Exploring the society–body–school nexus: theoretical and methodology issues in the study of body pedagogics

“One line of research emphasizes what Shilling (2010) calls body pedagogies, how societal norms are translated into institutions such as schools via policies, messages and practices.”

“…and proximate others offers a means to move beyond ‘the causal determinacy that tends to be associated with Foucault’s approach’ in work on education (Shilling, 2010, p. 165) to one which more closely reflects the domination/resistance dyad (rather than dichotomy) evident in Foucault’s assertion…”

“…such contexts, new forms of normalising practices emerge in many social sites through the exercise of what is now referred to as body pedagogics (Shilling 2005, 2007, 2010), bio pedagogies (Wright 2009; Wright and Harwood 2009), or body pedagogies (Evans and Davies 2004; Evans, Rich, Davies, et…”

“2008 , Shilling 2010 ) dominate this sporting culture and the lives of those within it.”

“In a recent special issue on Body pedagogies in this journal, Shilling ( 2010 ) identifies a theoretical cleavage in the articles on body pedagogies between, on the one hand, a Foucault-inspired interest in the overarching discourses on health, obesity and fitness, and on the other hand, articles that are phenomenolog…”

“As Shilling (2010) notes, a shift of focus from pedagogics to pedagogies directs attention to the ways in which broader social facts, ‘can undergo processes of adaption and metamorphosis as a result of the re-contextualizations they undergo within curriculum policy and classroom organization’ (p.…”

“…become public matters to be discussed and measured against a normative vision of masculine sporting bodies as fit, muscular and/or competent, further supplemented by a culture of surveillance, performance and assessment (Evans, Rich, Davies, & Allwood, 2008; Evans & Rich, 2011; Shilling, 2010).”

“I watch just generally programmes that look interesting about obesity and all that lot (Nathan) The role of the media in fashioning contemporary understandings of the body, weight and obesity, historically, might not be a new phenomenon (see for example Schwartz, 1986 and Stearn, 1987).”

“They are acknowledged as different from sites of schooling in relation to the processes of ‘mediation and selection’ of body pedagogies (Shilling 2010 , 161), and as always individually engaged with and experienced.”

“Email: joacim.andersson@edu.uu.se Sport, Education and Society, 2015 Vol. 20, No. 6, 722 740, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2013.802684 # 2013 Taylor & Francis contexts (e.g. Calhoun & Sennett, 2007; Crossley, 2006; Shilling, 2005; Wacquant, 2004).”

“While beauty cultures conflate health with a narrowly defined gendered body ideal which is not about health as much as appearance (Chare, 2010 ), consumer cultures are saturated with images of thin, fit and youthful bodies (Shilling, 2010 ).”

“This valuation has a corporeal element, inclusive of physical capabilities and ‘ability’ in PE (Shilling, 2010).”

“…and cultural context it depends on, is reproduced in its efficacy of initial expected outcomes, the extent to which it continues to transmit the important values connected to it, is reproduced on the basis of novel purposes or alternatively disappear as a technique all together (Shilling, 2010).”

“Shilling ( 2010 ) suggests that in investigating the relevance of education to the ways ideas about bodies have been taken up in schools in the west there are two key issues to be addressed.”

“…‘how discursive principles determine and shape reflexivity and experience and (even more so) how these shape and are shaped by corporeal properties’ (Shilling, 2010, p. 23), or articulating how or why relations within and between official, local and popular pedagogical practices generate…”

“bodily norms are recontextualised as ‘body pedagogies’ in schools (Evans et al. 2008; Shilling 2010).”

“…35 years old, PT, emphasis added) These latter quotes also illustrate the fact that the body can readily become an object of social, not only of physical, control (Molnar & Kelly, 2013; Shilling, 2010; Smith Maguire, 2008), especially in the case of women (Tiggemann, 2015; Zach & Adiv, 2016).”

“We have only just begun to understand the complexities of the operations of various capitals and body pedagogies to produce advantage and privilege in/through independent schooling (Shilling 2007, 2010).”

“While revealing both that health education initiatives in schools could be generative of deeply ‘troubled bodies’, producing a few (but significant) individuals who seemed to think nothing of themselves and were plagued by its practices and prescriptions, as well as some ‘emboldened ones’ who profited from its expecta…”

“As Shilling (2010) has analysed, much of the work on and with bodies in schools has been driven by concerns relating to obesity, health, and fitness, and the upstream embodiment of national economic and sporting competitiveness.”

“…of feminized subjectivities, the maintained body becomes, in a pedagogic sense, an important link between wider (neoliberal) body pedagogics (Shilling, 2010) that are underpinned by an individualized and responsibilized citizenry who unquestioningly take care of the self (Giroux, 2004;…”

“…of the body’ (Mauss, 1979) or ‘habits’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2002) are acquired through a process of apprenticeship in culturally specific contexts (Shilling, 2010) as a form of body pedagogics (Allen-Collinson et al., 2018; Shilling, 2017), and are essential to the production of the…”

“Body awareness is usually embedded in a movement (action), and reflection on how the movement (action) is done occurs only in case of difficulties, when understanding of the movement needs to be reworded or reinterpreted (Schön, 1983).”

“Sociologists of the body and physical education conceptualise such processes as ‘body pedagogies’ (Evans et al., 2008), which occur through learning in both formal spaces such as schooling, but also beyond as part of the more ‘general forms of body pedagogics’ (Shilling, 2010: 151).”

“The appraisal of the existing culture of performance (Evans, 2013; Shilling, 2010) contributes to the shaping of knowledge, norms, experiences and constructions of abilities, as well as the discursive practices surrounding students’ and teachers’ bodies.”

“…(see for example Coupland & Gwyn, 2003; Dworkin & Wachs, 2009; Featherstone, 2010; Hargreaves & Vertinsky, 2007; Howson, 2004; Markula, 2001; Shilling, 2003, 2010; Thorpe, 2014) and the body in the field of HMS in particular (see for example Azzarito, 2009, 2010; Azzarito & Solmon, 2006,…”

“Other studies have looked at how pedagogical discourses/practices may risk disciplining the body into ideas of perfection (Evans, Davies, and Rich 2010; Evans, Rich, and Holroyd 2004; Shilling 2010).”

“This article will approach questions of pedagogy in kinesiology in terms of embodiment using a body pedagogics perspective taken from Shilling (2005, 2007, 2008, 2010) and Shilling and Mellor (2010), which we connect to the holistic perspectives of body pedagogy, by which we mean to emphasize the…”

“…informing such analyses, however, they have generally explored the reproduction of social and cultural forms, rather than analysing those processes of change that concerned Dewey when experience resulted in crises and habits became obstructed (Dewey, 1922/2002, p. 53; Shilling, 2008, pp. 16–24).”

“Por ello, el cuerpo se puede considerar una construcción social (Shilling, 2010, 2012), capaz de impregnar a la persona de manera inconsciente y condicionar todas sus manifestaciones sociales.”

“Within a neoliberal era, the emphasis on self-governance and corporeal control promotes the shaping of lifestyle practices as though individuals can prevent and manage illness, disease, and poor quality of life (Shilling, 2010).”

“From a body pedagogics perspective (Shilling and Mellor 2007; Shilling 2008, 2010; Mellor and Shilling 2010), we suggest that the sporting body is not simply a location for values and norms and a commodity under the influence of a coach or culture, but is also a source and means for creative habits…”

“According to the cultural story, in fl uencing urban-centred institutions like PE in schools and other organised sports settings, children should learn physical activities for which they have use in order to be able to live healthy lives (Shilling, 2010).”

“…to learn via the body: the learning about and training of the body in an inward looking sense proposed by Shusterman (2008) and learning through the body theorised by Shilling (2007, 2010), which permits the acquisition of knowledge about the broader world through an enactment of bodily practices.”

“(Helen) Helen’s educational philosophy involved increased physical activity and competence, she defined ‘healthiness’ by what bodies (can) do, which according to Shilling (2010) links to how bodies are valued, and consequently their credibility and status within the school.”

“Such scrutiny, of course, must also acknowledge broader ‘body pedagogics’ such as the valorisation of the ‘thin ideal’ in consumer culture (Shilling, 2010)*themes that will be taken up in my ethnographic analysis.”

“Although the concerns regarding childhood obesity and the connection to national ambitions with sporting competitiveness are not new, Shilling (2010) suggests that these concerns ‘have reached unprecedented levels and have become central issues in schools across much of Europe, North America and…”

“…capacities of embodied subjects actually interact with these structures and either reproduce or transform them and therefore establish the conditions in which the next generation of bodies develops, senses, and behaves (Mellor and Shilling, 2010; Shilling and Mellor, 2007; Shilling, 2010).”

“…of embodying action within policy work, therefore, is the role of an individual’s body pedagogics in making sense of how contextual rules and internal rules regulate how messages and knowledge of policy are ‘filtered, mediated and re-contextualised’ (Shilling, 2010, p. 132) into practice.”

“In highlighting the significance of the body in multifaceted relationships between societies and formal education, Chris Shilling (2010) distinguishes body pedagogics prevalent within society, such as ideals about the body evident in health promotion, workplaces and consumer culture, from body pedagogies apparent in c…”

“It confirms how, within the neoliberal system, the body acts as a tool of social control [38,67].”

“Most of the bloggers maneuver between these two contradictory discourses: One encourages the girl to accept herself as she is, the other to “work on the body,” join the ranks, and take care of her body as an object consistent with the ideal of beauty (Aapola et al., 2005; Shilling, 2010).”

“…amongst others – routinely make impassioned calls for embodied research, for interrogating how articulations and operations of power are enacted in and through the body, and for considering ‘ body pedagogics ’ (Shilling 2010) that examine how embodied subjects experience the world around them.”

“In part this may be related to sociocultural factors, such as the prevailing ethics of working on the self in which a ‘good’ body is deemed to be the reflection of a ‘good’ person (Shilling 2010): Our body is judged as our individual production.”

“…Calhoun and Sennett 2007; Shilling 2005; Joas 1996; Evans et al. 2008), there is a purported risk of positioning the body as a transcendent force and neglecting other important phenomena, such as meaning-making, interaction and reflective thought (Crossley 2007; Pink 2011; Shilling 2010, 2017).”

“Such views of moving and knowing are here considered in an educational context and further developed within a framework of body pedagogics (e.g. Shilling 2010, 2017, 2018).”

“…there has been increased attention within studies of the body to empirically understand embodied processes of teaching and learning (Georgiou and Ioannou 2019) through research on body pedagogics and body pedagogies (Evans and Davies 2011; Shilling 2007, 2010, 2018; Ivinson 2012; Watkins 2005).”

“…& Society but there is important conceptual work provided by body pedagogies (Evans, Davies, & Rich, 2009; Evans, Rich, Allwood, & Davies, 2008; Shilling, 2010), habitus (Bourdieu, 1972) and physical capital (Bourdieu, 1978; Shilling, 1991, 1992), and in special issues where bodies,…”

“Despite schools having an increasingly important role in supporting children to become more physically active (37), the lack of speci fi c guidelines de fi ning this role may hinder interprofessional collaboration on PAP, as there is no clear sense of responsibility.”

“According to Shilling (1992, 2010) we should not underestimate the importance of the corporeal in our understanding of formal schooling in contemporary times.”

“It is commonly linked to able bodied sporting success or behaviourism (Brighton, 2016; Shilling, 2004, 2010).”

“In light of this increased interest in intervening in children’s physical activities within the school environment (Massey, Neilson, and Salas 2020; Shilling 2010), it becomes important to enhance our understanding of children’s interests in relation to movement in school (Wehner et al. 2021).”

“Immersion in the sports community involves internalizing a normative horizon of excellence and performance characteristic of performative culture, which views the body as a disciplined project (Shilling, 2010).”

“Drawing on the philosophical traditions of phenomenology and pragmatism, and taken up by scholars in various fields, such as sociology (Shilling, 2010) and health care (Kelly et al., 2019), body pedagogics emphasize the embodied nature of teaching and learning in everyday situations.”

“…“body techniques” in several studies, but especially in pedagogical studies, such as those by Rodrigues (2000); Alkemeyer (2002); Daolio (2005); Lüdorf (2009); Shilling (2010); Andersson et al. (2013); Cavalcante and Potiguar Junior (2019); Santos (2020) and Scaglia et al. (2020), among others.”

“…aforementioned discussions on the bodily practices of Fakirs add credence to the value of “an analysis of body pedagogics that recognizes how the distinctive properties of embodied subjects and the social milieu in which and on which they (inter)act shape each other over time” (Shilling 2010: 156).”