Abstract
In The Urban Geography of Boxing, Benita Heiskanen offers an in-depth cultural examination of boxing that calls attention to the spatiality of pugilistic power relations. This book marks an important point of departure in scholarly boxing literature as it convincingly explains that everything about boxing, from the space of the ring canvas to the urban geographies where the sport operates, is spatially organized. As such, Heiskanen’s writing offers several new insights and points for discussion on the power dynamics of a sport that has geographically relocated from the urban margins to the center. As Alan Bairner (2012) reminds us in an essay on the main challenges that currently face the sociology of sport, there remains limited crossover between geography and the sociology of sport. Those of us who engage in writing about the sociospatial relations of sport, physical culture, and bodies can delight in the polished arguments that Heiskanen presents over seven logically structured chapters. Bairner also argues that there is a need for greater interdisciplinarity within the sociology of sport literature. Heiskanen’s text provides an excellent model, as it “is neither anchored in a monodisciplinary base nor does it claim a singular methodological trajectory” (p.xiii).
Researched over a decade, Heiskanen’s decidedly interdisciplinary text offers critical new insights into the prizefighting industry at multiple intersecting levels. The book draws on ethnographic fieldwork primarily conducted in Texas, archival research, literary sources, theoretical conceptualizations, and media representations to trace the fight game from the local to the global. Heiskanen begins the book with a basic overview and introduction to the contents of the book, explicitly outlining that the book does not subscribe to a single methodological lens but engages with a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches to examine the complexity of the sport’s power relations. This approach enables her to examine boxing from its many different relations and, in particular, moves her analysis beyond a narrow focus on boxing as a field in which masculinities have been constituted. Rather, the book focuses on three developments that have characterized boxing across the globe: its ethnoracial development (“Latinization”), class blending, and gender desegregation.
The first chapter focuses on a group of Latino boxers from the urban margins of a barrio in East Austin, Texas and traces how their careers began. While boxers are often depicted as profoundly melancholic figures, Heiskanen exposes the ways in which they carve out positive experiences, a measure of autonomy, and belonging within overwhelmingly oppressive circumstances in a spatially segregated community. Chapter 2 shifts attention to an examination of how women’s presence in boxing has desegregated the male-only space of the gym. This is where Heiskanen’s analysis differs sharply from scholarly work on “boxing masculinities”, including Kath Woodward’s (2006) Boxing, Masculinity and Identity: The “I” of the Tiger, Elliot Gorn’s (2010) updated The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America, John Sugden’s (1996) Boxing and Society and Loic Wacquant’s (2004) Body and Soul. Heiskanen examines the “workplace” of the gym as a mixed social space of people with different class, gender, and ethnoracial backgrounds, examining the complex, nuanced, and fluid meanings the sport has for its practitioners and sundry players. This context is important as it highlights the shifting dynamics of the gym and offers an alternative voice to the largely overdetermined readings of hegemonic masculinities within boxing.
Chapter 3 engages with the unregulated prizefight industry on numerous geographic scales, including the local, national, and global. The chapter sheds light on the “power battles between the financial players and the class-based, racialized, and gendered labour force” (p.44). What Heiskanen does effectively here is not simply reporting on the inner workings of the business of boxing; rather, she helps the reader comprehend the largely hidden yet intersecting labor, financial, and legal issues faced by the worker-athlete within the sport’s centers and margins, which often obscure the underlying mechanisms of both subjugation and empowerment. Chapter 4 places the boxing match itself at the center of spatial analysis, showcasing the numerous warring interests beyond the bodily combat of the fighters. Heiskanen’s assessments of the often parasitic relationships between the matchmakers, promoters, athletic commissions, and sanctioning bodies highlight the numerous agendas at play during any prizefight.
Chapters 5 and 6 provide further innovative contributions to scholarly boxing literature. Chapter 5 showcases the role of the media in depicting the Latinization and gender desegregation of boxing to the broader public. Heiskanen argues that as boxers move from the private/marginal sites into more central/mainstream locations, their bodies become inescapably intertwined with numerous discursive strategies, such as ethnoracial, class, gender, and sexual profiling. Chapter 6 explores boxing as a form of consumer culture deeply connected to nationalism, patriotism, and military interests. There are numerous historical examples of boxing being used as an instrument of ideology during warfare. One only has to think of Second World War recruitment posters featuring Joe Louis or the numerous Joe Louis/Sugar Ray Robinson exhibitions staged for the US troops in Europe to understand that the sport has long been used for a range of political purposes, including military campaigns. Heiskanen revisits this pugilistic history and then outlines how the contemporary world of professional boxing continues to collide with the military agenda. The discussion on the war–sport continuum is anchored by numerous examples of professional boxing being used to serve various ideological purposes, including military operations like Operation Iraqi Freedom. These examples clearly illustrate the tangled local–global power relations that engage boxing for purposes outside of the sport’s everyday context.
The focus on spatiality is also woven into Chapter 7, which reflects on the process of doing research, including an examination of ethnographic fieldwork as a spatial practice. This discussion is among a number of topics in The Urban Geography of Boxing that have rarely been addressed within the sport sociology literature. Heiskanen’s reflexivity about the research’s ethical challenges, as well as the geographies of knowledge formation, is summarized in a spatial question on research practices which she poses to scholars: “Does our work attempt to build bridges or barricades?” (p.123). Heiskanen’s in-depth knowledge of the boxing world and its sundry parties, her familiarity with both popular and scholarly boxing literature, and her interdisciplinary approach to American studies and sport studies help to enliven the discussion on boxing as she builds bridges with her cultural examination of a sport operating at multiple intersecting spatial scales.
The Urban Geographies of Boxing is a truly excellent piece of research. Heiskanen engages in both intensive fieldwork and sustained theoretical writing, making her one of those rare scholars who deftly weds theory, everyday life, and the intensities of fieldwork (Hancock, 2009). She also works across disciplinary boundaries. This ensures that the book will appeal to a wide range of graduate students and academics, as well as some boxing enthusiasts. Her theoretically driven ethnographic approach prioritizes the practical knowledge of participants within boxing landscapes. In doing so, this work demonstrates that theory is indispensable in capturing and explaining the multiple and shifting meanings of boxing, including those that extend far beyond the everyday sporting contexts.
In the end, this book offers an important and highly original contribution to sport sociology and the scholarly boxing literature, an area considered by some to be a relatively saturated research field. The Urban Geographies of Boxing also provides a much-needed corrective to the disciplinary territorialism within existing boxing scholarship. The one missing element in the book is images. This is a minor flaw, but the book would benefit from the inclusion of images of some of boxing’s geographies, featured fighters, media representations, or pictorial examples of the US military’s appropriation of the sport for their own political agendas. Ultimately, however, Heiskanen has succeeded in writing an inspired and exciting book that examines the power relations embedded in the sport and its urban geographies.