Punching Back: Gender, Religion and Belonging in Women-Only Kickboxing

by Jasmijn Rana

Overview

In the Netherlands, girls and young women are increasingly active in women-only kickboxing. The general assumption, in the Netherlands and in western Europe more broadly, is that women’s sport is a form of secular, feminist empowerment. Muslim women’s participation would then exemplify the incongruence of Islam with the modern, secular nation-state. Punching Back provides a detailed ethnographic study that contests this view by showing that young Muslim women who kickbox establish agentive selves by playing with gender norms, challenging expectations, and living out their religious subjectivities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781800736900
Publisher:	Berghahn Books, Incorporated
Publication date:	11/11/2022
Series:	New Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocations , #5
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	180
File size:	735 KB

About the Author

Jasmijn Rana is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1. A Place for Us: Neighbourhood and Nation in a Kickboxing Gym
Chapter 2. Punching, Kicking and Belonging through Learning Together
Chapter 3. Crafting Gendered Subjectivities in Kickboxing
Chapter 4. To Fight or not to fight: Religious Sensibilities in Sports
Chapter 5. Fighting your way in: Competitive Kickboxing Against the Odds

Conclusion

References
Index

Editorial Reviews

“Jasmijn Rana has written an engaging, well-crafted and long-anticipated ethnography of the intersectionally gendered and racialized experience of Muslim Dutch women, drawn from her own apprenticeship in women-only kickboxing venues in the southern neighbourhoods of The Hague.” • Paul Silverstein, Reed College

“I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and feel that it makes a very important contribution to the fields of sport studies, martial arts studies, migration studies and the anthropology of Islam in Europe.” • Alex Channon, University of Brighton

From the Publisher