The body has become a vital research object in several disciplines in recent years. Indeed, in the social sciences and humanities, a corporeal turn in which embodiment has become a key concept related to learning and socialisation is discussed. This cross-disciplinary paper addresses the epistemological question of how we know what we know and theoretically and empirically contributes to current arguments of a shift from embodiment to emplacement. In other words, this study strives for understanding of the intersection of mind, body and place through a focus on how bodily knowing is formed as part of a moving world. The purpose of the paper is to explore the kinaesthetic experience as bodily knowing in emplaced semi-formal teaching. Through long-term ethnography in a Swedish skateboard setting and in-depth analysis of digital visual material, this paper demonstrates how kinaesthetic experience might be viewed as knowing and how a particular type of this experience might be interpreted as explosiveness and, as such, an act of physical remembrance and energy transformation. Knowing is formed along paths of movement and rhythm, and kinaesthesia is identified as a multisensory experience. It is argued that a fruitful way of bridging the mind–body divide is to view the body as un/knowing, rendering it both knowing and not knowing simultaneously. Moreover, emplaced via its senses in a sociocultural and spatio-temporal environment, this conceptualisation of a moving body in a moving world might allow for re-thinking regarding how a body in context knows, teaches and, possibly, learns.

The Nordic countries score high gender equality ratings and we have a long tradition of working with feminist agendas promising liberal futures to both young women and men. Still, today’s young women struggle to make room for female participation in male-dominated space. Based on ethnographic research, this article explores gender manoeuvring, i.e. manipulations of the relationship between masculinity and femininity in the patterned beliefs and activities of Swedish skateboarding. The three most apparent femininities in the empirical material, ‘the tomboy’, ‘the bitch’, and ‘the lesbian’, are discussed and how they sometimes give rise to gender manoeuvring and sometimes not. It is argued that the formation of a national network harnessing feminist strategies has been successful in making space for female skateboarding in local skateparks and the mainstream media. The negotiations these actions result in have the potential to transform the hierarchical gender order between and among masculinities and femininities. However, simultaneous tendencies to preserve the unequal gender structure through valuing both hegemonic masculinity and femininity become visible.

Det är tveklöst så att ungdomsidrotten och skolidrotten, det vill säga idrott som utförs inom skolans ram, är problematisk; det är inget man bara kan överlämna till idrottsrörelsen respektive skolans idrottslärare att ta hand om. Bara i föreliggande uppdatering recenseras tre ungdomsidrottsböcker, dels en om coachning av barn och ungdom, dels en om sociala supportsystem för ungdomar i fysisk aktivitet, samt dels Ken Greens nya bok Key Themes in Youth Sport (Routledge). Skälen till att så mycket forskaruppmärksamhet ägnas just ungdomars idrottsdeltagande är många och synnerligen godtagbara, särskilt om man accepterar att idrott a priori betraktas som ett gott i sig och därmed något som barn och ungdomar ska dras in i; barn och ungdomar är å andra sidan, till följd av sin åldersbetingade sårbarhet, a posteriori i behov av extra omsorg – och stöd av forskning. Vi gav Ken Greens bok till Åsa Bäckström, som konstaterar att det här rör sig om något som närmast får betraktas som en uppslagsbok, med 45 nyckelteman från ability and talent till youth’s new condition. Man kan i sådana här sammanhang alltid diskutera urval, och det gör vår recensent, kritiskt och sansat, och hon kommer slutgiltigt fram till att Greens sociologiskt konstruerade teman är användbara, inte minst för att boken också pekar ut en fortsatt färdriktning i kunskapsprocessen genom dess definitioner, statistik, referenser och tankegångar.

This paper discusses research about how knowing and teaching is formed as part of the physical activity of skateboarding. Through a four-year project in educations sciences focusing on the cross-roads of mind, body, place and learning, the sensory ethnography approach (Pink 2009) made it possible to explore how knowing was expressed by skateboard coaches in their teaching. The semi-structured character of skateboarding contributed with a setting were the moving body is central, but without the formalized educational framework. To begin with, this methodological approach foregrounded how perception and the senses were involved but also showed the need to go beyond the five-sense sensorium, particularly in relation to understanding the process of teaching and knowing balance and explosiveness, which are both crucial for skateboarding proficiency. Moreover, this research revealed the implications of reflective auto-ethnographic elements in the process of field-work. As a researcher it became apparent how this sensory embeddedness not only informed the research participants’ teaching and knowing, but also my own way of understanding the fleshiness of knowing. In this paper I will explore more deeply the question of the researcher’s route to knowing. To develop this discussion I will build on two existing approaches to defining kinesthetic empathy (Sklar 1998; Parviainen 2003) to suggest how this concept might inform our understandings of how learning is sensory and emplaced (Fors, et al, forthcoming), as well as socio-affective (Tomkins, 1962). In doing so I address related epistemological issues regarding the moving, learning and un/knowing body (e.g. Moyal Sharrock, 2004).

En djupdykning i SUNY-förlagets backlist har ådagalagt tre angelägna titlar som inte tidigare kommit med i forumets recensionsverksamhet men som trots att de fått några år på nacken av tjänstgörande recensionsredaktör bedömts som angelägna att lyfta fram. I november 2010 recenserade Ingela Kolfjord Mike Messners Out of Play, (2007), och Pirkko Markulas antologi Feminist Sport Studies från 2005 recenseras av Helena Tolvhed på annan plats i denna uppdatering. Äldst av de tre var antologin Athletic Intruders: Ethnographic Research on Women, Culture, and Exercise från 2003, med Anne Bolin och Jane Granskog som redaktörer (State University of New York Press). Vi applåderar SUNY Press för en föredömlig lagerhållningsstrategi (möjlig tack vare print on demand-tekniken), och gläds åt att vi hittade totalt rätt i val av recensent, nämligen Åsa Bäckström, som just då var redo att läsa just denna bok. I en föredömligt välskriven, initierad och intresseväckande recension ser hon bortom de lite ålderstigna referenserna och diskuterar metod, empiri och, inte minst, feminismens historia.

In 1989 the American anthropologist Paul Stoller argued in favour of taking detours in his now classic The taste of ethnographic things, subtitled the senses in anthropology. Detours, he argued, may be theoretical, or artistic. One way is to strive for what he calls “radical empiricism”. This demands a different kind of text (or film), where the senses are given greater prominence. He writes: “This kind of respect directs writers and filmmakers onto a radically empirical detour along which we can achieve the most simple yet most allusive goal of ethnography: to give our readers or viewers a sense of what it is like to live in other worlds, a taste of ethnographic things” (1989: 156). Recently, a “sensory revolution” (Howes, 2005) has fuelled and interest in perception and the senses. This paper draws on research with a sensory ethnography (Pink, 2009) approach. It focuses the un/knowing body and deals with epistemological issues related to collecting and representing sensory ethnographic material. It is argued that scientific texts (in a wide sense) need richer sensory “data” in order to more fully understand learning and knowing in a contemporary world. Moreover, the paper problematizes the prevalent logocentrism in society.

In social sciences and humanities 'the body' is accentuated to the extent that we may even talk about a ‘corporeal turn’. Through ethnographic research on skateboarding I explore the particular corporeal practice of energy transformation and the verbal, visual and bodily expression of what can be labeled explosiveness.

Explicitly, I use the digital audio-visual empirical material to investigate how kinaesthetic knowing is expressed and taught. The paper adds theoretically and empirically to recent arguments of a shift from embodiment to emplacement. By way of conclusion, a more elaborate focus on the sensory experiences is suggested to better understand the intersections of mind, body, place and learning.