‘The battle in belonging’: Pedagogies, Practice and Hypermasculinity in Boys’ Physical Education

This chapter reveals the relevance of ‘place-belonging’ for a teacher and student arising around a game of battle-ball in an all-boys’ Physical Education class. Drawing on a narrative vignette, it reveals how belonging is embedded in the politics of institutional policies, pedagogic practices, gender and personal power relations. It also shows how the serendipitous conflation of these conditions can rapidly shift the boundaries and identities of belonging and that belonging or not belonging—being in/out of place—is not always agentically sought or controlled but can be ‘done to you’. In this light, it is argued that belonging and not belonging is best understood not as an encounter of oppositional forces but as a dynamic process involving subjective investments and desires.