Paralympics and Its Athletes Through the Lens of the New York Times
The purpose of this article is to analyze the coverage of the Paralympics in the New York Times (NYT) from the first appearance of the term Paralympics in 1955 up to 2012. We analyzed a) the textual imagery (not imagery intrinsic to pictures) of the Paralympics and its athletes, b) the representation of views and […]
Parent involvement in young adults’ intercollegiate athletic careers: Developmental considerations and applied recommendations.
Student-athletes have to balance their sport, academic, and social lives during the transition to college and parent involvement is an integral, but potentially problematic, aspect of this transition. The present study investigated how key parent involvement factors may be associated with positive developmental outcomes in NCAA Division I student-athletes. Student-athlete participants (N= 514) were 46% […]
Parent-child interactions and objectively measured child physical activity: a cross-sectional study
Parents influence their children’s behaviors directly through specific parenting practices and indirectly through their parenting style. Some practices such as logistical and emotional support have been shown to be positively associated with child physical activity (PA) levels, while for others (e.g. monitoring) the relationship is not clear. The objectives of this study were to determine […]
Parent–child injury prevention conversations following a trip to the emergency department
The goal of the study was to examine how parents use conversation to promote the internalization of safety values after their child has been seriously injured. Parent interviews detailing postinjury conversations were coded for strategies mentioned to prevent injuries in the future and information about circumstances surrounding the injury. Logistic regression analysis revealed that parents […]
Parent–Child Interactions and Objectively Measured Child Physical Activity: A Cross Sectional Study
Parents influence their children’s behaviors directly through specific parenting practices and indirectly through their parenting style. Some practices such as logistical and emotional support have been shown to be positively associated with child physical activity (PA) levels, while for others (e.g. monitoring) the relationship is not clear. The objectives of this study were to determine […]
Parenting and motocross: The whoops and downs.
Many studies address the influences of parenting and contextual factors on child development (Belsky, 1984). Although long-term contextual factors such as poverty and abuse have been shown to be associated with both parent and child behaviors (La Placa & Corlyon, 2016; Salzinger et al, 2002), little research exists on the degree to which short-term situational […]
Parenting in relation to children’s sports participation: generational changes and potential implications
This paper presents data on the parenting practices and perceptions of middle-class parents in the domain of children’s sport. Adopting a grounded-theory approach, the data were generated through 16 semi-structured interviews conducted with parents and children from eight different families. The findings in relation to parenting practices indicated that the parents were ‘investing’ in their […]
Passing to India: A critique of American football’s expansion
Although India has long held a passion for cricket, an organization called the Elite Football League of India(EFLI) is looking to disrupt that sporting nerve center, and introduce the foreign sport of American football to the country’s growing middle class. While it is too soon to assess how Indian audiences will respond to, negotiate and […]
Pawns or power players: The grounds on which adults dismiss or defend youth organizers in the USA.
Over the last two decades, youth organizing has emerged as an important strategy for social change, particularly within education policy; however, the ability of youth to influence policy is limited by the tendency of adults in positions of power to find reasons to distrust, discredit, or otherwise ignore them. This paper draws on interviews with […]
Pay discrimination, exit discrimination or both? Another look at an old issue using NBA data.
Economic literature has identified two potential types of racial discrimination in sports careers: exit discrimination and wage discrimination. The authors test for both types of discrimination in National Basketball Association (NBA) data in two ways. First using a modified Heckman procedure, they control for potential survival bias that may arise from exit discrimination in panel […]
Peddling sport: liberal multiculturalism and the racial triangulation of blackness, Chineseness and Native American-ness in professional basketball
Deploying liberal multiculturalist discourse, the media depicts professional basketball as a post-racial space where all talented players, regardless of their race, can thrive if they work hard. An analysis of the construction of non-white players in the 1930s and in 2010 demonstrates sport as modulated by racially charged discourse. As part of a liberal multiculturalist […]
People Have a Knack of Making You Feel Excluded if They Catch onto Your Difference: Transgender Experiences of Exclusion in Sport
While there is a growing literature in the field of gender, sexuality and sport, there is a dearth of research into the lived experiences of transgender people in sport. The present study addresses this research gap by exploring and analysing the accounts of transgender people in relation to their experiences of sport and physical activity. […]
Perceived coach-autonomy support, basic need satisfaction and the well- and ill-being of elite youth soccer players: A longitudinal investigation
Objectives: Drawing from the basic needs theory [BNT; Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2002). An overview of self-determination theory. In E. L. Deci, & R. M. Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of self-determination research (pp. 3e33). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press], the major purpose of the present study was to test a hypothesized sequence […]
Perceived environmental church support and physical activity black church members.
Background. Churches are an appealing setting for implementing health-related behavior change programs. Purpose. The objective of the study was to examine the relationship between perceived environmental church support for physical activity (PA) and PA behaviors. Method. Black church members from South Carolina (n = 309) wore an Actigraph accelerometer prior to the initiation of an […]
Perceiving Penn State: The formative role of interpersonal discussion in third-person perceptions in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal.
We examine the role of interpersonal discussion in an attempt to better understand talk’s contribution to perceived media impacts related to the sexual abuse scandal at Penn State University. Through the use of a survey conducted both in the state of Pennsylvania and nationally, we analyze how interpersonal discussion, issue involvement, media exposure, and affinity […]
Perception or reality: The relationship between stereotypes, discrimination, and the academic outcomes of African American male college athletes.
The current study examined the degree to which stereotypes and racial discrimination affected the academic outcomes of African American male college athletes. Furthermore, the ability of athletic identity and racial identity to moderate this relationship was examined. Participants (N = 168) were recruited from 13 predominately White institutions across the United States. Results indicated a […]
Perfectionism and attitudes towards doping in junior athletes
Recent theory and research suggest that perfectionism is a personal factor contributing to athletes’ vulnerability to doping (using banned substances/drugs to enhance sporting performance). So far, however, no study has examined what aspects of perfectionism suggest a vulnerability in junior athletes. Employing a cross-sectional design, this study examined perfectionism and attitudes towards doping in 129 […]
Performance level and sexual harassment prevalence among female athletes in the Czech Republic.
This article investigates whether there is a relationship between the sport performance level of female athletes inside the sport (at clubs, competitions, or training events) and outside sport (in family or community settings) and the likelihood that they will be victims of sexual harassment The study sample consisted of 595 women from the Czech Republic […]
Perpetuating the “lack of evidence” discourse in sport for development: Privileged voices, unheard stories and subjugated knowledge
Through an examination of the power relations embedded in the international movement of sport for development, we consider the dominant ‘lack of evidence’ discourse, which calls for more rigorous, scientific proof to validate the sport for development field. We argue that the lack of co-creation of knowledges, the politics of partnerships, and donor-driven priorities have […]
Online news comments as a public sphere forum: Deliberations on Canadian children’s physical activity habits
While considerable scholarly research has examined online media’s function as a public sphere forum, surprisingly little analysis has extended to examining the public’s actual deliberations of the covered issue(s). Recognizing this gap, this discussion conceives online news comments in response to a CBCNews (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation online news) article reporting the release of Active Healthy […]
Openly lesbian team sport athletes in an era of decreasing homohysteria
Sociologists who have examined the issue of lesbians in American sport in the 1980s and 1990s normally found overt and covert mechanisms of social discrimination. However, homophobia has been on a rapid decline over previous decades, and studies show attitudes toward female homosexuality in sport have improved since the research conducted on lesbian athletes in […]
Opportunities and challenges facing NGOs using sport as a vehicle for development in post-apartheid South Africa
Post-apartheid South Africa manifests poor social indicators with over half the population living below the poverty line and the worst levels of inequality in the world, with much work needed to overcome the skewed legacy of apartheid. Sport suffered in this system resulting in unequal access to sporting facilities and opportunities, meaning many South Africans […]
Opportunities to play the game: The effect of individual and school attributes on participation in sports
Historically, African Americans and white girls have not had the same access to playing sports as white boys have had. Changes in laws led to racial integration of sports teams and equal athletic opportunities for girls. Yet, racial and gender gaps in playing sports persist, and intersections between race and gender, as well as different […]
Organisational perspectives on anti-doping work in sport.
The diverse challenges associated with anti-doping work in sport can result in multiple, competing viewpoints amongst stakeholder groups working to solve the problem. Coupled with the complexity of the problem itself, this has the potential to generate chaotic or disordered work contexts that impede rather than promote progress towards a solution. A visible lack of […]
Organisations practices actors and events: Exploring inside the distance running social world
This paper revisits Unruh’s notions of social worlds, exploring the organisations, practices, events and actors involved within the culture of distance running, as an increasingly popular leisure activity. An ethnographic research design was utilised using a combination of interviews, observation and participant observation. Data was collected over a two-year period on a weekly basis at […]
Organised activities, educational activities and family activities: how do they feature in the middle-class family’s weekend?
In the context of concerns regarding work-life balance, questions have been raised in relation to the weekend and whether it is being ‘lost’. This paper presents new empirical evidence regarding the weekend of the middle-class family, who are the section of the population perhaps most likely to be subject to time pressure yet have the […]
Organised Crime and Drugs in Sport: Did They Teach Us About That in Medical School?
There was a startling press conference attended by the Australian Minister for Justice, the Minister for Sport, the Chief Executive Officer of Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) and the leaders of the major sporting codes in Australia. High-performance sporting organisations, even relatively small organisations, should have a ‘supplementation panel’ comprising at least three of a […]
Out in Sport: The experiences of openly gay and lesbian athletes in competitive sport
Research has shown that since the turn of the millennia, matters have rapidly improved for gays and lesbians in sport. Where gay and lesbian athletes were merely tolerated a decade ago, today they are celebrated. This book represents the most comprehensive examination of the experiences of gays and lesbians in sport ever produced. Drawing on […]
Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball
This book explores the many-faceted relationship between Jews and black baseball in Jim Crow America. Jewish sports entrepreneurs, political radicals, and a team of black Jews called the Belleville Grays—the only Jewish team in the history of black baseball—made their mark on the segregated world of the Negro Leagues. The book tells the stories of […]
Outline of a typology of men’s use of anabolic androgenic steroids in fitness and strength training environments.
Recent research into the use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) in fitness and strength training environments have revealed great variance in users’ approach to AAS use and more specifically their approach to health risks and desired objectives. However, there have only been few attempts to develop theoretical frameworks directed at conceptualising the variance in AAS […]
Outside Horses, Inside Men: Equestrian Sport, Disability, and Theology
Equestrian sport is unique in many ways among the sporting disciplines, but is rarely inspected by theologians. The author undertakes one of the first studies of Christian theology, disability, and equestrian sports. She considers four themes (interdependence, vulnerability, mutual enabling, and normalcy) through case study and theory and highlights central features of equestrian sport. The […]
Outstanding high school coaches: Philosophies, views, and practices
Many of the governing bodies referred us to specific coaching organizations (e.g., Texas High School Football Coaches Association), who then made the selections. […] admittedly the selections were based on a number of criteria such as performance (win-loss records, championships, etc.) and positive character development of young athletes.
Overcoming respondent resistance at elite interviews using an intermediary
This article promotes an interviewing technique that could be used when interviewing elite policy-making respondents who fear repercussions for divulging information and who, as a result, either become too emotionally unstable to allow for rapport or begin to resist disclosing information. Based on two independent research projects in Bulgaria and Cyprus, the article advocates the […]
Overexposed: Capturing a secret side of sports photography.
Accredited photographers have been observed taking sexualized, voyeuristic images of athletes that are later distributed on pornography websites and among collectors of pornographic images. As with other emergent forms of digital voyeurism, such as upskirting, these images are taken in public places in such a way that they capture compromising moments without any awareness on […]
Overriding concerns: Developing safe relations in the high-risk interspecies sport of eventing
Equestrian sports are unavoidably interspecies and undeniably dangerous. Whilst there has been qualitative research into the human–horse relationship, and quantitative research into horse riding, injury and risk, there remains a need to understand how risk perception and experience is subjectively implicated in, through and by the human–horse relationship, and vice versa. Doing so requires reconciling […]
Overview of university sport in Iran
This article focuses on the structure and management systems of sport at Iranian universities. The method of this research was through an analysis of documents. Sport in the system of Iranian universities is divided into three different categories. The physical education department of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology of Iran is responsible for […]
Own-race bias among NBA coaches
This article finds that National Basketball Association (NBA) coaches gave greater minutes per game to players of their own race during the 1996-2004 seasons after controlling for player quality using performance statistics and player fixed effects. The authors estimate that having the same race as the coach increased playing time by between 45 and 55 […]
Paradoxes of the flesh: Emotion and contradiction in fitness/beauty magazine discourse.
Analyzing women’s fitness/beauty magazines for advice on diet and exercise reveals a range of contradictions, the focus of this research. Contradictory diet and fitness discourses signify our culture’s paradoxical expectations for women’s bodies, ensuring that virtually no woman can measure up. In short, the production of feminine bodies is rigged for failure. Starting with Spitzack’s […]
Paralympians Outperforming Olympians: An Increasing Challenge for Olympism and the Paralympic and Olympic Movement
Non-therapeutic performance enhancement in sport is a contentious issue for some time but the issue of therapeutic enhancements has only recently entered the sport vernacular. The purpose of therapeutic assistive devices so far is widely seen as lifting as impaired perceived people back to species-typical norms. However, ‘therapeutic’ body devices developed to mimic species-typical body […]
Of Colours and Scales
Professor Banton’s headlining contribution to this symposium is further evidence of his tireless devotion to pushing the bounds of our thinking, of his thinking, on questions related to racism. Like all his work on the topic, the current article displays an erudite knowledge of the ways in which ‘race’ and its cognates operate in a […]
Of Menace and Mimicry: The 2008 Beijing Olympics
This article examines the Olympic narratives of young, educated urbanites in China to consider the 2008 Beijing Olympics’ role as a “diagnostic event” through which global conflicts and controversies coalesce and national identities are constructed. It illustrates how students and young professionals analyzed the Beijing Olympics to invoke discourses of similarity in the form of […]
Off-colour landscape: Framing race equality in sport coaching
The article examines how UK sport organizations have framed race equality and diversity, in sport coaching. Semi structured interviews were used to gain insight into organizational perspectives toward ‘race’, ethnicity, racial equality, and whiteness. Using Critical Race Theory and Black feminism, color-blind practices were found to reinforce a denial that ‘race’ is a salient factor […]
Older men’s blueprint for “being a man.”
Does the cultural blueprint for “being a man” direct older men into patterns of conduct and emotions similar to younger men? In the absence of cultural guidelines for aging as a man, this theoretically grounded article discusses the masculinity standards that are likely to influence how older men go about their lives. Framed by Brannon’s […]
Olympic boomtown: The social impacts of a one-time mega-event in Utah’s Heber Valley
We extend the research on the individual and community-level impacts of rapid growth development (boomtowns) to include communities that have been affected by a short-term, yet large-scale “mega-event”—the Olympics. Testing the assumption of generic similarities of social impacts between these two types of communities, we examined longitudinal survey data from six survey years (between 1999 […]
Olympic city bidding: An exegesis of power
In this article I analyse the bidding process to host the olympics as a complex set of power relationships between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and candidate cities. My analysis looks at both macro-political conditions and relationships and the micro-motives and psychological predilections of IOC members and the principals of candidate cities. Unlike traditional political […]
Olympic rings of peace? The Olympic movement peacemaking and intercultural understanding
This article examines the historical and contemporary links between Olympism and peacemaking. It traces the development of thought and praxis in relation to the Olympic movement’s aim and capacity to promote peaceful coexistence and intercultural understanding from the ancient Olympic Truce to the revival of the modern Olympic Games by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, to […]
Olympics 2012 security: Welcome to lockdown London
As a metaphor for the London Olympics, it could hardly be more stark. 1 The much-derided ‘Wenlock’ Olympic mascot is now available in London Olympic stores dressed, no less, as a Metropolitan police officer. For £10.25 you, too, can own the ultimate symbol of the Games: a member of by far the biggest and most […]
Olympism in Action, Olympic hosting and the politics of ‘Sport for Development and Peace’: investigating the development discourses of Rio 2016.
This paper offers an overview, and critical, comparative reading, of the discourses of international development championed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) versus those ascribed through media and corporate communications to the 2016 Summer Olympics, awarded in 2009 to the city of Rio de Janeiro. The first Olympics bestowed to a South American host, the […]
Omnivorousness in sport: The importance of social capital and networks
There has been for some time a significant and growing body of research around the relationship between sport and social capital. Similarly, within sociology there has been a corpus of work that has acknowledged the emergence of the omnivore–univore relationship. Surprisingly, relatively few studies examining sport and social capital have taken the omnivore–univore framework as […]
On Balinese cockfights: Deeply extending play
In this article, I advance three points, each in service of “extending play” as a critical conceptual category. The article begins with Clifford Geertz’s essay “Deep Play,” tracing through its lens the possibilities for “deeply extending play.” The essay extends Geertz’s argument that games and play are in/as/of/through culture. Games and play are not generative […]
On roads traveled and journeys ahead for IRSS
Now entering its 47th year of publication, the International Review for the Sociology of Sport is the oldest and most international of the scholarly journals devoted to the study of sport, culture, and society. While over the years we have consistently endeavored to publish the strongest and most engaging scholarly work on sport, IRRS has […]
On the conceptualization, design, and evaluation of appealing, meaningful, and playable digital games for older people
While older people tend to be regarded as actual, or potential, players of digital games within literature on game studies, human-computer interaction, and gerontechnology, they are also often considered non avid users of digital technologies. This contradiction prompted us to conduct a literature review, which revealed (a) insufficient involvement of older people within the design […]
On the Digital Playing Field: How We “Do Sport” With Networked Computer Games
In the following article, the author explores the notion of playing computer games as sports by sketching out the labors and sensations of Counter-Strike teams playing at pro/am esports local area network (LAN) tournaments. How players are engaged physically in practice and play is described in this qualitative study through the core themes of movement, […]
On the doorstep of equality: Attitudes toward gay athletes among academy-level footballers
In this semi-structured interview research, we investigate the attitudes of 22 academy-levelassociation football (soccer) players who are potentially on the verge of becoming professional athletes. We find that, as a result of these men belonging to a generation holding inclusive attitudes towards homosexuality, independent of whether they maintain contact with gay men, they are unanimously […]
On the Limits of the New and the Lasting Power of the Mediasport Interpellation
This essay comments on the limits of new and social media to change the contemporary landscape of mediated sport in meaningful ways. The first part of the essay speaks to the “limits of the new.” Here, the forces of “monetization” and the transition of new media into mainstream are considered. Arguments are presented that the […]
On the malleability of self-image in individuals with a weak sense of self.
For over four decades, clinical psychologists have claimed that individuals with a weak sense of self have highly malleable self-images, even temporarily taking on aspects of the personalities of interaction partners who have a stronger sense of self. The present Study 1 provided the first empirical test of this claim. In same-sex stranger dyads that […]
On the terms of the recipient? Norwegian sports development aid to Tanzania in the 1980s
This article discusses the donor–recipient relationship in a sports development aid context, and identifies potential dilemmas occurring when aiming to give aidon the recipient’s terms. Using the case of the Norwegian sports development aid project Sport for All, it is argued that the Norwegian Confederation of Sports was clearly in control of the project throughout […]
One Guy Named Mo: Race, Nation and the London 2012 Olympic Games
The triumphal track and field performances of British distance runner, Mo Farah, at the London 2012 Olympic Games were lauded both for their athletic endeavor and for their perceived validation of the rhetoric of ethnic and cultural diversity and inclusion in which the Games were ensconced. By analyzing coverage of the athlete’s achievements in mainstream […]
Online Community or Electronic Tribe? Exploring The Social Characteristics and Spatial Production of an Internet Hockey Fan Culture
Scholarly interest in the relationship between sport and new media has increased significantly in recent years, yet research about online sport fan groups remains limited. This article contributes to this body of literature through an ethnographic examination of a fan-produced hockey blog called Nucks Misconduct. The article examines the blog’s social characteristics by conceptualizing it […]
Neoliberal urban entrepreneurial agendas, Dunedin Stadium and the Rugby World Cup: Or ‘If you don’t have a stadium, you don’t have a future’.
This chapter presents a case study set in Beloit, a fishing village located on Ataro Island, 30 kilometres across the sea from Dli, capital of Timor-Leste. Tourism is an industry that could help promote the natural and cultural assets of Timor-Leste. It explores the tensions between tourism development, food security and marine conservation in a […]
New approaches for studies of Muslim women and sport
This article offers a new approach for examining Muslim women in sport, which combines the domains of sporting participation, consumption and representation. It proposes moving beyond a sports development paradigm and deficit model of sports participation, whereby marginal communities are incorporated into the mainstream by playing sport, to take account of other ways that people […]
New categories are not enough: Rethinking the measurement of sex and gender in social surveys
Recently, scholars and activists have turned their attention toward improving the measurement of sex and gender in survey research. The focus of this effort has been on including answer options beyond “male” and “female” to questions about the respondent’s gender. This is an important step toward both reflecting the diversity of gendered lives and better […]
New Europe, new chances? The migration of professional footballers to Poland’s Ekstraklasa.
The intention of this paper is to offer a preliminary analysis of the migrations of professional footballers to Poland’s top division – the Ekstraklasa. Based upon a series of interviews conducted with migrant players located at an Ekstraklasa club, the paper focuses specifically on the factors that influence the players’ decisions to migrate to that […]
New media, professional sport and political economy.
New media technologies are seen to be changing the production, delivery and consumption of professional sports and creating a new dynamic between sports fans, athletes, clubs, governing bodies and the mainstream media. However, as Bellamy and McChesney (2011) have pointed out, advances in digital technologies are taking place within social, political, and economic contexts that […]
New screen action and its memories: The “live” performance of mediated sport fandom
The experience of watching sport on television is changing with the proliferation of screens, the diversification of screen-based content, and the extension of interactive screen-facilitated communication. In recent decades, sports broadcast television viewing opportunities shifted from a primary reliance on a single “box in the corner” in the domestic living room environment to the availability […]
Nice Korea, Naughty Korea: Media Framings of North Korea and the Inter-Korean Relationship in the London 2012 Olympic Games
This study examines mainstream news media framings of North Korea and the inter-Korean relationship in the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games, focusing on the role that the media played in privileging particular understandings of nationalism, conflict and reconciliation. Print news articles from South Korea and English-speaking western nations were collected and analyzed. The results illustrate […]
Nobody’s Innocent: The Role of Customers in the Doping Dilemma
Customers who boycott an organization after some scandal may actually exacerbate the fraud problem they would like to prevent. This conclusion is derived from a game-theoretic model that introduces a third player into the standard inspection game. Focusing on the example of doping in professional sports, we observe that doping is prevalent in equilibrium because […]
Non-mega sporting events’ social impacts: a sensemaking approach of local governments’ perceptions and strategies.
Research question: The literature investigating non-mega sport events’ social impacts remains limited. Furthermore, these impacts have mainly been examined from the point of view of spectators or residents. This article explores how these impacts are perceived by local governments. Based on the theoretical framework of strategic sensemaking, we analyze how local sport officials collect and […]
Non-performing inclusion: A critique of the English Football Association’s Action Plan on homophobia in football.
The English Football Association’s (FA’s) Action Plan entitled ‘Opening Doors and Joining In’, published in early 2012, aims to promote the inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGB&T) people and tackle homophobic abuse in football. The document is the latest example of the extent to which LGB&T inclusion and homophobia now feature on the […]
Normalizing Sexual VIolence: Young Women Account for Harassment and Abuse
Despite high rates of gendered violence among youth, very few young women report these incidents to authority figures. This study moves the discussion from the question of why young women do not report them toward how violence is produced, maintained, and normalized among youth. The girls in this study often did not name what law, […]
Norwegian elite-level coaches: Who are they?
Previous studies have shown that there is an underrepresentation of female coaches and a lack of opportunities for women to coach males, particularly at the elite-level. Very few studies, however, have focused on elite-level coaches’ demographics and whether these vary with respect to gender. The aim of this article is to get an overview of […]
Not an “extraordinary event”: NFL games and militarized civic ritual
In this article, which was delivered as the Alan G. Ingham Memorial Lecture to the 37th annual conference of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, I extend Ingham’s ideas regarding sport as civic ritual and combine it with my own work on the relationship between sport and the increasing militarization of US […]
Not everybody is a golfer: Bourdieu and affluent bodies in Mexico
The present article analyzes processes of social reproduction among upper-middle- and upper-class individuals in contemporary Mexico City, using affluent golf clubs as a case study. Drawing on ethnographic data, it shows how private golf clubs are invisible sites for the average city dweller, both metaphorically and literally. This characteristic fulfills a dual political role, by […]
Not Out to Start a Revolution: Race, Gender, and Emotional Restraint among Black University Men
In this article, I use in-depth interviews with black university men to investigate race, gender, and emotions. Participation in dominant institutions requires African American men to exhibit extraordinary emotional restraint. Because anger is culturally associated with men, however, black men’s suppression of anger violates masculine expectations. Thus, racial subordination not only creates difficult emotional expectations […]
Not So Black and White: A Multi-Divisional Exploratory Analysis of Male Student-Athletes’ Experiences at National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Institutions
The purpose of this study was to examine the nature and quality of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) male student-athletes’ college experiences across race, sport, and divisional classifications. In recent years, the NCAA and its member institutions have faced intense scrutiny regarding the purpose of intercollegiate athletics within their educational missions. Additional concerns have been […]
Not so black and white: Race and promotion in Major League Baseball, 1951-1955
Jackie Robinson was the first acknowledged Blackplayer in 20th century Major League Baseball (MLB). By 1951, a few Black players had performed credibly at the Major League level, while others were integrating Minor League Baseball. Unlike other labor situations where proxies for productivity must be used, Minor League players at the AAA level—the level just […]
Nothing but medals? Attitudes towards the importance of Olympic success
States intervene increasingly in financing and organization of Olympic elite sport in order to maximize national success in the medal table. In Germany and many other countries too that includes practices that have been criticized as unacceptable in democratic societies: funding of medal-promising sports only, early selection and specialization of young athletes, authoritarian tendencies in […]
Nothing to Report: A Semi-longitudinal Investigation of the Print Media Coverage of Sportswomen in British Sunday Newspapers
The under-representation of female athletes by print media has been widely acknowledged by feminist media scholars. However, there have been a number of recent studies which suggest that things are changing in terms of progress towards gender equality. In light of such studies this article examines the representation of sportswomen in five British Sunday newspapers, […]
Now’s when we throw him under the bus: Institutional and occupational identities and the coverage of doping in sport
This article explicates the processes by which sports news is constructed by analyzing the case of performance enhancing drug use coverage. An ethnographic study was conducted of a North American cycling news journal and website. Investigating fundamental tasks of the journalist profession illuminates the labor practices of sport media. Contextualized within institutional, economic and cultural […]
Motivations Associated With Nondisclosure of Self-Reported Concussions in Former Collegiate Athletes
Background: Previous studies examining non disclosure among athletes in various settings have found substantial proportions of athletes with undisclosed concussions. Substantial gaps exist in our understanding of the factors influencing athletes’ disclosure of sports-related concussions. Purpose: To examine the prevalence of, and factors associated with, non disclosure of recalled concussions in former collegiate athletes. Study […]
Moving bodies beyond the social/biological divide: toward theoretical and transdisciplinary adventures
In this paper I call for ‘new forms of thinking and new ways of theorizing’ the complex relations between the biological and social in sport and physical culture. I illustrate the inseparability of our biological and social bodies in sport and physical culture via the case of exercise and female reproductive hormones. Inspired by feminist […]
Multimodal, multiplex, multispatial: A network model of the self.
Contemporary culture finds human experience spread across various digital and physical spaces. Although many scholars embrace derivative perspectives of a distributed self—dramaturgical, multiphrenic, networked—these notions are seldom engaged as empirically testable theories. This article proposes a theoretical model to foster such empirical examination, in which the “self” is not engaged as a node in broader […]
Multiple past concussions in high school football players: Are there differences in cognitive functioning and symptom reporting?
Background: There is increasing concern about the possible long-term effects of multiple concussions, particularly on the developing adolescent brain. Whether the effect of multiple concussions is detectable in high school football players has not been well studied, although the public health implications are great in this population. Purpose: To determine if there are measurable differences […]
Multiple Voices: Improving Participation of Muslim girls in Physical Education and School Sports
This study reports on data from a larger-scale research project in one city in the West Midlands, England. The study was commissioned by the local education authority because of the rising incidence of parental withdrawal of Muslim girls from physical education. The aim was to provide evidence-based guidance to schools on improving the inclusion of […]
Narrating goals: a case study on the contribution of Digital Storytelling to cross-cultural leadership development
This case study and evaluation of a Digital Storytelling (DST) workshop for young women identifies the strengths, limits and challenges of transformational feminist leadership development within sport for development programmes (SDP). Based on postcolonial feminist approaches and empirical evidence, the findings demonstrate how leadership development for girls and young women from the Global South is […]
National identity and important Australians
Aspects of the national narrative of an advanced industrialised nation are examined in this research. Nationally representative survey data suggest the most important collective figures for Australian identity are the Anzacs, colonial free settlers and post-Second World War immigrants, while sporting heroes have a negligible influence upon what it means to be Australian. Although many […]
Nationalism in the United States and Canadian primetime broadcast coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics
The CBC’s and NBC’s primetime broadcasts of the 2014 Winter Olympics were analyzed to determine differences between the media treatment of home nation and foreign athletes. The CBC results showed that Canadian athletes represented 48.5% of total athlete mentions and constituted all of the top 20 most-mentioned athletes. NBC results showed that American athletes represented […]
Natural disaster arrhythmia and action sports: The case of the Christchurch earthquake
Taking inspiration from French sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s theory of ‘rhythmanalysis’, the author advocates new ways of thinking about the impact of natural disaster on the bodies and everyday mobilities of those who continue to live in disrupted spaces. Drawing upon interviews conducted with residents living in Christchurch, New Zealand, before, during and after […]
Nautical small-scale sports events portfolio: A strategic leveraging approach
Research question: This study analyzes the leverage process of a nautical small-scale sports events portfolio, hosted in a tourist community of Portugal. Strategic goals were identified and the implementation process examined, according to economic and social leveraging models. Since these models have lack of empirical research, their application to real contexts may improve their contribution […]
Navigating barriers: A qualitative examination of the underrepresentation of Black females as head coaches in collegiate basketball.
Although sport management researchers have produced findings with regard to diversity in the leadership positions of college athletics, this examination has focused separately on gender (Inglis, Danylchuk, & Pastore, 1996; Inglis, Danylchuk, & Pastore, 2000; Knoppers, Meyer, Ewing, & Forrest, 1991; NCAA, 2009a, b,c; Sartore & Cunningham, 2007) or race (Cunningham & Sagas, 2004a, 2004b; […]
NCAA Academic Performance Program (APP): Future Directions
This paper represents the first major effort to conduct a comprehensive review of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Academic Performance Program (APP) and to recommend to the NCAA Board of Directors those modifications that will lead to further improvement in graduation performance. They fall into four categories: (a) new initial eligibility standards; (b) new […]
NCAA academic reform: History context and challenges
The purpose of this article is to offer a sociohistorical overview of academic reform in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). To do so, the author draws heavily from football history and its association with academic reform in the broader intercollegiate athletics context. Intercollegiate athletics has undergone significant changes in professionalism and academic integrity over […]
Nearly 100,000 Job Bias Charges in Fiscal Year 2012
Commission Obtains $365 Million for Victims of Workplace Discrimination; Reduces Charge Inventory by 10 Percent for Second Consecutive Year.
Negotiating “new” narratives: Rio de Janeiro and the “media geography” of the 2014 FIFA World Cup
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is currently in the midst of an extraordinary period of mega-event hosting. While a large number of articles have been keen to illustrate the transformative potential and dilemmas of utilizing mega-events to advance an urban agenda, less understood is the role that media play in the construction of the “media geography” […]
Negotiating Gender through Fun and Play: Radical Femininity and Fantasy in the Red Hat Society
The Red Hat Society (RHS) is a relatively new and international women’s network that offers “fun” and “friendship” specifically for women over fifty. Its members, the Red Hatters, are easily recognized in the streets by their red hats and otherwise purple attire, giving the RHS its unique flavor of leisure combined with expressive public performance. […]
Negotiating the ‘F-word’ in the field: Doing feminist ethnography in action sport cultures
This paper examines the potential of social theory for enhancing researcher reflexivity and praxis in the ethnographic field. More specifically, we advocate the potential of feminist interpretations of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “regulated liberties” for helping critical ethnographers navigate some of the embodied political and ethical tensions and challenges encountered in male-dominated physical cultures. Drawing […]
Negotiations of the ageing process: Older adults’ stories of sports participation.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the talk of older athletes, with particular focus on how the context of sport helps them negotiate the ageing process. It draws on personal stories provided by 44 World Masters Games competitors (23 women; 21 men; aged 56–90 years; M = 72). Four themes emerged: ‘There’s no […]
Neighborhood stigma and the sporting lives of young people in public housing
This paper spotlights the sporting lives of young people who live in ‘Redcrest’, a public housing community in the Niagara region of Canada. We report on data culled from neighborhood-centric documents (municipal data, planning council reports, media coverage) and ethnographic fieldwork (interviews, community mapping, go-alongs) collected over eight months with 14 young people. This paper […]
Neoliberal freedoms, privatisation and the future of physical education.
Focussing on the ideological aspects of privatisation, this paper explores ways in which ‘freedom’ has been activated discursively to justify actions involving changes to both the structure and the content of formal education in the UK. Empirically, the paper will analyse examples in England of UK Government ‘new provider’ rhetoric relating to ‘Academies’ in order […]
Men at sport: Gay men’s experiences in the sport workplace.
Research on sexual identity and sport has revealed a shifting narrative about the experiences of gay men. While some suggest the atmosphere is hostile, others posit that homophobia and sexual prejudice are playing less of a role in gay men’s experiences. This research focuses on the experiences of 10 gay men working in professional, collegiate, […]