Boys Bodies and Physical Education

<p>Using visual ethnography this book explores the many forms of pleasures that boys derive in and through the spaces and their bodies in physical education. Employing the works of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler Gerdin examines how pleasure is connected to identity schooling and power relations and demonstrates how discourses of sport fitness health and masculinity work together to produce a variety of pleasurable experiences. At the same time the book provides a critique of such pleasurable experiences within physical education by illustrating how these pleasures can still for some boys quickly turn into displeasures and can be associated with exclusion humiliation bullying and homophobia. </p><p>Boys Bodies and Physical Education argues that pleasure can both be seen as an educational and productive practice in physical education but also a constraint that both engenders and privileges some boys over others as well as (re)producing narrow and limited conceptions of masculinity and pleasures for <i>all</i> boys. This book works to problematize these pleasures and their articulations with gender bodies and spaces.</p>