<p>The perspectives of skilled experts who help learners develop and improve bodily skills has not often been examined in sociology. In this paper, I focus on the role of selective sensory engagement with moving bodies as an important way of knowing through which skilled experts assess and intervene upon the skill acquisition of learners. I bring together literature on body pedagogics with literature on sociology of the senses to understand how embodied, sensorial knowledge is an inter-corporeal and intersubjective resource for the transmission of bodily skills. I use interviews with barbell coaches and yoga teachers in the United States to understand the processes by which these skilled experts construct ‘good form’ and its normative limits and I outline three interrelated processes of sensorial knowing through which barbell coaches and yoga teachers help their paying clients achieve ‘good form’ when learning to engage in these fitness cultures. I argue that that the use and training of the senses in body pedagogics is an understudied but essential way of knowing to understand the transmission and embodiment of culture.</p>

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Sensory Forms of Knowing in Body Pedagogics

  • Kelly Underman

摘要

The perspectives of skilled experts who help learners develop and improve bodily skills has not often been examined in sociology. In this paper, I focus on the role of selective sensory engagement with moving bodies as an important way of knowing through which skilled experts assess and intervene upon the skill acquisition of learners. I bring together literature on body pedagogics with literature on sociology of the senses to understand how embodied, sensorial knowledge is an inter-corporeal and intersubjective resource for the transmission of bodily skills. I use interviews with barbell coaches and yoga teachers in the United States to understand the processes by which these skilled experts construct ‘good form’ and its normative limits and I outline three interrelated processes of sensorial knowing through which barbell coaches and yoga teachers help their paying clients achieve ‘good form’ when learning to engage in these fitness cultures. I argue that that the use and training of the senses in body pedagogics is an understudied but essential way of knowing to understand the transmission and embodiment of culture.