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Towards a critical geography of physical activity: Emotions and the gendered boundary-making of an everyday exercise environment

Coen, Stephanie E.; Davidson, Joyce; Rosenberg, Mark W

Authors

Joyce Davidson

Mark W Rosenberg



Abstract

The information, practices and views in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). © 2019 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) In this paper, we put forward a proposal for a critical geography of physical activity that attunes to experience while centring on the socio-spatial processes and power structures enabling and constraining physical activity participation. Drawing on our research that explored women's and men's emotional geographies of an everyday exercise environment – the gym – in a Canadian city, we show how this approach can identify otherwise invisible environmental influences on physical activity participation. Our thematic analysis reveals that the gym environment is generative of three place-based emotive processes of dislocation, evaluation, and sexualisation that collectively configure an unevenly gendered emotional architecture of place. Through this interstitial structure, the boundaries of localised hierarchies of masculinities and femininities become felt in ways that create tensions and anxieties, which in turn reinforce gendered boundaries on physical activity participation. Two additional themes reveal how gendered motivation and individual factors mediate negative emotional experiences. Our findings indicate that emotional geographies are one way in which gender disparities in physical activity are naturalised at the scale of the everyday exercise environment. Interventions for gender equity in physical activity would benefit from being empathetically attuned to the subtleties of place-based experiences. More widely, bringing emotions into geographies of physical activity sheds light on the larger question of the role of place in (re)producing gendered health inequities, with implications for geographical research on health and social justice. Future critical geographical inquiry is necessary to ensure that public health interventions are grounded in the experiential realities of practising physical activity in particular places.

Citation

Coen, S. E., Davidson, J., & Rosenberg, M. W. (2020). Towards a critical geography of physical activity: Emotions and the gendered boundary-making of an everyday exercise environment. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 45(2), 313-330. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12347

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 12, 2019
Online Publication Date Sep 18, 2019
Publication Date 2020-06
Deposit Date Sep 19, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
Print ISSN 0020-2754
Electronic ISSN 1475-5661
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 45
Issue 2
Pages 313-330
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12347
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2636428
Publisher URL https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/tran.12347
Additional Information This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Coen, S. E., Davidson, J. and Rosenberg, M. W. (2019), Towards a critical geography of physical activity: Emotions and the gendered boundary‐making of an everyday exercise environment. Trans Inst Br Geogr. Accepted Author Manuscript, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12347. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions

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