Come Out Swinging: The Changing World of Boxing in Gleason's Gym - Hardcover

Trimbur, Lucia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 069115029X ISBN 13: 9780691150291

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

A nuanced insider's account of everyday life in the last remaining institution of New York's golden age of boxing Gleason's Gym is the last remaining institution of New York's Golden Age of boxing. Jake LaMotta, Muhammad Ali, Hector Camacho, Mike Tyson-the alumni of Gleason's are a roster of boxing greats. Founded in the Bronx in 1937, Gleason's moved in the mid-1980s to what has since become one of New York's wealthiest residential areas-Brooklyn's DUMBO. Gleason's has also transformed, opening its doors to new members, particularly women and white-collar men. Come Out Swinging is Lucia Trimbur's nuanced insider's account of a place that was once the domain of poor and working-class men of color but is now shared by rich and poor, male and female, black and white, and young and old. Come Out Swinging chronicles the everyday world of the gym. Its diverse members train, fight, talk, and socialize together. We meet amateurs for whom boxing is a full-time, unpaid job. We get to know the trainers who act as their father figures and mentors. We are introduced to women who empower themselves physically and mentally. And we encounter the male urban professionals who pay handsomely to learn to box, and to access a form of masculinity missing from their office-bound lives. Ultimately, Come Out Swinging reveals how Gleason's meets the needs of a variety of people who, despite their differences, are connected through discipline and sport.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lucia Trimbur is assistant professor of sociology at the City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice and at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

"A brilliant, humane, and critically attentive book."--Les Back, Goldsmiths, University of London

"What is work? Trimbur's exquisite ethnography reveals postindustrial New York as a socially and spatially segregated landscape shaped by disappearing jobs for--and relentless criminalization of--modestly educated people of color. By developing their bodies as worksites and instruments, the boxers Trimbur describes enact complex understandings of the contradictory struggles to remix their labor with the external world. These sobering insights give me hope."--Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author ofGolden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California

"This book is a gem. Incisive, deeply principled, and acutely observed, it yields nothing to the idea that Gleason's Gym should be seen as an exotic place. The product of extensive fieldwork, Trimbur's writing overflows with insights into work, sport, masculinity, and above all 'the realization of the colonial model within the metropolitan heartland.'"--Paul Gilroy, author ofThe Black Atlantic

"Come Out Swinging is an extraordinary work of ethnography and theoretical reflection in the tradition of DuBois's understanding of double consciousness, Sartre's realization of 'the fight,' and Fanon's insights about the transformative force of engaged practice. The first emerges from Lucia Trimbur's double training in sociology and African American studies, which she brings together with unusual grace and skill as she draws out the contradictions of a society premised on narcissistic models of power in which those who rule dictate conditions over the very bodies of the dominated. The social reach of the white female and male amateur boxers who live out their fantasies of physical strength to match their political and social location illustrates and echoes American power relations in ways that strain traditional clichés about the intersections of class, gender, race, and sexuality. Trimbur's provocative, poignant, and often brilliant reflections enable the reader to see beyond what is at first seen. The unexpected, constantly transformative dimensions of human relations are brought to the fore in a genuine portrait of what it means to bring the human element, wrought with contradictions, to the study of a social world paradoxically based on brutal compassion. This is a must-read for scholars and general readers interested not only in the complexity of sports in postindustrial society but also in what it means to fight for one's humanity under rapidly changing conditions of identity and meaning."--Lewis R. Gordon, University of Connecticut and Rhodes University, South Africa

"Read this book for old times and new times. You will learn about the bodily disciplines and human practices, some surprisingly intimate, of boxing culture, but also about how a working-class sanctuary of racialized masculinity, the boxing gym, has been engulfed by postindustrial social and economic relations. A book about boxing and the perplexing inequalities and cultural inversions of the late-modern age,Come Out Swinging powerfully shows the unique ability of ethnography to shed light on and connect the macro and the micro."--Paul E. Willis, author ofLearning to Labor

"In this rich and engaging book, Lucia Trimbur invites her readers into the everyday world of Gleason's Gym. With its beautifully rendered observations and conversations, along with its lively style, this is a terrific book that does a marvelous job of revealing the complexities of the postindustrial landscape."--David Grazian, author of Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs

Aus dem Klappentext

"A brilliant, humane, and critically attentive book."--Les Back, Goldsmiths, University of London

"What is work? Trimbur's exquisite ethnography reveals postindustrial New York as a socially and spatially segregated landscape shaped by disappearing jobs for--and relentless criminalization of--modestly educated people of color. By developing their bodies as worksites and instruments, the boxers Trimbur describes enact complex understandings of the contradictory struggles to remix their labor with the external world. These sobering insights give me hope."--Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author ofGolden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California

"This book is a gem. Incisive, deeply principled, and acutely observed, it yields nothing to the idea that Gleason's Gym should be seen as an exotic place. The product of extensive fieldwork, Trimbur's writing overflows with insights into work, sport, masculinity, and above all 'the realization of the colonial model within the metropolitan heartland.'"--Paul Gilroy, author ofThe Black Atlantic

"Come Out Swinging is an extraordinary work of ethnography and theoretical reflection in the tradition of DuBois's understanding of double consciousness, Sartre's realization of 'the fight,' and Fanon's insights about the transformative force of engaged practice. The first emerges from Lucia Trimbur's double training in sociology and African American studies, which she brings together with unusual grace and skill as she draws out the contradictions of a society premised on narcissistic models of power in which those who rule dictate conditions over the very bodies of the dominated. The social reach of the white female and male amateur boxers who live out their fantasies of physical strength to match their political and social location illustrates and echoes American power relations in ways that strain traditional clichés about the intersections of class, gender, race, and sexuality. Trimbur's provocative, poignant, and often brilliant reflections enable the reader to see beyond what is at first seen. The unexpected, constantly transformative dimensions of human relations are brought to the fore in a genuine portrait of what it means to bring the human element, wrought with contradictions, to the study of a social world paradoxically based on brutal compassion. This is a must-read for scholars and general readers interested not only in the complexity of sports in postindustrial society but also in what it means to fight for one's humanity under rapidly changing conditions of identity and meaning."--Lewis R. Gordon, University of Connecticut and Rhodes University, South Africa

"Read this book for old times and new times. You will learn about the bodily disciplines and human practices, some surprisingly intimate, of boxing culture, but also about how a working-class sanctuary of racialized masculinity, the boxing gym, has been engulfed by postindustrial social and economic relations. A book about boxing and the perplexing inequalities and cultural inversions of the late-modern age,Come Out Swinging powerfully shows the unique ability of ethnography to shed light on and connect the macro and the micro."--Paul E. Willis, author ofLearning to Labor

"In this rich and engaging book, Lucia Trimbur invites her readers into the everyday world of Gleason's Gym. With its beautifully rendered observations and conversations, along with its lively style, this is a terrific book that does a marvelous job of revealing the complexities of the postindustrial landscape."--David Grazian, author of Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

COME OUT SWINGING

THE CHANGING WORLD OF BOXING IN GLEASON'S GYM

By Lucia Trimbur

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-15029-1

Contents

Acknowledgments............................................................
xi
List of Prominent Participants.............................................
xv
Preface....................................................................
xvii
Chapter One: Survival in a City Transformed: The Urban Boxing Gym in 
Postindustrial New York....................................................
1
Chapter Two: Work without Wages............................................
16
Chapter Three: Tough Love and Intimacy in a Community of Men...............
39
Chapter Four: Passing Time: The Expressive Culture of Everyday Gym Life....
63
Chapter Five: The Changing Politics of Gender..............................
89
Chapter Six: Buying and Selling Blackness: White-Collar Boxing and the 
Cultural Capital of Racial Difference......................................
117
Epilogue...................................................................
142
Methodological Appendix: Ethnographic Research in the Urban Gym............
149
Notes......................................................................
155
References.................................................................
181
Index......................................................................
193

CHAPTER 1

SURVIVAL IN A CITY TRANSFORMED: THE URBANBOXING GYM IN POSTINDUSTRIAL NEW YORK

OVER THE PAST FOUR DECADES, NEW YORK CITY'S SOCIAL,economic, and political structures have transformed dramatically, andthe word "postindustrial" is used to describe these changes. "Postindustrial"is used in a number of contexts, and the trends that it capturesare subject to myriad interpretations by scholars, policymakers, and socialcritics. As a result, the term is contested and not without discursive,political, and ideological problems. However, "postindustrial" can be auseful way to mark the decline in manufacturing and the acceleration ofthe FIRE economy—finance, insurance, and real estate—in urban centersand some of the resulting social and cultural conditions and structuresof feeling among city residents. This chapter, "Survival in a City Transformed,"provides a sketch of the postindustrial landscape of New YorkCity, in which Gleason's Gym and this ethnography are situated. The firstpart of the chapter examines postindustrial restructurings and some ofthe accompanying social and cultural changes, such as the eliminationof welfare entitlements, the expansion of crime control, and the ascensionof consumer capitalism. The second part looks at how postindustrialrestructurings affected urban boxing gyms in New York City. I arguethat Gleason's Gym survived the vicissitudes of the new postindustrialeconomy by incorporating some of its features, such as the turn to multiculturalismand diversity, the shift to cosmopolitanism and aggressive advertising,and the focus on the body and emergence of the fitness industry.

POSTINDUSTRIAL ECONOMIC AND SOCIALRESTRUCTURINGS

New York's Labor and Housing Markets

In studies of the labor market, the postindustrial points to a specific economicrestructuring that began in the late 1960s in which metropolitancenters that manufactured goods began to focus more heavily on retail,financial, and corporate services. That is, the postindustrial registers areorganization in which reliance on industrial capital was replaced byreliance on the FIRE industries. As industrial operations scattered to theglobal south, which offered lower taxes as well as less regulation, unionorganizing, and collective bargaining, cities in the Northeast and theMidwest lost a devastating number of jobs, turning them into rustbeltregions. Though many urban economies suffered from this process ofdeindustrialization, New York City was disproportionately affected. Thechanges New York City endured were more exaggerated and the growthof services quicker and more extensive than in other cities. Between1965 and 1989, the number of manufacturing jobs in New York fell from865,000 to 355,000, causing a rapid rise in unemployment. Workerswho lost manufacturing jobs had a difficult time finding employment ofcomparable remuneration in the new service economy and had few opportunitiesfor upward mobility.

While Fordist models of production were on the decline, new modesof accumulation gained ascendancy. New possibilities for global tradeand direct foreign investment, innovations in technology and its uses, advancesin transportation, and the growing power of multinational financeand telecommunication firms shaped the postindustrial economy. In herwork on the globalization of economic activity, Saskia Sassen suggeststhat cities such as New York emerged not only as places where capitalis coordinated but also as production sites. The production of financialgoods and services requires what she calls "dispersal" and "concentration";because some economic practices are decentralized, others mustbe more centralized. For instance, as jobs moved from US metropolitancenters to peripheral low-wage areas, more coordination was necessaryin central business districts. Sassen explains, "The more dispersed a firm'soperations across different countries, the more complex and strategic itscentral functions—that is, the work of managing, coordinating, servicing,financing a firm's network of operations." A new class of professionalsto do this managing, coordinating, servicing and financing soon formed.

Concentration and dispersal restructured the labor market and changedthe nature of work in urban areas. Workers bifurcated into "core" and"contingent" laborers. Core workers are executives, consultants, managers,and a range of specialists who manage capital. Contingent workers,or unskilled laborers in personal services, support the economic activitiesand personal lives of core workers. The experiences of work andthe financial compensation of the two groups stand in sharp contrast.Core workers enjoy higher salaries, better benefits, and more job securitythan contingent workers and, as a result, the former have access to morepossibilities for wealth accrual, such as investment in stocks, bonds, andmutual funds. Contingent workers engage in low-wage and unstablework: typically labor that has been subcontracted or that is part-time,seasonal, and temporary. Though this flexibility reduces costs, it createsjob insecurity and instability, benefit losses, and a reduction in investmentin human capital.

While the postindustrial economy promised new possibilities of profitand accumulation, wealth was unevenly distributed across society. Theowners and managers of capital disproportionally benefitted from theeconomy's splendors and a polarization of income financially distancedcontingent workers from core workers. An earning gap between manufacturingand nonmanufacturing, retail services and corporate services, andthe outlying boroughs and Manhattan increased the gap between poorand rich. Service jobs of contingent workers paid far less than did Fordistmanufacturing jobs, and the remaining manufacturing jobs became low-wageand low-skill....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 069115029X
• ISBN 13: 9780691150291
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 226
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland