There has been a dramatic rise in public, and particularly the media, attention directed at concerns regarding childhood obesity, and body shape/contents/images more broadly. Yet amidst the torrential call for increased attention on so-called “body epidemics” amongst youth in Canada and elsewhere, links between youth masculinities and bodily health (or simply, appearance) are largely unquestioned. Whilst there is a well-established literature on the relationship between, for example, body image and marginalized femininities, qualitative studies regarding boys and their body images (and how they are influenced within school settings) remain few and far between. In this paper, we offer insight into the dangerous and unsettled spaces of high school locker-rooms and other “gym zones” as contexts in which particular boys face ritual (and indeed, systematic) bullying and humiliation because their bodies (and their male selves) simply do not “measure up.” We draw on education, masculinities, health, and the sociology of bodies literature to examine how masculinity is policed by boys within gym settings as part of formal/informal institutional regimes of biopedagogy. Here, Foucault’s (1967) notion of heterotopia is drawn heavily upon in order to contextualize physical education class as a negotiated and resisted liminal zone for young boys on the fringes of accepted masculinities in school spaces.
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Boys, Bullying and Biopedagogies in Physical Education
Michael Atkinson and Michael Kehler
In Boyhood Studies
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2012
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 166–185 (19 total)
“I Am Trying” to Perform Like an Ideal Boy
The Construction of Boyhood through Corporal Punishment and Educational Discipline in Taare Zameen Par
Natasha Anand
Discipline and Punish ([1975] 1995)—the text that influences my entire discussion—Michel Foucault gives the classroom weight equal to the jail house or the factory as evidence for a panoptic discipline that pins the subject within its gaze. In such a gaze
In Boyhood Studies
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 78–104 (27 total)
“Boys in Power”
Consent and Gendered Power Dynamics in Sex
Katrín Ólafsdottir and Jón Ingvar Kjaran
draws our attention to patriarchy 4 and the underlying gendered power imbalances at work and uses it as a theoretical lens through which to view society ( Hesse-Biber [2006] 2014 ). We also draw on Michel Foucault's writings on subjectification
A Social Negotiation of Hope
Male West African Youth, ‘Waithood’ and the Pursuit of Social Becoming through Football
Christian Ungruhe and James Esson
“entrepreneur of self, being for himself his own capital, being for himself his own producer, being for himself the source of his earnings” ( Foucault 2008: 226 ). This individuated understanding of the sporting body as a means to generate an income has been
“I Don't Want to Spend My Life under a Toilet Seat”
Aspiration, Belonging, and Responsible Masculinities in the Lives of White, Working-Class Boys in a Youth Inclusion Program at the YMCA
Ross Wignall
youth engagement centers ( Smyth 2017 ). In this context, the “reflective culture” ( Kushner 2006 ; Wignall 2016a ) engendered through sport at the YMCA needs to be seen as a choreographed “technology of the body” ( Foucault [1979] 2008 ) that renders
In Boyhood Studies
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2019
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 131–149 (19 total)
Non-Transitional Adolescences in The City and the Pillar and Other Voices, Other Rooms
Chung-Hao Ku
Foucault says about homosexuality as “a type of life, a life form” (1990: 43), a gay-identified adult often reconstructs a gay childhood in backformation or looks back on his adolescence as a fuzzy transition. He may look for clues about his homosexuality
In Boyhood Studies
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 115–134 (20 total)
A Phenomenological Study of Arranged Friendships between Young Boys and Men
Man Interest and Masculine Embodiment
Kathrine Vitus and Nathalie Perregaard
Sociology 51 ( 3 ): 643 – 656 . doi: 10.1177/1440783313518251 . Garlick , Steve . 2002 . “ The Beauty of Friendship: Foucault, Masculinity and the Work of Art .” Philosophy and Social Criticism 28 ( 5 ): 558 – 577 . doi: 10