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Deuce or Advantage? Examining Gender Bias in Online Coverage of Professional Tennis
Despite the increasing popularity of women’s sports, it has generally been found that female athletes receive less media coverage and are portrayed negatively with myriad gender-specific descriptors. Such biased representations warrant attention as they construct and reinforce traditional gender beliefs. This study compared the representations of female and male tennis players on the official site […]
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Differences in Adolescent Relationship Abuse Perpetration and Gender-Inequitable Attitudes by Sport Among Male High School Athletes
Abstract Purpose School-based athletic programs remain an important context for violence prevention efforts although a better understanding of how gender attitudes and abuse perpetration differ among athletes is needed. Methods We analyzed baseline survey data from the “Coaching Boys into Men” study—a school-based cluster-randomized trial in 16 high schools in Northern California. We describe relationships […]
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Differences in Behavior, Psychological Factors, and Environmental Factors Associated with Participation in School Sports and Other Activities in Adolescence
This study examined whether participation in school team sports, exclusively or in combination with other extracurricular activities, is associated with higher levels of psychosocial functioning and healthy behavior than participation in other extracurricular activities alone or nonparticipation. The study sample includes 50,168 ninth grade public school students who completed an anonymous, voluntary statewide survey in […]
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Digital Games as a Source of Enjoyment in Later Life
As playing digital games has become a popular pastime among older adults, the study of the older audience of digital games would do well to exchange exploratory research for more specialist and focused areas. This article follows this reasoning and focuses on game enjoyment in later life. This topic is explored through two qualitative studies […]
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Disability Rights’ or ‘Wrongs?: The Claims of the International Paralympic Committee, the London 2012 Paralympics and Disability Rights in the UK
A central aspect of the vision of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) is that the Paralympic Movement is a vehicle for achieving ‘a more equitable society’ (IPC 2012a). Building upon the findings of an online survey conducted with disabled activists prior to the London 2012 Paralympic Games (Braye, Dixon and Gibbons 2012), in this short […]
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Disability Sport: Changing Lives, Changing Perceptions
Welcome to this special edition of the Journal of Sport for Development (JSFD) entitled Disability Sport: Changing lives, changing perceptions, which was inspired by a conference of the same name held at Coventry University, UK in September 2014. The aim of the conference was to bring together practitioners and academics working in the field of […]
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Disabled Sports Women and Gender Construction in Powerchair Football
Sports and physical activities are ideal fields to study gender construction. Much research aims at shedding light on these processes. Women involved in ‘male’ sports have been extensively studied, and mixed-sex activities have sometimes been used to support these studies, but research has rarely focused on populations of disabled athletes. Yet, the phenomenon of gender […]
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Discipline, Sport, and the Religion of Winners: Paul on Running to Win the Prize, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27
In 1 Cor. 9:25 Paul exhorts the Corinthian believers to strive like athletes for an eternal prize. This paper elucidates the communal horizon of the self-disciplining he enjoins, which overturns popular modern conceptions of individual fitness and performance training. Paul likewise defines the rewards of spiritual labour as aspects of participation in the communion of […]
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Discordant Fandom and Global Football Brands: ‘Let the People Sing’
This article has three main objectives. Our first is to turn to sport as a particularly illuminating and revealing example of consumer culture in the making. Marketplace logic suffuses consumer culture, and exploring practices of fandom as performed thus becomes particularly revealing of the tensions and contradictions which are thrown up when passions collide with […]
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Discrimination Inward and Upward: Lessons on Law and Social Inequality From the Troubling Case of Women Coaches
In the Title IX success story, women’s opportunities in coaching jobs have not kept pace with the striking gains made by female athletes. Women’s share of jobs coaching female athletes has declined substantially in the years since the law was enacted, moving from more than 90% to below 43% today. As a case study, the […]
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Diversity Issues in Academic Reform
The purpose of this paper was to provide a response to the Petr and McArdle (2012) and Paskus (2012) papers. The author suggests that academic reform should be couched within broader diversity issues affecting intercollegiate athletics, with a particular emphasis on race, social class, and the ability to implement reforms. Implications and conclusions are discussed.
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Diversity Work in Community Sport Organizations: Commitment Resistance and Institutional Change
Diversity is a key term used in a range of public and private organizations to describe institutional goals, values and practices. Sport is a prominent social institution where the language of diversity is frequently and positively used; yet, this rhetoric does not necessarily translate into actual practice within sports organizations. This paper critically examines diversity […]
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Cultural Citizenship: Media and Sport in Contemporary Australia
Mediated sport has assumed an extraordinary position in contemporary global culture. It is enormously popular, especially when stimulated by both artful and ‘carpet bomb’ marketing and promotion. It is, correspondingly, in high commercial demand in the transition from scheduled, ‘appointment’ broadcast television to a more flexible, mobile system of on-demand viewing on multiple platforms. The […]
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Cultural Consumption Through the Epistemologies of the South: ‘Humanization’ in Transnational Football Fan Solidarities
In 2014, Boaventura de Sousa Santos awoke the global sociological community to the need to privilege ‘humanization’ in the exploration of transnational solidarities. This article presents the cultural consumption of a football club – Liverpool FC – to understand the common ‘love’, ‘suffering’, ‘care’ and ‘knowledge’ that fans who are part of the ‘Brazil Reds’ […]
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Cultural Differences, Assimilation, and Behavior: Player Nationality and Penalties in Football
We examine the impact of a different cultural background on individual behavior, focusing on penalties in football matches of southern European and northern European football players in the English Premier League. Southern European football players collect on average more football penalties than their British colleagues, and northern European football players collect on average less football […]
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Cultural Hostility Re-Considered
It is often remarked that dislikes are more revealing of taste than likes. The evidential basis of this insight, which can be found in the work of Bourdieu (1984) and of Douglas (1996), who called it ‘cultural hostility’, is slight. This paper specifies and evaluates the thesis, ‘the cultural hostility thesis’, that people share strong, […]
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Cultural Sociology in Perspective: Linking Culture and Power
Cultural sociology aims at incorporating the central role of meaning-making into the analysis of social phenomena. The article presents an overview of cultural sociology, focusing on its main theoretical frameworks, methodological strategies and empirical investigations. The interplay between the cultural and the social and the focus on meaning variations are two central principles of analysis […]
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Cultural Studies: Which Paradigm?
This essay is a critical review of ‘Cultural Studies: two paradigms’ by Stuart Hall, published in this journal in 1980. The two paradigms are ‘experience’ and ‘ideology’, the respective master concepts of the first and second generation of Cultural Studies. I situate Hall’s article in the context of its time (the late 1970s) as a […]
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Cultural vs Economic Capital: Symbolic Boundaries Within the Middle Class
This article concerns an insufficiently studied link in cultural class analysis, namely that between class-structured lifestyle differences and social closure. It employs a modified version of Michèle Lamont’s promising, yet under-theorised approach to the study of symbolic boundaries – the conceptual distinctions made by social actors in categorising people, practices, tastes, attitudes and manners in […]
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Culture, Community, Consciousness: The Caribbean Sporting Diaspora
This study shows the utility of the concept of diaspora for physical cultural studies, and particularly for thinking through sport in a Canadian setting. The capacity of diaspora theory to specify a matrix of real and imagined cross-border cultural, kinship, and social relationships makes it useful for understanding community (re)generation in sport settings. Relatively little […]
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Cumulative Prevalence of Arrest From Ages 8 to 23 in a National Sample
Objective: To estimate the cumulative proportion of youth who self-report having been arrested or taken into custody for illegal or delinquent offenses (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from ages 8 to 23 years. Methods: Self-reported arrest history data (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (N = […]
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Current Health-Related Quality of Life is Lower in Former Division I Collegiate Athletes Than in Non-Collegiate Athletes
Background: College athletes participate in physical activity that may increase chronic stress and injury and induce overtraining. However, there is little known about how previous injuries that have occurred during college may limit current physical activity and/or decrease their subsequent health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Purpose: To evaluate HRQoL in former United States National Collegiate […]
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Dancing With Derrida: Deconstructing Sports Women’s Performances on Dancing with the Stars and Mira Quien Baila
Feminists have long wrestled with the binary of gender difference in sport, employing diverse theoretical and empirical approaches to understand how difference is constructed, maintained and challenged. In this article, we engage with Jacques Derrida’s work on deconstruction and différance . Specifically, we engage with deconstruction double gesture in order to firstly identify, and later […]
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Dangerous Liaisons, Fatal Women: The Fear and Fantasy of Soccer Wives and Girlfriends in Spain
Critical feminist analysis has produced much important work on women in the gender regime of men’s sport. The protagonists of these studies have been mostly female athletes, fans, managers and journalists. This article focuses on yet another female persona in men’s sport: the lover. Complementing research that identifies wives and girlfriends (WAGs) as helpmates who […]
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Dark Cloud or Silver Lining? The Value of Bonding Networks During Youth
Social capital is fast becoming a salient and exciting area of youth study. While debates about social capital during youth usually focus on its presumed positive consequences, there is a current trend to label certain forms of networking, particularly bonding networks, as ‘perverse’, ‘bad’ or ‘dark’. What is often referred to as the ‘down side’ […]
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De Coubertin’s Olympism and the Laugh of Michel Foucault: Crisis Discourse and the Olympic Games
De Coubertin developed the sport philosophy of Olympism and the Olympic Games as a response to social and political crisis to promote peace, fair play, and the development of Christian masculinity. The purpose of this paper is to examine how crisis discourse functions as an important shaper of contemporary understandings of Olympism and how conflicting […]
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De-Civilizing, Civilizing or Informalizing? The International Development of Mixed Martial Arts
This article contributes to ongoing debates about trends in violence in sport through an examination of the emergence of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). The article counters suggestions that the rise of MMA is indicative of a decivilizing and/or de-sportizing process, arguing instead that the development of MMA can best be explained with reference to the […]
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Debunking Early Single Sport Specialisation and Reshaping the Youth Sport Experience: An NBA Perspective
The ‘common wisdom’ Among many parents and coaches, it is believed that early single sport specialisation is essential for future competitive sport success and, further, that a high level of achievement in youth sports predicts future success. Owing to these misconceptions, youth sport has become focused on results at young ages rather than the overall […]
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Defining Religion: A Practical Response
After addressing the post-modern argument that defining religion is impossible, bad or both, the case is made that functional definitions of religion are generally not definitions but assertions about the consequences of religion substantively defined. A substantive definition of religion is proposed. The relationship between ordinary and sociological language is discussed. A review of recent […]
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Contested Terrain and Terrain That Contests: Donald Trump Golf’s Environmental Politics and a Challenge to Anthropocentrism in Physical Cultural Studies
This article focuses on the case of Trump International Golf Links, Scotland (TIGLS), a golf course in Aberdeenshire that opened in 2012 after a lengthy and contentious application and development phase. Herein, we draw from a larger study of golf and the environment with the aim of assessing both the TIGLS case in itself and […]
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Contrasting Representations of Englishness During FIFA World Cup Finals
Football and English national identity have been interlinked for over a century. The increased display of the St George Cross rather than the Union flag when the England team compete in international football competitions has been linked to a rise in a specifically English national consciousness. Academics have assumed this to be a response to […]
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Conversion to Bodybuilding
This article aims to study the process of conversion to bodybuilding in order to understand how some gym enthusiasts progressively organise their lives around this activity. Our observations, drawn from an ethnography of a gym and 30 semi-structured interviews with different profiles of gym-goers in French-speaking Switzerland, suggest that the grip that bodybuilding takes on […]
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Corporatization Activism Through Sport-Focused Social Justice? Investigating Nike’s Corporate Responsibility Initiatives in Sport for Development and Peace
Inspired by assertions of “creeping commercialization” in issues of social justice, this article seeks to address the entanglement of privatization with sport for development and peace initiatives. We look specifically at Nike’s history of “social responsibility” to situate the N7 initiative, for Indigenous health, within a larger landscape of privatized social justice. Critical discourse analysis […]
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Correlates of Pride in the Performance Success of United States Athletes Competing on an International Stage
Grounded in social-identity and self-categorization theories and drawing on data gathered in the US General Social Survey (N = 2528), this research examines how demographic and media-use measures associate with national pride, as experienced through the success of US athletes competing internationally. Bivariate tests and analysis of covariance models indicated greater levels of national pride […]
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Corruption and Public Secrecy: An Ethnography of Football Match-Fixing
The topic of corruption has recently moved from the periphery to the centre of social scientific attention. Notwithstanding the increased interest, research into corruption has been empirically limited and under-theorized. This study addresses that gap by providing an ethnographic account of football match-fixing in the Czech Republic. By qualitatively analysing both primary and secondary data, […]
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Counting Young People is Not Youth Work’: The Tensions Between Values, Targets and Positive Activities in Neighbourhood-Based Work
The UK New Labour Government’s ideological preoccupations included tackling deprivation, addressing anti-social behaviour and persuading young people to engage in ‘positive activities’. In 2007, the report ‘Aiming High for Young People’ outlined policies intended to contribute to the achievement of associated goals. The Youth Sector Development Fund (YSDF) provided Civil Sector Organisations (CSOs) with the […]
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Creating Opportunities for Social Change in Women’s Sport Through Academic and Industry Collaborations: An Interview with Kate Fagan
A number of scholars have articulated the real and perceived benefits of engaging in collaborations with practitioners and have urged researchers to establish industry partnerships. Much of the discussion, however, stems from a researcher-perceptive and focuses on developing theory and scholarly advancements; less effort has been made to understand the potential advantages from a practitioner’s […]
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Creating Our Own Lineup: Identities and Shared Cultural Norms of Surfing Women in a U.S. East Coast Community
Women’s participation in surfing has grown significantly in the past decade, yet few surfing studies include women’s perspectives. Using the communication theory of identity (CTI), I examine how surfing women in one community develop, enact, and negotiate their identities in this traditionally male lifestyle sport. Findings show that surfing women bring a more social, complementary […]
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Creating Social Change in and Through Intercollegiate Sport
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the work included in the special issue: Creating Social Change in and Through Intercollegiate Sport. In doing so, the author develops a multilevel conceptual model, demonstrating how the research included in the special issue addresses the antecedents and outcomes of social change initiatives in intercollegiate sport at […]
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Critically Encountering Exer-Games and Young Femininity
This article builds upon previous research into the Nintendo Wii game “We Cheer” through qualitative analysis of the lived experiences of young girls and their playing experiences. I argue here that this multi-layered approach is important as it allows for exploration of the nuances between representation and everyday lives, specifically when analyzing the complexity and […]
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Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Religion as “Character”: Football and Soccer in the United States and Germany
This study compares sports media coverage of American football (“football”) in the United States and association football (“soccer”) in Germany, with a specific focus on the portrayal of Christian athletes. Specifically, we contend that media coverage of Christian football players in the United States presupposes that religiosity necessarily equates with good character. Thus, American athletes […]
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CrossFit: Fitness Cult or Reinventive Institution?
Branded as ‘the sport of fitness’, CrossFit is a burgeoning exercise regime that has surpassed the growth of well-known fitness franchises. In addition to its comprehensive fitness regime, it claims to offer a supportive community, which aims to ensure that people do not exercise ‘together alone’. The tight-knit – almost insular – nature of this […]
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Cuddling and Spooning: Heteromasculinity and Homosocial Tactility Among Student-Athletes
This article examines the prevalence of homosocial tactility and the contemporary status and meaning of heteromasculinity among British male youth. Drawing on in-depth interviews with forty student-athletes at a British university, we find that thirty-seven participants have cuddled with another male. In addition to this cuddling, participants also engage in “spooning” with their heterosexual male […]
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Cul-de-sac Kids
Previous research indicates that adults who live on cul-de-sac streets are more likely to have positive experiences with neighbors than residents of other street types (Brown and Werner, 1985; Hochschild Jr, 2011; Mayo Jr, 1979; Willmott, 1963). The present research ascertains whether street design has an impact on children’s neighborhood experiences. The author interviewed 73 […]
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Competing With Her Mother-in-Law: The Intersection of Control Management and Emotion Management in Sport Families
Extensive ethnographic research with wives of professional athletes revealed that in certain sport families, the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship is among the numerous unique marital and occupational stressors these wives confront in their everyday life. Many wives believe they must compete with their mothers-in-law for their husbands’ attention, love, and support. This chapter makes a case for […]
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Competition, Gender and the Sport Experience: an Exploration Among College Athletes
Worldwide, sport and physical activity rates of women generally lag behind those of men. One reason for this could be the way that sport cultures typically frame and value competition. This study provides an examination of the meaning and impact of ‘competition’ on the sport participation experiences of men and women. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, […]
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Complex Interaction of Religiousness With Other Factors in Relation to Substance Use and Misuse Among Female Athletes
Strength of religious faith (SRF) is rarely studied as a protective factor against substance use and misuse in sports. Herein, we studied the potential buffering effect of the complex socio-educational, sports, and religiousness factors in the protection against substance use and misuse, including cigarettes, analgesics, appetite suppressants, potential doping behavior, and binge drinking. The sample […]
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Complicating the Relationship Between Sport and National Identity: The Case of Post-Socialist Slovenia
Sociology of sport knowledge on national identity is grounded in research that focuses primarily on long established nation-states with widely known histories. The relationship between sport and national identity in postsocialist/Soviet/colonial nations that have gained independence or sovereignty since 1990 has seldom been studied. This paper examines the role of sports in the formation of […]
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Concussion Incidence and Return-To-Play Time in National Basketball Association Players. Results from 2006 to 2014
Background: Various research efforts have studied concussions in the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and the National Hockey League. However, no study has investigated the incidence and return-to-play trends in the National Basketball Association (NBA), which this study aims to do. Hypothesis: Increased media scrutiny and public awareness, in addition to the institution of […]
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Conducting Commissioned Research in Neoliberal Academia: The Conditions Evaluations Impose on Research Practice
The article deals with the unease we experience during various commissioned research projects. On the one hand, as social scientists, we feel committed to conducting ‘good research’ that acknowledges quality criteria such as flexibility and transparency and in particular allows for musing and reflexivity to ‘discover’ new aspects of our research topic. On the other […]
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Confronting Neoliberalism: Toward a Militant Pedagogy of Empowered Citizenship.
This article is structured along two particularly pressing fault lines: (a) the educational arena and our work as critical pedagogues and engaged public intellectuals, and (b) the location of our research to what we may term the street (or, the spaces in which neoliberal engagements are faced head-on). It presents a discussion on neoliberal fundamentalism, […]
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Confucianism, Baseball and Ethnic Stereotyping in Taiwan
Unlike the experience of indigenous people in some societies, notably North America and Australia, where there is a significant modern sporting culture to which indigenous people contribute relatively little, in Taiwan the situation is reversed. Here the sporting culture is relatively underdeveloped in large part, we argue, because of the continuing influence of Confucian ideas, […]
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Connecting Social Psychology and Sociology of Sport: Using Goffman as a Framework for Sociological Sports Research
Research on the sociology of sports has much to contribute to public discourse on sports and is well positioned to do so through the connection between sociology of sports and social psychology. This article uses the work of Erving Goffman () as a framework for situating research in the sociology of sports into the themes […]
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Constructing and Contesting the Olympics Online: The Internet, Rio 2016 and the Politics of Brazilian Development
The awarding of the 2016 Summer Olympics to the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil continues the trend of international sports mega-events being hosted in the global South and constructed and promoted as part of long-term development plans and policies. Rio 2016 also connects with the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) current commitment to international development […]
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Constructing Masculinity Through Penetration Discourse: The Intersection of Misogyny and Homophobia in High School Wrestling
Drawing from ethnographic data, this article analyzes how the ‘‘fag’’ identity and the epithet ‘‘pussy’’ relate to high school wrestlers’ constructions of masculinity. Empirically, this research illuminates two dynamics: (1) how wrestlers achieve normative masculinity by symbolically framing sexual relations as acts of domination and (2) the way in which wrestlers’ use of ‘‘pussy’’ parallels […]
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Constructing Masculinized Sportscapes: Skiing Gender and Nature in British Columbia Canada
Sport sociology has provided a significant body of critical research on gender and social inequality within outdoor sport. Less attention is given to how the social construction of sport landscapes shapes gendered power relations. This article examines how skiinglandscapes are constructed as masculinized spaces. The mountainous sublime is a site for performing athletic, risk-seeking masculinity.The […]
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Constructing Racial/Ethnic Difference in and Through Dutch Televised Soccer Commentary
The purpose of this study was to expand on current research about ways in which race and ethnicity are socially constructed through popular media culture. In this article we explore to what extent broadcast commentary of televised soccer in the Netherlands reproduces and challenges hegemonic discourses about race/ethnicity and is congruent with findings of similar […]
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Consuming Athletic Labor: : A Special Issue of JSSI
The history of modern spectator sport has been defined by a wide range of labor struggles, from individual contract disputes to collective acts of workplace dissent, protest, mass audience. Not simply detached observers, fans have played prominent and critical roles in shaping the labor politics of sport.
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Consuming Sports Media, Producing Sports Media: An Analysis of Two Fan Sports Blogospheres
The fan sports blogger, a sports fan who contributes their own narratives to the quotidian reportage of sports by publishing an online sports news site on platforms like Blogger and WordPress, is a relatively new fan presence. The scant research devoted to this nascent culture has questioned its potential impact on mainstream sports media, or […]
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Classified Beauty: Goods and Bodies in Brazilian Women’s Magazines
This article analyzes women’s images in Brazilian magazines aiming to understand the logic behind the construction of notions of female beauty, health, and wellbeing. More precisely, it investigates how magazines associate an extensive array of goods to women’s bodies, sustaining a permanent logic of consumption. At the explicit level of images, magazines express novelty, promote […]
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Coaching Touching and False Allegations of Sexual Abuse in Canada
Whether in sports training or in physical education contexts, touching is an integral component of the coaches’ tasks. However, recent evidence suggests that touching has become a significant concern for coaches in Canada and elsewhere, maybe due to the increased sensitivity toward child protection discourses. In fact, it appears that some coaches are concerned that […]
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College-Going Benefits of High School Sports Participation
The long touted athlete advantage in college enrollment has been tempered by assertions that this advantage is actually due to characteristics that precede participation. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the benefits of sports extend into contemporary times and apply equally to female and racial minority athletes. This study uses three nationally representative longitudinal data sets […]
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Collegiate Sport Chaplaincy: Exploration of an Emerging Profession
Previous research has indicated there are no clearly defined qualifications and roles for collegiate sport chaplains. Among the concerns raised about the practice of sport chaplaincy were the provision of counseling services and the separation of church and state. The purposes of this study were to explore: 1. training among collegiate sport chaplains, 2. their […]
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Colour-Blindness and Diversity: Race Frames and Their Consequences for White Undergraduates at Elite US Universities
In this paper we bring together the literatures on frame analysis, the meaning of race and campus racial climate to analyse the race frames – lenses through which individuals understand the role of race in society – held by white students attending elite US universities. For most, the elite university experience coincides with a strengthening […]
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Commemorating 9/11 NFL-Style: Insights Into America’s Culture of Militarism
This article explores how the National Football League’s (NFL’s) commemoration ceremonies on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 present a unique instance of sports–media-military convergence through their meticulous implementation across multiple games, broadcasting channels, and geographic locations. Expanding on themes of healing, the valorization of troops, and the sanitizing of war, as well as territorial conquest, […]
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Comment on “Investigating Allegations of Point-Shaving in NCAA Basketball Using Actual Sportsbook Betting Percentages”
A recent article by Paul and Weinbach has two objectives. The first is to reject the conventional wisdom that sports books operate by balancing the action on the games. The second objective of Paul and Weinbach is to investigate point-shaving. This second section of the article falls short in recognizing the incentive to decrease detection, […]
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Comment on Hanssen and Meehan, ‘‘Who Integrated Major League Baseball Faster Winning Teams or Losing Teams?’
In this short note, the authors contrast their own recent work on racial integration in Major League Baseball with that of two other groups: Hanssen and Meehan (2009) and Goff, McCormick, and Tollison (2002). While reaching dissimilar conclusions, both groups understate the role of the entrepreneur in the process of integration and rely too heavily […]
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Communism, Capitalism, and Images of Class. Effects of Reference Groups, Reality, and Regime in 43 Nations and 110,000 Individuals, 1987-2009
People differ vastly in perceptions of inequality, some seeing a small elite at the top of their society with a vast impoverished mass at the bottom, others a prosperous society with most people in the middle. This was found first for two nations, Australia and Communist-era Hungary. We extend these results to 43 nations and […]
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Community Trial of a Faith-Based Lifestyle Intervention to Prevent Diabetes Among African-Americans
About 75 % of African-Americans (AAs) ages 20 or older are overweight and nearly 50 % are obese, but community-based programs to reduce diabetes risk in AAs are rare. Our objective was to reduce weight and fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and increase physical activity (PA) from baseline to week-12 and to month-12 among overweight AA […]
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Comparative Analysis of University Sports in the U.S. and Turkey
The authors compare collegiate sports governance in Turkey and the United States using comparative analysis techniques. Using the U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Association as a model, the authors evaluate structural and political aspects of the Turkish University Sports Federation to identify new potentialities for its growth and for the support of collegiate sports within Turkey.
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Comparing Genomic Narratives of Human Diversity in Latin American Nations
Human population genomics aims to improve health for all, trace human migration histories and refine forensic identification techniques. These aims transcend national borders: geneticists are part of a global community supported by transnational infrastructures. At this level, concerns have been raised that, in its intense focus on genetic difference, genomics reinscribes “racial” differences. But global […]
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Comparing Super-Diversity
Reflecting a broadening interest in finding new ways to talk about contemporary social complexity, the concept of ‘super-diversity’ has received considerable attention since it was introduced in this journal in 2007. Many utilizing the term have referred only to ‘more ethnicities’ rather than to the term’s fuller, original intention of recognizing multidimensional shifts in migration […]
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Comparison of Concussion Rates Between NCAA Division I and Division III Men’s and Women’s Ice Hockey Players
Background: Examinations related to divisional differences in the incidence of sports-related concussions (SRC) in collegiate ice hockey are limited. Purpose: To compare the epidemiologic patterns of concussion in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) ice hockey by sex and division. Study Design: Descriptive epidemiology study. Methods: A convenience sample of men’and women’s ice hockey teams in […]
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Competing Constructions of British National Identity: British Newspaper Comment on the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony
This study used newspaper comment on the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London as an avenue to discuss and contemplate British national identity. Through analysis of 91 editorials and opinion columns in the British national press, we uncovered three prominent themes in newspaper discourse: the ‘greatness’ of Great Britain, the ceremony as […]
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Competing Loyalties in Sports Medicine: Threats to Medical Professionalism in Elite, Commercial Sport
This paper explores the ways in which the environment of elite-level and, in particular, commercial sport produces expectations and pressures on sports doctors that may compromise their professional standards. Specifically, this paper addresses the pressures and demands that emerge from varying groups and individuals with whom doctors have relationships within the world of elite sport […]
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Champions of Respect: Inclusion of LGBTQ Student-Athletes and Staff in NCAA Programs
This resource was commissioned by the LGBTQ Subcommittee of the NCAA association-wide Committee on Women’s Athletics and the Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee in 2012. The subcommittee’s charge is to provide leadership and advocacy, raising awareness of and providing resources to address issues related to equitable opportunities, fair treatment and respect for LGBTQ student-athletes, coaches, […]
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Changing Work Routines and Labour Practices of Sports Journalists in the Digital Era: A Case Study of Postmedia
This article contributes to an emerging body of research that examines the transformation of sport, journalism and media practice in the digital era as part of what Raymond Williams has called the ‘long revolution’ of communications, culture and democracy. In so doing, we explore how Canadian sports journalists have attempted to make sense of, and […]
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Chasing Objectivity? Critical Reflections on History, Identity, and the Public Performance of Indian Mascots
Chasing Objectivity? Critical Reflections on History, Identity, and the Public Performance of Indian Mascots examines the role of the objectivity within the discipline of history via explorations of research into Native American sports mascots. I argue that Whiteness and other aspects of privilege are intimately, and publicly, entwined with the practice of “doing” history and […]
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Chasing Rx: A Spatial Ethnography of the Crossfit Gym
CrossFit is a group fitness program that incorporates a variety of weightlifting and gymnastic movements performed at high intensities. While scholars have examined CrossFit’s physiological and behavioral outcomes, few studies have examined the program’s psychological and sociological characteristics. Drawing from Henning Eichberg’s work on spatial geography, this 5-month ethnographic study examined the space and place […]
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Cheating is the Name of the Game – Conventional Cheating Arguments Fail to Articulate Moral Responses to Doping
One of the most common arguments in the discussion on doping is that it represents a form of cheating. In this paper it is argued that common doping-is-cheating arguments based on notions of rule-violation and unfair advantage are inadequate, since they treat cheating as distinct from the structure and the logic of competitive sport. An […]
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Cheering on the Collegiate Model: Creating, Disseminating, and Imbedding the NCAA’s Redefinition of Amateurism
In January 2012, during his “State of the Association” address, National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) President Mark Emmert urged members to fix the “collegiate model.” Imbedded in the speech’s framework, this relatively new term in the NCAA national office’s lexicon has received spontaneous consent from the association, member universities, and other college-sport constituents including administrators, […]
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Child Athletes and Athletic Objectification
This article examines the risks associated with conceptualizing the child athlete’s body primarily in aesthetic terms and as an instrument of sporting victory, and develops a concept of “athletic objectification.” It draws on a recent research project involving Australian males and females aged between 18 and 25 who participated in organized sport as children. It […]
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Children’s engagement in leisure time physical activity: Exploring family structure as a determinant
This paper draws on Bourdieu’s key concepts in an effort to understand particular social practices and the effect of family as a social environment and determinant for participation in leisure time physical activity. As an exploratory study, the aim was to elicit children’s subjective views of their engagement in leisure time physical activity settings. Adopting […]
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Children’s Participation in Organized Sport and Physical Activities and Active Free Play: Exploring the Impact of Time, Gender and Neighbourhood Household Income Using Longitudinal Data
This study examines the associations among socioeconomic status (SES), aging, gender and sport and physical activity participation from late childhood into adolescence. Drawing from previous research, we test three hypotheses regarding the impact of aging on SES and sport participation using longitudinal data. The data come from a prospective cohort study of children, all of […]
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Chinese Olympic Sport Policy: Managing the Impact of Globalization
The article examines the extent to which, and the manner in which, the Chinese government managed its relationship with the Olympic movement following its re-engagement with international elite sports competition in the mid 1970s. Locating the analysis in the literature on globalisation, the article notes the limited research exploring the role of the state in […]
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Christianity, Boxing and Mixed Martial Arts: Reflections on Morality, Vocation, and Well-Being
This essay provides a theological analysis of two violent combat sports, boxing and mixed martial arts (MMA, also known as cage fighting). The titles of the biographies of a number of well-known professional Christian boxers, such as God in My Corner (Foreman) and Humble Warrior (Holyfield) and the fact that “roughly 700 churches in the […]
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Churches as Targets for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention: Comparison of Genes, Nutrition, Exercise, Wellness and Spiritual Growth (GoodNEWS) and Dallas County Populations
Background We compared cardiovascular (CV) risk factors (CVRFs) of community-based participatory research (CBPR) participants with the community population to better understand how CBPR participants relate to the population as a whole. Methods Good News Participants in 20 African-American churches in Dallas, Texas were compared with age/sex-matched African-Americans in the Dallas Heart Study (DHS), a probability-based […]
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Citizen Consumer Citimer in Football Fan Cultures
This article examines how football, sport and other cultural fields are characterized by complex interrelations between ‘citizen’ and ‘consumer’ identities. Our analysis centres specifically on critically examining and developing the concept of ‘citimer’ (citizen-consumer) with respect to activist supporter groups within European professional men’s football. First, to establish the structural and cultural context for our […]
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Building Worlds: A Connective Ethnography of Play in Minecraft
Digital gameplay is enacted across many social platforms that can be described as affinity spaces, meaning informal learning environments where players share resources and knowledge. This article examines the ways that a young gamer stitches together several different spaces to play Minecraft. Our study focuses on the play of a single participant, collecting ethnographic data […]
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Bullshot: Sporting Shooting, Alcohol and the Two Cultures
This paper discusses the role and function of alcohol in sporting shooting in the UK. It seeks to understand and critically comment upon alcohol consumption relating to this sport, to widen empirical knowledge of sporting shooting and to use the lens of alcohol to enhance our theoretical understanding of changes taking place in the global […]
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Call Me Loyal: Globalization, Corporate Nationalism and the America’s Cup
This study examines the relationship between sport, globalization and national identity. Specifically, the article focuses on how Team New Zealand’s 2003 America’s Cup campaign represents and reproduces the concept of corporate nationalism. Located within a critical cultural studies perspective the analysis uses a multi-method approach including textual and contextual analysis and semi-structured interviews with key […]
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Calling for a Time-Out: The Theology of Disability Sport and the Broader Understanding of Competition
The author seeks to interrogate technological trends in economic competition by means of theological reflection on the practices of disability sport, particularly the Special Olympics. He discusses the increasing influence of an algorithmic rationale that has been established in mainstream sport within wider society, especially in the economic sphere. The capturing of time is the […]
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Camaraderie Reincorporated: Tough Mudder and the Extended Distribution of the Social
Tough Mudder, a market-leading event in the burgeoning practice and industry of mud running, is a 21 km “military-style” obstacle course with a curiously collaborative ethic. Teams of runners traverse the course in the name of fun, fitness, bravado, and much more besides, galvanized around Tough Mudder’distinctive ethos of togetherness. This essay sets out to […]
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Can ‘The Ghetto’ Really Take Over the County? ‘Race’, Generation & Social Change in Local Football in the UK
The involvement of people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds in local sports clubs is little used as a route for examining questions of their wider identity politics and exploring the impact of generational change in local sport. This is often because of difficulties involved in conducting qualitative research at the same site over an […]
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Can There be a Moral Duty to Cheat in Sport?
This article examines and defends the claim that whether or not to cheat can be a genuine moral dilemma within the ethics of team sports. That is, although there is always something morally wrong in cheating there may also be moral reasons in its favour and thus some (and perhaps an overriding) duty to cheat. […]
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Can We Consider Changes in Sports Participation as Institutional Change? A Conceptual Framework
The aim of this paper is to gain conceptual understanding of changes in leisure-time sports participation (LTSP) as an issue of institutional change. The study is elaborated in the LTSP research context of Flanders (Belgium) and Denmark. Data originate from the Flemish Household Study on Sports Participation (1969, 1979, 1989, 1999, 2009), Danish National Surveys […]
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Capital Matters: Social Sustaining Capital and the Development of Black Student-Athletes
How is social capital nurtured and made meaningful in the development of black student-athletes in historically white institutional (HWI) settings? Research explicitly exploring an understanding of nurturing social capital related to the development of black student-athletes is scarce. This collective case study investigates black student-athletes’ accrual and meaning-making of social capital in historically white settings […]
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Caster Semenya, Gender Verification and the Politics of Fairness in an Online Track & Field Community
The sex testing of South African runner Caster Semenya in 2009 was widely discussed in media, but the most serious and significant sites of debate may have been within the cultures and institutions of track & field itself. In this article, we report findings from an analysis of an online track & field community—TrackNet Listserv—through […]
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Celebrity, Ageing and the Construction of ‘Third Age’ Identities
This article explores celebrity as a point of articulation between consumer culture and the reconfiguration of ageing lifestyles and identities in contemporary culture – described by cultural gerontologists as the ‘Third Age’. We focus on ageing stars whose celebrity is used to promote a particular vision of successful ageing, describing the cultural basis and significance […]
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Challenge and Relief: A Foucauldian Disciplinary Analysis of Retirement From Professional Association Football in the United Kingdom
The aim of this study was to consider the retirement experiences of British male professional association footballers by utilising Foucault’s analysis of discipline discussed in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Specifically, we drew upon Foucault to consider how, through the various techniques and instruments of discipline, the professional football context produces ‘docile […]
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