Protection, discipline and honor. A boxing gym in the American ghetto Based on a long-term ethnographic and participant-observation study of a club located on the South Side of Chicago, this articles outlines three of the social and moral functions that a boxing gym fullfills in the contemporary black American ghetto. The gym is first a protective shield against the violence and insecurity that pervade the neighborhood, a sanctuary which allows its members to cut themselves off from the street and to escape, if for a limited time, the fates to which the latter consigns those who fall under its influence. The boxing gym is also a school of morality in Durkheim’s sense: a machine for inculcating the spirit of discipline, mutual respect and care of self indispensible to the blossoming of the pugilistic vocation but whose benefits are felt in the most diverse areas of social and family life. Finally, the gym is the vehicle for the deroutinization of everyday life: in it, bodily routines and drilling open up a unique sensory and emotional universe which interweaves adventure, masculine honor, and prestige. The monastic, if not penitential, character of the pugilistic “life programme” makes the individual over into his own arena of challenge and invites him to discover himself, better yet, to produce himself. And the acceptance in a virile fraternity signaled by membership in the gym allows one to tear away from the anonymity of the mass and to attract the admiration and assent of the local society

Protezione, disciplina e onore. Una sala di boxe nel ghetto americano

PAONE, SONIA
2015-01-01

Abstract

Protection, discipline and honor. A boxing gym in the American ghetto Based on a long-term ethnographic and participant-observation study of a club located on the South Side of Chicago, this articles outlines three of the social and moral functions that a boxing gym fullfills in the contemporary black American ghetto. The gym is first a protective shield against the violence and insecurity that pervade the neighborhood, a sanctuary which allows its members to cut themselves off from the street and to escape, if for a limited time, the fates to which the latter consigns those who fall under its influence. The boxing gym is also a school of morality in Durkheim’s sense: a machine for inculcating the spirit of discipline, mutual respect and care of self indispensible to the blossoming of the pugilistic vocation but whose benefits are felt in the most diverse areas of social and family life. Finally, the gym is the vehicle for the deroutinization of everyday life: in it, bodily routines and drilling open up a unique sensory and emotional universe which interweaves adventure, masculine honor, and prestige. The monastic, if not penitential, character of the pugilistic “life programme” makes the individual over into his own arena of challenge and invites him to discover himself, better yet, to produce himself. And the acceptance in a virile fraternity signaled by membership in the gym allows one to tear away from the anonymity of the mass and to attract the admiration and assent of the local society
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11568/666681
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