Transnational Youth Mobility in the Neoliberal Economy of Experience
An increasing number of young people are making long-stay travels while postponing their transition to adulthood and seeking ‘global experience’. Among various forms of long-stay travel, the working holiday has been popular among young people looking for opportunities to work during travel. In order to empirically explore how global experience is negotiated by young travellers, […]
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Traumatic Brain Injury: Endocrine Consequences in Children and Adults
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a common cause of death and disability in young adults with consequences ranging from physical disabilities to long-term cognitive, behavioral, psychological and social defects. Recent data suggest that pituitary hormone deficiency is not infrequent among TBI survivors; the prevalence of reported hypopituitarism following TBI varies widely among published studies. The […]
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Trends in NCAA Athletic Spending: Arms Race or Rising Tide?
We develop and empirically test a model of intercollegiate athletic department expenditure decisions. The model extends general dynamic models of nonprice competition and includes the idea that nonprofit athletic departments may simply set expenditure equal to revenues. Own and rival prestige are included in the athletic departments’ utility functions, generating rivalrous interaction. The model predicts […]
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The Trouble with Tebowing
Sociologists Grace Yukich, Kimberly Stokes, and Daniela Bellows explore cultural norms around religious displays in sports, and in public life more generally, by examining media coverage of controversial football player Tim Tebow.
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The Two Different Worlds of Black and White Fraternity Men: Visibility and Accountability as Mechanisms of Privilege
There has been limited empirical research on how individuals “do privilege.” As a result, our understandings are incomplete about how high-status groups continue reaping the benefits of privilege. Using data from fifty-two men in three white and four black fraternities at a predominately white institution, this paper demonstrates that visibility and accountability function as mechanisms […]
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The Tyranny of the Male Preserve
Within this paper I draw on short vignettes and quotes taken from a two-year ethnographic study of boxing to think through the continuing academic merit of the notion of the male preserve. This is an important task due to evidence of shifts in social patterns of gender that have developed since the idea was first […]
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The Ubiquitous Baseball Cap
The baseball cap completes the T-shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers as the common kit of late modern life, the recent decades when consumption, as acquisition, display, and deployment, has become preeminent in asserting self-identity and negotiating social placement. This essay traces the codification and commercialization of the baseball cap within that sport and its adoption […]
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The Under-Representation and Experiences of Elite Level Minority Coaches in Professional Football in England, France and the Netherlands
This article will examine the previously under-researched area of the under-representation and experiences of elite level minority (male) coaches in (men’s) professional football in Western Europe. More specifically, the article will draw on original interview data with 40 elite level minority coaches in England, France and the Netherlands and identify a series of key constraining […]
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The Urban Geography of Boxing: Race, Class, and Gender in the Ring
This book is an interdisciplinary cultural examination of twenty-first century boxing as a professional sport, a bodily labor, a lucrative business, a popular entertainment, and an instrument of ideology. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted with Latino boxers, women boxers, and boxing insiders in Texas, it discusses boxing from the vantage point of the […]
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The Value of Female Sporting Role Models
Historical and sociocultural associations between sport and masculinity still determine the predominance of male ‘sporting role models’ (SRMs) in many parts of the world. The lack of female SRMs is one common theme among Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) publications. This article features potential benefits of available and relevant female SRMs in general and […]
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The Visibility of Female Athletes: A Comparison of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games Coverage in French, British, and Spanish Newspapers
The media coverage of sport events in relation to athletes’ sex has been extensively analyzed in the scientific literature. Apart from sports mega-events such as the Olympic Games, the findings of these studies seem consistent in that female participants are systematically underrepresented in sports media coverage. However, much of the research in this area relates […]
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The World Report on Disability
The World Report on Disability, a joint endeavor of the World Health Organization and the World Bank, launched in June 2011, is an astonishing achievement that will set the standard for disability studies research for evidence-informed policy for years to come. The product of collaborative and participatory work between organizations of persons with disabilities, academics […]
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The Writing’s on the Firewall: Assessing the Promise of Open Access Journal Publishing for a Public Sociology of Sport
The process of digitization has transformed the ways in which content is reproduced and circulated online, rupturing long held distinctions between production and consumption in the (virtual) public sphere. In accordance with these developments over the past fifteen years, proponents for open access publishing in higher education have argued that the (not yet absolute) transition […]
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Thinking the Unthinkable: Imagining an “Un-American,” Girl-friendly, Women- and Trans-Inclusive Alternative for Baseball
The purpose of this article is twofold: to capture the injustice inherent in the gendered bifurcation of baseball and softball via the prism of critical feminist sport studies; and to begin to imagine a girl-friendly/women-and trans-inclusive future for baseball that is less fertile for cooptation into post-911 United States security state discourses. In this article […]
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Time Trends in Concussion Symptom Presentation and Assessment Methods in High School Athletes
Background: Concussion rates have increased significantly over the past decade. This may reflect an increase in the knowledge and diagnosis of the symptoms of a concussion rather than a true increase in the incidence. Assessing trends in the way that concussions are presenting to and being identified by clinicians over the same period may provide […]
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Time Trends in Incidence and Severity of Injury Among Collegiate Soccer Players in the United States: NCAA Injury Surveillance System, 1990-1996 and 2004-2009
Background: A number of sociocultural and environmental changes have occurred over the past several decades that may affect the risk of injury among young athletes playing soccer. Purpose: To identify trends in injury incidence and severity between 2 time periods (1990-1996 and 2004-2009) in both male and female National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) soccer players […]
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Time Use and Physical Activity: A Shift Away From Movement Across the Globe
Summary Technology linked with reduced physical activity (PA) in occupational work, home/domestic work, and travel and increased sedentary activities, especially television viewing, dominates the globe. Using detailed historical data on time allocation, occupational distributions, energy expenditures data by activity, and time‐varying measures of metabolic equivalents of task (MET) for activities when available, we measure historical […]
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Timing and Imaging Evidence in Sport Objectivity, Intervention, and the Limits of Technology
This article analyzes timing and imaging systems used as sports decision aids (SDAs). Evidence of athletic performance in the form of timing and imaging data is the product of distinct interactions between humans, technology, and the live environment. As such, sports decisions are fallible. Yet the measurement of athletic performance is often presented as irrefutable […]
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Title IX Literacy: What Coaches Don’t Know and Need to Find Out
Celebrated by many and lamented by a vocal few, Title IX holds the distinction of being one of the few pieces of legislation passed by the United States Congress that has emerged as an iconic symbol unto itself. Despite broad familiarity with the term, it remains much less clear how many Americans have more than […]
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To Try and Gain an Advantage for My Team: Homophobic and Homosexually Themed Chanting among English Football Fans
Association football (soccer) fans are becoming increasingly liberal in their attitudes towards homosexuality. However, the continued presence of homosexually themed chanting – normally interpreted as evidence of homophobia by footballing authorities – has received little academic attention. Through 30 semi-structured interviews with 30 male football fans of various English football clubs, this article uses McCormack’s […]
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Too Good to be a Sport? Why Dog Agility Struggles in Gaining Recognition as a Sport
Over the last two decades, the Finnish community of dog agility practitioners has worked diligently towards gaining recognition for agility as a sport. The process reached an important milestone in 2016 when the National Sports Council listed the Finnish Agility Association as eligible for financial support from the state. As one of the pioneer countries […]
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Top 10 Reasons Why Children Find Physical Activity to Be Fun
If one were to survey 100 elementary physical education teachers and coaches for the top three reasons they think children stay active and interested in physical activity, chances are that “fun” would make the majority (if not all!) of their lists. Results from research conducted with youth (as well as from teachers’ practical knowledge) has […]
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Top 10 Reasons Why Children Find Physical Activity to be Unfun
“That was so fun!” is a phrase that physical education teachers and coaches will likely never get tired of hearing from children. Without fun, youth are unlikely to voluntarily engage in physical activity. While the notion of fun (i.e., enjoyment) in physical activity has been increasingly studied over the past few decades, there has been […]
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The Sociology of Sports Coaching
To be forthcoming of my biases and perspective, please allow me to begin by situating myself for the context of this review. I worked as a strength and conditioning coach at the University of Tennessee while completing my master’s (2003) and doctoral degrees (2009). Early in graduate school I was introduced to longstanding and commonly […]
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The Secularization of Sunday: Real or Perceived Competition for Churches, Review of Religious Research
In a survey of pastors and members of 16 declining congregations in the US and Canada, respondents most commonly identified competing Sunday activities as the primary reason for the decline in Sunday worship attendance. The repeal of “blue laws” that kept stores closed on Sundays has resulted in many more people working or shopping on […]
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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 Significance of Family Culture for Sports Participation
Contrary to commonplace assumptions regarding ‘determinants’ of sports participation, Birchwood et al. (2008) found strong evidence that family cultures were the chief factor underpinning individuals’ propensities to play sport. The central objective of this study was to investigate family sporting cultures in more detail. To do this, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight ‘sporty’ children […]
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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 and the Disappearing Body: Towards a Sociology of Impairment
What is the case for and how would one begin to construct a sociology of impairment? This paper argues that the realignment of the disability/impairment distinction is vital for the identity politics of the disability movement. The body is at the heart of contemporary political and theoretical debate, yet the social model of disability makes […]
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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 Socialization of Young Cyclists and the Culture of Doping
The objective of this article is to understand how the specific interactions between actors involved in the production of performance influence the socialization process by which cyclists learn their job. In particular, we try to understand how these interactions determine the reported attitudes towards doping products and methods. We focused on the interactions within the […]
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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 State of Play: Critical Sociological Insights into Recent ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ Research
The maturation of the field of ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (SDP) is reflected in the growing number of research publications on the topic. This article focuses on a recent review of English-language research publications on SDP from 2000–2014 conducted by Schulenkorf et al. (2016. Sport for development: an integrated literature review. Journal of Sport […]
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The Surveillance of Racing Cyclists in Training: A Bourdieusian Perspective
Research into the complexities of social identity construction and maintenance within racing cycling cultures has been neglected in sport sociology and studies of cycling group interactions are lacking. In this paper, preliminary findings from an on-going ethnographic research study on understanding the social world of a group (n= 73) of male racing cyclists aged between […]
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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 Relation of Coaching Context and Coach Education to Coaching Efficacy and Perceived Leadership Behaviors in Youth Sport
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The purposes of this study were to examine how coaching context and level of coaching education were related to coaching efficacy and, subsequently, how coaching efficacy was related to perceived leadership behaviors in youth sports. One hundred and seventy-two youth sport coaches completed […]
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The Relationship Between Ethical and Abusive Coaching Behaviors and Student-Athlete Well-Being
Drawing on social-cognitive theory, this research examined the impact of college coaches’ ethical and abusive behavior on their athletes’ college choice satisfaction, perceptions of the team’s inclusion climate, and team members’ willingness to cheat. We examined the relative impact of these coaching behaviors controlling for team gender as well as the contextual influences of the […]
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The Relationship Between Physical Literacy Scores and Adherence to Canadian Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines
Background Physical literacy is an emerging construct in children’s health promotion, and may impact their lifelong physical activity habits. However, recent data reveal that only a small portion of Canadian children are regularly physically active and/or meet sedentary behaviour guidelines. To our knowledge, no study has investigated the association between physical literacy and movement behaviour […]
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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 Road to the Top: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Mobility in an Elite Labor Market
We examine how career paths, job performance, affiliation ties, and race combine to affect who secures top jobs in an elite labor market. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we show that examining these traits in conjunction, rather than in isolation, reveals novel insights into how one reaches the top of an occupation. Specifically, we document how […]
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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 Organisational Stressors Encountered by Athletes with a Disability
Organisational stressors have been found to be prevalent and problematic for sport performers, with research identifying demographic differences in the stressors encountered. Nevertheless, extant Sport Psychology research on the topic of stress has generally focused on able-bodied athletes; whilst that which has been conducted on performers with a disability has typically recruited relatively small samples […]
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The Pain and Pleasure of Roller Derby: Thinking Through Affect and Subjectification
Writing about pain in roller derby challenges us to rethink old dichotomies that separate mind and body, ‘real’ and virtual, feminine and masculine. The ‘tough’ roller derby ‘girl’, willing and able to endure pain for the pleasure of the game, has become a powerful figure in contemporary western popular culture. Our analysis of roller derby […]
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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 Identity and Methodology in African Development
Since the reflexive turn in sociology and social anthropology, ‘identity negotiation’ and the ‘insider/outsider’ dilemma have been central topics of ethnographic literature. Much of the writings have exposed how the sociocultural biography and the identity of Western researchers interact, contradict and collaborate with the constructed ‘self’ of the participants of research. However, African development researchers […]
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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 Intersections of Dance and Sport
Is sport art? Is dance a sport? Such questions are asked on the pages of social media as well as on the pages of research journals. Debating whether dancers are athletes or sport has aesthetic qualities can reveal broader issues regarding the current health conscious, competitive, and commercialized (neoliberal) culture: What do dance and sport […]
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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 Long-Term Athlete Development Model: Physiological Evidence and Application
Within the UK, the “Long Term Athlete Development” (LTAD) model has been proposed by a variety of national governing bodies to offer a first step to considering the approach to talent development. The model, which is primarily a physiological perspective, presents an advancement of understanding of developing athletic potential alongside biological growth. It focuses on […]
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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 Marathon Journey of My Body-self and Performing Identity
In this autoethnography, I provide voice to the wounded storyteller (Frank, 1995) in my journey to address issues of embodiment, ‘the body’, and illness in relation to my performing identity, with a particular focus on how I was able to overcame a spinal injury, partial paralysis, and lower back surgeries to cross the finish line […]
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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 Mediating Effects of Family on Sport in International Development Contexts
The role of family in influencing sports behaviour is widely recognized. This article extends this body of knowledge by examining how the family influences young people’s responses to sport programmes operating in international development contexts. Recognizing the central role of the family as a social institution, the article highlights the cultural significance and specificity of […]
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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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