Fighting Feelings: The Emotional Labor of ‘Old Heads’ in an Amateur Boxing Gym

• In Event: 479 - Section on Sociology of Emotions Paper Session. Emotions and Social Worlds

Abstract

This paper explores the mentorship of low-income young men of color by examining amateur boxing coaches and the emotional training techniques that they use with their fighters. Studying both the actions and the intentions behind non-physical training routines provides insights into the increasingly rare experience of adult male mentorship for low-income young men of color. Data for this paper comes from a 13-month ethnographic study of a South Los Angeles boxing gym and in-depth interviews with the gym’s boxing coaches. This paper explores two aspects of the training process from the coach’s point of view: the creation and enforcement of rules to differentiate the boxing gym from “the street,” and the use of “emotional regimens” in training. The coaches in this study acted as “old head” mentors for their fighters and sought to produce a particular form of masculinity with and through their amateur boxers that simultaneously embraced and forbade certain expressions of “street” masculinity.

Author

• Jeffrey Owen Sacha, University of Southern California