Sheila Scraton | Leeds Metropolitan University (original) (raw)

Papers by Sheila Scraton

The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology

Sport, Leisure and Social Justice

The Palgrave Handbook of Feminism and Sport, Leisure and Physical Education, 2017

This chapter explores how our understandings of gender and physical education (PE) have developed... more This chapter explores how our understandings of gender and physical education (PE) have developed since the 1980s as differing feminist approaches engage with a changing social and cultural world. It considers some key questions including: Is feminism still needed? Are we in a postfeminist era? Can girls ‘just do it’ in sport and PE? Have questions on inequalities given way to a celebration of difference and diversity? What of feminist praxis? The chapter assesses how feminism continues to have resonance for the world of PE and proposes ‘middle-ground’ theorizing as a helpful lens through which we can re-engage with feminist praxis to influence practice and develop critical and reflexive PE practitioners who understand and query the complexity of difference within a moral agenda of social justice.

Race, Gender and Sport, 2017

`Race', Sport and British Society, 2002

This chapter concentrates specifically on sport, gender, and race within the British context. It ... more This chapter concentrates specifically on sport, gender, and race within the British context. It argues that one has to look beyond sport theorizing and learn from the theoretical and empirical contributions of black feminists who are raising crucial theoretical questions while ...

Freedom and Constraint, 2019

Sport, Education and Society, 2018

This article explores how our understandings of gender and Physical Education (PE) have developed... more This article explores how our understandings of gender and Physical Education (PE) have developed since the publication of Shaping Up to Womanhood in 1992. I reflect back on my research which, using qualitative methodology and a socialist feminist lens, explored dominant gender relations in the teaching of girls' PE in English secondary schools. The analysis of my data revealed how PE teachers had clear ideas about 'appropriate' activities and behaviours based on notions of acceptable femininity relating to physical ability and capacity; female sexuality and expectations of motherhood and domesticity. I consider how my conclusions have been taken forward in international feminist PE research over the past 25 years as theory has shifted from structural to poststructural analyses. I conclude that we now have far more micro analyses of teachers' and students' subjectivities, identities and differences and more complex understandings of power. I argue we need to realign subjectivities with the social, political and economic landscape of education. The paper considers the cultural backlash against feminism underpinned by postfeminist, neoliberal discourse that emphasises individual self-determination evidenced by the 'can do' girl. This is set in contrast to recent evidence that concludes that gender expectations are still very evident in PE for girls in schools. Finally, I consider the 4th wave of feminism that through digital platforms is reasserting feminist activism and developing a 'call out' culture of sexism and inequalities. For a more equitable PE we need to bridge the gap between theoretical sophistication and school experience. There are both continuities and changes in relation to gender and PE but the need for critical feminist work in PE is as important today as it was as I concluded my research 25 years ago.

Journal of Leisure Research, 2009

Leisure scholars have attempted to examine experience through a socialpsychological lens that loc... more Leisure scholars have attempted to examine experience through a socialpsychological lens that locates the individual and her/his interpretation of leisure experiences at the center of discussions about leisure, leisure experience and identity. However, this primarily social-psychological perspective lacks an accompanying discussion about the ideologies and discourses that structure those experiences. The purpose of this paper is to examine how "leisure experience" has been conceptualized and how individuals have been represented in terms of race in the Leisure Studies literature. It is not a call to abandon Leisure Studies' focus on individuals and their experiences of leisure. Rather, it is an attempt to offer alternative strategies for how to (re) conceptualize and conduct kinds of research that account for individual experiences within broader discourses of ideology and power.

Dansk Sociologi, 2005

Kari Fasting, Gertrud Pfister & Sheila Scraton: Disrupting gender? A cross-national study of fema... more Kari Fasting, Gertrud Pfister & Sheila Scraton: Disrupting gender? A cross-national study of female soccer players’ perceptions of masculinity and femininity Traditionally football has been a masculine sport, even though there has been a dramatic increase in the number of female footballers in many countries since the beginning of the 1970s. Through qualitative, in-depth interviews with female football players in England, Germany, Norway and Sweden (N= 40), the article explores how far women, who are engaged at a highly competitive level in a “male“ sport like football, actively construct alternative femininities, subvert traditional meanings of femininity and/or respond to the cultural ideals of “acceptable“ femininity. The results indicate that the football players do all these.They actively construct alternative femininities while responding to cultural ideals of acceptable femininity at the same time. The data also revealed that sport is a social field that not only produces gen...

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:5300.392(57) / BLDSC - British Lib... more SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:5300.392(57) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Researching Women and Sport, 1997

The project which is discussed here has been underway for three years and our collective experien... more The project which is discussed here has been underway for three years and our collective experiences of the research process have been exciting, stimulating, at times frustrating, but above all have raised important questions for the whole research team about doing research into women and sport. This chapter discusses some of the methodological, practical and personal challenges encountered in engaging in a cross-national research project into the experiences and meanings of sport in the lives of women in England, Germany, Norway and Spain.

Handbook of Physical Education

A Companion to Sport, 2013

The European sports history review, 1999

Part One: Setting the Agenda 1. Introduction 2. Talking Gender 3. Physical Education: A Gendered ... more Part One: Setting the Agenda 1. Introduction 2. Talking Gender 3. Physical Education: A Gendered History Part Two: Gender Agents 4. Difference Matters: Sexuality and Physical Education 5. Muslim Women in Teacher Training: Issues of Gender 6. Gender Positioning as Pedagogical Practice in Teaching Physical Education Part Three: Gender and Physical Education: Policies and Practice 7. Gendered Policies 8. Gender, Health and Physical Education 9. Understanding Girls' Experience of Physical Education: Relational Analysis and Situated Learning Part Four: Extending Gender Agendas in Physical Education 10. Gender Equality and Physical Education: A USA Perspective 11. Physical Education Teacher Education: Sites of Progress or Resistance 12. Extending Agendas: Physical Culture Research for the Twenty First Century

The Sociological Review, 1985

This paper considers the relationship between PE in secondary schools and young women's sub-c... more This paper considers the relationship between PE in secondary schools and young women's sub-cultures. For many years PE teachers have been concerned with the apparent loss of interest and 'dropping out' of many adolescent young women from the PE lesson. This paper attempts to relate PE teaching to the subcultural experiences and resistances of young women and thus move beyond a biologically determined position which traditionally has explained young women's responses to PE as 'natural' and inevitable. The paper provides 1) a brief critical introduction to youth subcultural analysis, 2) a more detailed examination of recent work on young women's sub-cultures and their school-based resistances and 3) a consideration of the relationship of PE to this work on young women's sub-cultures. The analysis in this third section draws on eight year's teaching experience in secondary school PE and qualitative research carried out in Liverpool secondary schools during the 1983-1984 school year. In conclusion the paper looks forward to possible initiatives which could help move towards a more positive and challenging approach to PE for adolescent young women.

Leisure Studies, 1989

Tony Veal (Leisure Studies (1989) p. 141) rightly identifies the need to relate leisure to its wi... more Tony Veal (Leisure Studies (1989) p. 141) rightly identifies the need to relate leisure to its wider social context, and goes on to evaluate the failings of what he calls 'the Marxist' and 'the pluralist' perspectives in attempting to do this. Sadly, he ignores totally the progress which has been made by feminist researchers and writers in successfully locating women's leisure, gender relations and patriarchal society in the social contexts in which they have developed. Liz Stanley (1989) has criticized much of leisure studies for imposing, on people's behaviour, researcher-defined categories of what constitutes 'leisure', and for stripping even individually defined experiences of their particular personal context, adding them to responses by other people and producing generalizations about them. While Stanley argues for the need to 'put context back in', and look at people's lives 'in the round', Veal appears to be suggesting that it is the categories, or aggregations, which leisure researchers have got wrong. Veal is unhappy with the problematic aspects of 'the Marxist' explanations of the work-leisure relationship, especially where he sees class and class conflict failing to explain social change. And yet he seems to be arguing for a new set of stereotypical categories, based on unquestioned assumptions regarding a market economy, which fail themselves to translate to individual experiences. A more fundamental criticism of his work is that, in spite of his claims for a 'pluralist' approach, it is largely gender-blind, and clearly ignores the progress made by feminist researchers in addressing the problem of situating leisure in its lived context. Doubts about the efficacy of Veal's own pluralism are highlighted by his apparently naive and underdeveloped view of what he calls 'the Marxist view of society and leisure'. It seems hardly accurate to describe the numerous, complexly developed neo-Marxist analyses as having a singular view on any phenomenon. "The" Marxist view of society is described as being situated within 'its basis of class division and conflict'. But this limited perspective ignores the ways in which the relations of production, with all their attendant complexities, divisions and contradictory locations under advanced capitalism, have been addressed by, for example, Braverman (1974), dealing with the complex changes in class relations; or the Poulantzas (1978)/Olin Wright (1978) debate concerning the need to understand class analysis through the criteria of economic, political and ideological categorization. Veal seems to be confining his critique of 'the Marxist' perspective to