%0 Journal Article
%A Singh, Amit
%D 2022
%F discovery:10164837
%I Informa UK Limited
%J Identities
%K Bourdieu, habitus, race, agency, kickboxing, Muay Thai
%N 3
%P 301-319
%T Fighting with race: complex solidarities & constrained sameness
%U https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10164837/
%V 29
%X Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted at an East London Kickboxing/Muay Thai gym, this paper explores how fighters at Origins Combat Gym seek to reject race as a discursive category in favour of constructing each other as the same, bonded by years of intimately training alongside one another. Drawing upon Bourdieu, I conceptualise a racial habitus to argue that such processes are constrained; my field-site is not a racial utopia, even if it does allow for new possibilities. Nonetheless, my interlocutors’ attempts to reject the logic of ethnic absolutism through forging complex localised solidarities offers hope in anti-immigrant times.
%Z This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.