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Kerry R. McGannon, Sydney Graper and Jenny McMahon
To explore the digital landscape, narrowing to Instagram, as a cultural space to advance sociological understanding of elite athlete mother identity meanings and lives.
Abstract
Purpose
To explore the digital landscape, narrowing to Instagram, as a cultural space to advance sociological understanding of elite athlete mother identity meanings and lives.
Design/methodology/approach
Relativist narrative inquiry is outlined as a theoretical and methodological approach to expand sociological research on motherhood and sport, by exploring big and small stories on social media sites. Elite athlete mother's mediated self-portrayals on Instagram are theorized as identity stories (re)created and made possible, by cultural narrative resources.
Findings
An example of big and small story research is outlined from a larger case study of elite athlete figure skating mothers' self-portrayals on Instagram as they negotiated motherhood, and a professional sport career. Thematic narrative analysis findings include a big story plot in the post-partum period: negotiating intensive mothering and career. Two small stories that fed into fluid meanings of this big story plot are also presented: holding the baby close and working mum/new mumtrepeneur. These findings show nuanced contradictions of contemporary motherhood meanings, within sportswomen's personal and public digital stories.
Originality/value
A big and small story approach grounded in narrative inquiry holds value to learn more about the contemporary digital landscape's shaping of the meanings of sportswomen's identities and lives. Future research is recommended using this approach on additional social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) to expand intertextual understanding of elite athlete mother identities in socio-cultural context, tapping into these underexplored naturalistic data resources.
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The intent of this chapter is to examine the historical and present-day intersections of injury, impairment, pain and risk-taking in the Paralympic Movement. While much has been…
Abstract
Purpose
The intent of this chapter is to examine the historical and present-day intersections of injury, impairment, pain and risk-taking in the Paralympic Movement. While much has been written about injuries that end an athlete’s career, far less consideration has been given to how an injury might launch a sports career. In this chapter, I explore the experiences of athletes for whom injury and sports participation are fundamentally entwined.
Approach
To accomplish this, I draw on sociological literature on sport and injury, psychological literature on identities and sport retirement and feminist disability theories. The discussion is further enriched by interviews with Paralympic athletes and informed by own experience as a researcher, guide and volunteer in the Paralympic Movement.
Findings
This work illustrates how systems of representation intersect to (re)produce identities. This includes demonstrating how some individuals use sport as a means of claiming an athletic identity while distancing themselves from devalued disabled identities and the subsequent impact this can have on their psycho-social well-being.
Implications
This chapter demonstrates how sociologists of sports can engage with critical disability scholarship to deepen understandings of how and why individuals with impairments enter into sport and their experiences therein.
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This chapter describes the disordered eating in sport problem and provides a critical overview of research in the area. It offers specific insights into how cultural practices in…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter describes the disordered eating in sport problem and provides a critical overview of research in the area. It offers specific insights into how cultural practices in elite sport may be implicated.
Approach
In contrast to dominant medical perspectives, disordered eating in sport is discussed as a product of high-performance cultural contexts. The ways that practice commonplace in elite sport might contribute to disordered eating onset and maintenance are described. In turn, I also consider the experiential struggles of athletes with eating disorders and how this relates to dominant discourses in elite sport.
Findings
Elite sport culture, with its emphasis on surveillance, sacrifice, and success, reinforces disordered eating practices. Much of what is conventionally considered disordered eating, can be normalized when situated in the context of high-performance sport. Nevertheless, when functional disordered eating slides into mental illness, the mental toughness ethos works to silence and stigmatize athletes.
Research Implications
Research must broaden its focus to explore how social practices in elite sport normalize disordered eating and how prevention approaches can become more culturally informed and less individually driven.
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Hannah Thompson-Radford and Michael Skey
This chapter shows how professional athlete-motherhood is presented by the mainstream media and challenged by self-representation on social media, using arguably one of the most…
Abstract
This chapter shows how professional athlete-motherhood is presented by the mainstream media and challenged by self-representation on social media, using arguably one of the most successful professional athletes of all time, Serena Williams, as a case study. We suggest that Williams' use of social media has allowed motherhood to be a part of her entrepreneurial self, accessing sponsorship and endorsements while also normalising struggles and using her platform to raise awareness of what it means to be a ‘working mother’. In comparison, mainstream media presents athlete-motherhood as either the athlete-mother as a transgressor or as the ‘super mum’, a theme where the athlete manages the demands of motherhood with sport and does it all ‘perfectly’. While mainstream media may present these two tensions and speculate on what women's bodies should be able to do, Williams reminds us through her social media that her professional status does not disappear, she is not ‘coming back’ from becoming a mother, it's a part of who she is, thus, showing that motherhood can be part of being a professional athlete and can be celebrated via online self-presentations. We conclude with a call for future work to explore the understanding of the pregnant athlete beyond a case study of a global celebrity athlete to look at the experiences of athlete-mother at other levels of sport and society.
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This paper highlights the case of David Cooper, a vulnerable adult who was financially abused. It discusses the indicators that may have alerted individuals and services to the…
Abstract
This paper highlights the case of David Cooper, a vulnerable adult who was financially abused. It discusses the indicators that may have alerted individuals and services to the risk of financial abuse, and the measures taken by those aware of David's potential vulnerability.
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Maarit Aakko and Kirsi Niinimäki
Extending the active lifetimes of garments by producing better quality is a widely discussed strategy for reducing environmental impacts of the garment industry. While quality is…
Abstract
Purpose
Extending the active lifetimes of garments by producing better quality is a widely discussed strategy for reducing environmental impacts of the garment industry. While quality is an important aspect of clothing, the concept of quality is ambiguous, and, moreover, consumers may perceive quality in individual ways. Therefore, it is important to deepen the general understanding regarding the quality of clothing.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents an integrated literature review of the recent discussion of perceived quality of clothing and of the links between quality and clothing lifetimes; 47 selected articles and other literature obtained primarily through fashion/clothing/apparel journals were included in this review.
Findings
The main ideas from the articles are thematized into the following sections: the process of assessment, levels involved in assessment, multidimensional cues of assessment, and quality and clothing use times. The paper highlights that perceiving quality is a process guided by both expectations and experience, and assembles the various aspects into a conceptual map that depicts the connections between the conceptual levels involved in assessing quality. It also illustrates connections between quality and clothing use times.
Research limitations/implications
This paper focused on perceived quality on a conceptual level. Further studies could examine and establish deeper links between quality, sustainability and garment lifespans.
Originality/value
The study draws together studies on perceived quality, presenting the foundational literature and key concepts of quality of clothing. It summarizes them in a conceptual map that may help visualize various aspects affecting the assessment of quality and deepen the general understanding of the quality of garments.
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The Third International Conference on CD‐ROM sponsored by Microsoft Corporation was held in Seattle March 1–3, 1988.
An information retrieval thesaurus is a familiar object: it consists of a set of more or less controlled terms functioning as conceptual labels for sets of natural language entry…
Abstract
An information retrieval thesaurus is a familiar object: it consists of a set of more or less controlled terms functioning as conceptual labels for sets of natural language entry words, with some indication of relations between terms in the form of references from terms to other BT's, NT's or RT's. Such an indexing language differs from a set of natural language keywords in involving vocabulary normalization; from a list of subject headings in being designed for post‐co‐ordination; and from a classification in having a limited structure.