| Titre | Un trafiquant de chair à l'?uvre : passion, pouvoir et profit dans l'économie de la boxe professionnelle | |
|---|---|---|
| Auteur | Loïc Wacquant | |
 |
Revue | Actuel Marx |
| Numéro | no 41, avril 2007 Corps dominés, corps en rupture | |
| Page | 71-83 | |
| Résumé anglais |
The Business of a Flesh-Merchant : Passion, Power, Profit in the Economy
of Professional Boxing.
France has witnessed a significant rise in the recourse to sub-contracting over the last twenty years. The
article is the result of an inquiry carried out by way of observation and participation in a boxing club located on the outskirts of Chicago's «South Side », close to the University of Chicago. The paper focuses on
the matchmaker as a particular figure in the world of boxing. A close study of what is a crucial function
in the world of boxing throws light on the way the milieu of boxing operates, in its recruitment of young
underprivileged Afro-Americans with a view to turning them into competent boxers. In his role as an
intermediary, the function of the matchmaker is to oversee the encounter between supply and demand in
what, to a large extent, is the body market of boxing. As the individual around whom all the transactions
revolve, the matchmaker is the figure on whom the milieu's various tensions and oppositions are projected. Regarded as an exploiter and a body-trafficker by most of the young men whom he hires, his peers
deem him “an honest businessman”. He thus epitomises the general economy of boxing, here understood
as a system of exchange of bodies, incorporated within a system of social relations, requiring both the
general collaboration of its subjects and the celebration of the success of certain individuals, at the expense of others. The article thus puts forward an empirically grounded economic anthropology, based on the
exchange and the wearing-away of what is the most precious possession of those young candidates for success: their own bodies. Source : Éditeur (via Cairn.info) |
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| Article en ligne | http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=AMX_041_0071 |
