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Social Class, Femininity And School Sport, Jan Wright, Gabrielle O'Flynn

Jan Wright

This paper examines the relationship between the discursive and material practices associated with school sport and physical education and the formation of particular classed and gendered subjectivities; and how these, in turn, impact on young women’s potential life chances. In so doing, the paper will attempt to go beyond an understanding of ‘subjectivity’ as formed in relation to cultural and institutional discourses, to engage with the notion of ability or ‘embodied capacity’ as a form of physical capital (Shilling 1993) which has particular salience in a consumerist ‘performance’ motivated market economy and which is differentially made available in schools. This …