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Contesting Masculinity and Ritual Embodiment in Youth Baseball

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The Palgrave Handbook of Anthropological Ritual Studies

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Abstract

This chapter explores the formation of ritualized bodies in the context of youth baseball in a medium-sized city in the United States. I argue that the baseball diamond forms a structured environment or “ritual space” that presents children with a framework for embodying social norms related to concepts such as competitiveness and hierarchy. The example discussed here represents a particularly useful way of seeing how values expressed and contested in the context of ritual performance link to the bodies of youth baseball players as they learn to enact and embody specific practices and values related to normative notions of masculinity.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.littleleague.org/media/04congressends.asp.

  2. 2.

    http://www.baberuthleague.org/history.html.

  3. 3.

    http://www.baberuthleague.org/code.html.

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Acknowledgements

This project is part of a larger research program looking at youth baseball in Japan and the U.S. that has been supported by the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Endowment at the University of Texas at Austin. Thanks go to Julian Traphagan, who provided helpful comments on a draft of the chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Religious Studies, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA

    John W. Traphagan

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  1. John W. Traphagan
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Correspondence to John W. Traphagan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Pamela J. Stewart

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Andrew J. Strathern

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Traphagan, J.W. (2021). Contesting Masculinity and Ritual Embodiment in Youth Baseball. In: Stewart, P.J., Strathern, A.J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Anthropological Ritual Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76825-6_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76825-6_7

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

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