When French sociologist Loic Wacquant signed up at a boxing gym in a black neighborhood of Chicago's South Side,
he had never contemplated getting close to a ring, let alone climbing into it. Yet for three years he immersed
himself among local fighters, amateur and professional. He learned the Sweet science of bruising, participating
in all phases of the pugilist's strenuous preparation, from shadow-boxing drills to sparring to fighting in the
Golden Gloves tournament. In this experimental ethnography of incandescent intensity, the scholar-turned-boxer
supplies a model for a "carnal sociology" capable of capturing "the taste and ache of action."
Body & Soul marries the analytic rigor of the sociologist with the stylistic grace of the novelist to offer
a compelling portrait of a bodily craft and of life and labor in the black American ghetto, but also a fascinating
tale of personal transformation and social transcendence.
Table of Contents
The Taste and Ache of Action Preface to the U.S. Edition Prologue The Street and the Ring An Island of Order and Virtue "The Boys Who Beat the Street" A Scientifically Savage Practice The Social Logic of Sparring An Implicit and Collective Pedagogy Managing Bodily Capital Fight Night at Studio 104 "You Scared I Might Mess Up 'Cause You Done Messed Up" Weigh-in at the Illinois State Building An Anxious Afternoon Welcome to Studio 104 Pitiful Preliminaries Strong Beats Hannah by TKO in the Fourth Make Way for the Exotic Dancers "You Stop Two More Guys and I'll Stop Drinkin'" "Busy" Louie at the Golden Gloves List of Illustrations A Note on Acknowledgments and Transcription Index
