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Showcasing the Springboks: The Commercialization of South African Rugby Heritage
This article is concerned with how sport museums, and in particular rugby museums, in South Africa tell the story of South Africa’s rich rugby heritage. By drawing on the author’s observations at the opening of the Springbok Experience Rugby Museum, making several visits to the museum, sourcing hitherto untapped archival sources from the South African […]
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Skateboarding Helmets and Control: Observations from Skateboard Media and a Hong Kong Skatepark
Skateboarding has a global reach and will be included for the first time in the 2020 Olympic Games. It has transformed from a subcultural pursuit to a mainstream and popular sport. This research looks at some of the challenges posed by the opening of a new skatepark in Hong Kong and the introduction of a […]
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Skateboarding, Community and Urban Politics: Shifting Practices and Challenges
This paper examines how skateboarding is impacted by the current neoliberal economic and cultural climate of youth sport in the United States. Presently, youth sport is highly influenced by private entities and often packaged as a means to assuage parents that their children are gaining competitive life skills as well as character enhancing attributes. Skateboarding […]
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Soccer Attendees’ Preferences for Facilities at the Fionia Park Stadium: An Application of the Discrete Choice Experiment
The discrete choice experiment (DCE) is introduced in sports economics by empirically investigating soccer attendees’ preferences for facilities at a soccer stadium in Denmark. The appropriateness of the strategy of differentiating prices based on quality of opponents (A vs. B matches) is investigated. The results indicate that respondents are capable of understanding the exercise. The […]
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Soccer Fan Violence: A Holistic Approach: A Reply to Braun and Vliegenthart
Building on Braun and Vliegenthart’s recent study of soccer hooliganism, this article develops an explanatory model of soccer fan violence and collective violence more generally. The fabric of soccer fan violence becomes a richer tapestry if the diversity of the phenomenon is recognized and the focus is moved towards a more holistic approach to explaining […]
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Soccer Nation/Corporation
I miss living in Cape Town, South Africa. I miss lots of things: planting seeds in soil as deep and rich as chocolate pudding; the way the ocean curls around the land like a cat; being able to look up to Table Mountain’s shoulder to see the weather coming in from the south. Where I […]
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Social Aspects of Physical Education and Sport in Schools
The paper entitled Social Aspects of Physical Education and Sport in Schools follows the tradition of social research on physical culture, focusing on the evolution of physical education and sport in schools. The subject is analysed using terms and theories that are characteristic of sociology, most notably the sociology of physical culture, historical sociology and […]
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Social Benefits of Playing Wii Bowling for Older Adults
This research study investigated whether playing a digital game, Wii Bowling, with others can enhance the social life of older adults. Our research used a mixed-methods approach. Results showed that players’ levels of social connectedness increased and loneliness declined over an 8-week period. Qualitative results described participants’ perceptions of their interactions with others, conversations with […]
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Social Capital and College Sport: In Search of the Bridging Potential of Intercollegiate Athletics
Intercollegiate athletics in the United States have been linked with enhancing the sense of community between students on campus (Clopton, 2008). Still, little evidence confirms that maintaining a prominent athletics program contributes to the social capital of students on campus who follow those teams. Consisting of networks of relationships based on trust and norms of […]
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Sedentary Activities, Peer Behavior, and Delinquency Among American Youth
Delinquent behavior of one’s peers is one of the most robust predictors of adolescent delinquency. However, no study to date has explored the role of this relationship among those who engage in high rates of nonproductive sedentary activities (e.g., video gaming, TV viewing, and watching movies); a growing public health concern. Here, this issue is […]
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Seeking Spirituality Through Physicality in Schools: Learning from ‘Eastern Movement Forms
This paper argues that we might learn from the ways in which Eastern movement forms with a self-cultivation focus approach the development of spirituality through physicality. It also argues that these movement forms have potential to assist in the development of children’s spirituality in school and Physical Education (PE) settings. First, the paper highlights a […]
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Seniors in Sport: The Experiences and Practices of Older World Masters Games Competitors
This study aims to understand the views, practices and experiences of seniors who participate regularly in sport within the context of identity management and cultural notions of sport and aging. We conducted on-site interviews and observations of male and female World Masters Games competitors (aged 55 years and over). Participants were involved in a variety […]
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Serving the State and the Private Sector: The Paradoxical Effects of the Reconstruction of Public Action on the Career Paths of Sports Ministry Agents in France
Faced with the problems of governing high-level sports policy in France caused by the mobilisation of various categories of private actors, and with the downgrading of France in the ranking of leading sports nations, the Sports Ministry instigated a reform of this policy based on the principles of New Public Management. While some studies have […]
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Shadowed by the Corpse of War: Sport Spectacles and the Spirit of Terrorism
Since the early 2000s, there has been a groundswell of research on terrorism and sports mega-events, including investigations into the impact of ‘9/11’ on fear and risk management strategies at high profile sports events. In this article, we re-examine the case of the Salt Lake City Winter Games of 2002 around Baudrillard’s (1995) concept of […]
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Shooting for Lithuania: Migration, National Identity and Men’s Basketball in the East of England
The accession of the ‘A8 states’ into the European Union initiated considerable migration into Western Europe. The impact upon local communities has seen significant attention, yet little research exists that focuses upon migrant experiences and identity specifically in sport. This study used a figurational framework to investigate the lived experiences of basketball among male Lithuanian […]
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Riding in the Shadows: The Reaction of the British Print Media to Chris Froome’s Victory in the 2013 Tour de France
On 21 July 2013 Chris Froome became only the second British cyclist to win the Tour de France. This paper examines how the events surrounding Froome’s victory in the 2013 Tour de France were reported in the British (London-based) print media the day after his victory. Data were collected from nine different daily newspapers on […]
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Rio 2016 and the Sport Participation Legacies
The aim of this study was to investigate the perceptions held by physical education professionals of the sport participation legacy associated with the 2016 Olympic Games (Rio 2016). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 professionals who resided in Rio de Janeiro at the time of the study. In general, apart from the tangible legacies, individuals […]
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Road Cycling Over Forty: Fitness, Friends, and Fondos
The recent growth in the aging population taking up road cycling and participating in Gran Fondo events has gained attention in popular media. However as of yet, little research exists regarding why, at this time, road cycling is drawing this demographic. This paper explores experiences and perspectives of aging cycling enthusiasts, coaches, and bike store […]
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Running for Jesus! The Virtues and the Vices of Disability and Sport
The author explores some of the virtues and the vices of sport for Christians. Although sport is clearly a popular and potentially fruitful enterprise for human beings, it has its glories and its temptations. On the one hand, sport can be a magnificent exhibition of the beauty, diversity, power, and God-given potential of the human […]
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Rustic Obsessions: The Role of Slovenian Folk Pop in the Slovenian National Imaginary
The article explores the relationship between Slovenian national identity and popular music. A substantial empirical research (150 interviewees from 4 different Slovenian regions) has been conducted to find out what kind of music Slovenians themselves perceive as typically Slovenian and what are for them the defining characteristics of these music acts or styles. The results […]
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Salvaging National Pride: The 2010 Taekwondo Controversy and Taiwan’s Quest for Global Recognition
In this article, we analyze Taiwan’s grassroots reactions to the disqualification of taekwondo icon Yang Shu-chun in the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, in order to examine how a technical dispute induced political and popular campaigns that variously blamed the governing party, the People’s Republic of China, and South Korea for inflicting shame on both the […]
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Same But Different? Exploring the Organizational Identities of Swedish Voluntary Sports: Possible Implications of Sports Clubs’ Self-Identification for Their Role as Implementers of Policy Objectives
The aim of this study is to contribute to the ongoing discussion of sports clubs’ propensity to act as policy implementers. Theoretically, we conceptualize this propensity as contingent on an alignment between a sports club’s organizational identity and the cultural material, that is, ends and means of a given policy. Building on data from short, […]
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Saturday Night’s Alright for Tweeting: Cultural Citizenship, Collective Discussion, and the New Media Consumption/Production of Hockey Day in Canada
Drawing upon data collected during the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s 2011 Hockey Day in Canada broadcast, this paper examines how users of Twitter variously reproduced or contested this mediated television program. Three emergent themes from these data are discussed: the sociocultural importance of hockey to Canadians; the corporate sponsorship of Hockey Day in Canada ; and […]
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Saved at Home: Christian branding and faith nights in the ‘church of baseball’
Baseball has enjoyed its status as the “national pastime” in part because it has been associated with democracy. To the extent that baseball, as an institution of civil religion, fosters pluralism and inclusion, it can indeed be viewed in democratic terms. In recent years, the advent of conservative Christian events called “Faith Nights” threatens the […]
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School Board Decision-Making and the Elimination of Sport Participation Fees
Public schools in the US are increasingly charging ‘pay-to-play’ fees for participating in sports. Although these fees can cause reductions in participation, particularly for children from lower-income families, pay-to-play has become a legitimate practice within the field of public education. This study examines what leads some school districts to abandon sport participation fees, despite the […]
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Schooling Taiwan’s Aboriginal Baseball Players for the Nation
One of the major challenges that faces nation-builders in postcolonial societies is the incorporation of subaltern groups, particularly aboriginal peoples, into a collective national project. One vehicle for addressing this challenge is sport with schools being amongst the most important venues. This article offers an empirical study of the role of aboriginal players in Taiwanese […]
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Representation in the First African World Cup: ‘Worldclass’, Pan-Africanism, and Exclusion
This paper explores the representation of the first African World Cup in the British and South African press. Drawing on the output of a variety of media outlets between 2004, when South Africa was awarded the right to host the 2010 event, and the culmination of the tournament in July 2010, this paper contends that […]
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Representations of Sport in the Revolutionary Socialist Press in Britain, 1988–2012
This paper considers how sport presents a dualism to those on the far left of the political spectrum. A long-standing, passionate debate has existed on the contradictory role played by sport, polarised between those who reject it as a bourgeois capitalist plague and those who argue for its reclamation and reformation. A case study is […]
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Representing Taiwan: International Sport, Ethnicity and National Identity in the Republic of China
This article outlines and analysis the political character of Taiwan’s relationship with international sport, and in particular with the Olympic movement. In so doing, it seeks to add to the understanding of the links between sport and the formation and reproduction of national identities, with specific reference to the various cultural and ethnic identities of […]
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Resilience as Embedded Neoliberalism: A Governmentality Approach
This article looks at resilience as a form of governmentality. In particular, it is concerned to show that resilience, despite its claims to be about the operation of systems, is, in practice, closer to a form of governance that emphasises individual responsibility. It traces this line of argument through looking at a range of documents […]
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Resisting the World-Class City: Community Opposition and the Politics of a Local Arena Development
While the public subsidy of major league sport franchises and associated urban development projects remains wildly popular in some constituencies, these expenditures have, increasingly, been met with organized resistance. This article examines the formation of Voices for Democracy (VFD)—a grassroots community group that opposed the use of public funds to build a CAD $606.5 million […]
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Response to Comment on “Investigating Allegations of Point Shaving in NCAA Basketball Using Actual Sportsbook Betting Percentages”
Response to Comment on “Investigating Allegations of Point shaving in NCAA Basketball Using Actual Sportsbook Betting Percentages”
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Rethinking Identity Politics: The Multiple Attachments of an ‘Exclusive’ Sport Organization
This paper draws on a multi-sited ethnography of the North American Chinese Invitational Volleyball Tournament and examines the attachments and relationships that participation nurtures. I argue that rather than being exclusive, the NACIVT and its participants foster and nurture multiple relationships that extend beyond the NACIVT and Asianness. In doing so, I aim to do […]
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Review of Football Fascism and Fandom: The Ultra-S of Italian Football
Football fascism and fandom provides a rare look beneath the surface of Italian neo-fascist hardcore football fandom. The book is the product of ethnographic dissertation research conducted by Alberto Testa on two of these fan groups (called UltraS) in Rome, Italy. Based on academic research, the book seems to have been adapted for a mass-market […]
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Review of Marvin Miller, Baseball Revolutionary
A strong case could be made that a person who never played professional baseball was one of the most influential individuals in the history of that sport. Marvin Miller, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLPBA) from 1966 to 1982, transformed not only the business and economics of baseball but the very […]
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Review of The Fantasy Sport Industry: Games Within Games
Review of The Fantasy Sport Industry: Games Within Games
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Review of The Global Football League: Transnational Networks, Social Movements and Sport in the New Media Age
Globalisation has had a profound impact on European football and English football in particular. A series of political and economic transformations took place in the 1990s which reflected wider global transformations outside of the sport. Clubs sought additional funding from more commercial practices. New global media companies used football to establish new audiences and wider […]
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Review of The Urban Geography of Boxing
The Urban Geography of Boxing makes a valuable contribution to the ever expanding literature on what is social, cultural and political about sport. Benita Heiskanen’s focus is an empirical study of the culture of boxing, including the key players, promoters, trainers, media networks and audiences, as well as boxers in the gym. This book, a […]
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Recycling Religion: Lance Armstrong’s Postmodern Spirituality of Suffering and Survivorship
For much of his triple career as heroic cancer survivor, sports champion, and, latterly, fallen idol, Lance Armstrong, a professed atheist, has worn a silver necklace with a cross pendant. Why does he wear this Ur-symbol of Christian religious faith? Speculative answers range from ‘residual superstition’ to ‘fashion jewellery’ and ‘tactical deception’. Here, Armstrong’s own […]
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Refining the Nation’s ‘New Gold’: Music, Youth Development and Neoliberalism in South Africa
This essay explores the work of the Field Band Foundation (FBF) in South Africa, a non-governmental organisation that has been working nationwide since 1997 to create opportunities for the development of ‘life skills’ in youth in predominantly socioeconomically underprivileged communities through music education. It positions the work of the FBF as a pragmatic interaction with […]
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Reflections on communication and sport: On fanship and social relationships.
In this essay, Walter Gantz reflects on the importance of communication and sport and the evolution of his research on fanship and social relationships. Cutting across two overlapping dimensions—physical location and technology—this essay characterizes key ways that sports fanship may be integrally linked with meaningful relationships. Sports viewing at home is often a shared activity, […]
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Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Journalism and Digital
In this essay, Raymond Boyle reflects on how the study of sport within media and communication studies has evolved in the United Kingdom over the last 20 years. The first part of essay comments on the cultural importance of communication and sport. The second section traces the influences on the author’s research agenda, particularly in […]
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Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Nation and Globalization
In this essay, David Rowe reflects on how the nexus of sport and communication has affected national and global sensibilities. Sport contests take place at particular times in specific places, usually in a stadium setting, but not all who desire to watch can be present in the stadium. Without mediated communication, the vast edifice of […]
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Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Reading Sport and Narrative Ethics
In this essay, Lawrence Wenner reflects on the social and cultural importance of communication about sport. He considers the major influences on his research agenda and how the evolution of his research program came to change over time from one centered on empirical audience study to one anchored in critical and cultural studies. In a […]
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Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Women and Femininities
In this essay, Toni Bruce considers key cultural and social issues at play in the relationship between mediated sport and women. The treatment reflects on over 30 years of research and assesses not only central tendencies and changes in the way media covers women’s sporting events and achievements but also considers how this coverage interplays […]
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Religion, Spirituality, and Sport: From Religio Athletae Toward Spiritus Athletae
We are living in a time of increasing interest in the religious and spiritual aspects of sport and human movement activities. A strict distinction between religion and spirituality is, however, still missing in much of the literature. After delimiting religious and spiritual modes of experience, this article addresses Coubertin’s religio athletae and demonstrates that this […]
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Religious Offences in Italy: Recent Laws Concerning Blasphemy and Sport
Religious offences in Italy, as in many European countries, have a long and complex history that is intertwined with the events in the history of the relationship between church and state and the institutional and constitutional framework of a nation. This article is divided into three parts. The first part aims to offer some historical […]
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Religiousness as a Factor of Hesitation Against Doping Behavior in College-Age Athletes
Religiousness is rarely studied as protective factor against substance use and misuse in sport. Further, we have found no investigation where college-age athletes were sampled and studied accordingly. The aim of the present study was to identify gender-specific protective effects of the religiousness (measured by Santa Clara Questionnaire) and other social, educational, and sport variables […]
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Radical Sports Journalism?: Reflections on ‘Alternative’ Approaches to Covering Sport-Related Social Issues
In this paper we report findings from a study of what we are calling ‘sports media activism’ (or ‘SMA’). We were interested in how, why, and for what purposes a range of sport media activists are engaging with sport-related social issues through different media. This research contributes to a limited body of literature on sport-related […]
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Rationales Rhetoric and Realities: FIFA’s World Cup in South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014
The 2010 FIFA World Cup was heralded by mainstream media outlets, the local organisers, the South African government and FIFA as an unequivocal success. The month-long spectacle saw South Africa Take centre stage and host the world’s largest single sporting event. This occurred against a backdrop of rationales and promises made that the event would […]
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Re-Conceptualizing Sport as a Sacred Phenomenon
Sociological studies of sport have established their subject matter as significant to a wide range of sociocultural concerns. Despite a broad consensus about its global importance, however, the reasons for the particular, even ‘extraordinary’, societal importance of sport today remain deeply contested. Most studies account for it by highlighting its entanglement within a range of […]
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Re-Immersing into Elite Swimming Culture: A Meta-Autoethnography by a Former Elite Swimmer
This paper presents two meta-autoethnographies written by a former elite swimmer. In the first meta autoethnography, the swimmer revealed doubts in relation to details, emotions and inner-thoughts that she had included in her historical autoethnographic work. As a means of sorting and pondering these tensions and uncertainties, the swimmer explored cultural re-immersion as a possible […]
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Reactions to Implementing Adventure-based Learning in Physical Education
The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the reactions of 13 pre-service teachers (PTs) implementing an adventure-based learning (ABL) unit through the lens of occupational socialization. Data were collected through interviews, critical reflections and reflection of videotaped ABL lesson. Analysis of the data resulted in two themes: (1) This is harder than I […]
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Reclaiming the Kop? Analysing Liverpool supporters’ 21st century Mobilizations
For at least the past three decades, the sociology of football and its supportedcultures has been responsive to the social issues which have emerged within it. Today, the fact that fans rejoice and protest at overseas purchases of their club means that the time has come for research to reflect on elite-level English football’s position […]
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Recovering Spiritual Centres of Gravity Through Sport
Olympic all-around gymnastics gold medalist Gabby Douglas, of the London 2012 Games, proclaimed her relationship with God as a “win-win situation”: “The glory goes to Him, and all the blessings fall down on me.”1 Ray Lewis, the future Hall of Fame NFL linebacker, paraphrased St. Paul after claiming victory in the 2013 Super Bowl: “When […]
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Profile of self-reported problems with executive functioning in college and professional football players
Repetitive mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), such as that experienced by contact-sport athletes, has been associated with the development of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Executive dysfunction is believed to be among the earliest symptoms of CTE, with these symptoms presenting in the fourth or fifth decade of life. The present study used a well-validated self-report […]
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Promoting Buddhism through Modern Sports: The Case Study of Fo Guang Shan in Taiwan
In the past, traditional Buddhism in China focused on chanting and meditation that detached itself from the society. However, after generations of strenuous efforts to promote ‘Humanistic Buddhism’, several Masters have been encouraging religion to engage more in daily lives. One of the proponents was Master Hsin Yun, who was born and raised in mainland […]
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Promoting the ‘arriviste’ city: Producing neoliberal urban identity and communities of consumption during the Edmonton Oilers’ 2006 playoff campaign
In the spring of 2006, the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Edmonton Oilers made a surprise run to the Stanley Cup final for the first time in 16 years. Predictably, hockey fans and media pundits responded enthusiastically to the one-time return to glory of their men’s professional hockey team. Drawing from threads of political economy, historical […]
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Protecting the NFL/ militarizing the homeland: Citizen soldiers and urban resilience in post-9/11 America
In this article I focus on intersections between the National Football League’s (NFL) security practices and the US Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) counter-terrorism agenda, including new policies and legal structures that support pre-emption, protection, and preparation activities that manage and mitigate the effects of terrorist attacks. As I will argue, the intensifying and mutually […]
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Public financing of minor league stadium a risky investment.
after negotiating for several months to finance and build a $55 million ballpark in Charlotte, baseball’s Class AAA Charlotte Knights will receive $7.25 million from the city, $750,000 from Charlotte Center City Partners (an economic and cultural development group), and a donation of public land valued at $20 million to $24 million from Mecklenburg County. […]
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Public policies, body practices and social representations on ageing. A case study: the national sports plan and the sports games , Buenos Aires Province
In this paper we present the ideas of a number of speeches from which public policies have been designing and implementing that have embodied body practices (related to sport) with seniors and who build a particular social representation of ageing. In these policies, were detected to study social dimensions from which were identified and categorized […]
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Put on the wig it’s time to ball: Experiences of a collegiate men’s basketball fan group
The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of a collegiate men’s basketball fan group. Little research has been undertaken exploring student fan groups, especially using ethnographic methods. The primary researcher attended two men’s home basketball games at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, home of the student fan group, Orange Krush. The […]
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Quidditch: Impacting and Benefiting Participants in a Non-Fictional Manner
This study examines the sport of quidditch, based on the Harry Potter franchise, an alternative sport growing in popularity. The purpose of this research was to examine the impact and benefits participants of this sport received and determine similarities and differences to mainstream sport activities. Findings suggest involvement with quidditch provided leadership skills, social gains, […]
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Playing with the big boys: Basketball, American imperialism, and subaltern discourse in the Philippines
The global diffusion of sport is both a complex topic and a thematic presence in sport history and sociology circles. Studies of colonialism, human geography, and cultural appropriation are just a few of the channels to the international dissemination of sport. Much like soccer (or football), basketball became a global mega-sport through these means, spreading […]
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Political correctness, selection bias, and the NCAA Basketball Tournament
Allegations of selection bias toward the major conferences and teams with committee representation have previously been levied on the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Basketball tournament selection committee. We illustrate the source of this bias is political correctness. When using the computer ranking of Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), which uses only wins and losses in […]
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Popular and Lived Religions
This article discusses the sociological understanding of popular religion by first exploring the theories of Gramsci. It then critiques this approach by arguing that the social construction of popular religion in contrast to institutionalized religion is not as clear cut in our late modern, multi-faith and global world as it was in the early modern […]
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Power plays and Olympic divisions: Bilingualism and the politics of Canadian viewing rights at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games
There have been innumerable political debates around the world over the distribution of live sporting events in the digital era. Typically, these deliberations involve competing claims and interests associated with sport, commerce, cultural and broadcasting policies, and, at times, language rights. This article examines a recent debate in Canada over unequal access to live French-language […]
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Power, politics and sport for development and peace: Investigating the utility of sport for international development.
Sport is currently mobilized as a tool of international development within the “Sport for Development and Peace” (SDP) movement. Framed by Gramscian hegemony theory and sport and development studies respectively, this article offers an analysis of the conceptualization of sport’s social and political utility within SDP programs. Drawing on the perspectives of young Canadians (n […]
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Predisposed to participate? The influence of family socio-economic background on children’s sports participation and daily amount of physical activity
From a Bourdieu-inspired understanding of how personal resources (‘capitals’) enable certain practices in certain contexts, the links between families’ cultural, social and economic capitals, and children’s daily physical activity were investigated in 500 suburban Danish schoolchildren using questionnaire data and accelerometer measures. Family socio-economic position (SEP) was found to be positively associated with children’s participation […]
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Preserving the bounty: Gregg Williams, the Saints, and the audio the NFl wants you to hear
Audio of Gregg Williams imploring players to violence only preserves the status quo. First, the facts: Sounding like Garrison Keillor doing an impression of Robert De Niro as Al Capone, we now have audiotape of former New Orleans Saints Defensive Coordinator Gregg Williams telling his team to intentionally maim their playoff opponents, the San Francisco […]
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Pride of the people: Fijian rugby labour migration and collective identity.
Rugby is a sport that has given Fiji international recognition. The professionalisation of rugby has led to a growing number of elite players emigrating from Fiji – often temporarily but sometimes permanently – to metropolitan countries, with an estimated 450 athletes currently involved in foreign competitions. Whilst Fijians have a long history of migration to […]
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Producing mobility through locality and visibility: Developing a transnational perspective on sports labour migration.
To date, studies of sports labour migration have afforded little attention to analysis of how individual athletes relate to historical and macro- structural power relations and forces. In this article, we set out to develop a transnational perspective on sports labour migration, focusing particularly on migrants’ achievement and maintenance of mobility as a key constituting […]
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Personal strategies for managing a second career: The experiences of Spanish Olympians
The purpose of this study was to examine how Olympians experience the transition to a second career, to identify the strategies they may or may not implement in order to prepare for it, and to determine the main factors that influence this process. Using a phenomenological approach we asked 26 Spanish Olympians (13 men and […]
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Pharmacological routes to everyday exceptionality
In a modern era of speed, uncertainty, pleasure and anguish, the boundaries between pharmacologically healing and enhancing the mind are being redefined [Pieters, T., and S. Snelders. 2009 . “Psychotropic Drug Use: Between Healing and Enhancing the Mind.” Neuroethics 2 (2): 63-73]. Whether smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and coffee, or taking illicit drugs, some degree […]
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Physical and sports activities, and healthy and active ageing: Establishing a frame of reference for public action.
Since the 1960s, there has been a change in the portrayal of older people. This change has resulted in the promotion of an active way of life that led, at the turn of the twenty-first century, to the development by international bodies of standard guidelines relating to active or healthy ageing. This article examines the […]
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Physical Cultural Studies: Engendering a Productive Dialogue
One is never quite sure what the response will be to a special issue call for papers. Certainly, that was the case with regard to this Physical Cultural Studies special issue of the Sociology of Sport Journal. As editors, our original aim was to attract contributions that would help flesh out (pun intended), what we […]
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Physical literacy in the United States: A model, strategic plan, and call to action.
Supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and with guidance from a 15-member, cross-sector working group, this report offers a deep dive into the central idea behind Project Play. It builds on research showing that children with motor skills competence are more likely to stay physically active into adolescence and adulthood, identifies the populations in […]
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Physical literacy: Why should we embrace this construct?
An additional concern is that there has been a decrease in physical education programmes, an increase in early sport-specialisation and a greater focus on elite sport programmes, which have all led to fewer opportunities to teach fundamental motor skills and develop physical competence, decreased participation for all levels of athletes (regardless of ability or experience), […]
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Pilgrimage to fallen gods from Olympia: The cult of sporting celebrities.
Contemporary Western society has an abundant variety of role models, with celebrities from all walks of life replacing yesteryear’s role models of military heroes and political leaders. However, sport has long provided religious and secular role models dating back to the ancient Olympic Games, and today every two years with the celebration of the summer […]
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Place disparities in supportive environments for extracurricular physical activity in North Carolina middle schools.
Disadvantaged rural youth may be especially at risk for obesity and poorer health due to physical inactivity. Research suggests that extracurricular school programs can increase physical activity for this population. This study sought to determine whether local differences existed in the availability of supportive environments for extracurricular physical activity in North Carolina middle schools. Multiple […]
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Plans for the Legacy from the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
This document sets out the Government’s plans for the legacy from the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
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Players’ perspectives on the positive impact of video games: A qualitative content analysis of online forum discussions
On game forums, players often discuss the positive impact of video games on their lives. We collected 964 messages from top ranked game forums (via Alexa.com) and analyzed them using a coding scheme based on an existing taxonomy about the impact of the arts. This directed qualitative content analysis resulted in an exploration of how […]
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Playing and Protesting: Sport as a Vehicle for Social Change
Despite the fact that athletic activism is non normative behavior, there is still a long, albeit small, tradition of individuals who use the playing field to advocate for political and social justice. This article examines such individuals who, while in their role as athletes, engage in social or political activism to foster progressive social change. […]
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Playing in the New Media Game or Riding the Virtual Bench: Confirming and Disconfirming Membership in the Community of Sport
This essay explores a set of new media user trends that are (re)shaping fan–athlete interaction through (para)social connections. Acting as bonding agents, the trends considered either contribute to or detract from membership in the community of sport. Accordingly, social leveling practices, invitational uses, and bridging functions serve to connect people within the community of sport, […]
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Playing Rough and Tough: Chinese American Women Basketball Players in the 1930s and 1940s
During the still hours of a 1930s morning, a group of teenage girls trudged up the steep hill to the local playground in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The chain-link fence rattled as they shoved their fingers and feet into the holes and quickly scrambled over it to avoid being seen. This was the one day of […]
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Playing with the autoethnographical: Performing and re-presenting the fan’s voice
My article plays with notions of performativity and representation to repudiate assumptions of one-dimensional fandom. In particular, due to its self-reflexive writing style, I argue that autoethnography can articulate and show the subject-fan voice through evocations of first-person, insider experiences. Therefore, staged vignettes are deployed to represent the fan as an assemblage of investments, intensities, […]
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Paralympics 2012 legacy: accessible housing and disability equality or inequality?
The golden summer of sport is now over, but what is the legacy of London 2012 for disabled people? Nadia Ahmed, a disabled student, discusses the difficulties she has faced in finding accessible accommodation in London. She argues that while the Games are over, the United Kingdom still has lots of hurdles to leap when […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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