This chapter explores boys’ embodied performances of gender in school Physical Education (PE). Using a participatory visual research approach, involving video recordings of boys participating in PE, the boys’ representations and interpretations of the visual data are explored during both focus groups and individual interviews. In order to interpret the data I draw on Foucault’s work on power and disciplinary technologies in which he highlights the body as a site of disciplinary, normalising practices. The boys’ visual representations and interpretations illuminate how this disciplinary mechanism is responsible for (re)producing meanings around the normal versus the abnormal masculine body with significant impact on boys’ gendered and bodily experiences in PE. The findings in particular highlight how the disciplinary techniques used in this PE setting are aimed at producing suitably docile and gendered bodies which above all are fit, healthy and sporty masculine bodies. In this sense, PE can be seen as a disciplinary machinery which influences how boys inhabit and experience their bodies in different ways which may have long term consequences for how boys perceive their bodies and see themselves as embodied physically educated beings.
Ej belagd 20151216