TownsendHuntleyCushionFitzgerald IRSS2018 accepted.pdf (302.25 kB)
'It’s not about disability, I want to win as many medals as possible': The social construction of disability in high-performance coaching
journal contribution
posted on 2018-10-19, 11:13 authored by Robert C. Townsend, Tabo Huntley, Christopher CushionChristopher Cushion, Hayley F. FitzgeraldThis article draws on the theoretical concepts of Pierre Bourdieu to provide a critical analysis of the social construction of disability in high-performance sport coaching. Data were generated using a qualitative cross-case comparative methodology, comprising 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in high-performance disability sport, and interviews with coaches and athletes from a cross-section of Paralympic sports. We discuss how in both cases ‘disability’ was assimilated into the ‘performance logic’ of the sporting field as a means of maximising symbolic capital. Furthermore, coaches were socialised into a prevailing legitimate culture in elite disability sport that was reflective of ableist, performance-focused and normative ideologies about disability. In this article we unpack the assumptions that underpin coaching in disability sport, and by extension use sport as a lens to problematise the construction of disability in specific social formations across coaching cultures. In so doing, we raise critical questions about the interrelation of disability and sport.
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
International Review for the Sociology of SportVolume
55Issue
3Pages
344-360Citation
TOWNSEND, R.C. ... et al, 2018. 'It’s not about disability, I want to win as many medals as possible': The social construction of disability in high-performance coaching. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 55(3), pp. 344-360.Publisher
SAGE Publications © The AuthorsVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2018-08-08Publication date
2018-09-09Notes
This paper was published in the journal International Review for the Sociology of Sport and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690218797526.ISSN
1012-6902eISSN
1461-7218Publisher version
Language
- en