A brief reflection on homosociality in boxing and MMA

As some of you might have noticed this is not just a review of Deborah Jump’s excellent The Criminology of Boxing, Violence and Desistance but often a restatement of some of my own work. Indeed an attempt to clarify in my own mind some of these issues. Please join in on here or twitter. This little inter-round ‘ring girl’(?) does not relate to any particular chapter but to the theme of homosociality which I detect throughout but goes unnamed as far as I can determine currently.

I offer no definition of my own other than to say I disliked the all male grammar school I attended, much of the all male Scouts and rugby. I see I only used the term once in my PhD, in a discussion on the extent of homophobia amongst the boys and young men.

A quick look on Google Scholar for ‘homosociality boxing’ through up a number of items and I was intrigued by the following.

Bird’s (1996) WELCOME TO THE MEN'S CLUB Homosociality and the Maintenance of Hegemonic Masculinity is clearly a starting point.  She notes:

The men who described themselves as less competitive (or noncompetitive), on the other hand, explained that they considered the intensity with which other men engaged in competitions (especially sports) as relatively unimportant for them- selves. At the same time, however, these men recognized the expectations of masculinity to be competitive. One man explained, Guys don't know what it means not to be competitive. Even those men who tell you that competition is silly know they have to [compete]. It's like otherwise you're gonna get walked.

Silly me, I’m doing it now.

I very much like Ungar’s recent PhD on The Boxing Discourse in Late Georgian England, 1780-1820: A Study in Civic Humanism, Gender, Class and Race which makes extensive use of the term. His understanding of the hegemonic seems to accord with my own. For instance, ‘Politeness was “French” and foreign; boxing was “English” (p74). 

Stenius (2015) also addresses homosociality in The Body in Pain and Pleasure An Ethnography of Mixed Martial Arts.

Doubly interesting is Jennifer Ruth Lewis-Vidler PhD on Traveller, Boxer and Fascist: The Identities of Joe Beckett which deploys the concept liberally and has material on Tyson Fury.