During every summer Olympic Games, the sport of gymnastics rises briefly to the world’s
attention as the public admire the incredible skills and feats performed by fit muscular bodies
on a range of apparatus. The gymnastics they watch consists of performances in which bodies
assemble with apparatus. This thesis utilises an Actor Network Theory (ANT) perspective to
follow this assembling of gymnastics in the five codes of competitive gymnastics competed in
New Zealand: women’s artistic gymnastics, men’s artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics,
trampolining and competitive aerobics.
This thesis is a descriptive ethnography of the world of high performance gymnastics. It
begins by examining some of the controversies that have operated to both criticise and rework
the sport. Next, the gymnasts are followed through the selection processes that lead them to
become members of national squads and teams. It then moves to the training gymnasium and
examines the variety of non-human actants that work in the gymnasium to assemble
gymnastics. The next two chapters examine how gymnasts are found to enrol and assemble
with video technologies and sports science professionals in their efforts to improve
performance. Following this, gymnasts are observed to produce a routine at a competition
which is translated into a score and ranking through the highly complicated and laborious
process of judging. Finally, the thesis concludes with the story of Angela McMillan, New
Zealand’s most successful athlete within the gymnastic codes. Throughout are a range of
accounts from participants, together with observations, describing attempts to secure the
stabilisation of gymnastics as an actor-network that produces internationally successful
athletes.
All the networks followed involve a continual process of enrolling, un-enrolling, translating
and mediating, with power constantly shifting and being shared between various
heterogeneous actants including coaches, parents, the national federation and the international
federation. At times these networks stabilise with particular actants, such as sports scientists
or technologies, being enrolled, while at other times the paths of the networks come to an end
as particular assemblages or actants, such as physical ability tests, are no longer enrolled. In
contrast to a perception that successful high performance sports include key actors and
resources, this thesis shows how the networks that produce high performance gymnasts are
highly unpredictable and messy, with humans and non-humans both equally influential in
affecting every branch of the networks. Processes such as talent identification, training and
judging are found to be complicated and unstable.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:canterbury.ac.nz/oai:ir.canterbury.ac.nz:10092/4100 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Kerr, Roslyn Fiona |
| Publisher | University of Canterbury. Social and Political Sciences |
| Source Sets | University of Canterbury |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic thesis or dissertation, Text |
| Rights | Copyright Roslyn Fiona Kerr, http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/thesis/etheses_copyright.shtml |
| Relation | NZCU |
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