Sport, Bodily Habitus, and the Subject(s) of the Middle East

In his classic 1934 essay, “Les techniques du corps” (Body Techniques), the French sociologist Marcel Mauss called attention to a set of embodied practices from eating and sleeping to walking and swimming. While generally taken for granted as naturalized human aptitudes, Mauss deployed myriad exampl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of Middle East studies 2019-08, Vol.51 (3), p.482-485
Main Author: Silverstein, Paul A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aptitudes
Attention
Body techniques
College football
Culture
Discipline
Embodiment
Ethnography
Exercise
Government agencies
Habitus
Identity politics
Islam
Mahmood, Saba
Martial arts
Mauss, Marcel (1872-1950)
Mysticism
Nationalism
New Directions in Sports Studies
Physical fitness
Political development
Ramadan
Religion
Roundtable
Sectarianism
Soccer
Society
Sociologists
Sociology
Sports
State building
Swimming
Tournaments & championships
Transnationalism
Walking
Women
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Summary:In his classic 1934 essay, “Les techniques du corps” (Body Techniques), the French sociologist Marcel Mauss called attention to a set of embodied practices from eating and sleeping to walking and swimming. While generally taken for granted as naturalized human aptitudes, Mauss deployed myriad examples hitherto filed under “miscellany” in the ethnographic record to demonstrate that such activities are in fact cultivated techniques that constitute the particular “habitus” of a society. Until recently, sport had been similarly relegated to the miscellany of Middle East studies, generally garnering but passing attention or, at best, making for a fun side project for those studying ostensibly more serious matters such as sectarian conflict, nationalism, or state building. But, over the last decade or so, a new generation of scholars of and in the region has embraced the Maussian revolution and come to understand the centrality of sporting practices to the very making and unmaking of communities, nations, and states—to the constitution and contestation of the modern Middle East as we know it today.
ISSN:0020-7438
1471-6380
DOI:10.1017/S0020743819000448