Urban Geography of Boxing

Benita Heiskanen is Director of the John Morton Center for North American Studies at the University of Turku, Finland.

• Introduction 1. On the Barrio’s Ropes 2. Wo/Manly Art at the Gym 3. Business is Business Backdoors 4. The Limelight of the Ring 5. Through the Media’s Lens 6. Politicking in Combat Zones 7. The Ivory Tower in the Real World. Epilogue.

"The Urban Geography 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."– International Review for the Sociology of Sport"The Urban Geography of Boxing makes a valuable contribution to the ever expanding literature on what is social, cultural and political about sport." – Sociology of Sport Journal"Anyone with an interest in boxing, the geography of sports, or cultural geography will enjoy reading The Urban Geography of Boxing. It may not get you to run out to your front porch for the morning paper to check the boxing results (if you are one of the few who still gets a newspaper). But it will remind you of why the sport had been, and may yet again become, such a captivating component of American popular culture. It will also remind you of how naturally sports and geography blend together."– Ray Oldakowski, Jacksonville Universit, published in the Geographical Review"The Urban Geography of Boxing is a beautiful piece of research on the culture of boxing, the everyday lives of fighters and the contemporary issues that haunts professional boxing today. Heiskanen writes well, merging her sociological analyses with compelling narratives of boxers’ lives and struggles... Anyone interested in social, cultural and political issues in modern sport should pick up Heiskanen’s book."— Anne Tjønndal, Nord University, Norway, www.idrottsforum.org