Physical Cultural Studies: Critics Without Claws?

by Hokeun Choi

Over time, Physical Cultural Studies (PCS) has received various critiques pertaining to different areas and elements of PCS scholarship. While one may think that these critiques play a counterproductive role, they are rather a core element that allows PCS as an intellectual project to maintain a dialogic community and keep its members credible, critical, and truthful in their work.

In this post, I would like to draw attention to an ongoing critique that pertains to PCS’ efforts to engage in knowledge exchange and translation of research into interventions and practice. The intellectual project is committed to progressive social change, and our scholarship seeks to generate knowledge that enables the challenging, transforming, and intervening into contextual power relations (Andrews et al., in press). Accordingly, PCS has continued to successfully generate valuable scholarships that critically analyze a wide range of physical culture-related sites, forms, and expressions (e.g., Esmonde & Jette, 2020; Posbergh, 2022; Wallace, 2022). Yet, as Atkinson (2011) points out, scholars in PCS have mostly remained critics without claws, as the research often has not translated into engaged, interventionist, and transformative praxis.

That being said, it is important to give PCS credit where it is due and gain a deeper understanding of why PCS may not have been as successful in translating research into engaged intervention. For instance, the social issues PCS scholars interrogate are complex and rooted in broader social, cultural, economic, and political contexts, which puts PCS in a difficult position to easily intervene into society and create transformative change (Andrews, 2008; Andrews & Silk, 2015). Therefore, in certain areas (e.g., diversity in sport medicine; see Choi & Antunovic, 2025), it may be more appropriate for PCS to engage in a steady, yet slower form of praxis given the need to implement interconnected strategies at individual, organizational, institutional, and structural levels while also considering accountability mechanisms to ensure systemic change. Importantly, since modern universities privilege objective and quantitative research over qualitative, interpretive, and critical work, PCS faces institutional pressures and a daily threat (which may have already been realized) of falling to epistemological hierarchies as PCS scholarship becomes dismissed, overlooked, and deemed irrelevant (Andrews et al., 2013; Newman et al., in press). Specifically, as a result of higher education’s orientation towards market values and the subsequent prioritization of efficiency and quantifiable outcomes, scholars engaging in critical qualitative inquiry are marginalized while being expected to do more with less (Andrews, 2008).

Nonetheless, it is critical for PCS to embark on praxis that translates critical research into interventions to realize the full potential of our scholarship. Ultimately, we as PCSers conduct research with the objective of challenging and influencing society in meaningful ways, and to do so, we should continuously seek to utilize the knowledge we generate to transform the various power structures and relations that we challenge. To do so, we must begin by being open to competing discourses and viewpoints. For example, as neoliberalism continues to permeate physical culture, we must consider how we as PCS scholars and practitioners can respond to contemporary social issues within an increasingly donor-driven, individualistic, and economically focused environment. One way of doing so in the appropriate context, as I proposed in a recent meeting with members of the University of Maryland PCS community, may be social entrepreneurship (SE) or social innovation (SI). While SE and SI both continue to be characterized by conceptual ambiguity, for the purposes of this writing, they can roughly be defined as the individual or organizational creation, development, and implementation of new ideas while using business-like practices to meet social needs and create transformative social change (McSweeney, 2020; Mulgan et al., 2007; Nicholls et al., 2015). While some members were at first and may still be skeptical of the idea of entrepreneurship and business-like practices, we must be open to treading the neoliberal society and dominant economic model in a way that allows us to leverage the available resources and consequently, create social value. In addition, we must translate the significant yet less tangible impact of qualitative research into quantitative terms and data to showcase the impact of PCS research and create interest convergence between scholars outside of PCS as well as key decision-makers and stakeholders. This may be uncomfortable given that these competing viewpoints may ultimately be those that PCS scholarship seeks to challenge at various levels. However, for PCS to address urgent social issues and create our desired impact while thriving in the academic environment, we must navigate the environment with a dynamic fluency to turn perceived barriers into bridges (Newman et al., in press).

It is important to note that what I am suggesting above are merely first steps for PCS and may not be applicable to all the sites, forms, and expressions of physical culture that we study. As a dialogic community, we must continue to interrogate how we can best navigate our need to engage in interventionist and transformative praxis.

References

Andrews, D. L. (2008). Kinesiology’s inconvenient truth and the physical cultural studies imperative. Quest, 60(1), 45–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/00336297.2008.10483568

Andrews, D. L., Jette, S., Esmonde, K., Friedman, M. T., Justin, T. A., Mower, R., Roberts, J., Silk, M. L., Thorpe, H., & Wallace, B. T. (in press). Physical cultural studies: Toward a meaningful unity in difference. In M. Giardina, D. Waldman, & M. Donnelly (Eds.), SAGE handbook of qualitative research in sport & physical culture (pp. 217–239). Sage Publications. 

Andrews, D. L., & Silk, M. L. (2015). Physical cultural studies on sport. In R. Giulianotti (Ed.), Routledge handbook of the sociology of sport (pp. 83–93). Routledge.

Andrews, D. L., Silk, M., Francombe, J., & Bush, A. (2013). McKinesiology. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 35(5), 335–356. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2013.842867

 Atkinson, M. (2011). Physical cultural studies [Redux]. Sociology of Sport Journal, 28(1), 134–144. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.28.1.135

 Choi, H., & Antunovic, D. (2025). “Sometimes your presence just causes a disturbance”: Exclusion of racially minoritized sports medicine practitioners in elite sport. In Meena Dhanda (Ed.), Oxford intersections: Racism by context. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198945246.003.0062

 Esmonde, K., & Jette, S. (2020). Assembling the ‘Fitbit subject’: A Foucauldian-sociomaterialist examination of social class, gender and self-surveillance on Fitbit community message boards. Health, 24(3), 299–314. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363459318800166

 McSweeney, M. J. (2020). Returning the ‘social’ to social entrepreneurship: Future possibilities of critically exploring sport for development and peace and social entrepreneurship. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 55(1), 3–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690218784295

 Mulgan, G., Tucker, S., Ali, R. and Sanders, B. (2007). Social Innovation: What it is, why it matters and how it can be accelerated. Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. https://www.youngfoundation.org/our-work/publications/social-innovation-what-it-is-why-it-matters-how-it-can-be-accelerated/

 Newman, J. I., Charhardovali, T., Rochon, R., & Dai, S. (2025). Qualitative research, scholarly “performance” and the rationalization of inquiry in sport and physical culture. In M. Giardina, D. Waldman, & M. Donnelly (Eds.), SAGE handbook of qualitative research in sport & physical culture (pp. 71–90). Sage Publications.

 Nicholls, A., Simon, J., & Gabriel, M. (2016). Introduction: Dimensions of social innovation. In A. Nicholls, J. Simon, & M. Gabriel (Eds.), New frontiers in social innovation research (pp. 1–26). Palgrave Macmillan.

 Posbergh, A. (2022). Defining ‘woman': A governmentality analysis of how protective policies are created in elite women's sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 57(8), 1350–1370. https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902211072765

 Wallace, B. (2022). Racialized marketing in the athletic apparel industry: The convergence of sneaker promotion and Black culture in the United States. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 39(1), 42–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2021.1946037