Dr Leo Hopkinson's Outputs (8)

Competition and mis/trust in Africa and beyond (2024)
Journal Article
Zidaru, T., & Hopkinson, L. (2024). Competition and mis/trust in Africa and beyond. Africa, 94(3), 339-356. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0001972024000548

Competition has rarely been an explicit theme in ethnographies of African settings, despite being a familiar dynamic to ethnographers in the field. Trust and mistrust, although prominent themes, tend to feature in discussions of their relationship to... Read More about Competition and mis/trust in Africa and beyond.

“Punching is a sickness”: Temporal work, violence, and unsettled care among men who box in Accra (2024)
Journal Article
Hopkinson, L. (2024). “Punching is a sickness”: Temporal work, violence, and unsettled care among men who box in Accra. American Ethnologist, 51(2), 221-232. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13271

Men who box professionally in Accra recognize that bouts are physically harmful and that they involve violently subordinating one another. Yet they also share a sense that bouts can be spaces of mutual becoming and affirmation. To navigate the tensio... Read More about “Punching is a sickness”: Temporal work, violence, and unsettled care among men who box in Accra.

Boxing family: Theorising competition with boxers in Accra, Ghana (2023)
Journal Article
Hopkinson, L. (2024). Boxing family: Theorising competition with boxers in Accra, Ghana. Critique of Anthropology, 44(1), 21-41. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275x231202083

Anthropologists have often conceptualized competition by contrasting it with cooperation, even when collective ends are sought and achieved by competing. This approach tells us little about the qualities of the relationships and subjectivities that c... Read More about Boxing family: Theorising competition with boxers in Accra, Ghana.

Introduction: What Competition Does (2022)
Journal Article
Hopkinson, L., & Zidaru, T. (2022). Introduction: What Competition Does. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology, 66(4), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2022.660401

Anthropologists, like neoliberal economists, have often assumed that competition (re)orders society in broadly predictable ways. By contrast, we contend that competition always facilitates changes beyond its anticipated outcomes and disciplinary effe... Read More about Introduction: What Competition Does.

Only one Mayweather: a critique of hope from the hopeful (2022)
Journal Article
Hopkinson, L. (2022). Only one Mayweather: a critique of hope from the hopeful. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 28(3), 725-745. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13762

Professional boxing offers hope of vast wealth and global mobility for aspiring athletes in Accra, hopes bolstered by the understanding that Ghanaians are particularly suited to boxing's attrition. However, when boxers become active in the global ind... Read More about Only one Mayweather: a critique of hope from the hopeful.

'Stay Home, Stay Safe': Proximity as Vitality and Vulnerability Under Lockdown (2021)
Journal Article
House, L., & Hopkinson, L. (2021). 'Stay Home, Stay Safe': Proximity as Vitality and Vulnerability Under Lockdown. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 8(3), 1-29. https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.8.3.5143

From March to May 2020 in the UK, measures that became known across the world as ‘lockdown’ curtailed personal freedoms in order to curb the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus. While initial criticisms of lockdown focused on the adverse impacts of... Read More about 'Stay Home, Stay Safe': Proximity as Vitality and Vulnerability Under Lockdown.

Being “The Best Ever”: Contradictions of immobility and aspiration for boxers in Accra, Ghana (2020)
Book Chapter
Hopkinson, L. (2020). Being “The Best Ever”: Contradictions of immobility and aspiration for boxers in Accra, Ghana. In N. Besnier, D. G. Calabrò, & D. Guinness (Eds.), Sport, Migration, and Gender in the Neoliberal Age (176-194). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429423277

Ambitions to participate in global sporting markets come hand in hand with projects of global mobility and transnational migration. However, the extreme competitiveness of sporting industries means far fewer aspiring athletes realize dreams of global... Read More about Being “The Best Ever”: Contradictions of immobility and aspiration for boxers in Accra, Ghana.

Descartes’ shadow: boxing and the fear of mind-body dualism (2015)
Journal Article
Hopkinson, L. (2015). Descartes’ shadow: boxing and the fear of mind-body dualism. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5(2), 177-199. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau5.2.012

This article explores the body and self engendered through a boxer’s training, drawing on fieldwork conducted in boxing gyms in Montreal and Edinburgh. Contrary to contemporary anthropological accounts of the sport, I argue that training practices in... Read More about Descartes’ shadow: boxing and the fear of mind-body dualism.