unintentional researcher bias are
cited among other shortcomings of the project. In addition it is fair to say that the text
can at times be repetitive, although this does serve to identify the key Ž ndings and the
selected excerpts of conversation provide an appropriate accompaniment to the analysis.
However, the beneŽ ts and potential of this work far outweigh such minor limitations, and
the analysis of the data from this small group of girls has far reaching implications for
those working with young women, particularly in relation to policy and curriculum
development. The data are rich and insightful, and show the girls to be extremely
knowledgeable and well informed. However, the con ict that they are experiencing is
obvious, with the pressure to conform seemingly more powerful than the desire to resist.
Oliver and Laliks’ research provides a multifaceted attempt to explore the social and
cultural pressures surrounding, facing and informing young women, and highlights the
need for active assistance in empowering them to Ž nd their voice. Ultimately, however,
it is also a sign of hope, indicating a growing realisation that this adverse situation can
change, and encouraging girls to actively resist potentially oppressive taken-for-granted

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assumptions. In relation to this the authors offer practical suggestions for policy makers
and providers, encouraging the provision of a curriculum that allows for ‘nurturing
critique and agency’ among young women. With particular reference to physical
education provision, the authors strongly endorse the inclusion of the body as a topic for
critical study. As a text that is both accessible and absorbing, with a sound theoretical
base and innovative methodology, Bodily Knowledge is a book that will appeal to a vast
number of people. To those interested in the study of youth, physical education, gender,
race or media issues, or even to those simply curious about the ‘youth of today’, it is
deŽ nitely a text well worth a read.

References
ADLER, P.A. & ADLER, P. (1998) Peer Power: Preadolescent Culture and Identity (New Brunswick,
Rutgers University Press).
BOURDIEU, P. (1978) Sport and social class, Social Science Information, 17, pp. 819–840.
BOURDIEU, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London, Routledge).
FOUCAULT (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London, Allen Lane).
GIDDENS (1999) Modernity and Self-identity (Cambridge, Polity Press).
GOFFMAN, E. (1969) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Harmondsworth, Penguin).
HENDRY, L.B., SHUCKSMITH, J., LOVE, J.G. & GLENDINNING, A. (1993) Young People’s
Leisure and Lifestyles (London, Routledge).
NETTLETON, S. & WATSON, J. (1998) The Body in Everyday Life (London, Routledge).
SHILLING, C. (1991) Educating the body: physical capital and the production of social
inequalities, Sociology, 25, pp. 653–672.
SPARKES, A. (1997) Re ections on the socially constructed physical self, in: K.R. FOX (Ed.) The
Physical Self: From Motivation to Well-being (Champaign, IL, Human Kinetics).
TAIT, G. (2000) Youth, Sex and Government (New York, Peter Lang).
WOLF, N. (1991) The Beauty Myth (London, Vintage).

RACHEL HOLROYD
Loughborough University
UK

102