Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T00:52:19.023Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘I'd rather wear out than rust out’: autobiologies of ageing equestriennes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2014

DONA L. DAVIS ,
ANITA MAURSTAD  and
SARAH DEAN
DONA L. DAVIS*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, USA.
ANITA MAURSTAD
Affiliation:
Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.
SARAH DEAN
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, USA.
*
Address for correspondence: Dona Davis, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of South Dakota, 414 East Clark St., Vermillion, SD 57069, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Horse–human relationships expressed as a kind of co-embodied engagement or mutual physicality between horse and rider receive note in emerging literatures on equine sports and multi-species ethnography. Less attention focuses on the impacts of equestrienne activities on ageing female bodies. This study is based on analysis of narrative data collected from open-ended qualitative interviews with 36 women, aged 40–70, who participate in a variety of equestrian activities and sports in the North American Midwest and Arctic Norway. Although ageing informants associate animal partnerships with the maintenance of health, and although informants' narratives show some accord with master narratives of ageing athletes identified by sports sociologists, the natures of horse–human relationships invite more explicit, horse- specific contexts of analysis. The phrase ‘autobiologies of ageing’ denotes how women's narratives of equestrienne ageing privilege and centre a subjective sense of physical identity or embodied self where the rider's experience of her body becomes entangled with and impartible from that of the horse or horses she rides.

Keywords

equestrian sportsmultispecies ethnographyageing female bodysports and ageing
Type
Articles
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , February 2016 , pp. 333 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adelman, M. and Moraes, F. A. 2008. Breaking their way in: women jockeys at the racetrack in Brazil. Advances in Gender Research, 12, 1, 99–123.Google Scholar
Argent, G. 2012. Toward a privileging of the nonverbal: communication, corporeal synchrony and transcendence in humans and horses. In Smith, J. and Mitchell, R. (eds), Experiencing Animals Minds: An Anthology of Animal–Human Encounters. Columbia, New York, 111–28.Google Scholar
Armstrong Oma, K. 2010. Between trust and domination: social contracts between humans and animals. World Archeology, 42, 2, 175–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baun, M. and Johnson, R. 2010. Human/animal interaction and successful ageing. In Fine, A. (ed.), Handbook of Animal Assisted Therapy. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 283–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergquist, L. 2009. Second Wind: The Rise of the Ageless Athlete. Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois.Google Scholar
Birke, L. and Brandt, K. 2009. Mutual corporeality: gender and horse/human relationships. Women's Studies International Forum, 32, 189–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birke, L., Bryld, M. and Lykke, U. 2004. Animal performances: an exploration of intersections between feminist science and studies of human/animal relationships. Feminist Theory, 5, 2, 167–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanchard, K. 1995. The Anthropology of Sport. Bergin & Garvey, Westport, Connecticut.Google Scholar
Blanchard, K. 2002. The anthropology of sport. In Coakley, J. and Dunning, E. (eds), Handbook of Sports Studies: Cross Disciplinary Differences and Connections. Sage, London, 144–8.Google Scholar
Bolin, A. and Granskog, J. 2003 a. Introduction and reflexive ethnography, women, and sporting activities. In Bolin, A. and Granskog, J. (eds), Athletic Intruders: Ethnographic Research on Women, Culture and Exercise. SUNY Press, New York, 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolin, A. and Granskog, J. 2003 b. Pastimes and presentimes: theoretical issues in research on women in action. In Bolin, A. and Granskog, J. (eds), Athletic Intruders: Ethnographic Research on Women, Culture and Exercise. SUNY Press, New York, 247–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, P. 1978. Sport and social class. Social Science Information, 17, 6, 819–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burstyn, V. 1999. The Rites of Men: Manhood, Politics and the Culture of Sport. University of Toronto Press, Toronto.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowles, S. and Davis, D. 2013. Krusty and other sexagenarians: heroic self-stylings of ageing equestriennes. Teaching Anthropology, SACC Notes, 19, 1/2, 29–33.Google Scholar
Davis, D., Maurstad, M. and Cowles, S. 2013. ‘Riding up forested mountain sides, in wide open spaces and with walls’: developing an ecology of horse–human relationships. Humanimalia, 4, 2, 54–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, D., Maurstad, M. and Dean, S. 2015. ‘My horse is my therapist’: the medicalization of pleasure among women equestrians. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 29, in press.Google Scholar
De Munck, V. 2009. Research Design and Methods for Studying Cultures. Alta Mira, Plymouth, UK.Google Scholar
Despret, V. 2004. The body we care for: figures of anthropo-zoo-genesis. Body & Society, 10, 2/3, 111–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dionigi, R. 2006. Competitive sports as leisure in late life: negotiations, discourse, and ageing. Leisure Sciences, 28, 2, 181–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dyck, N. 2004. Getting into the game: anthropological perspectives on sport – introduction. Anthropologica, 46, 1, 3–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dyck, N. 2010. Remembering and the ethnography of children's sports. In Collins, P. and Gallinat, A. (eds), The Ethnographic Self as Resource. Berghahn, New York, 150–64.Google Scholar
Dyck, N. and Archetti, E. 2003. Introduction – embodied identities: reshaping social life through sport and dance. In Dyck, N. and Archetti, E. (eds), Sport, Dance and Embodied Identities. Berg, Oxford, 1–22.Google Scholar
Eichberg, H. 1995. Problems and future of research in sports sociology: a revolution of the body culture. International Review for Sociology of Sports, 30, 1, 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Game, A. 2001. Riding: embodying the centaur. Body & Society, 7, 4, 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, M. and Gillett, J. 2011. Equine athletes and interspecies sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 47, 5, 632–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giulianotti, R. and Robertson, R. 2007. Globalization and Sport. Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Grant, B. 2001. ‘You're never too old’: beliefs about physical activity and playing sport in later life. Ageing & Society, 21, 6, 777–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, D. 2008. When Species Meet. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.Google Scholar
Harris, J. and Park, R. 1983. Play, Games and Sports in Cultural Contexts. Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois.Google Scholar
Hedenborg, S. 2007. Female jockeys in Swedish horse racing 1890–2000: from minority to majority. International Journal of the History of Sport, 24, 4, 501–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heywood, L. and Dworkin, S. 2003. Built to Win: The Female Athlete as Cultural Icon. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.Google Scholar
Hockey, J. and Allen-Collinson, J. 2007. Grasping the phenomenology of sporting bodies. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 42, 2, 115–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, R. 2004. Preoccupations and prejudices: reflections on the study of sports imagery. Anthropologica, 46, 1, 29–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirksey, S. and Helmreich, S. 2010. The emergence of multispecies ethnography. Cultural Anthropology, 25, 4, 545–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larsen, E. 2011. Fast horses and strong women: revisioning the sport-family-business of harness horse racing. Sociological Viewpoints, 27, 39–46.Google Scholar
Larsson, H. 2013. Sport physiology research and governing gender in sport – a power–knowledge relation? Sport, Education and Society, 18, 3, 334–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latimer, J. and Birke, L. 2009. Natural relations: horses, knowledge and technology. The Sociological Review, 57, 1, 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lithman, Y. 2004. Anthropologists on home turf: how green is the grass? Anthropologica, 46, 1, 17–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maurstad, A., Davis, D. and Cowles, S. 2013. Co-being and intra-action in horse–human relationships: a multi-species ethnography of be(coming) human and be(com)ing horse. Social Anthropology, 3, 2, 322–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maurstad, A., Davis, D. and Dean, S.What's underfoot: emplacing identify in practice among horse–human pairs. In Nyman, J. and Schuurman, N. (eds), Affective Animals: Relational Approaches to Human–Animal Encounters. Routledge, New York, in press.Google Scholar
McDermott, L. 1996. Toward a feminist understanding of physicality within the context of women's physically active and sporting lives. Sociology of Sport Journal, 13, 12–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGarry, K. 2010. Sport in transition: emerging trends on culture change in the anthropology of sport. Reviews in Anthropology, 39, 151–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, P. 2004. Scouting an anthropology of sport. Anthropologica, 46, 1, 37–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, C. 2002. Introduction: Anthropology and sport. Australian Journal of Anthropology, 13, 3, 253–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Partington, E., Partington, S., Fishwick, L. and Allin, L. 2005. Mid-life nuances and negotiations: narrative maps and the social construction of mid-life in sport and physical activity. Sport, Education and Society, 10, 1, 85–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfister, G. 1993. Appropriation of the environment, motor experiences and sporting activities of girls and women. International Review for Sociology of Sport, 28, 2/3, 159–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfister, G. 2012. It is never too late to win – sporting activities and performances of ageing women. Sport in Society, 15, 2/3, 369–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phoenix, C. and Sparkes, A. 2007. Sporting bodies, ageing, narrative mapping and young team athletes: an analysis of possible selves. Education, Sport and Society, 12, 1, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pluijim, S., Smit, J., Tromp, E., Stel, V., Deeg, D. and Bouter, L. 2006. A risk profile for identifying community-dwelling elderly with high risk of recurrent falling. Osteoporosis International, 17, 3, 417–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinn, N. 2005. Finding Culture in Talk. A Collection of Methods. Palgrave, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, D. 1990. Quixote's library and pragmatic discourse: toward understanding the culture of capitalism. Anthropological Quarterly, 64, 4, 155–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sands, R. 1999. Anthropology, Sport and Culture. Bergin Garvey, Westport, Connecticut.Google Scholar
Tulle, E. 2008. The ageing body and the ontology of ageing: athletic competence in later life. Body & Society, 14, 3, 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vertinsky, P. and Cousins, S. 2007. Acting your age: gender, ageing and physical activity. In White, K. and Young, P. (eds), Sports and Gender in Canada. Oxford University Press, Don Mills, Canada, 155–77.Google Scholar
Wells, D. 2009. The effects of animals on human health and well-being. Journal of Social Issues, 65, 3, 523–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar