Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labour among Professional Boxers by Wacquant - Article Example

CRITIQUES OF RESEACH: WACQUANT L (1995) PUGS AT WORK BODILY CAPITAL AND BODILY LABOUR AMONG PROFESSIONAL BOXERS (Author’s name) (Institutional Affiliation) There is always much work on sociology of the body and less of it is dedicated to real practices where the structures of social life is embodies. This article concerns an analysis of America’s professional boxers especially how they are involved in using themselves as source of capital. This article entails interviews with boxers together with their managers. It also analyses the boxing publications available. Wacquant is stated as a previous apprentice boxer. Wacquant defines boxing as ‘body centre universe’. The body of the boxer is his work project, instrument and his asset. Accumulated labour is regarded as capital and therefore the boxers possesses themselves and are entrepreneurs when it comes to gaining capital from use of their bodies. The gym is seen as a machine used by the boxers to convert their bodily capital into more valuable capital which later gets to be recognized, get titles and more. The body of the boxer is built from bodily labour together with management (Boddy 2008). The boxers need to understand their bodies to well build them. Inborn limitations exist plus a fixed life expectancy, fighters need to be careful when they decide to invest in their bodies. They need to manage their career well enough, manage investments from boxing, stay shape-full and avoid burn out or injury. The body needs regular attention from its use (Monaghan 2001). Rating and classic measurement can be broken. This kind of inheritance must be considered when developing a strategy and style to denote the difference between boxers and fighters. The body structure is not destiny; its physiological process can be developed and built through sufficient training program in the gym (Sugden 1996). The shape and volume of the body can be changed following particular exercise regimes and diet (Beattie 1996). Boxers can build their muscles using exercises, drills and defined regimes of skipping ropes, calisthenics sparring, shadow boxing, running and punching assortment of bags .Weightlifting is not that much necessary in a boxer life because it impedes agility and resilience. The question is why this lift weightlifting machines are found in gyms if they do not help its users. Do some boxers do weightlifting? How has it affected their body or weight limits? Fighting is always the best training a fighter can get. It helps the body learn how to recover from hits. Wacquant say that body working for most fighters is a pleasure. He has failed to identify those fighters who do not find pleasure in what they do. Acquiring necessary bodily characteristics for fighters is an unnoticeable mental uplift. This is because the fighter has to undergo a long constant and prolonged development. Cognitive and emotional state is developed during the ongoing practical labor, an exercise intelligence from communication with the actual and concrete realities (Monaghan 2001). The opponent’s body can read, since the boxer’s can bear visible traces of their career and also musculature provide the opponent with clues towards the boxer’s weakness also his unhealed cuts. Boxers are taught of pressure point, this is where maximum damages are being placed in the opponent’s body (Myler 2005). Boxers can do impression management by using their bodies to capture the media and public attention. They could either, pad robes to look big or adopt stage costumes or shave their heads, just to get recognized. Does this impression management help, do the audience react differently or cheer more? This has not been fully portrayed in this article because boxers just do not do anything freely they are investing using their body. They could be doing that to show how much they worth compared to their opponents or to give a certain picture of what to expect. Sacrifice is always the key concept in the boxer's professional philosophy (Sugden 1996). Sacrifice anchors the whole moral economy of the boxers’ universe and is the result for continuous punishing routine and body stewardship hence a good secular body attainment. . The boxers are required to abstain from sex, social life and in food. Disciple is necessary to boxers’ life to attain the weight limits therefore they end up having diet struggle. Excessive training with less diet can be painful for a boxer. They are also required to be excessively dehydrated to make the weight limits. This sacrifice has to extend as well to the boxers daily life so the late nights are avoided, families are neglected and total seclusion is maintained (Beattie 1996). Avoiding sex in the life is very difficult, now that it is the centrality of the body. This avoidance causes bodily weakness and moral laxity, their physiology is affected. The huge sacrifice they are involved into causing anxiety to get over the fight to get back to their normal life. Come to think of the life necessity that one is denied can cause great disturbance in life. The question is why they should undergo through all those sacrifices to get money. Wacquant has not defined the problem related to this sacrifice and how families of these boxers tend to be. Everyone needs to enjoy life, so why should the boxers not enjoy. Teamwork is important in a boxer’s life, managers, trainers, family and peers should be involved in boxer’s life as well as support what they are doing. Families need not raise demands but to manage tension and support fully to attain the full bodily capital and value. Boxers have grown with this kind of self denial; abstinence and training can be much harder for a boxer’s life than the actual boxing. It is like self imprisonment(Boddy 2008). This article does not fully explain the advantages and disadvantages of teamwork. Teamwork does not always work for everyone especially where family and peer is involved. Boxing itself is risky and can result to serious injuries. Boxers are refereed to as entrepreneurs the fact that they are risk takers and invest capital and are occupational successful. The irony is that boxers develop their bodies to destroy those of their opponents and the same happening to them. Physical decline is always an acceptable price by the boxer to pay. Its effects can be lessened through care and training. Physical decline helps boxers rationalize their awareness of punishment and risk (Boddy 208). Death can occur during boxing and has to be managed. A range of injuries such as brain damage, bruised internal organs, cuts and fractures are commonly experienced. Common damages are those of hands and are unknown to the public; this is why some boxers deliver full punches to save their hands. Fighting pragmatic prevents the boxer from any constant reflection or awareness on injury because the boxers need not to have any worry of possible damages once the fighting has started. The boxers rate injuries and risk according to the form of capital they intend to get from the fight. There is a myth that says injury only happen to those who are not fully prepared. Social origins of the boxers sometime help them view risk and injury is a pre positive manner (Myler 2005). Some can rationalize on injuries using comparative statistics. Boxers can invest in their body; there a lot of body repair techniques provided ranging from oil for their skins and defensive moves. Cutmans are specialist used to minimize injuries in the rings. Training routines helps cut or avoid physical damages, it also deals with anxiety and dread. Being told that injury is avoidable, what is the case for worse injuries. Wacquant has failed to tell us how careers of boxers are affected when they circum serious injuries. He has also not fully defined how death occurs and how it influence and affected other people’s lives. Boxing is an act that is well understood by its user, it can posses. It said that when you master sport, the sports masters you and it becomes impossible to leave or give up (Young, McTeer & White 1994). This is why most boxers report not wanting to retire. In this article, Wacquant has failed to fully discuss the gender issue, how women and men as boxer experience in the life and how they relate. Mechanism at work has not been well analyzed and lacks concrete. This article contains unpleasant techniques used by boxers to defeat their opponents. Is it ok, if the techniques are publicly known or is it what Wacquant used at his times as a boxer? Techniques are always personified and do not work for every fighter. Lastly, Wacquant finding based on the boxers interviews and their manager is not enough plus also the publications. Whatever the boxers present to their managers or say may not be enough to conclude al this finding. Families and friends of some boxer would have helped a great deal by adding more information to this finding. They may happen to know more about the boxers and what they daily undergo while with them. Failing to do this, Wacquant finding is not fully displayed as it should be, some researches have decided to dig deeper on thing and find out more that Wacquant could not get or see. The fact that Wacquant was a boxer, he contradicted himself saying that boxers never quit, the question is, what happened to him that made him change his career and what is it, which will cause other players not to do so. References: Beattie, G 1996, On the rope: Boxing as a way of life, Indigo publication, London. Boddy, K 2008, Boxing: A cultural history, Routledge: London John, Sugden, P 1996, Boxing & Society: An international analysis, Manchester university press, Manchester. Monaghan, F 2001, Body building, drugs and risks, Routledge, London. Patrick, Myler, 2005, Ring of hate, Mainstream Publishers, United Kingdom Young, K McTeer W & White, P 1994, Male athletes on sport, injury and pain: A journal of sociology of sport, Vol 11, pp 175-194. Read More