Work

The Dis/appearing Sporting Body: The Complex Embodiment of Disabled Athletes

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This article critically explores how disability appears and disappears in high-performance sporting environments. Drawing upon symbolic interactionism and embodiment theory, we specifically focus upon disabled athletes’ lived experiences of competing in a pan-disability setting and interrogate the interplay between corporeality and social interaction in the materialising of ability, disability and impairment. In this study, 22 (21 male and one female) disabled athletes participated in online semi-structured interviews. The sample was purposively selected from athletes who had been drafted for the Disability Premier League (DPL), a unique pan-disability, draft-based franchise cricket tournament. This article establishes the DPL as a site of sociological importance – a neo-liberal, ableist environment that pushes the boundaries of what a disabled athlete and the disabled body should be. Our wide-ranging findings demonstrate the complex and interactional ways in which the disabled body dis/appears in sporting spaces and the significant embodied repercussions of this process.

Source: Sociology

DOI: 10.1177/00380385251325452

Authors: Ben Powis, James Brighton, Robert C Townsend

Institutions: Bournemouth University, Canterbury Christ Church University, University of Waikato

Language: English

Topic: Inclusion and Disability in Education and Sport

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,900