| Summary: | The aim of this paper is to propose a research experience developed since 2008, based on the analysis of the interaction between sport practice and the gender identity construction process. This study focuses on the practice of oriental disciplines in two Italian cities: Rome and Turin. Retracing the course of our research, and basing on the analysis of 20 in-depth interviews and of several sessions of “classic” and “virtual” ethnography with adolescents and young people (14-24 year olds), we can observe, in a first phase, the role of sport and oriental disciplines as a means of sexual socialization. This will lead the reader directly to the second part of this paper: the case study. The theme of the imaginary of the mortality of the body represents a sort of epistemological rupture in our sociological reasoning, putting into discussion our first conclusions concerning sexual socialization, and opening to the paradoxical role of oriental disciplines, which propose an environment of dialectical socialization oscillating between a holistic view of the body and their tendency to reproduce hegemonic masculinities and feminities. The different elements of corporeality, such as emotion management, sexuality and the imaginary of death, are only the elements of a complex system: that of the oriental disciplines, which interact and react with the environment of Practitioners.
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