Immersion: Marathon Swimming, Embodiment and Identity by Karen Throsby (English)

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Drawing on extensive (auto)ethnographic data, Immersion explores the embodied and social processes of becoming a marathon swimmer and investigates how social belonging is produced and policed

FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description

Immersion is about the extreme sport of marathon swimming. Drawing on extensive (auto)ethnographic data, Immersion explores the embodied and social processes of becoming a marathon swimmer and investigates how social belonging is produced and policed. Using marathon swimming as a lens, this foundation provides the basis for an exploration of what constitutes the 'good' body in contemporary neoliberal society across a range of sites including charitable swimming, fatness, gender and health. The book argues that the self-representations of marathon swimming are at odds with its lived realities, and that this reflects the entrenched and limited discursive resources available for thinking about the sporting body in the wider social and cultural context. The book is aimed primarily at readers at undergraduate level and upwards with an interest in sociology, the sociology of the body, the sociology of sport, gender and the sociology of health and illness. -- .

Flap

This book is about the extreme sport of marathon swimming. It provides insight into a social world about which very little is known, while simultaneously exploring the ways in which the social world of marathon swimming intersects and overlaps with other social worlds and configurations of power and identity. Drawing on extensive (auto)ethnographic data, Immersion explores the embodied and social processes of becoming a marathon swimmer and investigates how social belonging is produced and policed. Using marathon swimming as a lens, this foundation then provides the basis for an exploration of what constitutes the 'good' body in contemporary neoliberal society across a range of sites including charitable swimming, fatness, gender and health. The book argues that the self-representations of marathon swimming are at odds with its lived realities, and that this reflects the entrenched and limited discursive resources available for thinking about the sporting body in the wider social and cultural context. It argues that in spite of these constraints, novel modes of embodiment and pleasure seep out between the cracks of those entrenched understandings and representations, highlighting the inability of the dominant discourses of sporting embodiment to account for the experience of immersion. This in turn opens up spaces for resistance and alternative accounts of embodiment and identity both within and outside of marathon swimming. The book is aimed primarily at readers at undergraduate level and upwards with an interest in sociology, the sociology of the body, the sociology of sport, gender and the sociology of health and illness.

Author Biography

Karen Throsby is Associate Professor in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds

Table of Contents

IntroductionPart I: Becoming and belonging1. Becoming2. Unexpected pleasures3. Authentic swimming4. Making it countPart II: The good body5. Who are you swimming for?6. Gendering swimming7. Heroic fatness8. Failing bodiesConclusion

Review

'Throsby's own experiences ground the book and provide relatable entry points to her academic work. Throughout Immersion, which addresses all aspects of being a marathon swimmer from the initial becoming one to the politics of the bodies that ratify swims, Throsby seamlessly intersperses journal entries and field notes about her own swimming. It was during her unflinchingly honest self-assessment passages that I felt like I could have been reading my own swimming biography. Her lovely use of imagery and language in theses vignettes sucks the reader in with an anecdotal punch, from which she transitions to a more 30,000-foot view of the sport in general, contextualizing her powerful personal experiences.' Elaine K. Howley, h2open Magazine -- .

Long Description

Immersion is about the extreme sport of marathon swimming. Drawing on extensive (auto)ethnographic data, Immersion explores the embodied and social processes of becoming a marathon swimmer and investigates how social belonging is produced and policed. Using marathon swimming as a lens, this foundation provides the basis for an exploration of what constitutes the 'good' body in contemporary neoliberal society across a range of sites including charitable swimming, fatness, gender and health. The book argues that the self-representations of marathon swimming are at odds with its lived realities, and that this reflects the entrenched and limited discursive resources available for thinking about the sporting body in the wider social and cultural context.The book is aimed primarily at readers at undergraduate level and upwards with an interest in sociology, the sociology of the body, the sociology of sport, gender and the sociology of health and illness. -- .

Review Quote

"Throsby's own experiences ground the book and provide relatable entry points to her academic work. Throughout Immersion, which addresses all aspects of being a marathon swimmer from the initial becoming one to the politics of the bodies that ratify swims, Throsby seamlessly intersperses journal entries and field notes about her own swimming. It was during her unflinchingly honest self-assessment passages that I felt like I could have been reading my own swimming biography. Her lovely use of imagery and language in theses vignettes sucks the reader in with an anecdotal punch, from which she transitions to a more 30,000-foot view of the sport in general, contextualizing her powerful personal experiences." - Elaine K. Howley, h2open Magazine

Details ISBN1526139618 Publisher Manchester University Press Year 2019 ISBN-10 1526139618 ISBN-13 9781526139610 Format Paperback Author Karen Throsby Pages 216 Series New Ethnographies Imprint Manchester University Press Subtitle Marathon Swimming, Embodiment and Identity Place of Publication Manchester Country of Publication United Kingdom DEWEY 797.21 Illustrations Illustrations, black & white Publication Date 2019-03-05 Short Title Immersion Language English UK Release Date 2019-03-05 NZ Release Date 2019-03-05 AU Release Date 2019-03-04 Audience General We've got this

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