STORRE Collection: Electronic copies of Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport book reviews.
http://hdl.handle.net/1893/24086
Electronic copies of Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport book reviews.2024-03-29T10:42:10ZBook review: Transforming gender, sex, and place: gender variant geographies
http://hdl.handle.net/1893/34207
Title: Book review: Transforming gender, sex, and place: gender variant geographies
Author(s): Todd, James D
Abstract: First paragraph: In this volume Lynda Johnston embarks on an ambitious project: to understand the relations between trans and gender variant people and the places and spaces they live through, by exploring their ‘identities, subjectivities, bodily senses, moods, sensations and feeling of being in and/or out of place’ (p. x). Sharing this goal with Johnston, and encouraged by her dedication to exploring both alienation and belonging in everyday life, I drank deeply from the connections she weaves through the lived experiences of her participants. Their stories are taken from Johnston’s existing work exploring the spatialities of gendered relations, alongside a set of 22 interviews with adult trans, gender variant and intersex people predominantly of Aotearoa New Zealand.2020-01-01T00:00:00ZBook review: Reflexivity: The Essential Guide, Tim May and Beth Perry, Sage Publications, London (2017), ix and 234 pp., £26.99 paperback, ISBN: 978-14462-9517-5
http://hdl.handle.net/1893/34206
Title: Book review: Reflexivity: The Essential Guide, Tim May and Beth Perry, Sage Publications, London (2017), ix and 234 pp., £26.99 paperback, ISBN: 978-14462-9517-5
Author(s): Todd, James D
Abstract: First paragraph: In Reflexivity: The Essential Guide, Tim May and Beth Perry seek to present reflexive processes in their rich complexity by moving beyond suggestions for methodological interventions. Throughout, a multidisciplinary approach is attempted, charting the rise of reflexivity and its subsequent methodological entanglements through the decades it has been theorised and applied in social scientific research. By averting the gaze of potential readers who seek the fallacy of a ‘quick fix’ – an injection of uncomplicated, well-considered debate imploring them to undertake research reflexively – May and Perry instead push readers to consider the origins of self-knowledge. Consequently, they hope to encourage readers' ‘active intermediation as the embodiment of a set of reflexive practices’ (p.7) from individual acts driving ‘self transformation’ (p.3) to actions placing oneself in relation to others. Building upon their philosophically-minded volume exploring University-reflexivity relations (May and Perry, 2011), the nature of reflexivity as an iterative and spatially-extensive undertaking is emphasised, aligning their arguments with both established and emergent social scientific work highlighting the necessary comprehensiveness of reflexivity (see England, 1994; Wainwright et al., 2018). Numerous segments are contextualised politically and economically, with a diversity of voices from the philosophical and social scientific canon influencing debates, whilst informative boxes punctuate the dense prose to offer clarity through a multiplicity of readings and more tangible contextualisations.2018-08-01T00:00:00ZBook review: What’s the Use? On the Uses of Use
http://hdl.handle.net/1893/34205
Title: Book review: What’s the Use? On the Uses of Use
Author(s): Todd, James D
Abstract: First paragraph: I read What’s the Use? while tired. On lockdown due to COVID-19, my anxiety was dominant and my dismay at academia’s response to the pandemic sat at the forefront of my thoughts. Sara Ahmed’s exploration of how bodies (both human and otherwise) are used, become used up, and fall in and out of use proved both a source of comfort and a device for maintaining resilience and for pushing onwards through difficulty. Indeed, as with many of Ahmed’s writings, What’s the Use?, with feminist solidarity radiating from its pages filled with her characteristic rhetorical and language-repurposing writing, will allow readers to question and contest their lived realities and surroundings. Throughout the book, which completes a trilogy of writings employing a similar approach (Ahmed 2010, 2014), Ahmed draws on new archival and historical research and her recent work on academic institutions and queer life to develop intimate ‘biographies of use’ - stories and tracings that coalesce around (and bind) objects, things, bodies, histories, and voices. In doing so, Ahmed leaves another landmark impression on intersectional feminist thinking, praxis, and pedagogy, and develops new modes for examining the co-constitution of spaces, bodies, and social relations that will animate feminist and queer geographical study.2021-01-01T00:00:00ZBook Symposium: Ask Vest Christiansen's Gym Culture, Identity and Performance-Enhancing Drugs
http://hdl.handle.net/1893/33228
Title: Book Symposium: Ask Vest Christiansen's Gym Culture, Identity and Performance-Enhancing Drugs
Author(s): Christiansen, Ask Vest; Henning, April; Lopez Frias, Francisco Javier; Hoberman, John M
Abstract: This is a review and discussion of Ask Vest Christiansen’s book Gym Culture, Identity and Performance-Enhancing Drugs: Tracing a Typology of Steroid Use (2020). As indicated by the title, the book is on gym culture, the pursuit of fit, muscular bodies and the use of drugs as a means to get there. The book builds on the international research literature and in-depth interviews with men who have experience of image and performance enhancing drugs (IPEDs), to explore the fascination with muscles, motivations for using drugs to enhance them, assessments of risk and experience of side effects. The book examines what the altered body does to the men’s identity, self-image and relationships with peers and partners. Taking an evolutionary psychological approach, it also investigates the biological and psychological foundations of the fascination with the muscular body. Moreover, the book considers the political and regulatory frameworks in place to prevent the use of IPEDs and assess those strategies potential to reach their aims.2021-01-01T00:00:00Z