Refereed scientific book or report (C1)
The Urban Geography of Boxing – Race, Class, and Gender in the Ring
Subtitle: Race, Class, and Gender in the Ring
List of Authors: Heiskanen Benita
Publication year: 2012
Book title *: Routledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society
Title of series: Routledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society
ISBN: 978-0-415-50226-9
eISBN: 978-0-203-11928-0
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/GV1136.8H452012
URL: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415502269/
This book is an interdisciplinary cultural examination of twenty-first century boxing as a professional sport, a bodily labor, a lucrative business, a popular entertainment, and an instrument of ideology. Based on ethnohraphic fieldwork and interviews conducted with Latino boxers, women boxers, and boxing insiders in Texas, it discusses boxing from the vantage point of the sundry players, who are involved with it: the labor force, promoters, handlers, ringside officials, medical professionals, media, and the audiences. The various parties have multiple stakes in the sport. For some, boxing is about physical empowerment; others are in it for the money; some deploy it for ideological purposes; yet others use it to claim their 15-minutes of fame, and frequently the various interests overlap.