Twitter’s Diffusion in Sports Journalism: Role Models, Laggards and Followers of the Social Media Innovation
The roles of sports journalists have been affected considerably by the influence of Twitter, but what is not known is how the social media application has been adopted across a range of sports newsrooms in different countries. Employing Rogers’ diffusion…
Twelve Not so Angry Men: Inclusive Masculinities in Australian Contact Sports
Sport’s utility in the development of a conservative orthodox ideal of masculinity based upon homophobia, aggression and emotional restrictiveness is well evidenced in critical masculinities scholarship. However, contemporary research is reflecting a more nuanced understanding of male behaviour in many…
Truth Untold? Evidence, Knowledge, and Research practice(s)
What is philosophy if not a way of reflecting, not so much on what is true and what is false, as on our relationship to truth? (Foucault 1997, p. 327) I produce data. You produce data. She produces data. They…
Trust in Interspecies Sport
This paper explores how young girls develop trust in their equine partners for the purposes of competitive equestrian sport. I argue that interspecies trust manifests through interactional trust and system trust. Interactional trust, as reflected in the horse-human relationship, is…
Triathlon Magazine Canada and the (Re-)Construction of Female Sporting Bodies
This paper provides a critical look at the ways in which the female sporting body is discursively constructed within Triathlon Magazine Canada (TMC), Canada’s only triathlon-exclusive magazine. By exploring both visual and narrative representations of the athletic female sporting body,…
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…
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…
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…
Transgender Netballers: Ethical Issues and Lived Realities
Transgender people are increasingly tolerated, and sometimes even actively celebrated, within contemporary Western popular culture. However, despite the broader political movement against gender-based discrimination, transgender people’s participation in élite sport remains contentious. Although American transgender professional tennis player Renee Richards…
Transgender Inclusion and the Changing Face of Lesbian Softball Leagues
This article examines the re-negotiation of sex-based boundaries within the context of transgender/transsexual inclusion in North American lesbian softball leagues. Semi-structured interviews with transgender participants combined with participant observation have been undertaken. We focus on the ‘climate’ (Hall and Sandler,…
Transforming Communities Through Sport? Critical Pedagogy and Sport for Development
The value of sport as a vehicle for social development and progressive social change has been much debated, yet what tends to get missed in this debate is the way education may foster, enable or impede the transformative action that…
Transformative Sporting Visions
In this introduction to this special issue on Transformative Visions of Sport I draw attention to the tension critical sport studies scholars are likely to experience between the attention they draw to the role of sport in perpetuating and normalizing…
Transformative Research and Epistemological Hierarchies: Ruminating on How the Sociology of the Sport Field Could Make More of a Difference
Amidst recent clarion calls for ‘transformative action’ within the sociology of sport, in this paper we consider the prospects of the field with respect to challenging social injustices and inequalities. We reflect on how the sociology of sport has developed…
Transformational Leadership and Well-being in Sports: The Mediating Role of Need Satisfaction
The present study examined the direct and indirect effect of coaches’ transformational leadership on athlete well-being. Participants were 184 floorball players who completed questionnaires about perceived transformational leadership from their coach, need satisfaction, and sport-related well-being. The analysis revealed positive…
Training History, Deliberate Practice and Elite Sports Performance: An Analysis in Response to Tucker and Collins Review—What Makes Champions?
With the recent advances in genome-wide mapping studies and the emerging findings on the relation between athletes’ training histories and their performance, this should be a time for integrating these two bodies of knowledge for a more complete understanding of…
Tracing Tears and Triple Axels: Media Representations of Japan’s Women Figure Skaters
Anticipating the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, this article uses the triple axel jump, one of the most challenging moves in women’s figure skating, as a heuristic device to track representations of Japanese skaters Ito Midori and Asada Mao in the New…
Towards the Transhuman Athlete: Therapy, Non-therapy and Enhancement
This essay examines the future of sport by considering how medical and ethical distinctions between therapy, non-therapy and enhancement affect the likely use of human enhancements. It considers whether one can easily distinguish among these categories and investigates the legitimacy…
Towards Level Playing Fields? A Time Tend Analysis of Young People’s Participation in Club-organised Sports
Over the last 40 years, Sport for All policies – aiming at encouraging the sports participation of all citizens, regardless of age, sex, social class, ethnic origin, etc. – were implemented in a number of European countries. This study examines…
Toward the Post-Westernization of Baseball? The National-Regional-Global Nexus of Korean Major League Baseball Fans During the 2006 World Baseball Classic
This study investigates the multiplicity of South Korean Major League Baseball fans, with a focus on the tensions that they experience under the nationalistic aura surrounding MLB fandom while pursuing their individual hobby. For this purpose, it employs the idea…
Toward New Conversations Between Sociology and Psychology
We each came to this special issue from quite different backgrounds, yet we are equally convinced of the need to open up new conversations about the potential and politics of working at the intersection between sport sociology and Sport Psychology.…
Toward a Physical Cultural Studies
Within this paper we offer what is hopefully both a suggestive (as opposed to definitive) and generative (as opposed to suppressive) signposting of the ontological, epistemological, and methodological boundaries framing the putative intellectual project that is Physical Cultural Studies (PCS).…
Tour du Dopage: Confessions of Doping Professional Cyclists in a Modern Work Environment
Despite widespread condemnation of drug use in sport, recent flurries of riders’ confessions have emphasized the normalization and omnipresence of doping within cycling. This has particularly occurred since the Festina affair in 1998, and Lance Armstrong’s confession about drug use…
Tough Girls in a Rough Game: Televising the Unruly Female Athletes of Contemporary Roller Derby
This article examines the production and promotion of A&E’s Rollergirls (2006), a US docu-soap featuring the Texas Roller Derby Lonestar Rollergirls (TXRD), the league that revived roller derby as a sport for female amateurs. Focusing on the representation of TXRD…
Tottenham After the Riots: The Chimera of Community and the Property-Led Regeneration of ‘Broken Britain’
David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ agenda is best understood in terms of ideological and policy continuities with earlier Conservative and New Labour governments. But where previous post-1979 governments have sought to renegotiate the role of the state mostly through privatisations and…
Topsport Talent Schools in the Netherlands: A Retrospective Analysis of the Effect on Performance in Sport and Education
In order to help talented athletes to attain the highest possible level in both their sport and education, Topsport Talent Schools (TTS) were founded in the Netherlands in 1991. This research aims to investigate the effect of attending a TTS…
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)…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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)…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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 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.…
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 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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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)…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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 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,…