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This thesis investigates the social and bodily underpinnings of contemporary circus
practices, and their embeddedness within post-Fordist reconfigurations of art, work, leisure and the body. As such, it focuses on the nexus between the recent transformations of the modes of practicing and consuming circus and broader social changes, and on the processes and meanings involved in the embodiment of circus-specific body techniques. As well as a pioneer work in what might be called the ‘sociology of circus’, the thesis engages with affirmed and broadly known bodies of work and theoretical debates, having its main contributions in the areas of cultural sociology, the sociology of the body and the emotions, and qualitative methodology of social research.

The research takes the northern Italian city of Turin as a significant case study, and draws on the exploration of formal institutions and modes of organisation within contemporary circus as an artistic field under construction in Italy, and of the meanings, representations and definitions of circus as a community of practice. It focuses on the many forms acquired by circus careers today, on the practical understanding entailed in circus practice, and on how it is acquired. Data were generated mainly between January 2015 and March 2016 through document analysis, participant observation (and observant participation), shadowing, in-depth interviews, object, photo and video elicitation, and – due to my position as an insider within the community of circus practice - autoethnographic analysis. The identification of internal and external boundaries to the contemporary circus community provides a first research outcome. Other important findings concern the interplay between heteronomous and autonomous principles in the process of construction of a circus field, and the centrality of risk in circus practices. If physical risk has been a characteristic of the circus since its origins, new forms of risk – artistic, entrepreneurial, and narcissistic – deeply affect the careers and learning processes of contemporary circus practitioners. This has important implications at the level of adequate presentations of self, of body and emotion work, and of emotional labour performed to
realize and demonstrate authentic, responsible selfhood.

Finally, this study confirms the ‘disenchanting effects’ of sociological research, especially
when conducted by a full member of the researched group. Highlighting subcultural
meanings previously taken for granted implied a normalization of such meanings and
practices. Wearing the sociologist’s glasses means focusing on power relations,
heteronomous forces, and typical, rather than unique, dynamics of interaction. Circus in
this light appears as a normal quest for meaning rather than an exceptional quest for
sensation. [author summary]