McKinesiology

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

Although kinesiology has been instantiated as the name for this discipline in the United States, there are various other monikers applied to the loose conglomeration of disciplines that make up the field. In the United Kingdom it is more common to use the term sports studies or somewhat more tellingly, sport & exercise sciences, whereas in Australia, human movement studies is the preferred terminology.

Perhaps there is no more pertinent and grounded apparition of this haunting prophecy than the BA (Hons) in Business Management offered at De Montfort University in Leicester sponsored by Kentucky Fried Chicken. As Professor David Wilson, deputy vice-chancellor and dean of business and law at De Montfort University, suggested “At De Montfort University, we pride ourselves on our ability to adapt our skills and services to match the needs of business. This is an important new contract for De Montfort University and we are delighted to have this opportunity of working with such a major player in the global restaurant market” (Smithers 2012, emphasis added).

Although the processes of militarization—especially in kinesiology—have a longer history, Giroux (2008) offers a compelling account of the intensification of these processes post 9/11 such that within a wider biopolitics of militarization the university has become a militarized knowledge factory. He argues that there has been an increasing reliance on the Pentagon and corporate interests, and that resultantly the academy has opened its doors to serving private and governmental interests, further compromising higher educations’ role as a democratic public sphere.

Although Ritzer is at pains—certainly more than we—to stress that the rational efficiencies associated with McDonaldization do result in some very real benefits and advantages, they are, by the same token, equally fraught with damaging limitations.

Indeed, in the United Kingdom, the Research Excellence Framework points to a new shift from accountability over finances to control over substance and the content of what is researched: the last vestiges of independence from the state being cast aside (Olssen 2011, cited in Ball 2012).

We do not suggest discarding such advances, yet we do oppose parochialism and domination and the ways in which the conventions of this particular approach become accepted as the natural way of producing knowledge and viewing a particular aspect of the world. As such, our intent is to raise questions, provide an opportunity for thoughtful reflexivity, and aid the power of those in the academy to apply research so that it impacts, and is meaningful to, the various communities that kinesiology has the potential to touch. These are debates that are likely to continue, that we imagine will be challenged, and opposed, for what may seem to be appropriate to some may well be ludicrous to others—such debates, are, in our opinion a vital sign of a self-reflexive, healthy, field of study.

As galling as it may be, we cannot wholly condemn our bio-science colleagues for their blithe assurity regarding the centrality of the scientifically observable, natural body, as the core of kinesiology. This is because they have, as a result of both their graduate training and professorial indoctrination, been socialized into believing in, and unconsciously communicating, their own perceived centrality, and by association that of their version of kinesiological scholarship. This scientific bias within kinesiology rests on what Westkott termed the “first positivist assumption” that “the methods appropriate for studying the natural world are equally appropriate for the study of human experience” (Lather 2006, 33).

Building on Kincheloe (2001) to avoid such one-sided reductionism, there is a need for a variety of ways of seeing and interpreting in the pursuit of knowledge; the more one applies, the more dimensions and consequences of the field can be illuminated—the bricolage. Kincheloe did however point to the dangers of embracing an “interdisciplinary bricolage,” for example, superficiality of methodological breadth in which scholars fail to devote sufficient time to understanding the disciplinary fields and knowledge bases from which particular modes of research emanate. Inhabiting the world of the bricoleur is far from an easy option, it requires knowledge—if not deep comprehension—of multiple worlds, methodological approaches, theoretical perspectives, and disciplinary assumptions.

Derived from the self-proclaimed “champions” of online and distance degree certification.

How refreshing, for example, is the “menu” is at the University of Alberta's Department of Physical Education & Recreation “where the art and science of human movement come alive.”

For example, intellectuals located within mainstream sociology/cultural studies are increasingly engaging the empirical domains of sport and physical activity. These include notables such as Michael Messner, Douglas Hartmann, Reuben Mays, Toby Miller, Scott Brooks, and, most recently Norm Denzin and Henry Giroux.

Perhaps then the McKinesiology we have portrayed in this article is a figment of the conspiracy-theory paranoia of humanistic intellectualism? Maybe kinesiology is actually countering the trends evident within the rationalizing, and increasingly anodyne and ineffectual, McUniversity. The fledgling American Kinesiology Association has even come up with a draft of a common core of knowledge for undergraduate programs, which includes the following: physical activity in health, wellness, and quality of life; scientific foundations of physical activity; cultural, historical, and philosophical context of physical activity; and the practice of physical activity. Despite such developments, our cynicism and paranoia remains: We are deeply troubled by the influence of those encroaching “Golden Arches.”

This list is, of course, necessarily abbreviated.

This is a project however that we are incessantly working on, both within our writing (see Silk, Francombe, and Andrews 2014 for a more detailed discussion of the corporeal curriculum) and within our own institutions where we continue to press for a more democratic, moral, civic and socially just conception of the field/curricula content that ensures students are prepared as productive change agents, rather than “trained” for the “workplace.”