In the 1880s, two cycling clubs formed in New Orleans—the New Orleans Bicycle Club in 1881 and the Louisiana Cycling Club in 1887. These clubs were institutions of Victorian middle class culture that, like other athletic clubs, arose from the conditions of urban modernity and Victorian class anxieties. The NOBC, like other American cycling clubs, conformed to Victorian values of order and respectability. The attitudes and activities of the LCC, whose membership was younger, reflected instead a counter-Victorian ethos. This paper examines these two clubs in the context of late Victorian culture in New Orleans as it responded both to the conditions of urban modernity common to American cities in this period and to the particular cultural situation of New Orleans at the end of the nineteenth century, including proximity to and amalgamation with the recently-dominant, non-Anglo culture of the Creoles.

In an era that sees sports clubs facing a crisis, a few still grow and attract new members. They use technology for their benefit and provide a place where the members have fun, become aware of their competence, set goals for improvement and experience empowerment. The present qualitative study, conducted with a road cycling club in Germany, investigates how membership is negotiated and confirmed. By exploring the factors that influence the degree of belonging, this research aims to provide some answers on how active members of a cycling hobby club experience becoming part of such a community, what it takes to substantiate membership, and how individual and collective identities are formed and constantly negotiated. The situated learning perspective and Etienne Wenger's Communities of Practice concept have been adopted, and semi-structured interviews with ten participants were conducted. Moreover, observations and conclusions from a stimulated focus group discussion were used. The analysis shows that cycling in a group is a complex, multifaceted learning experience. Power, speed, or cycling skills do not suffice without the will and active efforts to harmonise with a group. Belonging grows parallel to competence, and the degree of competence gets constantly evaluated by the community in their practice, as a combination of contribution to the common goal and ability to be a trusted partner. Competence is thus a “becoming”, reflecting the members’ engagement with the sport and on an interpersonal level.

The study focuses on the experiences of female cyclists who participate in the cycling club at a tertiary institution in South Africa. By qualitatively exploring these experiences an attempt was made to understand how female cyclists narrate themselves within a specific context. In embarking on this research I have worked from a narrative position that focuses on experiences that people live on a daily basis. The way people tell about these experiences allows them to make sense of their lives. People’s experiences are shaped by history and culture which allows them to tell their narratives differently as context and time differs. The methodology employed is that of narrative analysis which entails attending, telling, transcribing, analysing and reading the text presented by the participants. Themes introduced by the participants were analysed and commented upon by the researcher in the final chapters. / Dissertation (MA (Counselling Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Psychology / unrestricted