Reflection on UMD Kinesiology’s discussion of “Born to run”… by Bryan C. Clift

Every year before the start of the fall semester, our Kinesiology Department sits down for a discussion of one book read by all faculty and graduate students. This year we read Christopher McDougall’s book, Born to run. Graciously, Chris joined us for the discussion. My response here is partly addressed to the text but more importantly addressed to our Kinesiology department and PCS students and scholars.

The text was specifically chosen because its content was relevant to All Kinesiology personnel at Maryland. However, I quickly became surprised at just how divided the Kinesiology department truly is. 

Silent survival: American nationalism among family, war, and sport… by Bryan C. Clift

Sound is saturated with worlding capacity. Yet, Western knowledges, noted for ocular-centrism, often reject, marginalize, or overlook critical and theoretical inquiries of the auditory. For example, through music Paul Gilroy, in The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, illustrated how cultural nationalism both constructs immutable and absolute ethnic differences among “black” and “white” people while also providing the courage to survive. As perceived minimal or lack of sound silence is worthy of investigation too. In the middle of a quieter event less prominently recognized sounds come into the fore; amid silence you may find yourself alone with your thoughts; and most importantly, meanings form and are formed through sound and silence. Probing silence as a modality of meaning and meaning making contributes toward contextual and critical understanding.

Experiencing silence. Sitting in the Baltimore terminal the gate-agent announced my flight was boarding. Like most other passengers I scrambled myself together and proceeded to clog the walkway while waiting for the broadcast of my boarding zone, zone six. One group of people, though, did not resemble the rest of the passengers; it was a family of four. One woman and man and I presumed their two daughters huddled close together just to the side and rear of the line of overhasty passengers. The mother and wife cried. The two daughters were sad and excited; they looked as though they had done this before. The husband carried a look of concern, preparation, and determinateness. As the Man walked away and inserted himself into the boarding column of people, a seemingly vapid line to me, I realized this was for him both a trial and node of transformation. The near silence of the moment overran all else.

The sociological imagination as the common cultural denominator: Are we just kidding ourselves? – By Oliver Rick

“For that imagination is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another – from the political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry. It is the capacity to range from the most intimate features of the human self – and to see the relations between the two” (Mills, 1959, p.7).

Having now been at the University of Maryland for a year I have had the opportunity to teach eight discussion sections for the undergraduate class KNES287 – Sport and American Society. One of the key components of the course is the discussion and understanding of, but also hopefully, the eventual use of C. Wright Mills sociological imagination. Based on this concept being core to the course I have read Mills definitions previously but it was not until this semester that I had the opportunity to really sit down and get into Mills book. It was from this reading that something stood out to me, something I want to discuss here. The passage that I wish to discuss comes from section four of the chapter “The Promise” found in The Sociological imagination regarding what Mills calls the “one style of reflection [which] tends to become a common denominator of cultural life” (Mills, 1959, p. 13). It is indeed Mills contention that the sociological imagination (as defined above – although in a brief excerpt) has come to be this common denominator for western culture, taking over the mantel from Darwinian and Newtonian physical science. But as I taught my way through two semesters I asked myself ‘can I agree with Mills? Is the common denominator of these students, before they enter our class, a critical and dialectic conception of reality, society and culture?’ and sadly I would have to say no. This is not to say that there is some genetic/general dumbing down of our student populace but instead I believe that our society and our educational institutions as a major part of this – both in being shaped by and shaping society – are not rewarding, encouraging or facilitating this sociological imagination as the common denominator.

Twisted, Mister. … by Margaret Austin Smith

Frank Deford, I like you. And I like your weekly spot of “Sweetness and Light.” But this morning, on your way to (duly) celebrating the triumphs of the UConn Women’s basketball team, you said something that made me stomp my casted broken foot so hard I’ll be stuck in this boot another six weeks.

“To be frank,” you say (and by all means, let’s be frank), “female fans have themselves miserably failed their sisters; they’ve not yet come to support women’s teams as men do their own athletes.”

Myth Busters: Do Black People Swim?

Do black people swim? Of course they do. I am black and I can swim. Myth busted.

Not so fast.

A 2008 multi-phase study out of the University of Memphis revealed that 58% of black children could not swim, they drowned at 3-times the rate of their white peers and that simply being black reduced your rate of participation in the sport by almost 60% (MSNBC, 2008).

Phase I of the study entitled, The Mythology of Swimming: Are Myths Impacting Minority Youth Participation?, was commissioned by USA Swimming and spearheaded by Richard Irwin (2008), a professor from the Department of Health and Sport Science.  One predominating myth influencing participation that was addressed was the idea that, ‘black women don’t want to get their hair wet’, and although Irwin believes they proved the relation between hair and swimming to be negligible, I beg to differ (p.12) While these studies have been lauded as a landmark investigation of minority swimming participation and a wake-up call to recognize swimming proficiency as a major public health concern, I am left unimpressed as I feel they fall short of understanding this crucial cultural phenomenon.

on “gut feelings” and embodied politics – jacob bustad

While we might disagree on the nature and potential meanings of the concept, the idea of “gut feelings” – those intuitive and often subconsciously enacted beliefs and opinions which enable us to make sense of the larger world – is undoubtedly an element of our lived realities. It might seem strange to discuss what some might see as a psychological feature of the human brain, or others might see as simple “common sense,” in the context of a blog primarily focused on elements of physical activity and the body-in-movement. Yet it seems that to avoid such a banal aspect of our everyday interactions risks missing the importance of the messy details of daily life, the likes of which are central to the cumulative formation of Raymond Williams “whole way of life” (i.e., culture).

That we act on our “gut feelings” is a common proposition; indeed we seem to often hear of an individual’s actions as emotionally rationalized within the moment, both in sporting contexts and beyond. Thus on one hand, we see this discourse of feelings appear in the rather mundane circumstances of organized sport – for example, NBA player J.J. Redick described his decision to sign a free agency contract as a process in which his “gut feeling changed about seven times” prior to his signing, sports columnists explain that placing the PED-using Mark McGwire in the Baseball Hall of Fame goes against a “gut feeling,” and Maryland men’s basketball coach Gary Williams states that he has a “gut feeling” that the new athletic director for the University will be great to work with. But this same discourse of emotions and a type of embodied “knowing” that serves to legitimate actions – or rationalize them afterward – is frequently apparent in more serious, ‘political’, even life-and-death conditions. Thus the statement by Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, in July 2007, that despite a lack of actual evidence, he had a “gut feeling” that another terrorist attack was imminent, and the threat of death-by-terrorist was “very alive” (ironic, I know).

The Decadence of Neo-Liberalism. By Michael Friedman

The idea was absolutely irresistible when it came to mind: The decadence of neo-liberalism.  I thought the concept was clear and easily articulated: The nomination of such candidates as Rand Paul, Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell is proof that the neo-liberal consensus that has dominated American politics since the 1980s is breaking down and will eventually result in the left offering a viable alternative to neo-liberal ideology.  Making the argument, however, was much more difficult than I originally thought as it based on a combination of my hope and an intuitive feeling about American politics.

So, instead, I will go back to what I know, sports stadiums, to work through the peculiarities of this decadent moment.

Ford Ironman championship 2010 coverage: “You’ve been chicked”, the competition between resistive and dominant gendered discourses. By Oliver Rick

“You’ve been chicked” Craig Walsh joked with Matt Lieto as I watched the Ironman World Championship this weekend. This phrase was a comment that was repeated on a regular basis during the beginning of the show by many of the sports most recognizable names. Indeed these comments were being broadcasted on the biggest platform for this sport for the whole year; in Ironman it does not very often make sense financially to broadcast the coverage of a whole race. So during the world championships, where there is full coverage all day long, the sport gets its biggest viewership on a worldwide platform. One of the sports biggest claims is that it is one of the only sports where you can compete on the same playing field as the worlds best male and female endurance athletes. Often you hear phrase’s like “your never going to get to play soccer with David Beckham” but you can race with world champions at Ironman. However despite this claim to this being one of the great aspects of the sport there has been a stigma developed that comes with being beaten by a woman of the same age group or professionals if you are a man.

Towards A PCS Aesthetic…By Sam Bernstein

It is now more than fifty years since C.P. Snow (1959) delivered his (in)famous lecture The Two Cultures, and yet despite continued efforts to bridge the ‘gaps’ between the  humanities  and the sciences, the affective reach of Snow’s proclamation remains evident today.  Less than a year ago, University of California President Mark Yudof illustrated that the current incarnation of this divide is less intellectual than it is ‘practical.’  More specifically practicality, in this sense, speaks directly to the politics and professionalization of the academy.  Responding to the ‘fiscal crisis’ facing  the UC system, Yudoff remarked
“Many of our, if I can put it this way, businesses are in good shape. We’re doing very well there. Our hospitals are full, our medical business, our medical research, the patient care. So, we have this core problem: Who is going to pay the salary of the English department? We have to have it. Who’s going to pay it in sociology, in the humanities? And that’s where we’re running into trouble.” 

Life after PCS: Reflections on my first few months as a local bureaucrat… by Jaime DeLuca

I am 29 years old and this September marks the first academic year since I was a toddler that I was not enrolled in school.  From pre-school to my Ph.D. – I’ve spent a great deal of time pursuing my educational goals, and specifically, for the better part of the last seven years I have been approaching my academic studies with the goal of becoming a professor.  However as last May grew closer and I set my dissertation defense date, I realized these goals were not realistic, at least in the near term.  Everything I read indicated that tenure-track jobs were falling by the wayside, and the job market mirrored this idea.  Further, I was limited geographically due to a new home purchase and my husband’s stable job and local graduate education.  All of this had me a bit stressed as I reflected on the financial need for employment coupled with all the years I had spent in school, and the fear that if I pursued an academic path, I would not get further than working as an adjunct professor for years on end.  So I did what I believed I had to do—I began an extensive job search applying for numerous government and consulting-based research positions, community college professorships, and recreation management jobs.  I was fortunate to find a position with a local organization doing work I am interested in.  Yet as this September comes and goes, admittedly I can’t help but miss academe, and ponder how my current role relates to my graduate research agenda which looked to understand how upper-middle class families appropriated a swim club membership into their daily lives.