O jogo dos gêneros e o gênero do jogo: o caso do voleibol

Abstract

Through an ethnography based on my own sports biography, I demonstrate the coexistence of powerful conceptions about volleyball that make it appear as “female sport”, “women's sport” and/or “sport of fagots”, among other variants, and the volleyball players’ conceptions about the sport they practice. The central argument of this research is that such conceptions are supported by a set of factors: the contrast between soccer and volleyball, respectively first and second sports in national preference, coupled with a certain view on body techniques in general and on the techniques of volleyball in particular, which merge with a peculiar context marked by the large presence of women, "gays" and certain uses of the body, at least in the amateur circuit.