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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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
Previous research has shown that the demographic–economic model consisting of variables such as age, gender, nationality, income, and time can generally be used to explain sport participation. However, this model has not yet been tested for participation in different sports.…
Research question: Small-scale sports events provide commercial opportunities for regional communities, and yet research suggests that local commercial organisations are sometimes reticent to engage with sport event organisations to leverage benefits. This paper examines variation in business engagement with sport…
Background: The Healthy Bodies, Healthy Souls (HBHS) program aims to reduce diabetes risk among urban African Americans by creating healthy food and physical activity environments within churches. Participant engagement supports the development of applicable intervention strategies by identifying priority concerns,…
The roller derby revival has created a unique stage and community for women athletes. Using Helen Lenskyj’s foundational work to frame the institutional oppressions on women in sports, I explore how marginalized spaces like derby engender performances and identities outside…
It’s the twenty-first century, and although we tried to rear unisex children—boys who play with dolls and girls who like trucks—we failed. Even though the glass ceiling is cracked, most women stay comfortably beneath it. And everywhere we hear about…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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.…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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’…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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)…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Kane’s ‘sport as a continuum’ theory posits many women can outperform many men in a variety of athletic endeavors. However, because sports are typically sex-segregated, this athletic continuum is rarely seen but provides a potentially powerful mechanism of transformation relative…
Despite the recent emergence of women and gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, intersexuals and transsexuals (GLBITs) in sport, gender equity has been far from realized. Dominant forms of sport are bimodal in gender classification, a construction that creates an ideology of…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…