Contestation in the social construction of body image and identity
Subtitle: transformational narratives of the lives of Canadian Paralympians.
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Description: Water, pools and competitive swimming provide a unique cultural and physical environment for persons with a disability where the water itself can provide a transformative component in their lives. Water also provides a medium through which individuals subject to marginalization and stigmatization use their own physical ability, unadorned by prosthesis or technological equipment, as a means to profoundly reject "victimhood" and the external limitations of disability to achieve excellence in sport and agency.Five major transformations in the lives of Paralympians are examined from the first identification as a swimmer with a love for the water, through the achievement of the status of international swimmer with a disability after classification, to disengagement and retirement. Central to this process was the shift from disability-based competition to a system based on classification of the swimmer by swimming functionality. The rites of passage/transitions, to new statuses and identities both private and public are ritually structured, officially recorded or certified and involve hierarchical inter-relationships with the power to label and exclude.The cultural framing and meaning of 'normalcy' and disability are examined in the context of bodily practices and identity in high performance swimming, through the examination of the narratives of swimmers with a disability (SWAD), on Canadian national teams, governed by the ever increasingly recognized and changing International Paralympic Committee (IPC). Under the hegemonic "gaze" of the able-bodied and the evaluative "gaze" of sport officials and swimming classifiers the "disciplined" sport body is subjected to myriad powerful authorities. The body is the site of contestation itself as defined by medical and cultural practices. In the world of 'cyborg' bodies and the concept of 'missing' limbs competition takes place with a body unadorned.Training and competition is in the challenged and idealized public spaces of competition---the globalized swimming pool. These sites of change and ritual in sport have a powerful symbolic component of "meaning creation" that has challenged definitions of "normalcy" and the meaning of disability itself, at the same time legislative and attitudinal changes in the wider society have signaled a move towards social inclusion.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-10, Section: A, page: 3701.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

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