Body, sports and motor disability in the City of Buenos Aires. Tensions between the reproduction and the questioning of domination

Abstract

This paper, which is based on the results of a qualitative investigation on the adapted sports in the City of Buenos Aires (1950-2010), analyses the ethos created by the practice of sports by persons with a motor disability. For that end, taking into account the sociological assumptions of Pierre Bourdieu, the author describes the bodily habits that are promoted by the practice of sports and that draw the disabled body valued within the field. On the basis of the empirical material gathered, escaping from the current readings that reduce the effects of the sports on the disability to the creation of an integrated citizen or to that of a hyper adapted super crip, the author submits that sports have an ambiguous effect on the domination of the persons with disability. Even if the promoted know-how challenge the hegemonic medical criterion, it also constitutes a strong imperative for a normalization that does not dispute the definition of a legitimate body.