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Hoops, History, and Crossing Over: Boundary Making and Community Building in Japanese American Youth Basketball Leagues.
My dissertation research examines how cultural organizations, particularly ethnic sports leagues, shape racial/ethnic and gender identity and community building among later-generation Japanese Americans. I focus my study on community-organized youth basketball leagues – a cultural outlet that spans several generations and continues to have a lasting influence within the Japanese American community. Using data from […]
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Hosting the Olympic Games: An Overstated Advantage in Sports History
Previous research on the home advantage in the history of the Olympic Games has found initial evidence that host nations have won more medals than non-hosts. In this paper, we argue that these findings are a myth of sports history, providing poor estimates of the home advantage in the Olympics. We argue that selection bias […]
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How Documentary Remade Mike Tyson.
This article will theorize the relationship between stardom and documentary by considering the ways in which documentary representations contribute to the discursive formation of a star. Specifically, the article will explore the central role that documentary film has played in remaking Mike Tyson’s public image by analyzing the boxer’s representation across three distinct films: Fallen […]
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How to Influence National Pride? The Olympic Medal Indexas a Unifying Narrative
Elite sport is often regarded as one of the main vehicles for articulating national pride and stimulating national cohesion. In this article, we explore a variety of different notions of pride and nationality as related to success in elite sport. We present the results of a public survey, which measured some of the effects on […]
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I Guess It’s Kind of Elitist: The Formation and Mobilisation of Cultural Social and Physical Capital in Youth Sport Volunteering
Policy and research portray sport volunteering as a means by which young people can develop skills and perform active citizenship. This paper draws on qualitative research with participants in a UK sport volunteering programme to critically examine young people’s volunteering journeys and how these are shaped by their formation and mobilisation of capital. The results […]
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I Just Can’t Bear These Procedures, I Just Want to be Out There Working With Children: An Autoethnography on Neoliberalism and Youth Sports Charities in the UK. Sport, Education and Society
This paper uses an autoethnography to recount my experiences with SportHelp, a UK youth sports charity. Using a layered account format, which jumps through time and space, I demonstrate the extent to which neoliberal values have influenced the continuity and change of SportHelp. This paper does not constitute an attack on the charity, its staff, […]
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Gramsci and Games.
The objective of this article is to highlight the relevance ideological debate plays in the study of popular culture texts and in particular in that of video games. Every text is a reflection of the ideological forces (cultural, economic, social, individual, etc.) generating it. Thus, ideology is essentially an omnipresent entity, which knows no boundaries […]
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Grooving in the ludic foodscape: Bridled revelry in collegiate tailgating
Throughout North America, the open air public feasting and drinking that surrounds an athletic event, most commonly football, is labeled “tailgating.” In this article, we explore how consumers infuse their place-creating activity with a well-modulated aura of revelry that energizes tailgating without jeopardizing either its immediate or long-term viability. To an appreciable degree, tailgating is […]
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Habitus and social class: a case study on socialisation into sports and exercise
According to Bourdieu, habitus is an important, and class-specific, foundation for behaviour. However, he hardly explained how the habitus is acquired. Based on Bernstein’s elaboration on the various contexts in which group-specific behavioural principles are acquired, this article demonstrates how young children of two divergent social classes obtain their habitus underlying their sports and exercise […]
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Harry Walks, Fabio Runs: A Case Study on the Current Relationship Between English National Identity, Soccer and the English Press
On 8 February 2012 Fabio Capello resigned from his position as manager of the England men’s national association football (soccer) team. The date this decision became public coincided with the acquittal in court of Harry Redknapp following the Tottenham Hotspur FC manager being accused of tax evasion. As Redknapp was considered the media favourite to […]
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Health and Wellness Programming on Faith-Based Organizations: A description of a nationwide sample
Introduction. Most of the U.S. population is affiliated with faith-based organizations (FBOs) and regularly attends services. Health and wellness activities (HWA) delivered through FBOs have great potential for reach, but the number of FBOs offering health programs and the characteristics of these programs are currently unknown. The purpose of this study was to better understand […]
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Global sport and consumer culture.
This paper introduces the Special Issue of the Journal of Consumer Culture on the theme of ‘Global Sport and Consumer Culture’. We begin by briefly setting out how the interrelations of global sport and consumer culture have intensified through three historical stages: first, a ‘take-off’ phase from the late 19th century to the mid-1940s; second, […]
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Global Subjects or Objects of Globalisation? The promotion of global citizenship in organisations offering sport for development and/or peace programmes
Sport for Development and Peace (sdp) has been adopted as a ‘development tool’ by Western development practitioners and a growing number of development organisations. Sport is frequently referred to as a ‘global language’ and used to promote international awareness and cross-cultural understanding-two key themes in global citizenship literature. In this paper I examine the language […]
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Global, National, and Local Factors in the Management of University Sport: The Hungarian Case.
Because of the international nature of university sport, the appearance of transnational areas, events, results, and actors occurred very early. Therefore, the harmonization of the national and international factors influencing the functioning and development of student sport has been necessary since its rise. The objective of the article is to reveal the interaction between global, […]
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Globalization and Social Justice in Sports Broadcasting: The Case of Al-Jazeera Sport
This article highlights sport broadcasting as an emergent battlefield of “globalization from above and below” based on analysis of the strained relationship between Al-Jazeera Sport (AJS) and sports fans in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over subscription fees to the 2010 and 2014 World Cup games. The article illustrates how sports globalization weakened national […]
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Globalization and sport in Asia: Diverse perspectives and future possibilities.
This paper develops our prior work to examine how glocalization may be applied to examine Asian sport. We begin by discussing the different usages of glocalization in social science, and the role of Asian scholars in developing and applying the term. We set out our sociocultural understanding of glocalization, notably drawing on Robertson’s work and […]
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Globalization, Urbanization and Sporting Spectacle in Pacific Asia: Places, People and Pastness
Within this paper we “hold together” an amalgam of intensive and extensive glocalization and the simultaneous reinscription of the importance of the global growth rationalities to aid understandings of contemporary Pacific Asian sporting spectacles. Through a series of four vignettes, we point to the place of sport within intense transformations within urban conglomerations in Pacific […]
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Globo, the Brazilian Military Dictatorship and the 1970 FIFA Football World Cup: Ambiguous Relations.
TV Globo is the leading television channel in Brazil and is among the biggest television networks in the world. Globo is internationally renowned for its soap operas, but football has also been an important part of its popularity. Domestically, Globo is also known for its ambiguous relationships with the military dictatorships of the 1960s and […]
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Glocalization and Sports in Asia
Asia’s sports-mediascapes are increasingly globalized and regionalized, as are the roles played specifically by global sports in the processes of reconstituting national imaginaries among local populations as they undergo the larger experience of globalization. As such, the thesis of “glocalization” developed by Roland Robertson informs the essays in this special issue that tackle recent trends […]
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Glory Hunters Sugar Daddies and Long-Term Competitive Balance Under UEFA Financial Fair Play
This article analyzes the long-term effects of Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Financial Fair Play on competitive balance using a multi period adaption of a professional team sports model. This study accounts for the empirical fact that a club’s market size is positively affected by historic success. An increasingly successful club can attract more […]
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God, Sport Philosophy, Kinesiology: A MacIntyrean Examination
Sport philosophy is in crisis. This sub discipline of kinesiology garners little to no respect and few tenure track lines in kinesiology departments. Why is this the case? Why isn’t philosophy held in greater esteem? Is it possible that philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s (2009) diagnosis found in “God, Philosophy, Universities” could actually be fruitfully applied to […]
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Gold Fever(?): Sport and National Identity – The Hungarian Case
Owing to the changes in its technological and economic environment, the national contexts that previously defined the world of sport have changed dramatically. The contribution of sport in defining national identity has been discussed by many scholars across a range of national contexts. However, there has not been a critical examination of the role of […]
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Governance of the London 2012 Olympic Games Legacy.
This study addresses the governance of the London 2012 Olympics legacy. It presents legacy not as a retrospective but a prospective concept concerned with shaping the future through interactions between the state, market and society. This entails designing systems of governance to guide and steer collective actions towards a consensus amongst various parties concerned. Four […]
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Generating trust? Sport and community participation
This article explores the claim that generalized trust and community participation are positively associated and reports results from a survey that collected data on individuals’ involvement in sport and non-sport community organizations. Data were collected on levels of involvement in community sport and other non-profit community organizations, selected demographic variables and the standard measure of […]
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Generation 3.0: Popularity of the national German team among Israeli soccer fans
Overshadowed by the events of WWII and Germany’s responsibility for the Jewish Holocaust, German–Israel relations are both sensitive and complicated. The memories of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes continue to pervade many areas of life in Israel, as these memories are regularly manipulated by multiple stakeholders. The present study examines the recently growing popularity of […]
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Getting Free: The Arts and Politics of Basketball Modernity.
I employ Marshall Berman’s and Stephen Kern’s cultural analysis of modernity in late 19th-and early 20th-century Europe and the United States to examine basketball’s invention, rules, and technical and institutional development. This yields two overlapping images of basketball. First, I situate basketball within the broader context of 19th-century modernization, where, as an effect of and […]
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Gibberish in Communicating Written Physical Activity Information: Making Strides at Derailing a Perpetual Problem
The majority of physical activity resources are too difficult to be easily read and understood by most U.S. adults. Attempts to ensure that such resources are written in the most accessible manner possible have been advanced (e.g., 2010 U.S. National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy ). For this study, physical activity educational resources were […]
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Friends as Enemies: A Sociological Analysis of the Relationship Among Touring Professional Golfers
This paper examines the relationship among male touring professional golfers from a figurational sociological standpoint. The paper is based on 20 interviews from players with experience playing at various levels on the European Professional Golfers Association professional tours and a level ‘above’ that. The results indicate a workplace culture where many begin to adopt the […]
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From ‘sport for good’ to ‘sport for sport’s sake’ – not a good move for sports development in England?
This paper reviews the remarkably rapid switch in 2008, still under new Labour, from ‘sport for good’ policies (stressing external benefits to society) to ‘sport for sport’s sake’ (stressing intrinsic benefits to sport). It then catalogues a series of issues which the author feels make it unlikely, indeed almost impossible under the budget cuts planned […]
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From Core to Consumer: The Informal Hierarchy of the Skateboard Scene.
In this article, I explore the characteristics of the informal social hierarchy within the skateboard subculture as well as how the elite members maintain their power and status within the subculture. Drawing from Fox’s detailed mapping of the punk subculture and Thornton’s reworking of Bourdieu’s cultural capital, I investigate how skateboarders distinguish themselves from the […]
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From Loving the Hero to Despising the Villain: Exploring Sports Fans Social Identity Management on Facebook
This research explored how University of Cincinnati football fans used Facebook to manage a social identity threat arising from head football coach Brian Kelly leaving the school to become the head coach at the University of Notre Dame. A thematic analysis of 717 wall postings in the “Get Out of Our City Brian Kelly” Facebook […]
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From Pride to Smugness and the Nationalism Between: Olympic Media Consumption Effects on Nationalism Across the Globe
To measure relationships between Olympic media viewing and nation-based attitudes, 6 nations (Australia, Bulgaria, China, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and the United States) were surveyed in the 5 days immediately after the 2012 London Olympics. A total of 1,025 respondents answered questions pertaining to four measures of nationalism: patriotism, nationalism, internationalism, and smugness. The amount of […]
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From Stoke Mandeville to Stratford: A History of the Summer Paralympic Games
As Aristotle once said, “If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development.” When Dr Ian Brittain started researching the history of the Paralympic Games after beginning his PhD studies in 1999, it quickly became clear that there was no clear or comprehensive source of information about the Paralympic Games or Great Britain’s […]
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From the “Taiwan Yankees” to the New York Yankees: The Glocal Narratives of Baseball.
This study examines both the general narratives of baseball in Taiwan and particularly New York Yankees-related narratives since Taiwanese player Chien-ming Wang joined the team in 2005. By reviewing newspaper coverage and TV ratings data, I argue that a nationalistic perspective was the undertone in the Taiwanese mass media; indeed, the media could define the […]
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Football Fandom Mobilization and Herbert Blumer: A Social Movement Analysis of F.C. United of Manchester
This article explores the establishment and development of fan-owned association football club, F.C. United of Manchester. It does this by drawing upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork, including interviews, observations and an analysis of multiple texts, such as fanzines, web-based and media reports materials and discusses this using Herbert Blumer’s theory of collective behavior. As such, the […]
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Football Fans’ Views of Violence in British Football: Evidence of a Sanitized and Gentrified Culture.
This article draws on the responses of 1,500 fans from across the United Kingdom to an online survey posted from August 2013 to November 2013 regarding their experience of football violence. Reflecting the 2013 Home Office report that indicated a continued long-term decline of football fan violence in England and Wales, 89% of fans illustrate […]
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Football Fascism and Fandom: The UltraS of Italian Football
Football fascism and fandom provides a rare look beneath the surface of Italian neo-fascist hardcore football fandom. The book is the product of ethnographic dissertation research conducted by Alberto Testa on two of these fan groups (called UltraS) in Rome, Italy. Based on academic research, the book seems to have been adapted for a mass-market […]
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Football in Arabic literature in diaspora: Global influences and local manifestations.
This paper explores how Arab writers in diaspora present football in their literary works. Through an examination of Rabih Alameddine’s I, the Divine, Laila Lalami’s Secret Son and Leila Aboulela’s Lyrics Alley, the paper highlights the way in which Arab novelists in diaspora draw on the game’s international popularity to supplement and clarify the themes […]
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Football on television: how has coverage of the Cup Finals in Norway changed from 1961 to 1995?
The aim of this study is two-fold: first, to investigate how the production practices of the TV coverage of the Norwegian Men’s Football Cup Final rely on journalism, drama and entertainment and, second, to analyse how the production practice has changed in the period 1961–1995. I conducted a visual analysis of 12 Cup Finals, transmitted […]
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Football’s Irish exodus: Examining the factors influencing Irish player migration to English professional leagues.
The intention of this paper is to examine the range of interdependent processes that influence the decisions of Irish footballers to migrate from teams based in the League of Ireland to English Premier League and Football League clubs. Using data derived from a series of qualitative interviews conducted with a group of Irish players that […]
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Football’s tsars: proprietorship, corporatism and politics in the 2010 FIFA World Cup
This essay explores the political economy of the 2010 World Cup as it is defined by the major commercial, corporate and political forces that have come to be prevalent in the organization of the FIFA finals. It examines the interchange between international and domestic processes of sport corporatization, commercialization and general trends of sport politics, […]
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For Your Ears Only!’ Donald Sterling and Backstage Racism in Sport
The purpose of this paper is to elucidate how racism manifests ‘behind closed doors’ in the backstage private domain. We do this with reference to recent high-profile controversies in the US and UK. In particular, we use the concepts of frontstage (public) and backstage (private) racism to unpack the extraordinary case in point of the […]
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Foreign players in the English Premier Academy League: ‘Feet-drain’ or ‘feet-exchange’?
The aim of this article is to make sense of the effects of foreign player involvement in English football’s elite youth academy system. Based upon a series of interviews conducted with academy directors, managers, and coaches at Premier League clubs, and senior figures in the Premier League’s Youth Development department, the article argues that the […]
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Forget Me . . . Not: Marion Jones and the Politics of Punishment.
In 2008, Marion Jones was convicted and sentenced to 6 months in a federal prison for lying to federal prosecutors about steroid use and knowledge of a check-cashing scheme. This article explores the Jones scandal and the aftermath in the context of the contemporary cultural politics of Black female bodies and Black womanhood. I examine […]
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Framing the 2007 National Basketball Association finals: An analysis of commentator discourse
Television broadcasters often exhibit bias in the reporting of sport events. Through framed discourse, networks embed multiple storylines to build and maintain audiences over the duration of an event. Research has typically focused on mega-events occurring every four years. This study, through content analysis of American Broadcast Company’s announcer discourse of a smaller annual event, […]
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Fantasy sport and media interactivity
Media interactivity in the field of sport functions as both a lure and a way of transforming a viewer’s relation to a game. Sport websites, along with the more traditional medium of television, have taken on the pedagogical task of acquainting a mass audience with a variety of sports and their rules, skills, histories and […]
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Fastest, highest, youngest? Analysing the athlete’s experience of the Singapore Youth Olympic Games.
The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) are the newest addition to the Olympic Movement and, in light of recent discussions of the education of high-performance athletes, represent a change within the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from a philosophy of ‘winning by all means’ to a philosophy much more informed by education. Therefore, this paper analysis the […]
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Fatness, Fitness, and Feminism in the Built Environment: Bringing Together Physical Cultural Studies and Social Materialisms, to Study the “Obesogenic Environment”
In a climate where the “obesity epidemic” is a consistent focus within discussions of public health, the theory that the environment is one of the main drivers of the “obesity epidemic” is coming to the fore. In this paper, we look to the example of the “obesogenic environment” and the literature tracing the relationship between […]
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Federal government funding and sport: the case of Brazil, 2004–2009
In 2009, Brazil won the right to host the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. International media coverage of the bid process revealed the involvement of the then Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the project application. To further understand the government’s involvement in Brazilian Olympic sport, we undertook an analysis of federal investment […]
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Female anglers in a predominantly male sport: Portrayals in five popular fishing-related magazines.
Kim Bain-Moore galvanized public interest as the first female competitor in the 2009 Bassmaster Classic fishing tournament. To examine the extent to which women were depicted by the fishing media during and after this watershed event, as well as how they were portrayed, we analyzed the content of five for-profit, fishing-related magazines from 2009–2012. Female […]
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Female fan experiences and interpretations of the 1958 Munich air disaster the 1966 World Cup finals and the rise of footballers as sexualised national celebrities
The experiences of female sports fans have largely been neglected in academic research to date with socio-historical accounts focusing almost exclusively on male fans. Through an excavation of the sporting histories of female football fans this article aims to make one contribution towards changing this. Drawing on Glaser and Strauss’s ‘grounded theory’ approach, 21 semi-structured […]
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Financial Risk Management: The Role of a New Stadium in Minimizing the Variation in Franchise Revenues
One of the absolutes in professional sports, and a reason for its success, is the uncertainty of the outcome of individual games, seasons, and championships. This uncertainty impacts a team’s attendance and financial operation. While leagues cultivate uncertainty through various rules such as salary caps, revenue sharing, and the amateur draft, individual franchises have to […]
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Finish Lines, Not Finish Times: Making Meaning of the “Marathon Maniacs.”
This paper examines how marathoners develop multiple and diverse subjectivities within this distance running space. Specifically, we engage in a case study and critically explore the various ways that a small but growing running group called the “Marathon Maniacs” positions itself within the marathon community. Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1984, 1986, 1990) interdependent concepts of field, […]
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Fist, feet and faith: An ‘elite’ interview with ‘Fight Church’ Pastor Jude Roberts
The interest in mixed martial arts (MMA) in the United States has escalated since its advent in 1993. In the last 10 years, there has been a heightened interest in Christian MMA (CMMA). Several evangelical churches across the country have started MMA ministries to attract and retain men and boys. Proponents of CMMA suggest that […]
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Fit for prosumption: interactivity and the second fitness boom
This article advances the claim that a new ‘fitness boom’ has arrived, one marked by the proliferation of devices such as wearable fitness trackers. The first fitness boom of the 1970s/1980s was characterized by the heightened availability of fitness ‘tools’ and the supposition that pursuing a ‘fit’ lifestyle was tantamount to responsible living. The new […]
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Experiences in Sport, Physical Activity, and Physical Education Among Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu Asian Adolescent Girls
Multicultural scholarship in sport and exercise psychology should help us understand and apply cultural competencies for all to be physically active. In the present study, two Asian countries, Japan and Singapore, were chosen. The participation rate for physical activities among adolescent girls tends to be lower than that of boys in both countries. Thus, the […]
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Experiencing Spiritual Aspects Outdoors in the Winter: A Case Study from the Czech Republic Using the Method of Systemic Constellations
The article focuses on spirituality on two semantic levels: the first one analysis participants’ experiences during a winter expeditionary course on snowshoes and considers the question of whether residing in the winter landscape with a community of other people may acquire a spiritual dimension in spite of the non-religious environment. The second level verifies whether […]
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Exploring the cultural intersection of music, sport and physical activity among at-risk youth.
Although sport can serve as a valuable mechanism for social change, this does not imply it can single-handedly solve large-scale problems; rather, sport should be utilized with passionate leadership, efficient and innovative program design, and ancillary cultural enrichment activities to achieve optimal results. This research was motivated by developments in some marginalized and at-risk communities […]
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Exploring the relationship between hope and burnout in competitive sport
Researchers have postulated that hope may be an important factor associated with burnout. Consistent with hope theory contentions, low-hope individuals may be susceptible to burnout because they are prone to experience goal blockage, frustration, and negative affect, all of which likely increase the risk of burnout. We examined the relationship between hope and athlete burnout […]
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Exploring the Truth: A Critical Approach to the Success of Korean Elite Sport
This article examines the structural problems that have accompanied South Korea’s increasing emphasis on success in elite international sport. After discussing how this was brought about by the political context of the 1960s and 1970s, we focus on three particular social issues: the educational problems experienced by student-athletes, the problems these cause in later life, […]
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Exports and Olympic Games: Is There a Signal Effect?
A recent study finds that Olympic Games host countries experience significant positive, lasting effects on exports. They interpret their results as an indication that countries use the hosting of such events to signal openness and competitiveness. The authors challenge these empirical findings on the grounds that a comparison of structurally different and non-matching groups of […]
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Extending the benefits of leveraging cycling events: Evidence from the Tour of Flanders.
Research question: This paper examines event leveraging for public health benefits with the outcome of increasing physical activity participation. While event leveraging provides the foundation for this research, social ecological theory is additionally applied to further examine how leveraging efforts can increase physical activity participation through an understanding of systems and targets.Research methods: An in-depth […]
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Facing an Unequal World.
To face an unequal world requires us to interpret and explain it, to be sure, but also to engage it, that is, to recognize that we are part of it and that we are partly responsible for it. In other words, inequality is not just something external to us, but also invades our own world. […]
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Factors Associated with Health Promotion on Megachurches: Implications for Prevention
Objective: Megachurches (churches with 2,000 + attendance) represent a community institution with extensive reach within the United States population, although little is known about their health and wellness programming (HWP). The purpose of this study was to examine factors associated with HWP in megachurches.Design and Sample Staff at megachurches were recruited to take an online […]
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Factors associated with using research evidence in national sport organisations
The purpose of this study was to explore factors associated with the use of research evidence in Canadian National Sport Organisations (NSOs). Data were collected via individual semi-structured interviews with 21 representatives from Canadian NSOs. A qualitative description approach was used. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and subjected to an inductive-to-deductive thematic analysis. A research implementation […]
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Fan Debates on English National Identity Surrounding the Almunia Case
English national identity has undergone significant challenges post-1945 which means this national construct has reached a point where its very nature is uncertain. The aim of this paper is to discuss debates between football fans regarding the possibility that the Spanish goalkeeper, Manuel Almunia, might have been chosen to represent the English national team due […]
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English National Identity and Football Fan Culture: Who Are Ya?
In recent years, scholars have understood the increasing use of the St George’s Cross by football fans to be evidence of a rise in a specifically ‘English’ identity. This has emerged as part of a wider ‘national’ response to broader political processes such as devolution and European integration which have fragmented identities within the UK. […]
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Equine Athletes and Interspecies Sport
This article draws on a range of sociological literature including studies of sport, subculture, interspecies relationships and animal advocacy to understand the social processes that have contributed to the horse being defined as an athlete in equestrian sports. Using a combination of qualitative interviews and archival analysis, we identify trends in the equine industry that […]
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Estimating the Value of Medal Success in the Olympic Games
We estimate Canadians’ willingness to pay (WTP) for medals won by Team Canada in the 2010 Winter Olympic Games using data from contingent valuation method (CVM) surveys of nationally representative samples conducted before and after the Games. The results permit an assessment of Own the Podium, a government program designed to increase Canada’s medal count. […]
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Estranged Labor, Habitus, and Verstehen in the Rise of Extreme Endurance Sports
Extreme endurance sporting events and participation in these events have grown exponentially since the 1970s. Events such as Iron-distance triathlons, marathons, ultramarathons, ultra distance cycling, and military-style obstacle courses now attract millions of participants in the United States annually. Although many studies have analyzed this late 20th and early 21st century phenomenon from a microsociological […]
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Evaluating Culture: World Music and Fusion Food
The problem of how to adapt criteria of evaluation to stylistic change will always be with us. Our current era of multiculturalism, postmodernism and globalism, however, confounds the problem almost beyond recognition. Multiculturalism, an heir of cultural relativism, asks us to withhold our evaluation, insisting that all cultures and subcultures deserve to be analyzed only […]
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Event Power: How Global Events Manage and Manipulate
Book Review: Chris Rojek, Event power: How global events manage and manipulate
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Everybody’s Team? The National Narrative in the Hebrew Press Covering Israeli National Soccer Team Matches
Sports media offer a unique discourse site because the nationalistic nature of reporting is often radicalized and in most cases ‘the national flag is waved with eternal enthusiasm’. Therefore, this study examined changes in the coverage of the Israeli national soccer team between 1949 and 2006 through an exploration of the identity of the journalistic […]
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Everywear: The Quantified Self and Wearable Fitness Technologies
What does it mean to wear a routine? This article explores a number of implications for the engagement of wearable fitness technology in everyday life. It straddles both a critical hermeneutic that explores the institutional prescription of wearable technology to combat the so-called “obesity epidemic” in American society, as well as a more phenomenological and […]
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Evolution and Revolution: Gauging the Impact of Technological and Technical Innovation on Olympic Performance
A number of studies have pointed to a plateauing of athletic performance, with the suggestion that further improvements will need to be driven by revolutions in technology or technique. In the present study, we examine post-war men’s Olympic performance in jumping events (pole vault, long jump, high jump, triple jump) to determine whether performance has […]
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Ex Ante and Ex Post Expectations of Outcome Uncertainty and Baseball Television Viewership
Sporting event attendance is determined by ex ante expectations about the quality of the game, but because changing television channels costs nothing, sporting event viewership is influenced by actual game progression. This implies that demand determinants for televised baseball may change as games progress. This study examined the dynamic relationship between demand for televised baseball […]
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Examination of Birthplace and Birthdate in World Junior Ice Hockey Players
The present study investigated birthdate (known as the Relative Age Effect; RAE) and birthplace as determinants of expertise in an international sample of elite ice hockey players. The sample included 566 World Junior (WJR) ice hockey players from four countries (Canada, n = 153; USA, n = 136; Sweden, n = 140; Finland, n = […]
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Examining Representation of the Non-local: China in the UK Media in the Run-up to the Beijing Olympics
This article examines how the United Kingdom’s media represents contemporary China. Using the context of the Beijing Olympics, the article examines the UK media’s representation of China through the prisms of ideology, history and geopolitics. Using Content Analysis, the inquiry examines news reports on the Olympics published in the UK’s ‘national newspapers’ (as classified by […]
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Editorial on the Special Focus: Drug Policy in Sport: Critical Perspectives
Ecological modernization refers to the idea that capitalist-driven scientific and technological advancements can not only attend to the world’s pending environmental crises, but even lead to ecological improvement, thus allowing sustainability and consumption to continue in concert. In this paper, we examine ecological modernization at the confluence of environmentalism, international development and global sport. Through […]
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Editorial Preface: Critical Perspectives on Development and Social Change in Africa
In the preface to the special issue on Africa which we published in March 2006 (Harris, 2006), we indicated that in future issues of the journal we hoped to publish more articles on the economic, political, and social challenges faced by the people of Africa, and to publish more contributions from the present generation of […]
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Editorial: IP, Copyright and Cultural Production
This editorial outlines the important role that IP issues are increasingly playing across the media industries. It identifies some of the key sectors discussed in this issue of the journal and why particular media industries face specific IP challenges even in an age of converging media.
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Editorial: Special Issue: Theology, Disability and Sport: Reflections on Physical and Intellectual Impairment and Well-Being
One of the most touching scenes in Jim Sheridan’s Oscar-winning film My Left Foot features a penalty kick in a street game of soccer. The film tells the story of the Dublin artist Christy Brown, who was born with cerebral palsy in 1932. Brown grew up in working-class Dublin, fully accepted and integrated into the […]
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Education for Social Change? A Freirean Critique of Sport for Development and Peace
Background: The previous two decades have witnessed an increasing number of policymakers and practitioners using sport programmes to achieve broader social development aims, particularly in countries in the Global South. A core element of these programmes has been the use of sport as a context to provide young people with social, personal and health education. […]
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Embodiment and Social and Environmental Action in Nature-Based Sport: Spiritual Spaces
This paper explores the interrelationship of space, the elements and the embodied experiences of water-based physical activity. It draws upon alternative forms of research and representation to draw out the embodied nature of the experiences in exploring the practices of windsurfing amongst communities of windsurfers. It proposes that ethnography and autoethnography can provide for unique […]
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Embodying Compassion: Disability Sport and the Mercy of God
The author offers a robustly theological account of compassion, highlighting its bodily nature. Divine mercy is presented as being conveyed through human bodies to remake and enliven both the human agent and recipient. Culminating in a story of a physically and mentally impaired runner, this account of mercy and compassion fleshes out God’s mercy, which […]
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Do as I Say: Contradicting Beliefs and Attitudes Towards Sports Concussion in Australia
The objective of this study was to explore beliefs and attitudes of students studying exercise science in Australia towards sports concussion. A secondary objective explored differences between gender and previous experience of concussion. A total of 312 participants (m = 217; f = 95) responded to a series of statements ranging across a number of […]
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Do Sports Mega-Events Boost Public Funding in Sports Programs? The Case of Brazil (2004–2015)
This article explores public expenditure in Brazilian sport from 2004 to 2015 and aims to understand if hosting sport mega-events has influenced investments in different types of sport (elite sport and educational/participation sport). Data were collected through governmental records and examined through descriptive statistics. Positive and negative variations of spending were reported, regarding both the […]
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Does Christianity Demean the Body and Deny the Value of Sport? – A Provocative Thesis
According to a thesis which is today authoritatively supported by some authors, the scarce recognition given to sport sciences in our culture should be ascribed to Christianity. This paper, in addition to attempting to refute this thesis, wishes to enrich the epistemological background of the emerging areas of research, to which sport belongs, with the […]
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Does the Threat of Suspension Curb Dangerous Behavior In Soccer? A Case Study From the Premier League
Using data from the 2011-2012 season of the Premier League, we study empirically and theoretically the impact of soccer suspension rules on the behavior of players and referees. For players facing a potential one-game suspension, being one versus two yellow cards away from the suspension limit results in an approximate 12% reduction in fouling, while […]
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Domestic Moves: An Exploration of Intra-National Labour Mobility in the Working Lives of Professional Footballers
This article investigates the domestic, intra-state labour mobility of professional footballers. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with a snowball sample of 49 male professional footballers who represent a range of career trajectories; the specific object of 19 interviews was to examine meanings and experiences tied to job relocation. An interactionist perspective was employed to highlight […]
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Driving to the “Net”: Blogs, Frames, and Politics in the New York Islanders’ Stadium Saga
On October 24, 2012, the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League announced a plan to move from their current stadium in Nassau County to the recently opened Barclays Center in the borough of Brooklyn, marking the end of a decades-long political saga about whether and where to build a new home arena for […]
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Dynamics of Inequalities in a Global Perspective: An Introduction
The contribution in this introduction, and in this monograph issue of Current Sociology itself, is to explain how patterns of inequality associated with global capital have been reconfigured in different contexts and have historically produced varied results. The definition of global inequality used here transcends Euro- and US-centric models of linear development and comparisons of […]
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Ecological Modernization and the 2014 NHL Sustainability Report
In December 2015, the National Hockey League (NHL) was invited to present on a special sport panel showcasing the green leaders of the sport industry, which was hosted as part of the COP21 United Nations climate change talks in Paris. The NHL has won numerous awards for its environmental initiatives over the last number of […]
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Ecological Modernization and the Olympics: The Case of Golf and Rio’s “Green” Games
In December 2015, the National Hockey League (NHL) was invited to present on a special sport panel showcasing the green leaders of the sport industry, which was hosted as part of the COP 21 United Nations climate change talks in Paris. The NHL has won numerous awards for its environmental initiatives over the last number […]
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Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference
It’s the twenty-first century, and although we tried to rear unisex children—boys who play with dolls and girls who like trucks—we failed. Even though the glass ceiling is cracked, most women stay comfortably beneath it. And everywhere we hear about vitally important “hardwired” differences between male and female brains. The neuroscience that we read about […]
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Designing the Healthy Bodies, Healthy Souls Church-Based Diabetes Prevention Program Through a Participatory Process
Background: The Healthy Bodies, Healthy Souls (HBHS) program aims to reduce diabetes risk among urban African Americans by creating healthy food and physical activity environments within churches. Participant engagement supports the development of applicable intervention strategies by identifying priority concerns, resources, and opportunities. Purpose: We developed a church-based diabetes intervention program using participatory research methods. […]
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Determinants of Business Engagement With Regional Sport Events
Research question: Small-scale sports events provide commercial opportunities for regional communities, and yet research suggests that local commercial organisations are sometimes reticent to engage with sport event organisations to leverage benefits. This paper examines variation in business engagement with sport events and identifies determinants to sport event leverage that are previously unrecognised in the academic […]
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Digital Games as a Source of Enjoyment in Later Life
As playing digital games has become a popular pastime among older adults, the study of the older audience of digital games would do well to exchange exploratory research for more specialist and focused areas. This article follows this reasoning and focuses on game enjoyment in later life. This topic is explored through two qualitative studies […]
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Discipline, Sport, and the Religion of Winners: Paul on Running to Win the Prize, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27
In 1 Cor. 9:25 Paul exhorts the Corinthian believers to strive like athletes for an eternal prize. This paper elucidates the communal horizon of the self-disciplining he enjoins, which overturns popular modern conceptions of individual fitness and performance training. Paul likewise defines the rewards of spiritual labour as aspects of participation in the communion of […]
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Discordant Fandom and Global Football Brands: ‘Let the People Sing’
This article has three main objectives. Our first is to turn to sport as a particularly illuminating and revealing example of consumer culture in the making. Marketplace logic suffuses consumer culture, and exploring practices of fandom as performed thus becomes particularly revealing of the tensions and contradictions which are thrown up when passions collide with […]
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