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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The Frequency of Doping in Elite Sport: Results of a Replication Study
The difficulty of measuring the prevalence of doping in elite sport is a recurring topic in the scientific literature on doping. The Randomized Response Technique is a method for asking such embarrassing or even threatening questions while allowing the respondents to answer honestly. It was used to measure the prevalence of doping among German squad […]
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The Conceptualization of Fitness Doping and Its Limitations
This paper examines the conceptualization of fitness doping and its limits. Much attention of the media and social sciences researchers has been focused on doping in an elite sport context. What is less developed is a sociological understanding of fitness doping. Over the past decade, anti-doping in fitness settings has been on the political agenda […]
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The Connection Between Race and Called Strikes and Balls
We investigate potential racial bias by Major League Baseball umpires. We do so in the context of the subjective decision as to whether a pitch is called a strike or a ball, using data from the 1989-2010 seasons. We find limited, and sometimes contradictory, evidence that umpires unduly favor or unjustly discriminate against players based […]
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The Construction of Play: Rules, Restrictions, and the Repressive Hypothesis
Rules are often cited as one of the defining features of games; however, few precise definitions of rules exist and those that do are often self-contradictory and/or reductive. This article seeks to reconceptualize rules for both traditional and digital games, not as a series of restrictions to which the player must submit but rather as […]
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The Contemporary Muscular Christian Instrument: A Scale Developed for Contemporary Sport
Social scientists have conducted quantitative research investigations since at least the early 1980s. However, to date no valid, reliable and objective survey instrument has been developed for sport sociologists to measure important religious ideals in contemporary sport. Historical and theoretical scholarship identifies muscular Christianity as primary to modern sport ideals. Therefore we developed and validated […]
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The Contested Terrain of Alcohol Sponsorship of Sport in New Zealand
This study examines the politics and policy implications of alcohol sponsorship of sport in New Zealand. Specifically, it draws on the recommendations of the 2010 New Zealand Law Commission report titled Alcohol in our lives: Curbing the harm, which called for the gradual elimination of all alcohol sponsorship from New Zealand sport. Using a multi-method […]
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The Corner and the Crew: The Influence of Geography and Social Networks on Gang Violence
Nearly a century of empirical research examines how neighborhood properties influence a host of phenomena such as crime, poverty, health, civic engagement, immigration, and economic inequality. Theoretically bundled within these neighborhood effects are institutions’ and actors’ social networks that are the foundation of other neighborhood-level processes such as social control, mobilization, and cultural assimilation. Yet, […]
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The Corporal Dimension of Sports-based Interventions: Understanding the Role of Embedded Expectations and Embodied Knowledge in Sport Policy Implementation
The aim of this paper is to show how the corporal character of activities commonly provided in sports-based policy interventions has implications for the results of policy implementation. By employing the theoretical concepts of embedded expectations and embodied knowledge, this paper examines how expectations embedded in such activities interact with experiences embodied by the participants […]
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The Critical Sociology of Race and Sport: The Firrst Fifty Years
This review surveys the sociological work on race and sport over the past 50 years. It begins by outlining the importance of C.L.R. James’s book Beyond a Boundary as a foundational text for the critical sociology of race and sport. Two paradigms of research on race and sport are sketched: the critical and the functionalist-evolutionary. […]
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The Cultural Politics of Lifestyle Sports
Serving as an appropriate follow-up to her groundbreaking and oft-cited collection, Understanding Lifestyle Sports: Consumption, Identity, and Difference (2004), Belinda Wheaton’s new book invites readers to explore the political potential of under-theorized and differentially marginalized (sub)cultures within contemporary lifestyle sporting spaces. In so doing, she attempts to unearth some of the multilayered complexities with respect […]
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The Culture of Sport, Bodies of Desire, and the Body of Christ
The culture of sport plays a persuasive role in the shaping of cultural conceptions of identity, the body, and what constitutes being human. The author gives a cultural exegesis of sport to highlight its authoritative influence on societal ideation about the body, and how society views, values, and valorizes ability as a dominant attribute of […]
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The Dark Side of Social Capital: An Ethnography of Sport Governance
This article extends the discussion on the ‘dark side’ of social capital in sport which has recently been increasingly conceptualized in civil society studies. We define the dark side of social capital as situations in which trust, social ties and shared beliefs and norms that may be beneficial to some persons are detrimental to other […]
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The Deadly Challenges of Raising African American Boys: Navigating the Controlling Image of the “Thug”
Through 60 in-depth interviews with African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers, this article examines how the controlling image of the “thug” influences the concerns these mothers have for their sons and how they parent their sons in light of those concerns. Participants were principally concerned with preventing their sons from being perceived as criminals, protecting […]
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The Death of a Female Boxer: Media, Sport, Nationalism, and Gender
This article examines the “gendered nationalism” and “gendered media sporting nation” theses in relation to female involvement in sport based mainly on a content analysis of media narratives surrounding the death of a young female boxer in Trinidad in 2009. The nature of this reaction disproves a dominant view that female athletes or sports have […]
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The Decline of Nationalism Among Football Fans
Throughout the history of the nation-state, political leaders have used sport as a means of promoting individual and national agendas. Over the last few years, their hold over sport appears to have weakened. In an era of commercialization, individualism, and globalization, many sport fans have access to matches from all over the world at all […]
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The Demand for Younger and Older Workers: Patterns From NFL Labor Markets
This study examines how worker productivity and risk factors affect the demand for younger and older workers modeled using concepts from labor economics. The two primary National Football League player labor markets—the draft process and veteran free agent market—provide rich empirical environments for testing hypotheses from the model. Clubs demonstrate greater demand for rookies by […]
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The Deprofessionalization of Football: The People’s Football Movement in Italy
The movement in Italy known as calcio popolare, or people’s football, is characterized by the organization of fan owned and managed football teams in local divisions. Growing out of the Italian ultrà phenomenon, calcio popolare marks a fifth phase in the history of the ultrà movement, expressing the alienation from heavily commercialized mass-market professional football […]
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The Design of Lower Limb Sports Prostheses: Fair Inclusion in Disability Sport
Within lower limb disability running, the design of the prosthesis has shifted from being a tool for restoring function to one of enabling athletes to perform to near non‐disabled standards. This paper examines the background to this development. The authors argue that the impact of technology on the design of prostheses is likely to affect […]
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The Discursive Construction of ‘Good Parenting’ and Digital Media – the Case of Children’s Virtual World Games
This article investigates ways discourses which are present on the virtual world gaming websites and in popular press produce constructions of ‘good parents’ and ‘good websites’ for children, and in the process create distinctions which position other parental practices and online media as undesirable. The article includes a discussion of historical constructs of parenting in […]
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The Dynamics of Gender Hegemony: Femininities, Masculinities and Social Change
In this article theories of gender hegemony are utilized to assess how changing norms impact upon the binary construction of gender. Transformed gender ideals have materialized in the figure of the ‘empowered’ and autonomous yet reassuringly feminine woman. Despite the assimilation of key attributes associated with masculinity this particular expression of idealized femininity does not […]
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The Effect of Coach Education on Reporting of Concussions Among High School Athletes After Passage of a Concussion Law
Background: Increasing attention has been paid to concussions and especially sports-related concussions in youth. To prevent an inappropriate return to play while symptomatic, nearly all states have now passed legislation on youth sports-related concussions. Purpose: To determine (1) the incidence of sports-related concussions in high school athletes using a unique system to collect reports on […]
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The American Dream, Then and Now
America has always taken pride in being the land of opportunity, a country in which hard work and sacrifice result in a better life for one’s children. Economic growth made that dream a reality for generations of Americans, including many people who started out poor. Between 1947 and 1977, a period in which the gross […]
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The Athlete and the Spectator Inside the Man: A Cross-cultural Investigation of the Evolutionary Origins of Athletic Behavior
Athletic contests constitute an important aspect of human affairs. However, the evolutionary origins of athletic behavior, that is, behavior which is associated with participating in and watching athletic contests, are rather obscure, as they do not seem to contribute directly to increasing survival or reproductive success. This article argues that athletic behavior has been shaped […]
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The Athletic Labour of Femininity: Branding and Consumption of Global Celebrity Sportswomen on Instagram
This article explores the relationship between consumer culture, female athletic representation and online fan engagement on the photograph-based social media platform Instagram. It argues that social media interaction between female athletes and fans is governed by gender norms and arrangements that expect and reward female athletic articulations of empowerment, entrepreneurialism and individualisation in the context […]
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The Attitude of the Holy See Toward Sport During the Interwar Period (1919-1939)
During the interwar period (1919-39), nations used sport and athletes for propaganda purposes, especially those countries with fascist and National Socialist ideologies. Through insights gleaned from the archives of the Vatican Secretariat of State and the Archivio Segreto Vaticano, the author discusses how the Holy See, at every level, regarded this phenomenon.
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The Attitudes and Opinions of High School Sports Participants: An Exploratory Empirical Examination
Sport scholars and public commentators have long held both positive and critical opinions about the influence of athletic involvement on participants and their perceptions of the social world. Yet for all of the strong claims and deeply held assumptions, relatively little empirical data or social scientific analysis have been available. This study begins to address […]
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The Beautiful and the Damned: The Work of New Media Production in Professional Rock Climbing
This article examines new media production in professional climbing through the prism of the work relationships between climbers and companies. The development of new media has driven significant transformations in the production, diffusion, and consumption of professional sports, notably in the relationships between athletes, companies, fans, and organizations. However, little is known on the influence […]
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The Bidding Paradox: Why Politicians Favor Hosting Mega Sports Events Despite the Bleak Economic Prospects
Politicians generally favor hosting mega sports events despite the discouraging evidence of financial benefits or direct economic gain. This paradox is surveyed from two different perspectives. First, we weighed the merits of the most prominent methods of economic analysis of mega sports events. Then, we discuss the ways in which politicians still manage to infer […]
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The Black–White Swimming Disparity in America: A Deadly Legacy of Swimming Pool Discrimination
This article offers a historically informed answer to the question why are Black Americans less likely to know how to swim than Whites. It contends that past discrimination in the provision of and access to swimming pools is largely responsible for this contemporary disparity. There were two times when swimming surged in popularity—at public swimming […]
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The Blade Runner: The Discourses Surrounding Oscar Pistorius in the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics
In 2012, South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius became the first double amputee to compete in both the Olympic and the Paralympic Games. Using the theoretical notions of framing and hegemony, this study used a thematic analysis to analyze the discourse surrounding Pistorius’s competitions. Using the National Broadcasting Company’s (NBC) broadcasts of the Olympics and Paralympics, […]
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The Bodily Engagement of Snow Park Freestylers: A Study in Three French Winter Sports Resorts
Snow parks constitute an essential part of the drawing power of winter sports resorts. However, epidemiological studies have highlighted the increased risk of snow park accidents when compared with those of traditional piste runs. In the light of such findings, the aim has been to understand why and how freestyle enthusiasts deal with the particular […]
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The Brazilian System of Racial Classification
Michael Banton’s text belongs to the long tradition of European social sciences which rejects the conceptual use of the term ‘race’ in sociological analysis. His work is also linked to the school — this time a minority — that uses individualist and logico-analytic methodologies, largely shunning historical, structuralist or holistic analysis. The real novelty of […]
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The British Asian Muslim Male Sport Participation Puzzle: An Exploration of Implications for Sport Development Policy and Practice
The purpose of this study is to explore intersections between religion, faith and social identity with regards to their impact on either promoting or preventing sport participation amongst self-identified British Asian Muslim males living in Birmingham (West Midlands of the UK) aged 16-25 years old. The research questions around this topic of study are to […]
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The Cardinal Virtues and Kinesiology
What is a good kinesiologist? Is it possible that the ancient and medieval tradition of the Cardinal Virtues sheds light on this question? The four Cardinal Virtues of prudence, justice, courage, and temperance are so called from the Latin cardo meaning “hinge.” The Cardinal Virtues are said to be the hinge upon which all the […]
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The Career Trajectory of a Black Male High School Basketball Player: A Social Reproduction Perspective
Interscholastic sport in the United States is a social institution within which the social relationships and attitudes needed to sustain the existing dominant economic and class relations of the larger society could be perpetuated or reproduced. This single case study allowed us to explore the question of social reproduction by examining the nuances of how […]
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The Case for Sunday Mails: Sabbath Laws and the Separation of Church and State in Jacksonian America
as a campaign that mobilized thousands of supporters, anti-Sabbatarianism reveals the attitudes of a significant minority toward church-state relations in the first decades of the republic. […]using a series of petitions from Philadelphia as a sample, I offer for the first time an analysis of the social origin of the signers of these petitions.
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The Catholic Mission, Sport and Renewal of Elites: St Michel de Tananarive Jesuit College (1906-1975)
The emblem of Jesuit ambition was St. Michel College, built in the heart of the capital in ‘fortress’ style proclaiming the educational plan for training the country’s elites. Our intention here is to show how, within the specific framework of this Catholic establishment, the disciplinary, associative and identitary functions of gymnastics and sports played their […]
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The Civic Engagement Gap(s): Youth Participation and Inequality from 1976 to 2009
Civic participation in the United States is highly unequal, resulting in a “civic engagement gap” between socioeconomic, racial, and gender groups. Variation in civic participation and the civic engagement gap remain contested, primarily as a result of inconsistent definitions and measurement issues in previous work. Using consistent measures from the Monitoring the Future Study from […]
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The Colour Tine and The Colour Scale in the Twentieth Century
Some more recent evidence supports Du Bois’ prediction that the twentieth century would prove the century of the colour line. It indicates that men have always and everywhere shown a preference for fair complexioned women as sexual partners, whereas males seeking a mate are rarely disadvantaged by a dark complexion. In the employment market in […]
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The Comparability of Quantitative Surveys on Sport Participation in France (1967–2010)
Results from quantitative surveys enable historians, sociologists and demographers to describe and analyse the evolution of sport participation in France from 1967 to 2010. However, most of these social scientists use the results of these surveys to create very different methodologies without having studied the surveys’ empirical data or databases. In this article, we demonstrate […]
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Taking South African Sport Seriously
Twenty years on, the image of Nelson Mandela, wearing the number six jersey of the white Springbok captain, Francois Pienaar, remains a poignant moment in South African and global sport. The 1995 Rugby World Cup victory by the overwhelmingly all-white Springboks remains a powerful symbol in post-apartheid South Africa. Clint Eastwood’s (2009) Hollywood film, Invictus, […]
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Taking the Fun Out of It: The Spoiling Effects of Researching Something You Love
This reflexive analysis of two sports ethnographers’ studies of an aerobics class and a swimming pool explores the effects of doing fieldwork on a physical activity that one loves. While using our bodies as phenomenological sites of perception initially created an epistemological advantage, researching the familiarly beloved not only ‘took the fun out of’ the […]
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Talent Recruitment and Firm Performance: The Business of Major League Sports
Firms rely heavily on their investments in human capital to achieve profits. This research takes advantage of detailed information on worker performance and confidential information on firm revenue and operating costs to investigate the relationship between talent migration and firm profitability in major league sports, one of the few industries in which detailed information about […]
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Tales from the Mat: Narrating Men and Meaning Making in the Mixed Martial Arts Gym
Based upon five years of observant participation, I examine how participants justify their engagement with the controversial but increasing popular practice of mixed martial arts. Several themes emerge: necessity (“it is a violent world”), sociobiological discourse, emulating the exotic, spiritual teachings, alienation from consumer society, and the body as a project. These themes suggest that […]
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Talking About Trayvon in 140 Characters: Exploring NFL Players’ Tweets About the George Zimmerman Verdict
This research explored how National Football League (NFL) playersused Twitter to discuss the verdict in the George Zimmerman murder trial in the immediate aftermath of its announcement. A textual analysis, using constant comparative procedures of 465 tweets from 125 NFL players, was conducted. Results revealed that players discussed the case in the following ways: (a) […]
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Talking Doping: A Frame Analysis of Communication About Doping Among Talented Young Norwegian Road Cyclists
In everyday communication, participants can critically explore their understanding of morally complex phenomena. There has been little effort within the social sciences to provide insight into whether and how athletes communicate among themselves about morally contested topics. This study attempts to fill this gap in the literature. Through focus group interviews and with the help […]
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Teaching Across the Lines of Fault in Psychology and Sociology: Health, Obesity and Physical Activity in the Canadian Context
While interdisciplinary knowledge is critical to moving beyond categorical ways of knowing, this comes with its own set of pedagogical challenges. We contend that acknowledging existing knowledge hierarchies and epistemological differences, recognizing the ideological baggage that students’ bring to the classroom in terms of their understandings of health, embracing intellectual uncertainty, and encouraging learning-as-witnessing, are […]
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Teammate Influence on Collegiate Swimmers’ Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction: A Qualitative Perspective
To enhance student-athletes’ psychological welfare and motivation it is essential to foster positive relationships and interactions with those in their surroundings, especially when considering that others’ actions toward them can have a significant impact on their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Vallerand & Losier, 1999). Deci and Ryan’s (2000) self-determination theory offers an ideal lens to […]
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Teamwork: A Systematic Review of Implications From Psychosocial Constructs for Research and Practice in the Performance of Ultimate Frisbee Games
Ultimate Frisbee (UF) is a non-contact, challenging, and self-promoted team sport. Some factors such as the game environment and rules seem to influence athletes’ behavior. Goals: Provide a robust systematic review (SR) of the psychological domains associated with UF
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Television Sport in the Age of Screens and Content
The death of television has been long predicated in the digital age, yet it remains a powerful mediator of live sports. This article focuses on football and examines the implications for the sport of the move to an age of screens and content. These may be large screens in public places or in our homes […]
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The ‘Uptake’ of a Sport-for-Development Program in South Africa
This article reports on the ‘uptake’ dynamics and resultant manifestations of a school-based, incentive-driven, sport-for-development programme in the South African context of poverty. The ecological systems theory of Brofenbrenner, the theory of complexity and a neoliberal framework underpin the social constructions of local meanings associated with programme participation and involvement. Thirty-nine primary schools in the […]
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The “Caddie Question”: Why the Golf Caddies of Bangalore Reject Formal Employment
The mainly poor and lower-caste caddies who carry the golf sets of wealthy members at exclusive golf clubs in Bangalore, India, are not employees. Still, they must hand over personal identification to the clubs, sign an attendance register, wear uniforms, attend training sessions, and submit to managerial oversight. Despite laboring under conditions that mimic regularized […]
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The “Logic” of Specialization: Using Children for Adult Purposes
Decisions and policies in both the public and private spheres were based on the ideological assumptions that (1) the sole foundation of social order was personal responsibility, (2) the most effective source of economic growth was unregulated self-interest, and (3) the basis of personal motivation was competition and observable inequalities of income and wealth (Bourdieu, […]
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The (Im)Possible Sexual Difference: Representations From a Rugby Union Setting
To date Luce Irigaray’s sexual difference theory has had very little impact on sport feminism studies. While sexual difference is still considered in some feminist circles as a regression to the old idea of anatomy as destiny, Irigaray’s sexual difference theory is more about criticizing the universal male subject and creating the possibility of female […]
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The (In)Validity of Supercrip Representation of Paralympian Athletes
This article provides a critical overview of the viability of the “supercrip” iconography as an appropriate representation of Paralympic athletes. It focuses on its validity as a vehicle for the empowerment of individuals with impairments both within the context of elite sport and broader society. This type of representation may be seen by the able […]
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The Absence of Resistance Training? Exploring the Politics of Health in High Performance Youth Triathlon
While research and scholarship on the dynamic interconnections between sport and health has steadily grown in the sociocultural study of sport in the past few decades, this paper focuses more directly on the politics of health within sport. Drawing on a small study of the lived experiences and understandings of health, pain/injury, risk and precaution […]
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The Academic Reform of Intercollegiate Athletics: The Good the Problematic and the Truly Worrisome
The purpose of this paper is to provide a response to Harrison’s (2012) work. The author highlights the positives associated with many of the academic reform efforts Harrison highlights (i.e., the good); addresses concerns about academic clustering, rewarding teams performing at high academic levels, and athletic administrators’ resistance to upset the status quo (i.e., the […]
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The Active Ageing Agenda, Old Folk Devils and a New Moral Panic
The proposal that older people should engage in “active aging” has come to dominate local, national, and international policy agendas. This encompasses a variety of ways that older persons might maintain active citizenship, but invariably promotes physical activity and exercise as having health and social benefits, despite a lack of conclusive evidence to support such […]
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The Adaptation Challenges and Strategies of Adolescent Aboriginal Athletes Competing Off Reserve
Within the motivation literature, it has been indicated that athletes respond more effectively to sport’s contextual challenges through effective adaptation skills. Fiske identified five core motives as facilitators of the adaptation process across cultures: belonging, understanding, controlling, self-enhancement, and trusting. Through a cultural Sport Psychology approach, the adaptation challenges and strategies of Canadian Aboriginal adolescent […]
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