Transcending ‘Hoop Dreams’: toward a consideration of corporeality, crossroads and intersections, and discursive possibilities in disability and theory

Abstract

In modern cultures where ability is revered, the disabled body continues to engender both fear and fascination. While the sociology of sport and disability studies has made great conceptual strides, they have done so in relative isolation from one another. This has resulted in a dearth of empirical evidence regarding the sporting lives of disabled athletes. Dr Ronald Berger’s Hoop Dreams – that is, a critical qualitative life history investigation of wheelchair athletes at the University of Wisconson-Whitewater – is particularly timely in this regard and offers compelling and novel insights into the meaning of sport for the participants. In this critical review for students and scholars of disability and sport, we appraise Berger’s work and applaud, in particular, his historically rich discussion of disability, theoretical command of the social model of disability and great methodological creativity. We suggest that considering carnality and corporeality, crossroads and intersections and discursive possibilities may not only point toward novel and exciting lines of enquiry which extend disability and sport scholarship like Berger’s, but expose the ultimately fragile and tenuous nature of the ability–disability sport categories that we are so invested in.

Keywords:

• disability
• sport
• qualitative research
• sociology