Bullying in male physical education: a figurational sociological analysis

Abstract

Dunning and Sheard's seminal work, Barbarians, Gentleman and Players, illustrates the importance of adopting a sociological approach to understanding the development of modern sport. Their specific analysis of the role of football in public schools and peer and pupil-master relations offered an important perspective on changing relations between these social groups. Since then, research on physical education (PE) from a figurational viewpoint has focused more on teachers' perspectives and experiences, with fewer articles concerning pupils' thoughts. In this article, we revisit power relations within male PE by drawing upon data from a recent ethnographic study in the North East of England. We locate contemporary perspectives and experiences of bullying along long-term shifts in people's attitudes towards violence and conflict resolution. In particular, we consider how the social processes involved in bullying illustrate the nuanced relationships and behaviours young people must navigate and negotiate within increasingly complex contemporary societies. In competitive single-sex PE environments, we demonstrate how young males are required to exhibit heightened levels of control over their emotional and behavioural expression.

“I Gave Up Football and I Had No Intention of Ever Going Back”: Retrospective Experiences of Victims of Bullying in Youth Sport

“…), rather than active strategies (asking for help or confronting the aggressor). The fact of not asking for help from their environment (family, teammates, and/or sport staff) can be explained because historically the sport setting identifies the action of asking for help as a sign of weakness on the athlete’s part ( Stirling et al, 2011 ) and of shame ( Mierzwinski and Velija, 2020 ), encouraging the athlete to mask the situation ( Newman et al, 2021 ). The perception of fear of retaliation by the aggressor was also present among the victims and as an explanation for the passive action of the teammates ( Flores et al, 2020 ; Nery et al, 2020 ).…”

Football Fitness - a figurational study of a new type of leisure football as a meaningful activity for men

“…As such, when participating in FF they do not just have a mental breather, as stressed above – they also have a masculine breather, interacting in joking relations (Nielsen et al, 2014). Recent sports sociological research departing the Eliasian tradition points out that social bonding and interaction in sport where a competitive element is present often involve and uphold a certain degree of banter (Mierzwinski and Velija, 2020). This is also the case for the FF players and a key part of their masculine breather.…”

A figurational approach to understanding school climate and peer harassment: Possibilities from Norbert Elias’s work

“…They also note that, 'growing levels of repugnance towards physical aggression offer one explanation for why there is now greater variation in the types of bullying, which now tends to be more verbal or indirect through forms of social exclusion and gossiping ' (2019, p. 218). In a later publication, Mierzwinski and Velija (2020) offer a methodological consideration of how detachment and involvement are crucial to establishing figurational understandings of violence and bullying behaviours in schools. The authors note how researchers ought to be both caught up in the interdependent lives of schoolchildren, while remaining sufficiently detached to avoid their own involvement being interpreted by participants as approval (or chastisement) of their behaviour.…”

“…Complimenting symbolic interaction's focus on how individual schoolchildren manage their identities in micro school contexts, I suggest that Elias's work adds a broader perspective of how emotions such as shame and repugnance, or behaviours of self-restraint, come into effect via long-term structural processes. Taking a cue from Mierzwinski and Velija's (2020) work, more empirical evidence needs to be generated to further develop realitycongruent knowledge from the figurational framework. I propose that greater emphasis be placed on creating school climates of interdependency that involve the entire community to work through these changing attitudes and behaviours towards social issues, while recognising that these are continually evolving figurational processes, rather than permanent states or statuses of 'positive' or 'negative' climates to be achieved.…”