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The Shrinking Presence of Black Female Student-Athletes at Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Despite the tremendous growth in female sports participation opportunities under Title IX, black females have not benefited to the same degree as their white female counterparts. While gender complaints about female athletes still lagging behind males in participatory opportunities, scholarships, facilities and equipment are being discussed, larger structural inequities associated with being black and female […]
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The Social Construction of Ability in Movement Assessment Tools
This paper focuses on how ‘ability’ is conceptualised, configured and produced in movement assessment tools. The aim of the study was to critically analyse assessment tools used for healthy and typically developed children. The sample consists of 10 tools from 6 different countries. In the study, we pay special attention to content and evaluation methods. […]
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The Social Construction of the Sociology of Sport: A Professional Project
This paper presents a historical sociological analysis of the sociology of sport. It draws on theoretical insights from the sociology of professions to examine ‘state-of-the-field’ reviews written by sociologists of sport. The paper argues that in establishing why the sociology of sport emerged, how people identified its earliest manifestations, and how the sub discipline’s boundaries […]
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The Social Model of Disability: Thirty Years On
This year marks exactly 30 years since I published a book introducing the social model of disability onto an unsuspecting world and yet, despite the impact this model has had, all we now seem to do is talk about it. While all this chatter did not matter too much when the economy was booming, now […]
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The Sociology of Emotion in Elite Sport: Examining the Role of Normalization and Technologies
Recent research has examined the role of negative emotion norms and elite athletes’ decisions to continue to train in sport when they are not physically healthy enough to do so. According to Lee Sinden ((2010) The normalization of emotion and the disregard of health problems in elite amateur sport. Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology 4: […]
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The Sociology of Sports Work Emotions and Mental Health: Scoping the Field and Future Directions
The central object of this introductory essay, and of this Special Issue more broadly, is to explore relations between the study of work and the continuing evolution of the sociology of sport with a particular focus on the mental health of sports workers. In particular, we argue that revitalizing the study of sports work, and […]
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The Sociology of the Body
Although classical sociology was not always oblivious or indifferent to the embodied dimensions of social relations, contemporary sociology has developed new perspectives and frameworks for understanding the body as a social and cultural construct and fundamental element in material and symbolic processes of power and conviviality. What do contemporary sociological approaches contribute to our understanding […]
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The Sustainability of the Youth Olympic Games: Stakeholder Networks and Institutional Perspectives
This paper explored the Youth Olympic Games’ (YOG) potential sustainability (survival and success) through an analysis of how actors exert various forms of pressure on the YOG. Given the impact of the Olympic Games and of youth on society, it becomes important to study the newest member of the Olympic Family. Combining stakeholder, network and […]
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The Team Effect on Doping in Professional Male Road Cycling (2005–2016)
This article questions organizations’ (clubs, teams, etc) responsibility in doping use from the case of anti-doping rules violations (ADRVs) sanctioned by the Union Cycliste Internationale in professional cycling. We built a database with 271 caught riders among 10 551 professional riders employed from 2005 to 2016 in the three first world divisions. We developed a […]
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The Terrier [Men]
‘Terrier work’ is an historical and deeply significant rural practice in the United Kingdom, in which small or medium size terriers are employed to track, capture and kill foxes in the larger context of an organized foxhunt. Between 2007-2009, I spent time following a small group of ‘terrier men’ and their dogs around the East […]
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The Training Camp: American Football and/as Spectacle of Exception
In this article, we use the theories of Giorgio Agamben to conceptualize the contemporary American football training camp as a material and metaphorical “camp”—a “space of exception” or a zone of indistinction where bare life is produced and the exception becomes the rule. Our aim is not to sportingly trivialize the horrors of those camps […]
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The Transformative Potential of Using Participatory Community Sport Initiatives to Promote Social Cohesion in Divided Community Contexts
Sports are popularly believed to have positive integrative functions and are thought, therefore, to be able to galvanise different, and sometimes divided communities through a shared sporting interest. UK government and policy rhetoric over the last two decades has consistently emphasised the positive role sport can play in building more cohesive, empowered and active communities. […]
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The Promise of Violence: Televised, Professional Football Games and Domestic Violence
This study asks, “Does a highly identified sports fan feel a strong bond while watching his favorite football players and then exhibit violent, copycat behavior?” Using the media, copycat framework, this research looked at five categories of domestic violence arrests in the city of Philadelphia on Eagles’ “game days,” for an 8-hr period, beginning with […]
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The Provision of Social Support for Elite Indigenous Athletes in Australian Football
This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study into the perceptions of social support held by elite Indigenous athletes playing in the Australian Football League. Indigenous athletes within the AFL appear to require more culturally relevant and specialized support structures than non-Indigenous athletes. The study illustrates that teammates of a similar cultural background are […]
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The Public Identities of the Black Middle Classes: Managing Race in Public Spaces
Drawing on data from a two-year ESRC-funded project into The Educational Strategies of the Black Middle Classes,¹ this article examines how middle class blacks negotiate survival in a society marked by race and class discrimination. It considers respondents’ school experiences, marked as they are by incidents of Othering and racism and explores both the processes […]
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The Quest for Victory: Collective Memory and National Identification Among the Arab-Palestinian Citizens of Israel
The interdependence of collective memory and national identification has become a widespread scholarly axiom. While the related literature recognizes the role of memories of victimization and heroic victories, this article illustrates the importance of a ‘semiotic balance’ between these two for the maintenance of national identification. The study is based on an individual-centered quantitative method, […]
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The Rape Prone Culture of Academic Contexts: Fraternities and Athletics
About two decades ago, feminist sociologists stopped focusing on rape and sexual assault even though rapes and their destructive toll on girls and women did not end. Rape did not diminish appreciably and neither did the legal justice system dramatically improve its treatment of victims. Perhaps this is why 80 percent of women college students […]
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The Ray Rice Domestic Violence Case: Constructing Black Masculinity Through Newspaper Reports
This case study used concepts associated with Black masculinity to critically analyze newspaper depictions of the Ray Rice Domestic Violence Case (RRDVC). The pattern matching and content analysis revealed the following themes: color blindness, binary depictions, and commodification. This article used the RRDVC to establish a persistent pattern of public discourse that situates Black male […]
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The Reality of Fantasy Sports: A Metaphysical and Ethical Analysis
Fantasy sports have become a major sector of our sport industry. With millions of participants worldwide and billions of dollars generated, fantasy sports have become a fixed part of our sport spectatorship. However, this prevalence has come without much intellectual investigation. Therefore, in this paper I discuss the metaphysics and ethics of fantasy sports. After […]
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The Regulation of Television Sports Broadcasting: A Comparative Analysis
Based on seven different sports broadcasting markets (Australia, Brazil, Italy, India, South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States), this article provides a comparative analysis of the regulation of television sports broadcasting. The article examines how contrasting perspectives on television and sport – economic and sociocultural – have been reflected in two main approaches to […]
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The Rich, the Affluent and the Top Incomes
The article reviews the literature on the rich, the affluent and the top income earners focusing on the determinants of affluence or richness. The review surveys empirical results about the composition of the income and wealth of the rich and its direct determinants, such as individual characteristics, the state and the structure of production. The […]
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The Role of Fiction in (Mis)Representing Later Life Leisure Activities
The study of ageing is becoming increasingly prominent in academic research, the media and policy debates with the rapid growth of the world’s ageing population. In particular is the perception that older people should engage in active leisure pursuits to address the actual and perceived effects of the ageing process. However, there remains limited understanding […]
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The Role of Law in Promoting Women in Elite aAhletics: An Examination of Four Nations
Globally, the participation of women and girls in sport has increased tremendously. Much of this growth has been attributed to relatively recent changes in national and international law, yet few empirical studies exist that test this assertion. In this study, the role of law, specifically gender-based sports doctrine, is examined across four nations: the USA, […]
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The Role of Pastor Support in a Faith-based Health Promotion Intervention
Pastor support has been viewed as an integral part of successful faith-based health promotion programs; however, few studies have systematically studied these relationships. This study examined associations between pastor support and program-related variables among African American churches taking part in a physical activity and dietary intervention. Results showed that some pastor support-related variables were associated […]
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The Role of Religious Leaders in Promoting Healthy Habits in Religious Institutions
The growing obesity epidemic in the West, in general, and the USA, in particular, is resulting in deteriorating health, premature and avoidable onset of disease, and excessive health care costs. The religious community is not immune to these societal conditions. Changing health behavior in the community requires both input from individuals who possess knowledge and […]
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The Role of Trusted Adults in Young People’s Social and Economic Lives
In moving toward adulthood, young people make formative choices about their social and economic engagement while developmentally seeking autonomy from parents. Who else then contributes to guiding young people during this formative life-stage? This article explores one contributing relationship: relationships with trusted adults. Past research has shown that these adults provide motivational, emotional, and instrumental […]
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The Role of Uncertainty of Outcome and Scoring in the Determination of Fan Satisfaction in the NFL
Fan satisfaction with individual sports games is likely to be an important indicator of future sales of tickets, television and radio advertising, and team merchandise sales. For the 2009-2010 National Football League (NFL) season, NFL.com, the official website of the NFL, had fans enter a ‘‘fan rating’’ for each game of the season. This rating […]
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The Rules of Engagement: Negotiating Painful and “Intimate” Touch in Mixed-sex Martial Arts
Within the sociology of sport and its related disciplines, martial arts have become increasingly popular sites for research on embodiment, gender and society. While much previous work in this area has focused upon the embodied experiences of either male or female practitioners, relatively few studies have directly addressed the social significance of mixed-sex practice. In […]
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The Neoliberalization of Football: Rethinking Neoliberalism Through the Commercialization of the Beautiful Game
This ethnographic study explores how football (soccer) fandoms respond to neoliberal reforms, adding to a growing debate on the nature of neoliberalism by scholars such as geographer David Harvey, sociologist Nikolas Rose, and anthropologist Anna Tsing. In order to critique spatially and temporally coherent characterizations of neoliberalism, brief case analysis of fan reactions to the […]
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The Normal Body–Anthropology of Bodily Otherness
The Normal Body – Anthropology of Bodily Otherness Human biology and medical science focus on the normality of the human body. This focus deserves, however, to be questioned. Cultural studies, in contrast, focus on normalities in plural – normalities of diverse cultures, revealed by comparison and under the historical perspective of change. The normality and […]
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The Olympic Movement, Action Sports and the Search for Generation Y
During an International Olympic Committee (IOC) meeting in 2006, IOC president Jacques Rogge asked the International Cycling Union (ICU) to assist with the entry of skateboarding into the Olympics. Accepting Rogge’s request, an ICU spokesman proclaimed: ‘From our side we are committed to help the development of skateboarding’ (quoted in Higgins 2007: para. 6). Newspaper […]
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The Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro 2007: Consequences of a Sport Mega-event on a BRIC Country
Sport mega-events were very important for Brazil in 2007. The 15th Pan American Games took place in Rio de Janeiro. It was the largest international tournament held in Brazil since the 1950 World Cup and the 1963 Pan American Games. The latter were held in São Paulo. In 2007, 5000 athletes and 60,000 tourists were […]
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The Paradoxical Character of Live Television Sport in the Twenty-First Century
The interacting social forces that have shaped the development of the electronic media constitute complex and contrary developments. Television technology, unlike that of the cinema, took a long time to grow from a technological possibility in the1930s to maturation in the 1970s. Mega-events such as the Olympic Games and the World Cup have both a […]
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The Paralympic Games as a Force for Peaceful Coexistence
The International Olympic Committee advocates that one of the three ultimate goals of Olympism is to build a peaceful and better world through sport. The International Paralympic Committee, on the other hand, is slightly less grandiose when stating its key aim of enabling Paralympic athletes to achieve sporting excellence and to inspire and excite the […]
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The Passion of the Tebow: Sports Media and the Heroic Language in the Tragic Frame
As one of the most widely covered athletes of recent years, Tim Tebow is both beloved and resented. In this essay, I critique sports media coverage of Tebow to demonstrate how tragic framing constitutes this opposition. By emphasizing his character both as a football leader and a Christian missionary, sports media frame Tebow in transcendental […]
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The Political and Civic Implications of Chicago’s Unsuccessful Bid to Host the 2016 Olympic Games
Between 2006 and 2009, Chicago’s political and civic leadership developed a bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) ultimately selected Rio de Janeiro to host the 2016 Games, with Chicago finishing fourth among the finalist cities in the October, 2009, IOC voting. This article is based on 20 key informant […]
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The Politics and Policy of Inclusion and Technology in Paralympic Sport: Beyond Pistorius
This article re-examines some of the complex policy issues and politics associated with two key features of the contemporary Paralympic sport movement: the inclusion in mainstream sports competitions of disabled athletes and the sports in which they complete, and the use by disabled athletes of various technologies to assist their performance. It is argued that, […]
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The Politics of Countermeasures Against Match-Fixing in Sport: A Political Sociology Approach to Policy Instruments
As match-fixing has emerged as a global problem, states and sports organisations have proposed a range of countermeasures. However, despite their neutral, technocratic appearance, these instruments produce their own political effects. Drawing from a case study of the 2011 South Korean ‘K-League’ football match-fixing scandal that resulted in a raft of countermeasures, this article examines […]
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The Politics of Pleasure: An Ethnographic Examination Exploring the Dominance of the Multi-activity Sport-Based Physical Education Model
Kirk warns that physical education (PE) exists in a precarious situation as the dominance of the multi-activity sport-techniques model, and its associated problems, threatens the long-term educational survival of PE. Yet he also notes that although the model is problematic it is highly resistant to change. In this paper, we draw on the results of […]
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The Politics of Sport-for-Development: Limited Focus Program and Broad Gauge Problems?
This article explores the almost evangelical policy rhetoric of the sports-for-development ‘movement’ and the wide diversity of programmes and organizations included under this vague and weakly theorized banner. It is suggested that, although the rhetoric of sport as a human right has provided some rhetorical and symbolic legitimation for sport-for-development initiatives, the recent dramatic increase […]
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The Potential Benefits and Risks of Identifying as a Tomboy: A Social Identity Perspective
Although many girls may call themselves tomboys, little is known about the consequences of these self-perceptions. Seventy-six 5- to 13-year-old girls were interviewed and asked to identify their tomboy status (35 traditional girls, 20 tomboys, and 21 “in-betweens”). Tomboyism was associated with potentially negative gender identification (i.e., feeling less like a typical girl and less […]
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The Potential of Sports-based Social Interventions for Vulnerable Youth: Implications for Sport Coaches and Youth Workers
Sports have long been viewed as an opportunity to actively engage young people in a leisure context and not just in terms of participation in sports activities, but across a range of issues including education, employment and training, community leadership and healthy lifestyles. Although there are some indications that when working towards broader outcomes with […]
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The Practice of Capoeira: Diasporic Black Culture in Canada
This article draws on ethnographic research with Canadians who practise the Afro-Brazilian martial art, capoeira, to discuss, renew and perform African heritage, black circulating cultures and Canadian nationalism. I make several incursions into Paul Gilroy’s theory of the Black Atlantic. First I draw attention farther north to Canada to show that diaspora cultures reference an […]
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The Predictive Ability of the Frequency of Perfectionistic Cognitions, Self-oriented Perfectionism, and Socially Prescribed Perfectionism in Relation to Symptoms of Burnout in Youth Rugby Players
Perfectionism has been identified as an antecedent of athlete burnout. However, to date, researchers examining the relationship between perfectionism and athlete burnout have measured perfectionism at a trait level. The work of Flett and colleagues (Flett, Hewitt, Blankstein, & Gray, 1998 ) suggests that perfectionism can also be assessed in terms of individual differences in […]
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The Presentation of Possible Selves in Everyday Life: The Management of Identity Among Transitioning Professional Athletes
In contrast to research, which privileges the notion of an exclusive athletic identity, we argue that the identity management of professional athletes is influenced by the expectations of audiences and the motivational weight of ‘possible selves’ in explaining career transitions from ‘sports work’. Qualitative vignette interviews were conducted with 10 male participants (ages 18–26 years) […]
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The Invisible Hand of Thierry Henry: How World Cup Qualification Influences Host Country Tourist Arrivals
This article highlights an aspect of mega-events that has been neglected: the changing composition of tourist arrivals during and after the event. The change happens because, in the FIFA World Cup, a quota of countries participate from each continent and this opens up new tourism markets. We show that the 2010 FIFA World Cup in […]
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The Irish Bifocal and American Sport: Exploring Racial Formation in the Irish Diaspora
Departing from previous research that focused only on how ‘the Irish’ became White, this essay will instead explore how the color line was used to define and divide the Irish Diaspora in the United States. The color line will be used as part of a bifocal perspective on the Irish Diaspora, which examines how certain […]
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The Lesbian Label as a Component of Women’s Stigmatization in Sport Organizations: An Exploration of Two Health and Kinesiology Departments
The purpose of this inquiry was to explore the meanings and organizational implications of lesbianism and the lesbian label within the sport organization context. Fourteen faculty members from two health and kinesiology departments were asked how they, their colleagues, and their departments defined, responded to, coped with, and managed the lesbian label. First and foremost, […]
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The Life of High-Level Athletes: The Challenge of High Performance Against the Time Constraint
The conditions for high performance have changed considerably over the last few years. Athletes must spend more time training and competing, devote a lot of time to mental, physical and nutritional professionals and continue to respond to some constraints such as studying, spending time with their families, friends and quality of life. In this context […]
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The London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony and its Polyphonous Aftermath
Global mega-events are widely perceived as a tool used by host countries’ elites to propagate national narratives. But how are the messages actually decoded by international publics? The article takes the case of the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony to reveal the multifaceted character of mediated responses to a global event. This case is particularly […]
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The London 2012 Olympics: A Gender Equality Audit
In this report from the Centre for Sport Policy Studies at the University of Toronto, Peter Donnelly and Michele K. Donnelly have analysed gender equality in sport using the case of the 2012 London Olympics.
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The Male Gaze and Online Sports Punditry: Reactions to the Ines Sainz Controversy on the Sports Blogosphere
On September 11, 2010, Ines Sainz, a sports reporter for Mexican television network TV Azteca, was allegedly harassed by members of the New York Jets football team. Controversy erupted around the role of women in sports broadcasting and the myriad attendant dimensions involved, including issues of credibility, dominant beauty ideals, and the male gaze, among […]
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The Masters Athlete: A Review of Current Exercise and Treatment Recommendations
Context: With the ever-increasing number of masters athletes, it is necessary to understand how to best provide medical support to this expanding population using a multidisciplinary approach. Evidence Acquisition: Relevant articles published between 2000 and 2013 using the search terms masters athlete and aging and exercise were identified using MEDLINE. Study Design: Clinical review. Level […]
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The Mediasport Interpellation: Gender, Fanship, and Consumer Culture
This paper considers how mediated sport’s promotional culture works to hail us in interlinked gender, fan, and consumer identities. The paper draws on findings from a recent series of studies to illustrate how an emergent dirt theory of narrative ethics helps move beyond Althusser’s notion of ideological hailing to understand the dynamics of power and […]
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The Mental Health of Elite Athletes: A Narrative Systematic Review
Background The physical impacts of elite sport participation have been well documented; however, there is comparatively less research on the mental health and psychological wellbeing of elite athletes. Objective This review appraises the evidence base regarding the mental health and wellbeing of elite-level athletes, including the incidence and/or nature of mental ill-health and substance use. […]
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The Militarization of American Professional Sports: How the Sports–War Intertext Influences Athletic Ritual and Sports Media
This article investigates how “war-speak” is incorporated into both sports media coverage and athletic rituals. It posits that while the militarization of American sporting events may help to comfort a nation in crisis and afford the Armed Forces a valuable recruitment tool, it simultaneously encourages a coercive patriotism that is morally problematic for many athletes […]
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The Moral Glocalization of Sport: Local Meanings of Football in Chota Valley, Ecuador
Studies of the glocalization of sport usually focus on ‘aesthetic glocalization’ (how local actors adopt a global sport and create a new hybrid aesthetic). This has led some critics to dismiss glocalization as a superficial ‘façade’ of diversity hiding global homogeneity. This paper challenges this view by looking at the‘moral glocalization’ of sport and at […]
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The Myth of the Model Minority Myth
With continued cost increases as well as demands for charitable donations and economic subsidies, universities are concerned with public relations and political legitimacy. The latter are fostered by the Model Minority Myth which implicitly asserts the moral superiority of universities and their graduates by condemning American society in general and the white working class in […]
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The Naked Female Athlete: The Case of Rebecca Romero
Since the 1990s, the image of the naked female body has become an increasingly important and common cultural motif that has engendered much scholarship. Focusing on the Powerade advertisement, which featured a now celebrated image of the naked Rebecca Romero, astride her racing bicycle, this article seeks to explore the cultural significance of this image […]
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The National Football League: Does Crime Increase on Game Day?
This article investigates the effects of National Football League(NFL) games on crime. Using a panel data set that includes daily crime incidences in eight large cities with NFL teams, we examine how various measurements of criminal activities change on game day compared with non game days. Our findings from both ordinary least squares and negative […]
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The Natural: An Autoethnography of a Masculinized Body in Sport
Stories about individual’s lives in relation to sport, and the body have intrigued me. This is due in part to my significant involvement in sport throughout my life and its central role in shaping my masculine identity. I have been particularly interested in autoethnographies as a means through which such stories are conveyed. It is […]
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The Gaelic Athletic Association, Transnational Identities and Irish-America
This article draws on the concept of transnationalism to examine the role and function of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) among Irish migrant communities in the United States. In particular, it examines the role of the GAA in the production and reproduction of shifting notions of Irish national identification in America. The analysis here are […]
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The Games People Play: Theology, Religion, and Sport
In ‘The Games People Play’, Robert Ellis constructs a theology around the global cultural phenomenon of modern sport, paying particular attention to its British and American manifestations. Using historical narrative and social analysis to enter the debate on sport as religion, Ellis shows that modern sport may be said to have taken on some of […]
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The Gap Between Formalised Children’s Rights and Children’s Real Lives in Sport
The purpose of this paper is to use the theoretical standpoint of sociology of childhood to enhance understanding about how children’s rights, as outlined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, are experienced by child athletes and adult coaches in the context of sport clubs in Sweden. Data were gathered through […]
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The Generalized Exchange of Punishments in Adult Recreational Softball: The Case of ‘Going Middle
Exchange theory has a long tradition of systematic theory development and testing using experimental methodology. Webster and Whitmeyer (2001) argue that the application of a theory can be used to demonstrate its usefulness. The purpose of this paper is to apply well-developed theoretical concepts from exchange theory to explain interactional processes that occur in adult […]
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The Globalization of Time and Space: Soccer and Meaning in Chota Valley, Ecuador
Globalization is commonly defined as time–space compression, a view that relies on an idea of ‘empty’ time and space where these dimensions have been stripped of local meanings by abstraction and standardization. This notion is incompatible with the globalization of culture literature that suggests that these processes do not erase local meanings but rather mix […]
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The Gospel According to Tim Tebow: Sporting Celebrity, Whiteness, and the Cultural Politics of Christian Fundamentalism in America
In this article, we explore the media and cultural politics of former National Football League (NFL) quarterback Tim Tebow. More specifically, we investigate paradoxical and contradictory media representations of Tebow as his celebrity surfaced within, and came to dominate, the Obama-era ‘American’ media landscape. In so doing, we draw lines of articulation from Tebow—as performative […]
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The Growth of TV News, the Demise of the Journalism Profession
In response to the dearth of critical literature on the transformation of local news ownership structure and the impacts of technological reorganization of news production on the television profession and local communities, we analyze the consolidation of local news and the paradox of expanded news hours in times of shrinking staffs and less-trusting audiences. Focused […]
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The Gym and the Beach: Globalization, Situated Bodies, and Australian Fitness
Fitness culture is becoming gradually more globalized, both in terms of body ideals, and in terms of body techniques and philosophies of the body. This article discusses the consequences of the globalization of fitness. In particular, the article analyzes the relationship between processes of globalization and how local cultural ideals, gender, and environmental factors may […]
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The Healthy Body Paradox: Organizational and Interactional Influences on Preadolescent Girls’ Body Image in Los Angeles
In this article, we present paradoxical findings from a formative evaluation research project that explores how preadolescent girls understand and feel about their bodies after participating in “Girls on the Run of Los Angeles County”(GOTR LA), a girl-serving positive youth development program. Findings from pre/post test data (n=138) show that girls’ body image improved after […]
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The Hoolifan: Positive Fan Attitudes to Football ‘Hooliganism’
Popular accounts of ‘football hooliganism’ have identified the phenomenon as being harmful and damaging for both the sport of football and the interests of spectators who attend matches. As a result, it has been generally assumed that ‘non-hooligan’ supporters disapprove of their hooligan counterparts and their activities. However, this one-sided account does not recognize the […]
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The Hooligan as ‘Internal’ Other? Football Fans, Ultras Culture and Nesting Intra-orientalisms
Football fans, specifically fan associations (navijačke udruge), are sometimes depicted as stereotypical of Balkan ‘mentality’, drawing on associations with violence, organised crime and examples of ‘primitive’ behaviour and attitudes at football matches. In this paper, I argue that the drawing of such associations may explored in terms of a nesting intra-orientalism, whereby non-European ‘others’ are […]
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The Hunting Industry: Exploring the Marriage of Consumerism, Sport Hunting, and Commercial Entertainment
This article makes a case for the inclusion of sport hunting in studies of consumer culture. This argument is advanced through an analysis of “the hunting industry” in North America. The hunting industry comprises a vast commercial network, exemplified by specialty retailers and advertiser-supported media involved in the marketing of hunting-related merchandise. The analysis contrasts […]
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The Impact of a Sport-based Service Learning Course on Participants’ Attitudes, Intentions and Actions Toward Social Change
Framed in the context of a sport-based service learning program that engages in interdepartmental university partnerships (including athletics), the current study focused on addressing the need to analyze the long-term impacts of service learning on students’ intentions and actions toward social change. Service learning courses have been shown to facilitate positive outcomes such as increased […]
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The Impact of a Sports Initiative for Young Men in Prison: Staff and Participant Perspectives
This study presents the prisoner and prison staff ideographic experiences of an English initiative which aimed to use sport as a way of engaging young men in identifying and meeting their reentry (or “resettlement”) needs in the transition from prison custody to the community. Young men aged between 18 to 21 years old (N = […]
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The Impact of an “Equal Opportunities” Ideological Framework on Coaches’ Knowledge and Practice
This study focuses upon UK professional coaches’ experiences of equity training and the impact of the conceptualisation of equity as a matter of equal opportunities on this education and subsequent coaching practice. The research employs a critical feminist approach to connect the ideological framing of gender equity by sporting organisations to coaches’ ability to understand, […]
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The Impact of Sports Participation on Violence and Victimization Among Rural Minority Adolescent Girls
The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of sports participation and race/ethnicity on violence and victimization among a sample of white, African American, and Hispanic rural-area high school girls. It was hypothesized that girls who participated in sports would report lower rates of violent behavior and fewer incidents of victimization. Using logistic […]
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The Impact of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games: Diminishing Contrasts, Increasing Varieties
The London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics were seen as a success and the hosts were praised for the promotion of equality, tolerance and unity as well as inspiring a legacy to continue these values. This volume contains a collection of sociological case studies which critically assess the diverse impacts of London 2012 and its key […]
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The Inclusive Masculinities of Heterosexual Men within UK Gay Sport Clubs
This article focuses on the little known phenomenon of heterosexual men’s participation in gay1 sport clubs. It explores the relationship between straight men joining gay teams in a context of changing masculinities. Through 12 interviews with a diverse range of self-identified straight men living in the UK, the research demonstrates how traditional definitions of masculinity […]
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The Indian Premier League, the Spectacle, and the Illusion of a Nation
The Indian Premier League (IPL) cricketing tournament is a misnomer, issuing images in the name of Indianness while ultimately veiling the country’s mass cricketing public. Submitting to a modern-day obsession with spectacle, the IPL stages a highly visual representation of India and its cultural character. Yet, its tactics ultimately work to undermine any valuable cultural […]
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The Intersection of Race, Religion and Homophobiain British Football
In this semi-structured interview research, I use inclusive masculinity theory to frame attitudes toward homosexuality in 17 young Christian footballers from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. I show that, despite the recent decrease of cultural homophobia, almost half of these men maintained conservative attitudes toward homosexuality. Others, however, were more tolerant, particularly when discussing legislation […]
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The Effect of Marquee Players on Sports Demand: The Case of U.S. Major League Soccer
In 2007, Major League Soccer (MLS) changed its salary rules to allow teams to pay over the salary cap to sign high-priced talent. The first Designated Player was David Beckham. This study presents estimates of the influence of marquee players on MLS attendance using data from 2007 to 2012. The results indicate that few of […]
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The Effects of Revenue Changes on NCAA Athletic Departments’ Expenditures
This study uses a panel of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I athletic department revenue and expenditure data from 225 public colleges and universities to empirically investigate the behavior of athletic departments over the period 2006-2011. Three empirical relationships were explored: (a) how changes in total revenue affect disaggregated expenditure categories, (b) how disaggregated […]
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The Effects of Sport Participation on Gender Relations: Case Studies of Female Footballers in Johannesburg and Cape Town South Africa
South Africa has progressive political policies concerning women with a high percentage of women in political positions, while simultaneously having some of the worst indicators of gender relations internationally, including high rates of rape and domestic violence. This article examines how participation in football can challenge hegemonic masculinity in South African society and sport through […]
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The Effects of Sports Media Exposure on College Students’ Rape Myth Beliefs and Intentions to Intervene in a Sexual Assault
An online survey was fielded to freshmen living in residence halls at a northwestern university in the United States. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the structure of relationships among exposure to mainstream sports media, rape myth acceptance, and intentions to intervene in sexual assault situations while controlling for gender traits. Given that prior […]
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The Effects of the Bosman Ruling on National and Club Teams in Europe
The Bosman ruling and its aftermath allowed soccer players to move more freely between clubs in Europe. This study examines the performance of national and club teams in Europe before and after Bosman. Some national teams improved after the ruling while others became weaker, but the overall effects are small. At the club level, there […]
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The Elite Sport and Christianity Debate: Shifting Focus from Normative Values to the Conscious Disregard for Health
Scholars and theologians continue to debate whether or not God’s intended purpose of elite sport violates the creational normativity for elite sport. However, while it is important to be aware of the contradictions between elite sport and Christianity, there is a need for more deep-seated discussions about emotions and health problems in elite sport and […]
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The Emergence of Neoliberalism: Thinking Through and Beyond Michel Foucault’s Lectures on Biopolitics
This paper uses Michel Foucault’s lectures on biopolitics as a starting point for thinking historically about neoliberalism. Foucault’s lectures offer a rich and detailed account of the emergence of neoliberalism, but this account is far from complete. This paper addresses some of the blind-spots in Foucault’s lectures by focusing on the space between the decline […]
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The Eternal Present of Sport: Rethinking Sport and Religion
In his persuasive study The Eternal Present of Sport, Daniel Grano rethinks the sport-religion relationship by positioning sport as a source of theological trouble. Focusing on bodies, time, movement, and memory, he demonstrates how negative theology can be practically and theoretically useful as a critique of elite televised sport. Grano asserts that it is precisely […]
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The Ethics of Doping and Anti-Doping: Redeeming the Soul of Sport?
Verner Møller’s The Ethics of Doping and Anti-Doping: Redeeming the Soul of Sport? is part of Routledge’s ‘Ethics and Sport’ series. Other well-known books in this collection include Mike McNamee’s and Jim Parry’s Ethics and Sport and Sigmund Loland’s Fair Play in Sport. Like the other works in the series, Møller aims to improve active […]
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The Ethics of Sports Coaching
Is the role of the sports coach simply to improve sporting performance? What are the key ethical issues in sports coaching practice? Despite the increasing sophistication of our understanding of the player-sport-coach relationship, the dominant perspective of the sports coach is still an instrumental one, focused almost exclusively on performance, achievement and competitive success. In […]
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The Ethics of the Collegiate Locker Room
Locker rooms are a fixture in the athletic culture of colleges and universities. Given the important roles those spaces play in the learning, growth, and development of student-athletes, collegiate leaders should consider how to influence locker room environments in positive ways.
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The Experience of Defeat: Applying Goffman to Examine a Football Tournament for Socially Excluded Homeless Individuals
The use of football programs as a vehicle for social change has increased exponentially in recent decades. This article utilizes Goffman’s sociology as a framework to approach the Homeless World Cup (HWC). Firstly, we examine how the participants interviewed refer to their journeys and how, throughout the HWC’s preparation, they were able to positively reconfigure […]
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The Female Significant in All-Women’s Amateur Roller Derby
I analyze women’s flat-track amateur roller derby by asking: how do derby skaters negotiate the requirements associated with emphasized femininity? By drawing on Hebdige’s (1979) analysis of punk, I develop the term female significant to argue that roller derby is an aggressive contact sport with a theatrical edge. It provides a rich, adventurous space to […]
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The Feminization of Aging: How Will This Impact on Health Outcomes and Services?
We conducted an integrative review to identify issues and challenges that face aging women and to distinguish areas for future research. We found that many older women continue to face inequalities related to health and often are invisible within the discourse of aging policy. In this article we argue for a greater focus on the […]
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The Figuration of a Liquid Modern and Globalized Team Since the Acquisition by TV Azteca: The Case of Club Morelia
This article analyzes the transition from a solid modern soccer-scape into a liquid modern soccer-scape in professional soccer in Morelia, Mexico. The acquisition of the club by TV Azteca is considered the milestone that separates both soccer-scapes. The figurational sociology of Elias and the liquid modern analysis of Bauman serve as the foundations of this […]
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The Financial and Competitive Value of NCAA Basketball Recruits
In this article, we examine the value of high school basketball prospects, and results indicate that each five-star (four-star) recruit generates US$625,000 (US$178,000) in marginal revenue for his university. Additionally, university academic donations are strongly related to basketball performance and five-star recruits bring in an additional US$5,800,000 in funding on average as a result of […]
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The First Neoliberal Science: Management and Neoliberalism
There has been much recent scholarship on the nature of neoliberalism. What follows develops these connections by examining early neoliberal and management thought. The article explores the foundations of neoliberal and management theory to argue they share fundamental features – namely active intervention, prioritising competition and the necessity of elite leadership. The purpose of all […]
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The Football Fan and the Pub: An Enduring Relationship
This paper draws on qualitative interviews with a sample of English football fans to explore their relationship with one enduring site for fandom practice, the pub. In doing so, the work discusses the significance of structuration processes as a means of explaining the transcendent nature of this relationship across time and space. The findings complement […]
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The Football Supporter in a Cosmopolitan Epoch
Arguably, the later process of globalization served to reshape how socializations are fostered and maintained across time and space. In addition, in the last 15 years, a new phenomenon that reinvigorated time and space compression has emerged: social media. Moreover, it is argued that the conjunction of those processes can be seen as taking place […]
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