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Boxing, the Gym, and Men
The Mark of the Fist
Prix : $79,00
Translated by Michael C. Behrent
Adaptation à l’anglais (USA) de l’ouvrage de Jérôme Beauchez, L’empreinte du poing. La boxe, le gymnase et leurs hommes, Éditions de l’EHESS, Paris, novembre 2014.
This book explores the lived experiences of boxers in a French banlieue, largely populated by people from working-class and immigrant backgrounds. Jérôme Beauchez, who joined in the men’s daily workouts for many years, analyzes the act of boxing as a high-stakes confrontation that extends well beyond the walls of the gym. Exploring the physical and existential realities of combat, the author provides a multifaceted “thick description” of this world and shows that the violence faced by the gym’s members is not so much to be found in the ring as in the adversity of everyday racism and social exclusion. Boxing can therefore be understood as an act of resistance that is about more than simply fighting an opponent and that reflects all the existential struggles facing these men who are both stigmatized and socially dominated by race and class.
“Boxing, the Gym, and Men is an insightful ethnographic account of marginalized young people of the French banlieue. Without being romantic, it explains how they make meaning of their precarious lives through the experience of boxing. Informative and compelling, this scholarly work is also deeply moving ─it is an important contribution to our understanding of immigration and disfranchisement in the social fabric of French urban life and culture.”
Elijah Anderson, William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Sociology, Yale University.
“In its fine tuned phenomenological attentiveness to how boxers make sense of their experience by ‘working through’ their bodies, Beauchez’s carnal ethnography perfectly captures the vivid and nuanced immediacy of an embodiment in which domination is the key theme of both the fighters’ encounters in the ring and their subaltern social circumstances.”
Thomas J. Csordas, Dr. James Y. Chan Presidential Chair in Global Health, Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, University of California San Diego.
Jérôme Beauchez is Associate Professor of sociology and anthropology at the Université de Lyon/Saint-Etienne, France, and a researcher at the Centre Max Weber and the Institute of Interdisciplinary Research on Social Issues.
Table of contents
The Stranger: Portrait of the Boxer as a Young Man - p. 3-19
Incorporating the Novice: The Elementary Forms of the Boxing Experience - p. 21-41
The Punching Factory: Boxers and Daily Life – p. 43-67
When Boxers “Put on the Gloves”: Sparring and the Limits of the Fighter’s Institutionalization – p. 69-96
Counting the Blows: The Mark(s) of Exile – p. 99-126
“Like a Man”: Facing Adversity - p. 127-150
Boxing vs. the “Poor Life” - p. 151-186
The Clash of the Strongmen: Fighting in Public - p. 187-208
- Palgrave Macmillan, "Cultural Sociology" Series (Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Eyerman, David Inglis & Philip Smith, eds.) New York, 240 pages. ISBN: 78-3-319-56028-1. $79,00
- Pour accéder à la table des matières en ligne : http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319560281
Boxing, the Gym, and Men
The Mark of the Fist
