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1:33

Hello. Several decades ago,

1:36

along with the late Stanley Cohen, I

1:38

wrote a book called Psychological

1:40

Survival. It was based on extensive

1:42

interviews with a group of highly dangerous criminals

1:45

who were housed in the notorious E-Wing

1:48

of Durham Prison. Now, one of the

1:50

matters that interested us was the relationship

1:52

between these men. Their lengthy

1:55

sentences of up to 30 years,

1:57

a penal consequence of the abolition

1:59

of the death penalty, death penalty and the highly

2:01

confined, even claustrophobic

2:04

nature of the E-Wing that

2:06

housed them meant that criminals from quite

2:08

different defending backgrounds, armed

2:10

robbers, leaders of violent gangs and

2:13

individual murderers were

2:15

necessarily in regular, intimate

2:17

contact with each other. Now we did

2:19

hear of internal disputes and even one

2:22

stabbing, but we also learned the peculiar sort

2:24

of harmony that seemed to exist

2:26

among the significant group of inmates who

2:28

had dedicated themselves to weightlifting.

2:32

As one inmate told us, Laurie,

2:34

there are men in here who'd rather add an inch

2:36

to their pecks than knock five

2:38

years off their sentence. Well,

2:41

it was precisely this finding which made

2:43

me turn with keen interest to a new

2:45

book entitled Fighting Identity,

2:48

an ethnography of kickboxing

2:50

in East London, a book which aims

2:53

to show the manner in which kickboxes

2:55

in an East London gym sought to

2:57

reject prior identity markers,

3:00

their race, their gender, their sexuality

3:02

in favour of a new identity

3:05

as fighters. Well, it's all

3:07

though now joins me is Amit Singh, who's

3:09

Leave a Human Early Career Fellow in the

3:11

Sociology Department at the University of

3:14

Manchester. Amit, before we

3:16

discuss your findings, I've just got to ask

3:18

you, just tell me a little bit about the origins

3:20

of kickboxing and what is exactly,

3:23

what goes on in kickboxing.

3:25

OK, well, kickboxing primarily

3:27

is a stand up combat

3:30

sport that involves kicks, knees

3:33

and punching and sometimes the limited stand

3:35

up grappling, but not always. And

3:37

people say they originated

3:40

in Japan in the 1960s as

3:42

kind of a hybrid combat sport,

3:45

mixing kind of karate, traditional Japanese karate

3:48

with Muay Thai, a combat sport

3:50

for Thailand that is very similar, albeit

3:52

allows elbows. So in this kind of hybridised

3:55

rule set, there were no elbows allowed,

3:57

but they retained kind of the other elements, mainly kicking.

4:00

seeking, kneeing and punching. Let's

4:02

turn to the gym

4:04

where you did your research. You

4:06

focus on East End Gym that

4:08

you call Origins Combat

4:10

Gym. Tell me now about this

4:12

gym. What did it look like? Where exactly was

4:15

it?

4:15

So the gym is in a part of East London

4:17

that used to be on a road

4:20

that was called Once the Murder Mile because

4:22

of its association with criminality and

4:25

with a great income inequality but

4:28

is now more subject to the processes

4:30

of gentrification as obviously many parts

4:32

of London are. And the gym is kind

4:34

of situated on

4:37

top of a building, on the third floor

4:39

of a building and I guess we'd

4:41

call it no frills in the sense there's just

4:43

mats on the floor, mirrors

4:45

on one side and then a small ring at the

4:47

back. But I think that's part of the alert-able-ist

4:50

because it was once I guess more a fighting

4:52

gym primarily, only a fighting gym, particularly when

4:54

I was doing my research and even before then.

4:57

But it's now home

4:59

to more of a gym within a gym which is almost

5:02

a fitness-orientated gym as the gym's

5:04

owner I think quite cleverly has tried to

5:06

profiteer off of the new middle

5:08

class people in the area. Members

5:10

of this gym come to see themselves

5:13

as fighters. They renounce or

5:15

refuse other identities.

5:19

Unpack that a bit for me. What

5:21

identities are we talking about? There

5:24

is a large constituency of black fighters, a

5:26

large constituency of broadly Eastern

5:28

European fighters, Polish,

5:29

Lithuanian, Romanian, a couple

5:31

of Slovakian fighters. Then there's queer

5:33

fighters and there's a notable presence of female

5:36

fighters. And within this space

5:38

people argued that in suffering

5:40

alongside one another and kind of sacrificing

5:42

together and engaging in the horrible diets that

5:44

you have to do to make kind of specific

5:46

weights. In the intimacy of kind of

5:48

I guess throwing punches,

5:50

training with one another, holding pads for one another,

5:52

helping one another, that their identities,

5:55

the identities they bring with them into the gym are

5:57

somewhat less important and what they try to do is actively

6:00

disavow identity, they denied their identity

6:02

as being important within the space. And

6:04

I found this quite different to I guess

6:07

many aspects of wider society where people often

6:09

cling to identity, often seeking greater

6:11

recognition. But here,

6:13

they didn't want to be associated purely with their sexuality

6:16

or their class position. Instead, all

6:18

they wanted was recognition as fighters,

6:21

a category that they argued

6:23

freed them from the shackles of identity.

6:25

Because in their day to day lives outside of the gym,

6:28

people didn't associate identity as something

6:30

to be celebrated. Rather, they saw it

6:32

as associated with kind of negative stereotypes,

6:35

with humiliation, with inequality. And

6:37

there were pains to stress to me, there's

6:39

a supposedly egalitarian nature of training

6:41

to fight, allowed new possibilities.

6:44

So Nicole, a black working class

6:46

fighter, she said to me that she had a kind

6:48

of admin job, law

6:51

firm in the city. And she said she knew in her

6:53

words, there was a ceiling and a cap placed on her

6:55

as a black woman. But here within the

6:57

gym,

6:58

there was no limit. Tell me about the the

7:00

factors that perhaps facilitate this

7:02

feeling. What what is it that brings people

7:05

to regard themselves as rather the

7:07

same as each other? It is a very intimate

7:09

sport. It requires you

7:12

to engage kind of safely in what

7:14

otherwise we might think of as violence.

7:16

And there's extreme physical contact that you would

7:18

not get in other sports, for instance, in football,

7:21

or rugby and other team sports, people lend

7:23

their bodies to one another in the gym. Because part

7:25

of it is you don't want to injure your training partners, because if you

7:28

have no training partners left, because they're all injured, so

7:30

people saw their improvement as being intimately

7:33

tied to one another's improvement. And

7:35

then I guess finally, people believe

7:37

the training environment. And I think it was

7:39

to be egalitarian and meritocratic, insofar

7:42

as all fighters are trained at the same time

7:44

in the same way. And for them this contrasted

7:46

with

7:46

the world outside where they saw the world as

7:48

being unfair. These are the words of a black

7:50

Caribbean fighter called Nick who was raised by

7:53

his Jamaican mother, a short

7:55

bus ride from the gym and he joined the

7:57

gym aged 16.

7:59

My shoes have changed over time. Like

8:02

people never liked Polish people, but they came

8:04

in, realised the coup, and it opened up their

8:06

eyes. As a kid, I

8:08

mainly hung out with black kids because I went to school with them. But

8:11

when I came here, I met more people. People

8:13

from all over. Me and Casper,

8:16

we're close friends. We went to Holland

8:18

together, we trained together, invited

8:21

me to Poland. Let's be honest, I'm

8:24

scared. Because there's a black guy

8:26

in Poland, I fear for my safety. One

8:28

day I'll go up to visit him.

8:30

Amish, you say that the gym was once

8:32

perceived to be almost exclusively dominated

8:35

by Eastern, European or Polish

8:38

men. But this has changed, and there

8:40

are now many black members of the

8:42

club. I mean, to what extent do they connect and cross

8:45

racial and ethnic difference?

8:47

I believe that over time, then there has been this overlapping

8:49

between two groups that might otherwise

8:52

not necessarily be mixing with one another

8:55

in day-to-day life. And this worked both ways,

8:57

because although there were still, and I talk about this in

8:59

the book, many cultural misunderstandings, and

9:01

there was obviously still kind of instances

9:04

of racism or xenophobia, Eastern

9:06

European fighters might say, I used to have this view

9:08

of black people. One person said to me, I

9:10

used to have this view of Asian people. I thought Asians were

9:12

lazy, I thought they were dirty. But now

9:14

I realize I was wrong. And I find

9:17

that antithetical to kind of wider liberal

9:19

anti-racism where nobody would admit to ever

9:21

having bad views. Tommy Robinson would

9:23

say, I'm not racist. But here someone sang actually,

9:26

I held these bad views, I was actually racist. But that's because I

9:28

come from Poland, I come from a monocultural, monoracial

9:31

society. And now in this environment,

9:33

this unique environment, where we're intimately kind

9:36

of sharing space, I

9:38

see that as being different. And many black fighters

9:40

similarly, for very kind of different

9:42

complex reasons would say, I used to always

9:44

think Polish people were skimmies, I thought they were racists,

9:46

I thought they were fascists. But now these people

9:49

are my friends. And it didn't just stay in the gym,

9:51

these were friendships that kind of transcended the gym, as

9:53

people kind of created lives together that were intimately

9:55

intertwined in ways that I think were quite

9:58

sweet and quite meaningful. However. though

10:00

everyone was treated the same on the gym floor, there

10:03

were various ruptures. And one

10:05

of the most, I

10:06

think, interesting but also perhaps sad ones

10:08

was that the gym zone who is Polish

10:11

would get regular phone calls from fight promoters

10:13

in Poland, but also in Romania and Slovakia,

10:16

asking him specifically for

10:18

a big black fighter. They

10:20

said, can you bring over a big black fighter to fight

10:22

a white local fighter?

10:25

And in this way we see kind of race, the logic

10:27

of race, racial hierarchies, the

10:29

very racial hierarchies people wanted to escape,

10:32

re-emerging. And these narratives,

10:34

particularly, kind of it brings to mind that kind

10:36

of Jack Johnson and Jim

10:39

Jeffries, the great white, I hope that's kind of the imagery

10:41

that's conjured as a kind of local audience

10:43

of all kind of

10:44

presumably all white audience watch it. And

10:47

one of my friends who refused to go to Poland,

10:49

he said to me, I don't want to go, it's not carnival.

10:52

It's not a Victorian carnival where white

10:54

people are going to watch me as a spectacle. But

10:56

I think people had the choice whether they wanted to go or not. But

10:59

ultimately it did undercut the idea that everyone's

11:01

the same because no one was asking me to go and fight

11:03

there. It was then when asking for a kind of

11:06

a medium sized brown man to go, but there was

11:08

something particular about the idea

11:10

of a big black man going over and fighting there.

11:13

Okay, let me talk about another supposition

11:16

which I might have about the world

11:19

of boxing in general, that it really

11:21

is hyper masculine.

11:24

And really, when you're talking about losing various

11:26

identities, it just seems to me that losing

11:29

as it were masculinity is an identity

11:31

is something one wouldn't expect to find. Yeah,

11:34

in a sense, it is a hyper masculine space,

11:36

a hyper masculine space that is undercut

11:39

though by

11:40

levels of vulnerability that I guess wouldn't

11:42

be expressed necessarily in other masculine

11:44

spaces. The vulnerability people

11:46

share, the kind of real moments of weakness, real

11:49

moments of kind of care and

11:51

mutual care. But I guess thinking

11:53

then about the

11:54

female fighters in the group, because there was a notable

11:57

constituency of female fighters, they

11:59

would

11:59

argue often that they could escape gender.

12:02

Gender wasn't the same inside the gym, they were recognised

12:04

as fighters, not as women. They could escape

12:07

the associations of women with weakness

12:10

and so on. And I think at times

12:12

that did play out because we trained with everyone at

12:14

the same time, when we sparred, we sparred with everyone,

12:16

we switched partners seamlessly or it should

12:18

be seamlessly. However,

12:20

in garnering respect,

12:22

there was no space for female fighters to

12:24

show femininity in any way. Women had to

12:26

demonstrate kind of hard work, strength, stoicism

12:28

on the gym floor. And in that sense, I felt

12:31

like masculinity obviously is

12:33

kind of a dominant code within the gym. And

12:35

there were times, limited times,

12:37

one of which I talk about in the book, where a man

12:39

refused to train with a female fighter. He said, I don't

12:42

train with women, even though

12:44

everyone's meant to be a fighter, everyone's meant to train with

12:46

everyone. So we can see these kinds of social

12:48

discourses return in ways that obviously

12:51

don't happen to men because it never happened that amount

12:53

of time. I wouldn't train with another man. You've

12:55

said already the gym rather exists between the

12:58

old and the new East London. And

13:00

it is, I understand, being a bit altered by gentrification.

13:03

I mean, is this new gentrification,

13:05

new money coming in, if you like, altering

13:08

the production of a shared

13:10

fighting identity?

13:12

We see a difference between kind of the casual gymgoer,

13:14

if you like, the fitness gymgoer who comes in

13:17

the gym's owner's words, they want to

13:19

pretend they train like fighters, but they don't

13:21

want to fight because he's a people with proper jobs

13:23

don't want to get hit in the face. And so

13:25

we see people coming in to consume an experience

13:28

not otherwise afforded to them. It's almost

13:30

cosplay, I guess, if you like, as fighters, in

13:33

the same way that white collar boxing has this appeal

13:35

amongst certain demographics. And

13:37

then there's this distinction then between fighters

13:39

and non fighters and fighters would say, well, we're better

13:41

than

13:42

them because we fight, but the non fighters

13:44

largely are kind of middle class, they have professional

13:46

jobs, not afforded to fighters. And

13:49

we see this play out and there was one instance in

13:52

the book that I write about where a

13:55

local guy, he was a lawyer and

13:57

he watched me and my friend train and his son said, oh,

13:59

they're

13:59

quite good aren't they? And then he said to his son,

14:02

yeah it's because they have nothing better to do. Obviously

14:04

I was doing my PhD at the time so he was right,

14:06

I didn't have anything better to do. But you

14:08

see there's kind of a distinction going on there in which he

14:10

sees himself as better than us and I think that was a

14:12

tension that was beginning to emerge, especially

14:15

as fighters are the ones coaching these people.

14:18

Good for the gym's owner though, he's obviously making a lot of money

14:20

and the kind of economy

14:22

for fighting gyms is not good. It's a niche

14:24

sport Muay Thai is and kickboxing, they're niche sports.

14:27

It's good that he is kind of making a good living off of it

14:29

but it doesn't bode well I don't think for

14:32

many of my friends, many of my training partners. And

14:34

there we must stop. Amit Singh that was absolutely

14:36

fascinating, thank you, thank you so much. Thanks

14:39

also to those like the Reverend Tim

14:41

Evans who were prompted to email

14:43

me at thinkingaloud.co.uk in response

14:45

to last week's discussion

14:48

of the manner in which Britain might be seen now,

14:51

or perhaps has always been, a lower

14:53

middle class nation. And

14:56

the winner is the draft box.

15:04

On Sunday

15:05

night this week I had a chance to watch

15:08

boxing on the television, specifically

15:10

the fight in which Chris Eubank Jr

15:13

overcame his old rival Liam Smith.

15:15

Well I watched with my usual mixture

15:18

of, well of spiritual

15:20

guilt and visceral pleasure you might

15:23

describe it. But on this occasion I did

15:25

at least I had an additional excuse for

15:27

my indulgence because I knew

15:30

that in this present programme I'd be meeting

15:32

an academic who'd set out to investigate

15:34

one of the key justifications

15:37

which are advanced for the sport. The

15:39

claim that it is a potential cure

15:42

for a range of social ills

15:44

including criminal justice, mental

15:46

health and childhood trauma. Well

15:49

that academic is Deborah Jupp who is

15:51

Reader in Criminology at Manchester Metropolitan

15:53

University and whose paper co-written

15:56

with Amy Blakemore of the University of Manchester

15:59

is entitled. titled, Chure du

16:01

Jour, exploring the potential

16:03

of boxing as a mechanism for change

16:06

among vulnerable groups. Well,

16:09

Deborah now joins me. Deborah, you

16:11

do know a pretty widespread assumption

16:14

among criminal justice practitioners

16:17

and policymakers that boxing can

16:19

help young men desist

16:21

from criminal activity. Tell me a little

16:24

bit about the history of that assumption.

16:26

Well, like many sports, boxing emerged

16:28

from ancient Greece and was seen

16:30

as a civilising influence in society,

16:33

rather as an outlet for male violence

16:36

whilst instilling virtues of discipline,

16:38

strength and courage. I think

16:40

this influence has prevailed and I think it

16:43

is quite easy to assume from a packed

16:45

local gym on a Friday night that

16:47

this civilising influence positively impacts

16:50

on crime rates in the locality. However,

16:53

there is currently no evidence whatsoever to

16:55

show that it reduces

16:56

crime overall. To date,

16:58

there's been no large scale studies in the UK

17:01

that have been conducted to show that boxing

17:04

is singularly effective at reducing crime.

17:07

I mean, you bring in a very interesting

17:09

account of the way in which

17:11

boxing has been said to assist marginalised

17:14

communities to get over criminality and

17:16

that's that Wacom's book, Body

17:19

and Soul, notebooks of an apprentice boxer.

17:22

In this he does suggest, as it were,

17:24

that members discover the gym's island

17:27

of stability. Tell me how

17:29

you read Wacom.

17:30

Yes, Wacom was probably one of the first

17:34

sociologists to

17:36

kind of do an ethnography into

17:38

a boxing gym and I do

17:40

align with Wacom's suggestion

17:42

that the boxing gym can be an island of stability

17:45

and order and I believe that's a

17:47

result of its monastic appeal. It

17:49

can be familial, routinising

17:52

and disciplining for some and

17:54

this is no bad thing in criminology,

17:56

you know, the devil's work and idle hands etc.

17:59

And it's interesting because boxing gyms

18:02

do have the potential to, what we say,

18:05

incapacitate people at times

18:07

when they may otherwise be involved in crime

18:09

or on the streets committing antisocial

18:11

behaviour. But where I am

18:14

mindful of this is that we need to be aware

18:17

of the messages that are being perpetuated

18:19

within these spaces.

18:21

Talking about the ways in which

18:23

boxing might be associated with

18:26

reductions in criminality brings

18:28

me round to the subject of domestic

18:31

violence. What would you

18:33

like to say about that in relation

18:35

to boxing?

18:37

Boxing gyms can incapacitate men

18:39

at times when they might otherwise be involved in crime

18:41

and you'll see crime rates go down in the locality.

18:44

But what nobody really has looked at is

18:47

arguably the over-representation of domestic

18:50

violence amongst the boxing community

18:52

as perpetrators. Nobody's

18:54

really looking at the messages that are being transmitted

18:57

in the gym, that violence is an acceptable

18:59

solution to a problem and how that might transmit

19:01

into the whole. And its implications for domestic

19:04

violence. Absolutely, yeah. You argue

19:06

that boxing is a panacea for crime reduction. It's

19:08

probably a myth to bust, not

19:11

just in boxing circles but also

19:13

in policy and academic discourses.

19:16

Give me a few examples of what might be termed myth

19:18

creation, rooted in poor

19:21

or ambiguous evidence.

19:23

These myths are usually anecdotal

19:25

statements and you can hear them.

19:28

One has to listen to the

19:30

narratives of many famous boxers to hear

19:32

them say, without boxing I'd be in jail

19:35

or dead. And this discourse

19:37

has then been mythologised into popular culture

19:40

whereby narratives of survival and redemption

19:42

become tantamount to success. There

19:45

is an

19:45

all-party parliamentary group on boxing

19:47

which produced a report called Boxing the

19:50

Right Hook. That talks about the benefits

19:52

of boxing in crime reduction doesn't it?

19:55

It does indeed, but what it

19:57

doesn't talk about is the appeal of the

19:59

boxing gym.

19:59

And I think that's a really important

20:02

point. We need to move away from the actual tangible

20:05

reduction in crime to look at more

20:08

of what are the what are the cognitions

20:10

being created within these gyms, what are the messages

20:12

that these young people are inculcating. Why

20:15

are badminton clubs not touted as panaceas

20:17

for crime reduction? Or table tennis

20:20

clubs as narratives of redemption? I

20:22

believe it's the masculine affirming

20:24

appeal of the boxing gym that forms

20:27

part of its draw. This

20:29

appeal

20:29

was about the prevention

20:32

of repeat victimisation. And

20:35

what I mean by that is roughly 80% of

20:37

men had experienced prior

20:40

violence at the hands of other men who I spoke

20:42

to. And boxing for them

20:44

was a way to disavow victimhood

20:48

through what Bourdieu might refer to as

20:50

physical capital and what Wecant

20:52

also talks about as well in Body

20:54

and Soul, that embodiment of power

20:57

and prestige. Dick Hobbs,

20:59

a famous sociologist, criminologist

21:02

might refer to this as violent potential.

21:06

You don't have to always necessarily fight,

21:08

you just have to convey the idea that you

21:10

could do. And I think this idea

21:12

of physical capital combined with violent

21:15

potential can create an

21:17

illusion of safety and an ability

21:19

to command respect and obedience from others,

21:22

which also it can transpose over to

21:25

similar messages that are kind of transmitted

21:27

within street code or gang

21:29

culture, we might say. So I think it's

21:31

important to understand not just boxing

21:34

as a hitting bag sparring

21:36

in the ring, but we need to think about it's masculine

21:39

affirming appeal and as a way

21:41

to defend against vulnerability. I

21:44

interviewed a lot of young men

21:46

who'd had prior histories of criminality

21:50

in my work over the years. The word

21:52

respect kept coming up a lot and

21:55

I wanted to unpack that and

21:57

the best kind of definition of the word

22:00

that I could find came from Emmanuel

22:02

Kant and he said that respect

22:05

means being worthy of consideration

22:07

and I think for some young people

22:09

who don't necessarily feel worthy because

22:12

of structural impediments or

22:14

structural violence then that

22:17

that being worthy of consideration

22:20

being worthy of respect can

22:22

become vastly important to

22:24

them and I think actually

22:27

violence is a quick sure way to achieve

22:29

that

22:29

it's a it's an easy quick resource

22:32

and it can really garner a sense of respect

22:35

quite quickly amongst other young

22:37

men. I want to talk

22:38

to you now about a project you've been involved

22:40

in we've mostly been talking obviously

22:43

about men and boxing so far

22:45

in the program but you've recently

22:47

been involved in a project which focused on young

22:49

women the Getting Out

22:52

for Good the GOFG project

22:54

it's a five-year project I

22:56

think it works with young women at risk of

22:58

child sexual exploitation and

23:01

child criminal exploitation in the

23:03

northwest of England. Now tell me a little

23:05

bit about this project what it involves

23:07

and what were its aims

23:08

and how it relates to what we've been

23:10

talking about so far. So

23:11

we devised a project that worked with

23:13

over 130 young women aged between 14 to 24 at

23:17

risk of sexual violence and

23:20

they were given a three-month intensive

23:22

intervention of boxing but combined with

23:24

mentoring and it was with the

23:26

aim of reducing their vulnerability

23:28

to sexual exploitation and around

23:31

increasing mental well-being and mental health.

23:33

Now based on this previous notion of prevention

23:36

of repeat victimization that I discussed earlier

23:39

I was interested in whether boxing could help

23:41

these young women who'd previously experienced

23:43

violence. We actually discovered

23:46

that boxing when combined with mentoring

23:48

can help reduce anxiety and depression.

23:50

Now we think this is because

23:52

of its intense three-minute round it's

23:54

not dissimilar to interval training which

23:57

has which has proven to reduce

23:59

anxiety. depression. So we

24:01

are seeing that boxing can

24:04

have some positive benefits on on mental

24:06

health and mental well-being. We

24:08

did note these self-reported improvements

24:10

in physical well-being as well, which you

24:12

could say is concomitant with with mental

24:14

health. And we drew on

24:16

the famous work of Betel van der

24:19

Kock, who famously wrote The Body Keeps

24:21

the Score, and we drew on his theory

24:23

of inter-reception. And that's

24:25

a body-based awareness that

24:28

gives rise to understanding how we feel

24:30

about certain events. He suggests

24:32

that the greater the awareness of the body and mind

24:34

connection, the greater the potential to control

24:37

our lives. And this will make sense

24:39

in the context of boxing programs for

24:41

young women that seek to mobilise

24:44

these young people into making more positive choices.

24:46

That you almost feel that this

24:48

emphasis upon boxing as

24:50

a way of dealing with crime

24:52

is distracting from

24:54

the possible benefits that it may bring

24:57

in terms of mental problems, anxiety,

24:59

loneliness, all those other problems.

25:02

Absolutely, yeah. I think

25:04

the idea of boxing being a panacea for

25:06

all social ills is very misleading.

25:09

I think it's also very interesting the

25:11

distinction between boxing itself and

25:13

martial arts, because there is

25:15

some evidence that from around 1995

25:19

from Derek Kruger that suggests that

25:21

martial arts can have more of a positive

25:24

impact on violent attitudes

25:26

than standalone boxing. I'm

25:29

a bit reticent to make any further claims

25:31

without controlling for social class, and

25:33

I found it very interesting that Amit talked about

25:36

that towards the end, because martial

25:38

arts do tend to attract more middle-class

25:41

participants with arguably

25:43

less prior victimisation, or

25:46

what Senate and Cobb might refer

25:48

to as the hidden injuries of class, a

25:51

lack of perceived self-respect that can lead

25:53

to a sense of shame, and it

25:55

reminded me of what one participant said

25:57

to me, which was it takes a certain amount of time to make a difference in the world.

25:59

kind of person to want to get hit for

26:02

fun. Let's pick up on that certain

26:04

sort of person because you are that certain sort

26:06

of person because you've done a lot of boxing yourself I

26:08

think and tell me about your

26:10

own experiences in the ring.

26:12

I worked in youth offending

26:14

for many years and I would I would meet

26:16

young people coming out of prison and I'd say to

26:18

them what do you want to do you know I can get

26:20

you a job and they'd say well

26:22

either want to do boxing or I want to do music

26:25

and this led me to want to unpack

26:28

why boxing was boxing a good

26:30

avenue to kind of refer these

26:32

young people who've been in prison into and

26:35

I thought one of the ways that I would kind

26:37

of really understand it would was

26:39

to do it and I I come from a working

26:42

class background myself my brother was a boxer

26:45

as far as I know there's only been two other women

26:47

who've done ethnographies in boxing gym and that's

26:49

Cath Woodward and Louise

26:51

Trimble in the States and

26:54

when I first got to the boxing gym and nobody

26:56

spoke to me at all I was referred

26:58

to as that girl because

27:00

I was sat there on the mats kind

27:03

of with them you know the old journalist pen and paper

27:05

it was actually a 14 year old boy who came

27:07

up to me and said why don't you why don't you just fight

27:10

and I thought yeah you know what he's right and

27:12

I got stuck in and yeah about three

27:14

or four months into into

27:17

the ethnography I I realized

27:19

that boxing was reciprocal and that you actually

27:21

do get hit and it isn't just

27:22

a case of you hitting somebody and yeah

27:24

I walked away with a broken nose. Deborah,

27:27

thank you very much. Amish I'd just like

27:29

to come back to you for a moment I wonder if you'd care

27:31

to comment on Deborah's

27:34

research on boxing. No you didn't at

27:36

any point in your discussion suggest as it were

27:38

that the kickboxing led to a reduction

27:40

in crime that

27:42

would you want to say that kickboxing really

27:45

does transform people's lives

27:47

in the same way that there are many

27:50

assertions about boxing.

27:51

Most or almost all of my respondents

27:54

described it as a transformative process

27:56

in the sense it transformed their bodies kind of as

27:59

Deborah suggested.

27:59

through kind of a physical transformation, getting

28:02

fit, but also mainly in terms

28:04

of self-mastery, because the majority of my

28:06

respondents were kind of working class, they

28:08

were black and brown, they were Eastern European, and

28:11

they felt that they had no control over their lives in the

28:13

world outside. One of my respondents,

28:15

Daniel, who, in his own words, was involved

28:17

in gangs growing up, but was outed

28:20

by one of the gangs for his sexuality

28:22

because he was gay, which led to his

28:24

social death, he described to me. No one would

28:26

talk to him, but he said within the gym, he found

28:28

the community that allowed him to kind of be at

28:31

home and a family that took him in. It

28:33

had a major impact on his life. And I think additionally,

28:36

people saw the gym as a kind of respite

28:38

from the mundane nature of social

28:41

life outside, the mundane nature of work,

28:43

the harshness of work, the harshness of their bosses,

28:46

even to the extent where many people felt they had no

28:48

purpose outside, they had no qualifications. So

28:51

they became personal trainers and became coaches within

28:53

the gym, kind of entrepreneurs in

28:55

a way they would not have been able to outside of the

28:57

space. Amit Singh, thank you

28:59

very much.

28:59

And just perhaps some final words from

29:02

the ever-wise and much-missed Muhammad

29:04

Ali.

29:05

It isn't the mountains ahead to

29:07

climb that wear you out. It's

29:10

the pebble in your shoe. That

29:12

was a Thinking Allowed podcast

29:14

from BBC Radio 4. You'll find a treasure

29:17

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