Wednesday 21 July 2010

Reflections on BSA Youth 2010

Oh dear, I neglected my blog again. Two weeks ago I attended the British Sociological Society's Youth 2010 conference in Guildford. I presented, for the first time, some findings from my data collection/production, and managed to speak ad lib about it fairly well I think.

There I met Max Mauro from Dublin Institute of Technology, creating a video ethnography of transnational identities of boys in football clubs. He reflected, with surprise and a little dismay or puzzlement, that he and I were the only two speakers working on sport or physical activity issues, which for a conference on youth might be considered strange; the overall theme of the week was 'Transitions, Identities and Cultures' and this had been predominantly interpreted as sub-cultures, music, clubs, although youth un(der)employment was also an issue in some talks. There were plenty of things about accessing identities and cultures which I found useful, anyway. It seems like a nice group to get involved in ... which leads me onto thinking about another issue:

As I search for articles for reading, I find lots of book chapters, reviews, etc. written by PhD students and I wonder whether the way you get into this type of writing is a case of who you know? Being asked to write a chapter in a book by an acquaintance? Aside from the central areas of my PhD, I wouldn't know what to write about, or I wouldn't know anything to write! But I keep thinking about it as something important. Maybe movies about women in sport, being something tying women's equality in sport, and visual cultures/cultural resources, together... Need to find something other than Bend It Like Beckham ...

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