The Lit Review So Far

Entry 5

2/18/2011

Today is a good day. I had cake for breakfast. That being said, I woke up earlier than I had to in order to get something down in my literature review. I went to a part of the library I have never studied in before and I wrote for one hour. Here is what I’ve got so far:

Literature Review/Background

Theoretical Concepts

Gender is a part of everyone’s lived experience, and no matter what you consider your gender to be, it is something you face every day. In the past 100 years academia has come up with many ways to explain gender, which includes masculinity. Though theories have changed on how masculinity is created and experienced, many scholars would now agree that masculinity is created through daily social interaction. (Connell) [Throw in the definition of masculinity ideology up here somewhere].

Throughout the history of organized sport, men have been the main participants (citation). Many have argued that sport is the battleground upon which masculinity is created (Power at Play citation). In our culture, contact sports have been often idealized as the manliest sports (citation). This idea that masculinity is best created and portrayed in contact sports lends itself to the idea of hegemonic masculinity. [Define hegemonic masculinity and cite]. Hegemonic masculinity has been portrayed in sports by [give examples of hegemonic masculinity in contact sports (try mostly for football and rugby) and cite]. Why rugby.

A large part of the social interaction of adolescence is through sport. Studies show that [statistics of adolescents playing sports]. Throughout the (sometimes) daily interaction of sports for adolescent males, boys are learning just what it means to be boys. These interactions consist of boys with their teammates, boys with their families, boys with the spectators of sport, and boys with their coaches (citation).

Coaches have a lot of influence over their adolescent players (citation). Coaches are often the main teachers of their players and they have a lot of control over the daily interactions of their players (citation). [Explain how]. According to McCallister, Blinde, and Weiss (2000), coaches also have certain values that they deem to be important which they try to teach to their players. [Perhaps some of the conclusions from the study].

If coaches have such influence in the lives of their adolescent players, and they control much of the daily interactions between players, it stands to reason that they have much control over the creation of their players’ masculinity ideologies. What are the values that rugby coaches teach their players? How do those values affect the masculinity ideologies of said rugby players.

Context

· Explain how pervasive rugby is in South African culture, in East London. History will explain hegemonic masculinity in South Africa.

· Explain the societal ideas that sports teaches children how to be good adults, like in Forever Strong, Remember the Titans, etc. I am studying this to see if this is true, false, or a combination of both. Perhaps this research will help us to reinforce good things and change bad things.

So I think this is a good start. For the theoretical background I have used an argument chain that my mentor and I came up with, and I think what I have flows well. One of the problems I’ve encountered is that I obviously don’t have all of the sources I need to back up all of my claims. I think I already have some stuff in mind that I want to use, so that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I guess that the problem is that I feel like this is a dishonest way to do ‘scientific’ research. I put scientific in quotes because by using this word I mean the positivist sense of science. There is a prescribed method, and by using that method we can come to all truth if we eliminate all bias. However, what I’ve done is intermix scholarly ideas with my own assumptions, assuming that I can find sources to back up my assumptions, which I truly believe I can do. What does that say about science? Are we just reaffirming our own biases? I think I am. I don’t know that I necessarily think that is wrong though. Critical theory tells us that it’s okay to have biases, as long as we admit to them. Feyerabrand says that pretty much anything goes when we are searching for truths. I kind of like that. I guess I can’t speak for the natural sciences on this one, but I can see some truth in Feyerabrand’s statement in the social sciences. Perhaps we can find truth through statistics and postivist methods. Sounds good to me, I’ll buy that. But who’s to say that I can’t find truth from the Spirit, or from a séance, or from the Socratic method, or from a dance? What if I try to lick the sky? I could find truth from that. What if I use poetry to determine social truth? Can poetry be my social science method? I think so.

Back to my lit review, I went over it with a peer, and mainly he reinforced that I’ve done well with what I’ve got, but he also gave me some good ideas about the organization of my paper. He gave me the idea to separate my literature review into two parts: the theoretical background and the context for the space that I’m in. I think this is a good, because it will keep me organized and focused, but I’m a little confused, I guess. If I do it this way, would I have to funnel down to my research question twice? However, I don’t think fully integrating the two ideas would be good either.

Another idea he gave me was to legitimize more fully why sports is an appropriate lens to study masculinity. I’ve already got some of that, but I think it would be good to explore it some more.