Abstrakt
While significant attention has been paid to material, spatial, and visual aspects of the social world of boxing, the dimension of sound in boxing has remained widely overlooked. In my analysis I look at different soundscapes produced around boxing to try and understand how this auditory approach can bring about different understanding of the cultures and social worlds of boxers.
I focus my study around three songs that are played in the boxing gym in Bratislava: 1) "Jugoslovenka" by the Yugoslav pop-folk singer Lepa Brena (1989), 2) "Orlík" by a 1980s Czech nationalist skinhead band, and 3) songs belonging to Justin Bieber. This chapter draws on empirical research conducted over a year in a boxing gym in a socialist neighbourhood on the periphery of Bratislava, Slovakia.
It is part of the larger multi-ethnographic and multisensorial research project that aims to provide insight into the complexity of bodily labour and gender identity construction in the environment of amateur boxing culture in the countries of the Central European region and mainly its housing estates in the city peripheries.