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This paper challenges the practical and conceptual understanding of the role of emotions in higher education from the twin perspectives of transition and transformation. Focusing on the neglected area of positive emotions, exploratory data reveal a rich, low-level milieu of undergraduate emotional awareness in students chiefly attributed to pedagogic actions, primarily extrinsically orientated, and pervasive throughout the learning experience. The data conceive positive affect as oppositional, principally ephemeral and linked to performative pedagogic endeavours of "getting", "knowing" and "doing". A cyclical social dynamic of reciprocity, generating positive feedback loops, is highlighted. Finally we inductively construct a tentative 'emotion-transition framework' to assist our understanding of positive emotion as a force for transformational change; our contention is that higher education might proactively craft pedagogic spaces so as to unite the "feeling" discourse, the "thinking" discourse (epistemological self) and the wider "life-self" (ontological) discourse.

This paper takes critical lenses to interpret what students find enjoyable in their learning in specific "subject" environments within the prevailing socio-economic climate in higher education. It considers student dispositions that emerged from dialogues with two groups of students attending a non-traditional university and taking vocational degrees within England, UK. We argue that although each higher education institute can become its own destiny, it can only do so within the boundaries of state policy and its technologies. Higher education, when affected by cultures of "performativity," is arguably focused less on knowledge for "emancipation" and its own sake and more on the "use value" of its products. This paper argues that what is valued by these particular students in their learning and what gives them positive feelings as they engage with this process of learning is not altogether independent of the current governances shaping higher education. (Contains 4 notes.)

This paper presents a philosophy and method for an ongoing investigation into the cause and effect of student emotions in higher education. In particular, it presents the possibilities for exploring students' positive emotions as "jouissance" experiences linked to the transgression of power relations and social structures. The paper takes the form of "evolutionary musings" that guide the reader through a confessional account of the research programme, the epistemological and methodological challenges, the limits of data already produced, and suggestions for a future approach. The musings maintain that descriptions of causal relationships of pedagogic action and the phenomenology of students' feelings of gratification are not enough to plausibly interpret the locatedness and meaning of emotions, and that the emotional nexus is shaped by and continues to inform social relationships. (Contains 5 notes.)

This paper explores the implications and affects of a level two compulsory module concerned with "gender, difference and leisure" on a predominantly male student group studying for sports-related degrees. Participant observation was undertaken by a male and female lecturer who were delivering the module. A cohort of male football students were interviewed as a group, and individual interviews were undertaken with female students. The opinions and expressions of the students are also located in the significant subculture of the collegiate footballer researched by one of the authors. The paper draws attention to the ways in which young male students negotiate their male identities collectively and the implications this has for theirs and other's learning in HE. The findings show that many of the male football students, in particular, attempted to resist knowledge that challenged dominant male behaviours and threatened the project of patriarchy as a whole, such as the hegemonic patterning of the collegiate football subculture. While this resistance was beset with tensions, evidencing some opposition to gender ideologies at an individual level, at least, social identities constructed around gender and "race", especially, were clearly disruptive in the development of critical awareness to such issues. The data presented here highlight a number of pedagogical problems that arise from these complex sets of interrelated identity issues, not least the need for lecturers to develop greater critical awareness of masculine and racial identities and to reflect upon their methods of delivery of contested knowledge. (Contains 7 notes.)

This paper examines media representations of Welsh rugby player Gavin Henson, arguing that through analysis of media discourses we can trace shifting shapes of masculinities in the (post)modern era of sport. Contradiction and inconsistencies are prevalent in the narratives that accompany the equally conflicting images of Henson, who both conforms to and challenges traditional rugby playing masculinities. The paper examines articles from Welsh and British newspapers from a critical (pro)feminist perspective, arguing that Henson transcends boundaries in a way that no rugby player has ever done before and analyzes his place as the first metrosexual rugby star. The study also examines the somewhat problematic concept of metrosexuality within critical (pro)feminist theories of sport and attempts to conceptualize the position and significance of the term. This work brings images of the continual, dialectic process of the (re)defining of gender identities to the study of masculinities, and sport masculinities in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byline: John Harris, Ben Clayton David Beckham is, arguably, the most high profile association football player in the world, securing global media interest in all aspects of his life. Contradiction and inconsistencies are prevalent within the narratives that accompany the conflicting images of Beckham where media discourse has been adjusted to position him as both hero and villain. This paper examines the inconstant nature of the nationalistic and masculine discourses applied to Beckham and the diversity of roles played by him in upholding and distorting ideologies in sport. Beckham has become a cultural icon and a symbol of national identity and masculinised sporting pride. Yet many of his exploits, both on and off the pitch, have led to allegations of non-conformity. His role, therefore, is a complicated one as he is both symbol of, and an exception to, conceptualisations of Englishness and of the hegemonic model of masculinity.

This paper employs fictional techniques to convey the competing discourses of parenting and ‘serious’ climbing in relation to time and risk as they are experienced by heterosexual couples with at least one child and a history of commitment to traditional climbing. The resultant story is constructed from data produced by topical life-history interviews with seven white-British, middle-class couples and is interrupted, but not overlaid, by a late-modern and Foucauldian analytic thread through which we posit that the parents must negotiate a number of discourses of modernity in their pursuit of an authentic identity. The story, however, is intended more as dais for sociological dialogue, to allow the situated reader to inhabit the lifeworld and respond to its imagery. The story replicates the parents’ leisure time and space on a typical weekend and shows the contradictory and gendered nature of the discourses experienced by these climbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re-enacts a typical experience of male sport initiation at a university in the south of England and presents a confessional account of my own shifting epistemological position and desire to create more balanced, ethical, reflexive and self-effacing research. The tale of initiation is constructed from ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with male collegiate football (soccer) players and subsequent purposive conversations with male collegiate rugby players. It aims to confront the reader with the lived experience of male student sport initiations, providing a platform for unremitting reflection and greater possibilities for academic recourse. In particular, I suggest, the tale constructs a dais for sociological dialogue about the existentiality and configurations of, and relationships between, deviance, masculinities and subcultural identities in a student sport setting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses recent developments in mobile technology. Some of the devices discussed include installed Global Positioning System (GPS) sensors for satellite navigation and Geographical Information Systems through satellite imaging for additional navigation. The article explains how satellites translate information from the Mediascape program into digital technology, the mobile Bristol project, and how Mediascape authoring tools can help those at work and those who manage a business.

Building on previous discourse analytic studies in the context of male athletic cultures and subcultures, this article uses pro-feminist perspectives to analyse the talk of male university football (soccer) players in the UK. The (re)production of hegemonic masculinity in men's football has largely been taken for granted in sociology of sport, with very little literature producing actual empirical research to support the claim. The study presents extracts of players' conversations from the changing room and student bar, and examines the ways in which the men negotiate masculine positional identity and (re)affirm separation from the ‘other’, such as women and gay men. The three most predominant topics of conversation (excluding omnipresent talk about football itself) were identified as academic studies, alcohol consumption, and women. Each extract of the men's talk was subjected to critical discourse analysis and is discussed in this article in relation to (pro)feminist debates about hegemony and constructions of masculine self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]