What constitutes bodily difference? – An ethnographic study of a provincial men's blind football team in China

In recent years, ‘inclusion’ has become the dominant narrative in disability sport. However, athletes with disabilities continue to experience othering in everyday social interactions. Existing studies have largely explained this phenomenon through ableism, but have paid less attention to how ableism itself is produced. Against this backdrop, this study draws on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with the men's blind football team in Province A, generating fieldnotes and interview materials. The findings show that the biological body, through a differentiated sporting mode grounded in non-visual sensory practices, produces new forms of bodily presentation, yet remains constrained by the misinterpretation of difference imposed by the social body. Meanwhile, the subjective body generates a negotiated politics of difference within this tension, enabling the affirmative expression of bodily difference. In sum, this article argues that ableism stems from the misinterpretation of difference. Its core tension lies in the way difference is placed within a logic of sameness and understood as hierarchy rather than bodily diversity. Through the embodied expressions of blind footballers, this study reveals a possible pathway for understanding disabled athletes’ bodily difference and bodily emancipation, with implications for moving beyond symbolic inclusion among broader disabled groups.