Sport, spinal cord injuries, embodied masculinities, and narrative identity dilemmas. Men and Masculinities, 4 (3), 258-285. (original) (raw)
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Men, sport, spinal cord injury, and narratives of hope
Social Science & Medicine, 2005
"Drawing on data from a life history study of a small group of men who have suffered spinal cord injury and become disabled through playing sport, this article explores the meanings of hope in their lives. It focuses upon the life stories of 14, white, predominantly working-class men, aged 26–51. The most common kinds of hope used by the men were shaped by three powerful narrative types that circulate in Western cultures. These were ‘concrete hope’ (the most common form), shaped by the restitution narrative; ‘transcendent hope’, shaped by the quest narrative; and ‘despair’ or loss of any kind of hope, shaped by the chaos narrative. The implications of this dynamic process for their identity reconstruction as disabled men are considered. Keywords: Spinal cord injury; Sport; Narrative; Hope; Disability; United Kingdom"
This article explores the life story of a young man who experienced a spinal cord injury (SCI) and became disabled though playing the sport of rugby union football. His experiences post SCI illuminate the ways in which movement from one form of embodiment to another connects him to a dominant cultural narrative regarding recovery from SCI that is both tellable and acceptable in terms of plot and structure to those around him. Over time, the obdurate facts of his impaired and disabled body lead him to reject this dominant narrative and move into a story line that is located on Norrick’s (2005) upper-bounding side of tellability. This makes it transgressive, frightening, difficult to hear, and invokes the twin processes of deprivation of opportunity and infiltrated consciousness as described by Nelson (2001). These, and the effects of impairment, are seen to have direct consequences for the tellability of embodied experiences along with identity construction and narrative repair over time. Finally, some reflections are offered on how the conditions that negate the telling of his story might be challenged.
Men, sport, spinal cord injury and narrative time
Based on life history data, this article explores how time is experienced by three men who have become disabled through playing sport. Comparisons are made between their experiences of time at the following periods in their lives: (a) pre-spinal cord injury (SCI) when they inhabited able bodied, sporting, disciplined and dominating bodies; (b) immediately following SCI during rehabilitation; and (c) as they live at the moment post-SCI. The ways in which three different narratives operate to shape the post-SCI experiences of time for these men are highlighted, and the implications of this process for their identity (re)construction as disabled men is discussed. K E Y W O R D S : body, disability, identity, men, narrative, spinal cord injury, sport, time
Disability, sport, and men’s narratives of health: A qualitative study.
Objective: Very little research has been conducted that examines men, sport, masculinities, and disability in the context of health. Readdressing this absence, this article examines the health narratives told by spinal injured men and the work narratives do on, in, and for them. Methods: In-depth life history interviews and fieldwork observations with men (n 17) who sustained a spinal injury through playing sport and are now disabled were conducted. Qualitative data were analyzed using a dialogical narrative analysis. Results: Stories told about health characterized a style of embodied actions choices that anticipated a certain type of narrative, that is, an emergent narrative. The men’s narrative habitus, fashioned through the process rehabilitation, predisposed them to be interpellated to care about health. To uphold hegemonic masculinities the men also did not care too much about health. The analysis also reveals the work narratives do on, in, and for health behavior, masculine identities, resilience, leisure time physical activity, and body-self relationships. Implications for health promotion work are highlighted. Conclusions: The article advances knowledge by revealing the emergent narrative of health. It reveals too for the first time the way certain contexts and masculine identities create a new subject of health that cares about doing health work, but not too much. Building on the theoretical knowledge advanced here, this article contributes to practical understandings of men’s health and disability by highlighting the potential of narrative for changing human lives and behavior.
Considering how athletic identity assists adjustment to spinal cord injury: a qualitative study
Physiotherapy, 2013
Objectives To establish how sport, and access to an athletic identity, has been used when adjusting to a spinal cord injury. Design Qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. Setting Private athletic club. Participants Eight (six males and two females) athletes from a wheelchair badminton club participated in the study. The individuals had finished rehabilitation, and were aged between 20 and 50 years. Main outcome measures A single semi-structured interview was undertaken with each participant. Results Following the thematic analysis, two final themes were presented: (1) adjustment and paradox of chronic illness; and (2) the role and value of an athletic identity. Conclusions Badminton provided participants with an opportunity to continue and develop a positive athletic identity. Identity may be used as a factor that can promote recovery, and is considered as a way to encourage and maintain positive long-term adjustment to disability.
Communicating In and Through “Murderball”: Masculinity and Disability in Wheelchair Rugby
Western Journal of Communication, 2008
This article investigates communicative practices surrounding wheelchair rugby, a growing sport played worldwide by people with quadriplegia. Researchers have studied extensively the practice of using sport for rehabilitation, but the role of communication in this process has been overlooked. We argue that participating in this sport is itself a communicative act challenging ableist views of disability, and that the behavior of wheelchair rugby players transforms the stigma associated with their condition via enactments of hypermasculinity. Additionally, we suggest that the sport's organizational culture operates as a space for newly quadriplegic persons to learn strategies for coping with their disability and the life changes that surround it. While we recognize the rehabilitative potential of these enactments, we note the ways the activity reifies patriarchal notions of gender and sport as well as validates traditional, often ableist norms of masculinity that complicate the social meanings of disability sport.
Working at the intersection of sociology and psychology, the purpose of this paper was to examine people's experiences during rehabilitation of being and having an impaired body as a result of suffering a spinal cord injury (SCI) while playing sport. Interview data with men (n = 20) and observational data were collected. All data were analyzed using narrative analyses. To communicate findings in a way that can incorporate the complexity of results and reach wide audiences, the genre of ethnographic creative nonfiction was used. The ethnographic creative nonfiction extends research into issues related to disability, rehabilitation and sporting injury by 1) producing original empirical knowledge, 2) generating a theoretical account of human thought, affect and action as emerging not inside the individual but within social relations and the narratives that circulate between actors, and 3) capturing the impact of this research.
DISABLED BODIES AND STORIED SELVES: AN EXAMPLE OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AND NARRATIVE INQUIRY
2011
Based on life history data, this qualitative article explores the self-perceptions of a small group of men who, due to a spinal cord injury (SCI) through playing rugby union football, have made a transition from the world of the able-bodied into the world of disability where they remain to this day. The most common kinds of perceptions of self used by the men through telling their stories as they live post-SCI is focused upon in detail.