“What’s your worth?” The Development of Capital in British Boxing

Abstract

This paper is a report of an ethnographic study of boxing undertaken in the North-East of England. Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capital structured both the data collection, analysis of the findings and the discussion. The methods were depth interviews and observation over a six year period.The findings indicated that whilst participation in boxing was beneficial and led to the development of both body capital and social capital. Body capital which the boxer’s developed, involved the negotiation of risk and the acceptance (to a degree) of exploitation, and was of little use outside of boxing. The development of social capital was tied in with the acceptance of masculine hegemony.