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School Board Decision-Making and the Elimination of Sport Participation Fees
Public schools in the US are increasingly charging ‘pay-to-play’ fees for participating in sports. Although these fees can cause reductions in participation, particularly for children from lower-income families, pay-to-play has become a legitimate practice within the field of public education. This study examines what leads some school districts to abandon sport participation fees, despite the […]
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Schooling Taiwan’s Aboriginal Baseball Players for the Nation
One of the major challenges that faces nation-builders in postcolonial societies is the incorporation of subaltern groups, particularly aboriginal peoples, into a collective national project. One vehicle for addressing this challenge is sport with schools being amongst the most important venues. This article offers an empirical study of the role of aboriginal players in Taiwanese […]
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Representation in the First African World Cup: ‘Worldclass’, Pan-Africanism, and Exclusion
This paper explores the representation of the first African World Cup in the British and South African press. Drawing on the output of a variety of media outlets between 2004, when South Africa was awarded the right to host the 2010 event, and the culmination of the tournament in July 2010, this paper contends that […]
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Representations of Sport in the Revolutionary Socialist Press in Britain, 1988–2012
This paper considers how sport presents a dualism to those on the far left of the political spectrum. A long-standing, passionate debate has existed on the contradictory role played by sport, polarised between those who reject it as a bourgeois capitalist plague and those who argue for its reclamation and reformation. A case study is […]
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Representing Taiwan: International Sport, Ethnicity and National Identity in the Republic of China
This article outlines and analysis the political character of Taiwan’s relationship with international sport, and in particular with the Olympic movement. In so doing, it seeks to add to the understanding of the links between sport and the formation and reproduction of national identities, with specific reference to the various cultural and ethnic identities of […]
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Reproduction of the Female Image and Nationalism in Taiwanese Sport Documentaries
In Taiwan, female athletes receive little media attention or are objectified when they win international competitions. However, this objectification does not merely demonstrate sexism toward female athletes, but it also indicates current social views toward national identity and nationalism in Taiwan. This study examined the representation of female athletes from the perspectives of historical background, […]
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Requiem for a “Tough Guy”: Representing Hockey Labor, Violence and Masculinity inGgoon
This paper explores the ongoing construction of hockey in Canada through a textual analysis of the popular comedy, Goon (2012). Touted by its authors as “the Canadian sequel to Slap Shot” and “an homage to enforcers”, Goon is analyzed in relation to simmering debates about fighting in hockey as well as the broader crisis of […]
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Research Note: Estimates of College Football Player Rents
Past research indicates that top college football players generate over $500,000 annually in team revenues, well beyond the effective compensation of an athletic scholarship. This article supplements past empirical literature using the most comprehensive, detailed financial information yet compiled on college athletics. An alternative method estimates an equations system to account for the endogeneity of […]
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Resilience as Embedded Neoliberalism: A Governmentality Approach
This article looks at resilience as a form of governmentality. In particular, it is concerned to show that resilience, despite its claims to be about the operation of systems, is, in practice, closer to a form of governance that emphasises individual responsibility. It traces this line of argument through looking at a range of documents […]
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Resisting the World-Class City: Community Opposition and the Politics of a Local Arena Development
While the public subsidy of major league sport franchises and associated urban development projects remains wildly popular in some constituencies, these expenditures have, increasingly, been met with organized resistance. This article examines the formation of Voices for Democracy (VFD)—a grassroots community group that opposed the use of public funds to build a CAD $606.5 million […]
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Response to Andreas Wimmer
I think highly of Andreas Wimmer’s project and consider him a friend. In some ways we may be talking past each other, or just have very different ideas about what race, political sociology, and indeed politics, mean. I am not sure whether Emirbayer and Desmond, Bonilla-Silva, or Feagin are responding to Wimmer’s editorial. I can […]
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Response to Comment on “Investigating Allegations of Point Shaving in NCAA Basketball Using Actual Sportsbook Betting Percentages”
Response to Comment on “Investigating Allegations of Point shaving in NCAA Basketball Using Actual Sportsbook Betting Percentages”
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Rethinking Identity Politics: The Multiple Attachments of an ‘Exclusive’ Sport Organization
This paper draws on a multi-sited ethnography of the North American Chinese Invitational Volleyball Tournament and examines the attachments and relationships that participation nurtures. I argue that rather than being exclusive, the NACIVT and its participants foster and nurture multiple relationships that extend beyond the NACIVT and Asianness. In doing so, I aim to do […]
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Reverse Integration in Wheelchair Basketball: A Serious Leisure Perspective
Wheelchair basketball is one of the most popular sport activities among persons with disabilities. The current study focuses on “reverse integration” (RI) groups of athletes with and without disabilities playing wheelchair basketball in Israel. A qualitative analysis approach was chosen to examine whether the able-bodied participants in RI wheelchair basketball training and competition identify their […]
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Review of Football Fascism and Fandom: The Ultra-S 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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Review of Marvin Miller, Baseball Revolutionary
A strong case could be made that a person who never played professional baseball was one of the most influential individuals in the history of that sport. Marvin Miller, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLPBA) from 1966 to 1982, transformed not only the business and economics of baseball but the very […]
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Review of Red nails, Black Skates: Gender, Cash, and Pleasure on and off the Ice
Erica Rand’s Red Nails, Black Skates: Gender, Cash, and Pleasure On and Off the Ice is primarily a series of critical essays on figure skating, and adult figure skating in particular. Rand uses her involvement in the sport, which began in earnest when she was in her 40s, as an entry point into intersecting conversations […]
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Review of Sexual Diversity and the Sochi 2014 Olympics: No More Rainbows
Review of Sexual Diversity and the Sochi 2014 Olympics: No More Rainbows
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Review of The Fantasy Sport Industry: Games Within Games
Review of The Fantasy Sport Industry: Games Within Games
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Review of The Global Football League: Transnational Networks, Social Movements and Sport in the New Media Age
Globalisation has had a profound impact on European football and English football in particular. A series of political and economic transformations took place in the 1990s which reflected wider global transformations outside of the sport. Clubs sought additional funding from more commercial practices. New global media companies used football to establish new audiences and wider […]
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Review of The Urban Geography of Boxing
The Urban Geography of Boxing makes a valuable contribution to the ever expanding literature on what is social, cultural and political about sport. Benita Heiskanen’s focus is an empirical study of the culture of boxing, including the key players, promoters, trainers, media networks and audiences, as well as boxers in the gym. This book, a […]
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Recycling Religion: Lance Armstrong’s Postmodern Spirituality of Suffering and Survivorship
For much of his triple career as heroic cancer survivor, sports champion, and, latterly, fallen idol, Lance Armstrong, a professed atheist, has worn a silver necklace with a cross pendant. Why does he wear this Ur-symbol of Christian religious faith? Speculative answers range from ‘residual superstition’ to ‘fashion jewellery’ and ‘tactical deception’. Here, Armstrong’s own […]
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Redefining Disability, Re-imagining the Self: Disability Identification Predicts Self-esteem and Strategic Responses to Stigma
People cope with stigma via individualistic strategies that minimize stigmatized attributes, and collective strategies that positively redefine stigmatized traits. Guided by social identity theory, we surveyed people with hidden and visible disabilities to investigate the association between disability identification and strategy use. Further, we tested the prediction that self-esteem (collective and personal) varies by disability […]
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Redskins: Insult and Brand
The role of sports in the production, reproduction, and contestation of racism and inequality in the society remains paradoxical. On the one hand, many in the athletic establishment champion sports as a unique arena of exceptional opportunity, fairness, and cross-racial understanding. They celebrate (with some good cause, I think) the institution’s leading role in providing […]
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Redskins: The Clock Is Now Ticking on Changing the Name
It’s an awkward fact of life in Washington, DC, that we are home to both the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Washington Redskins. One attempts to preserve the Native American cultures that weren’t eradicated by conquest; the other is both a symbol and result of the same eradication. These two worlds […]
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Reflections on communication and sport: On fanship and social relationships.
In this essay, Walter Gantz reflects on the importance of communication and sport and the evolution of his research on fanship and social relationships. Cutting across two overlapping dimensions—physical location and technology—this essay characterizes key ways that sports fanship may be integrally linked with meaningful relationships. Sports viewing at home is often a shared activity, […]
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Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Journalism and Digital
In this essay, Raymond Boyle reflects on how the study of sport within media and communication studies has evolved in the United Kingdom over the last 20 years. The first part of essay comments on the cultural importance of communication and sport. The second section traces the influences on the author’s research agenda, particularly in […]
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Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Nation and Globalization
In this essay, David Rowe reflects on how the nexus of sport and communication has affected national and global sensibilities. Sport contests take place at particular times in specific places, usually in a stadium setting, but not all who desire to watch can be present in the stadium. Without mediated communication, the vast edifice of […]
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Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Reading Sport and Narrative Ethics
In this essay, Lawrence Wenner reflects on the social and cultural importance of communication about sport. He considers the major influences on his research agenda and how the evolution of his research program came to change over time from one centered on empirical audience study to one anchored in critical and cultural studies. In a […]
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Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Women and Femininities
In this essay, Toni Bruce considers key cultural and social issues at play in the relationship between mediated sport and women. The treatment reflects on over 30 years of research and assesses not only central tendencies and changes in the way media covers women’s sporting events and achievements but also considers how this coverage interplays […]
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Reflections on Salary Shares and Salary Caps
This article takes a closer look at salary and revenue figures for the four major professional sports in the United States. It shows that the reporting typically offered in the popular media and often picked up in academic work can be rather misleading. The article first considers the conundrums in defining player compensation and then […]
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Regulation of Diversity Through discipline: Practices of Inclusion and Exclusion in Boxing
Boxing gyms in the Netherlands, which were traditionally bastions of ‘white’ men, have become more and more diverse. Since boxers with different ethnic backgrounds and women have joined boxing clubs, trainers need to manage this emerging diversity in their gyms. This empirical study of a gym in the Netherlands, where full participation of women is […]
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Relationship Between Spiritual Transcendence and Competitive Anxiety in Male Athletes
The purpose of this study was the relationship between spiritual transcendence and competitive anxiety in athletes. For this field, 400 of men athletes in Kermanshah city by stratified sampling were selected and completed the spiritual transcendence and competitive anxiety scales. Results of Pierson correlation indicated that was positive correlation between connectedness (r=0.331), prayer fulfillment(r=0.411), universality […]
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Relative Age Effect and Chi-Squared Statistics
Traditionally, the Relative Age Effect (RAE) is determined with a chi-squared goodness-of-fit test based on a theoretical expected distribution of birthdates. This distribution must be that of the parent population, but many authors choose to replace it by a uniform distribution in order to simplify calculations. The consequences of this simplification are: (a) the actual […]
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Religion and the NFL
Are you ready for some football?! On this episode of Research on Religion we invite Prof. Eric Carter (Georgetown College, Sociology) to discuss his work about the various troubles that professional football players face and how religion may help to mediate these problems. Eric has conducted over 100 interviews with NFL players, some who have […]
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Religion, Spirituality, and Sport: From Religio Athletae Toward Spiritus Athletae
We are living in a time of increasing interest in the religious and spiritual aspects of sport and human movement activities. A strict distinction between religion and spirituality is, however, still missing in much of the literature. After delimiting religious and spiritual modes of experience, this article addresses Coubertin’s religio athletae and demonstrates that this […]
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Religious Offences in Italy: Recent Laws Concerning Blasphemy and Sport
Religious offences in Italy, as in many European countries, have a long and complex history that is intertwined with the events in the history of the relationship between church and state and the institutional and constitutional framework of a nation. This article is divided into three parts. The first part aims to offer some historical […]
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Race, ethnicity, and content analysis of the sports media: a critical reflection
In this article we draw on a cultural studies perspective to reflect critically on the racial and ethnic categorizations that are used by those who employ content analysis to study the sport media and to demonstrate how such categories naturalize racial thought and erase ethnic distinctions. We use examples of content analysis of the sport […]
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Race, Place, and Biography at Play: Contextualizing American Indian Viewpoints on Indian Mascots
Critical to the Indian mascot debate is the question of whether American Indians support their use. My research describes the diverse viewpoints of Northeast (NE) Ohio Natives, who live in a region with a prominent Indian mascot. I also explore a biographical pattern that maps onto respondents’ perspectives. Natives who lived in the urban setting […]
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Race, Sport and Social Mobility: Horatio Alger in Short Pants?
This article addresses sport as a vehicle of social mobility for athletes of all racial backgrounds. Utilizing two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we test two sociological models. The zero-sum model argues that any time spent on sports takes away from time that could be spent on academics, hindering performance in […]
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Racial Equality in France and the United States: Media Coverage of Professional Tennis Players
I engage debates about racial media bias by analysing newspaper coverage of professional tennis players in France and the United States. Tennis is an elite sport that typically does not have many non-white players and may be especially sensitive to racial boundaries. Tennis also offers a new solution to the methodological challenge of establishing that […]
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Racial Perceptions of Baseball at Historically Black Colleges and Universities
The purpose of this study is to identify demographic backgrounds, participation patterns, and racial perceptions of baseball student-athletes at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the Southeastern United States. HBCUs were selected for this study because of the dearth of research on student-athletes at these institutions. An 11-item questionnaire and a focus group interview […]
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Racialization and Its paradigms: From Ireland to North America
This article offers a template for understanding and analyzing racialization as a paradigm. Further, this template is applied to the North American case – an important one because it has endured and spread across the globe despite the enormous weight of scientific evidence against it. The fallacy of race (and in particular the North American […]
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Racism, Football Fans, and Online Message Boards: How Social Media Has Added a New Dimension to Racist Discourse in English Football
This article presents the findings of a discourse analysis carried out from November 2011 to February 2012 on two prominent association football (soccer) message boards that examined fans’ views toward racism in English football. After analyzing more than 500 posts, the article reveals the racist discourse used by some supporters in their online discussions and […]
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Radical Sports Journalism?: Reflections on ‘Alternative’ Approaches to Covering Sport-Related Social Issues
In this paper we report findings from a study of what we are calling ‘sports media activism’ (or ‘SMA’). We were interested in how, why, and for what purposes a range of sport media activists are engaging with sport-related social issues through different media. This research contributes to a limited body of literature on sport-related […]
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Rationales Rhetoric and Realities: FIFA’s World Cup in South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014
The 2010 FIFA World Cup was heralded by mainstream media outlets, the local organisers, the South African government and FIFA as an unequivocal success. The month-long spectacle saw South Africa Take centre stage and host the world’s largest single sporting event. This occurred against a backdrop of rationales and promises made that the event would […]
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Re-Conceptualizing Sport as a Sacred Phenomenon
Sociological studies of sport have established their subject matter as significant to a wide range of sociocultural concerns. Despite a broad consensus about its global importance, however, the reasons for the particular, even ‘extraordinary’, societal importance of sport today remain deeply contested. Most studies account for it by highlighting its entanglement within a range of […]
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Re-Immersing into Elite Swimming Culture: A Meta-Autoethnography by a Former Elite Swimmer
This paper presents two meta-autoethnographies written by a former elite swimmer. In the first meta autoethnography, the swimmer revealed doubts in relation to details, emotions and inner-thoughts that she had included in her historical autoethnographic work. As a means of sorting and pondering these tensions and uncertainties, the swimmer explored cultural re-immersion as a possible […]
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Re-placing Sport Migrants: Moving Beyond the Institutional Structures Informing International Sport Migration
Interest in international sport migration has been burgeoning recently. This article considers the dominant theoretical models used to explore these movements and suggests that it is time to rethink some of our theoretical presumptions. Recent permutations of these theoretical models, shifting from globalization to network theoretical models, make this reconsideration of migration-related theories necessary. Drawing […]
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Reactions to Implementing Adventure-based Learning in Physical Education
The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the reactions of 13 pre-service teachers (PTs) implementing an adventure-based learning (ABL) unit through the lens of occupational socialization. Data were collected through interviews, critical reflections and reflection of videotaped ABL lesson. Analysis of the data resulted in two themes: (1) This is harder than I […]
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Reclaiming the Kop? Analysing Liverpool supporters’ 21st century Mobilizations
For at least the past three decades, the sociology of football and its supportedcultures has been responsive to the social issues which have emerged within it. Today, the fact that fans rejoice and protest at overseas purchases of their club means that the time has come for research to reflect on elite-level English football’s position […]
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Reconstructing Fame: Sport, Race, and Evolving Reputations
In Reconstructing Fame editors David C. Ogden and Joel Nathan Rosen explore the evolving reputations of controversial athletes of color in the United States. The authors’ claim: the public reputations of athletes of color such as Jackie Robinson, Bill Russell, and Jim Thorpe and the racial significance connected to their stories evolved over the course […]
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Reconstructing the Community-Based Youth Sport Experience: How Children Derive Meaning from Unstructured and Organized Settings
Youth sport participation often provides the most salient forum for connecting sport with local communities. In this phenomenological examination of preteen youth sport participants, we consider the experiences and attendant meanings derived from participation in both organized and unstructured youth sport settings within a community. Phenomenology offers a paradigm for understanding youth sport participation, not […]
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Recovering Spiritual Centres of Gravity Through Sport
Olympic all-around gymnastics gold medalist Gabby Douglas, of the London 2012 Games, proclaimed her relationship with God as a “win-win situation”: “The glory goes to Him, and all the blessings fall down on me.”1 Ray Lewis, the future Hall of Fame NFL linebacker, paraphrased St. Paul after claiming victory in the 2013 Super Bowl: “When […]
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Production, efficiency, and corruption in Italian Serie A football
This article uses data for Italian Serie A to estimate a production function for the league and the relative efficiency of the clubs playing in it. It utilizes a panel data set comprising season aggregated match statistics for 36 Serie A clubs that played over 10 seasons from 2000 to 2010. The seasons affected by […]
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Professional golf—a license to spend money? Issues of money in the lives of touring professional golfers.
Drawing on figurational sociology, this article examines issues of money that are central to touring professional golfers’ workplace experiences. Based on interviews with 16 professionals, results indicate the monetary rewards available for top golfers continues to increase; however, such recompense is available to relatively small numbers and the majority fare poorly. Results suggest that playing […]
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Professional habitus and the construction of gender: The case of male journalists for sports magazines in France.
This article analyzes the role of male journalists in the construction of gender models in the specialized mountain bike press. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s field and habitus theory, it shows that the masculine and feminine media figures are mainly dependent on the professional habitus of these male journalists. Indeed, on one hand, professional socialization experiences out […]
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Profile of self-reported problems with executive functioning in college and professional football players
Repetitive mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), such as that experienced by contact-sport athletes, has been associated with the development of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Executive dysfunction is believed to be among the earliest symptoms of CTE, with these symptoms presenting in the fourth or fifth decade of life. The present study used a well-validated self-report […]
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Promoting Buddhism through Modern Sports: The Case Study of Fo Guang Shan in Taiwan
In the past, traditional Buddhism in China focused on chanting and meditation that detached itself from the society. However, after generations of strenuous efforts to promote ‘Humanistic Buddhism’, several Masters have been encouraging religion to engage more in daily lives. One of the proponents was Master Hsin Yun, who was born and raised in mainland […]
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Promoting the ‘arriviste’ city: Producing neoliberal urban identity and communities of consumption during the Edmonton Oilers’ 2006 playoff campaign
In the spring of 2006, the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Edmonton Oilers made a surprise run to the Stanley Cup final for the first time in 16 years. Predictably, hockey fans and media pundits responded enthusiastically to the one-time return to glory of their men’s professional hockey team. Drawing from threads of political economy, historical […]
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Protecting the NFL/ militarizing the homeland: Citizen soldiers and urban resilience in post-9/11 America
In this article I focus on intersections between the National Football League’s (NFL) security practices and the US Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) counter-terrorism agenda, including new policies and legal structures that support pre-emption, protection, and preparation activities that manage and mitigate the effects of terrorist attacks. As I will argue, the intensifying and mutually […]
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Public financing of minor league stadium a risky investment.
after negotiating for several months to finance and build a $55 million ballpark in Charlotte, baseball’s Class AAA Charlotte Knights will receive $7.25 million from the city, $750,000 from Charlotte Center City Partners (an economic and cultural development group), and a donation of public land valued at $20 million to $24 million from Mecklenburg County. […]
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Public policies, body practices and social representations on ageing. A case study: the national sports plan and the sports games , Buenos Aires Province
In this paper we present the ideas of a number of speeches from which public policies have been designing and implementing that have embodied body practices (related to sport) with seniors and who build a particular social representation of ageing. In these policies, were detected to study social dimensions from which were identified and categorized […]
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Put on the wig it’s time to ball: Experiences of a collegiate men’s basketball fan group
The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of a collegiate men’s basketball fan group. Little research has been undertaken exploring student fan groups, especially using ethnographic methods. The primary researcher attended two men’s home basketball games at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, home of the student fan group, Orange Krush. The […]
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Business or cause? Gendered Institutional Logic in Women’s Professional Soccer
Despite women’s increased participation in sport, women’s team sport leagues have yet to find a lasting toehold at the professional level. Using ethnographic data collected with U.S. women’s professional soccer in 2011-2012, I situate the work of selling women’s soccer in the complex institutional environment of contemporary women’s sports organizations. League owners and employees were […]
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Queering the gaze: Calgary hockey breasts, dynamics of desire, and colonial hauntings.
This paper compares two hockey-related breast-flashing events that occurred in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The first was performed by Calgary Flames fans, the ‘Flames girls’, in the 2004 NHL Stanley Cup final, and the second flashing event occurred when members and fans of the Bobby Orr hockey team participated in lifting their shirts and jerseys at […]
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R*dskins: Insult and brand.
C. Richard King has been the most prolific author writing on the topic of Native American sport nicknames/logos, which essentially consist of stereotypes of Native Americans created and maintained by white people. Working from what may be labeled a cultural studies perspective, King has previously investigated and brought critical analysis to bear on numerous cases […]
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Race and Quarterback Survival in the National Football League
This study examines data from the 2001 to 2009 National Football League (NFL) seasons to determine whether Black quarterbacks face discrimination. When controlling for injury, age, experience, performance, team investment, backup quality, and bye weeks, Black quarterbacks are found to be 1.98–2.46 times more likely to be benched. Marginal evidence is also found that Black […]
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Race and racism: Experiences of black Norwegian athletes
This article examines race and racism in sport based on the experiences of black Norwegian athletes. The findings are based on in-depth qualitative interviews with nine female and eight male black athletes. Race and racism concepts are explored to draw attention to different approaches of understanding racism in sport, from the individual to the institutional […]
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Race sport and social support: A comparison between African American and White youths’ perceptions of social support for sport participation
There is a substantial theoretical literature arguing that African American families, more than other ethnic groups, push their children towards sports. However, there is a dearth of generalizable empirical research examining whether African American families do in fact encourage their children to participate in sport more than families of other ethnic groups do, or whether […]
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Race-centrism: a critique and a research agenda
This article reviews some of the most prominent books in the field of race studies in the USA and identifies their shared assumptions: that racial inequality is the primary principle of stratification in the USA; that is has transformed but not lessened since the civil rights era; that it can be explained by the racist […]
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Race, ethnicity and social science
The contours and complexities of race and racism continue to confound the social sciences. This problem originates in the historical complicity of the social science disciplines with the establishment and maintenance of the systems of racial predation, injustice and indeed genocide upon which the modern world was built. All the social sciences originate in raciology […]
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Playing with the big boys: Basketball, American imperialism, and subaltern discourse in the Philippines
The global diffusion of sport is both a complex topic and a thematic presence in sport history and sociology circles. Studies of colonialism, human geography, and cultural appropriation are just a few of the channels to the international dissemination of sport. Much like soccer (or football), basketball became a global mega-sport through these means, spreading […]
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Plotting a Paralympic field: An elite disability sport competition viewed through Bourdieu’s sociological lens
In this paper components of Bourdieu’s sociological theory will be utilized to systematically outline key constituents, and the interrelated power struggles, which shape Paralympic sport. The premier Paralympic sport competition is arguably the summer Paralympic Games, a quadrennial multi-sport competition for elite athletes with specific impairments, governed by the International Paralympic Committee. This paper argues […]
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Political activism, racial identity and the commercial endorsement of athletes: Athlete activism.
With a focus on African American male athletes as product endorsers, the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of activism type and level of racial identity on perceptions of trustworthiness and athlete-product fit. Participants (N = 73 White undergraduate students) participated in a 2 (activism type: anti-obesity, anti-war) × 2 (level of […]
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Political correctness, selection bias, and the NCAA Basketball Tournament
Allegations of selection bias toward the major conferences and teams with committee representation have previously been levied on the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Basketball tournament selection committee. We illustrate the source of this bias is political correctness. When using the computer ranking of Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), which uses only wins and losses in […]
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Poor Teaching by the Coach: A Phenomenological Description from Athletes’ Experience of Poor Coaching
Background: Winning and losing have consistently been used as one criterion upon which to evaluate coaches. Since winning coaches have long been thought of as knowledgeable and effective at providing instruction, researchers have often studied coaches who have obtained a high winning percentage. While researchers know some about the behaviors and thought processes of winning […]
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Popular and Lived Religions
This article discusses the sociological understanding of popular religion by first exploring the theories of Gramsci. It then critiques this approach by arguing that the social construction of popular religion in contrast to institutionalized religion is not as clear cut in our late modern, multi-faith and global world as it was in the early modern […]
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Portrayals of women golfers in the 2008 issues of Golf Digest
This research note examines Golf Digest’s depictions of gender through the publication’s portrayals of women in its 2008 issues. Through the use of intersectional theory and critical discourse analysis of the contents within Golf Digest, we found that despite its emerging use of women columnists and content concerning women in articles or advertisements, the magazine […]
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Positive youth development through sport: Myths, beliefs, and realities.
This chapter examines positive youth development (PYD) in the social, cultural, and historical context in which it has emerged and been linked with sports. It also focuses on the particular approach to development commonly associated with PYD, why sport is seen as an appropriate context for PYD, the challenges of integrating PYD into existing youth […]
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Power plays and Olympic divisions: Bilingualism and the politics of Canadian viewing rights at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games
There have been innumerable political debates around the world over the distribution of live sporting events in the digital era. Typically, these deliberations involve competing claims and interests associated with sport, commerce, cultural and broadcasting policies, and, at times, language rights. This article examines a recent debate in Canada over unequal access to live French-language […]
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Predisposed to participate? The influence of family socio-economic background on children’s sports participation and daily amount of physical activity
From a Bourdieu-inspired understanding of how personal resources (‘capitals’) enable certain practices in certain contexts, the links between families’ cultural, social and economic capitals, and children’s daily physical activity were investigated in 500 suburban Danish schoolchildren using questionnaire data and accelerometer measures. Family socio-economic position (SEP) was found to be positively associated with children’s participation […]
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Prejudice against lesbian, gay, and bisexual coaches: The influence of race, religious fundamentalism, modern sexism, and contact with sexual minorities.
In drawing from Herek’s (2007, 2009) sexual stigma and prejudice theory, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among prejudice toward sexual minority coaches, religious fundamentalism, sexism, and sexual prejudice and to determine whether race affected these relationships. The authors collected data from 238 parents. Results indicated that Asians expressed greater sexual […]
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Prejudice in Major League Baseball: Have black players been held to a higher standard than white players?
It has long been suggested that even after baseball’s “color line” was broken in 1947, Black players had to be better than White ones to be given an opportunity to play in the major leagues. The present article provides empirical support for that claim, using data from the point at which all major league teams […]
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Preschoolers’ perceptions of their mothers’ and fathers’ reactions to injury-risk behavior.
Seventy-eight 3 year-old children participated in structured interviews. Boys reported wanting to engage in higher levels of risk than did girls. Children viewed mothers as allowing boys and girls to engage in similar levels of risk. Conversely, they viewed fathers as permitting higher levels of risk by boys than by girls. These findings are discussed […]
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Preserving the bounty: Gregg Williams, the Saints, and the audio the NFl wants you to hear
Audio of Gregg Williams imploring players to violence only preserves the status quo. First, the facts: Sounding like Garrison Keillor doing an impression of Robert De Niro as Al Capone, we now have audiotape of former New Orleans Saints Defensive Coordinator Gregg Williams telling his team to intentionally maim their playoff opponents, the San Francisco […]
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Problematizing Foucauldian ethics: A review of technologies of the self in sociology of sport since 2003.
Foucault’s technologies of the self have been used by sociological scholars of sport for nearly two decades. Yet Markula’s seminal articulation of a feminist Foucauldian ethics in 2003 stands as a watershed publication, insofar as the majority of publications following this article have framed much of their analysis in relation to this work. In this […]
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Producing mobility through locality and visibility: Developing a transnational perspective on sports labour migration.
To date, studies of sports labour migration have afforded little attention to analysis of how individual athletes relate to historical and macro- structural power relations and forces. In this article, we set out to develop a transnational perspective on sports labour migration, focusing particularly on migrants’ achievement and maintenance of mobility as a key constituting […]
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Producing television and reproducing gender
In a case study of Irish television, gendered production processes are created through the channeling of women and men into different types of roles where they receive differential rewards and opportunities from their work. Gender also impacts in complex ways on the routines of production, where it shapes the perspective applied to media content and […]
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Personal strategies for managing a second career: The experiences of Spanish Olympians
The purpose of this study was to examine how Olympians experience the transition to a second career, to identify the strategies they may or may not implement in order to prepare for it, and to determine the main factors that influence this process. Using a phenomenological approach we asked 26 Spanish Olympians (13 men and […]
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Perspectives of Mentoring: The Black Female Student-Athlete
The purpose of this study was to understand Black female collegiate athletes’ perception of mentors and the characteristics of their current mentors. Understanding their definition of a mentor and the persons whom fulfill the psychosocial and career mentor roles will provide insight on the mentor–mentee relationship. In addition, the researchers found it necessary to ascertain […]
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Physical activity experiences of young people in an area of disadvantage: ‘There’s nothing there for big kids, like us’
Through an examination of the experiences of young people in one disadvantaged area, this paper adds to an emerging body of knowledge focused on what place physical activity occupies in the lives of young people in areas of disadvantage. A total of 40 young people (21 males, 19 females) participated in focus group interviews. The […]
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Physical and sports activities, and healthy and active ageing: Establishing a frame of reference for public action.
Since the 1960s, there has been a change in the portrayal of older people. This change has resulted in the promotion of an active way of life that led, at the turn of the twenty-first century, to the development by international bodies of standard guidelines relating to active or healthy ageing. This article examines the […]
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Physical Cultural Studies: Engendering a Productive Dialogue
One is never quite sure what the response will be to a special issue call for papers. Certainly, that was the case with regard to this Physical Cultural Studies special issue of the Sociology of Sport Journal. As editors, our original aim was to attract contributions that would help flesh out (pun intended), what we […]
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Physical literacy: Why should we embrace this construct?
An additional concern is that there has been a decrease in physical education programmes, an increase in early sport-specialisation and a greater focus on elite sport programmes, which have all led to fewer opportunities to teach fundamental motor skills and develop physical competence, decreased participation for all levels of athletes (regardless of ability or experience), […]
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Pilgrimage to fallen gods from Olympia: The cult of sporting celebrities.
Contemporary Western society has an abundant variety of role models, with celebrities from all walks of life replacing yesteryear’s role models of military heroes and political leaders. However, sport has long provided religious and secular role models dating back to the ancient Olympic Games, and today every two years with the celebration of the summer […]
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Place disparities in supportive environments for extracurricular physical activity in North Carolina middle schools.
Disadvantaged rural youth may be especially at risk for obesity and poorer health due to physical inactivity. Research suggests that extracurricular school programs can increase physical activity for this population. This study sought to determine whether local differences existed in the availability of supportive environments for extracurricular physical activity in North Carolina middle schools. Multiple […]
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Plans for the Legacy from the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
This document sets out the Government’s plans for the legacy from the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
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Players’ perspectives on the positive impact of video games: A qualitative content analysis of online forum discussions
On game forums, players often discuss the positive impact of video games on their lives. We collected 964 messages from top ranked game forums (via Alexa.com) and analyzed them using a coding scheme based on an existing taxonomy about the impact of the arts. This directed qualitative content analysis resulted in an exploration of how […]
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Playing and Protesting: Sport as a Vehicle for Social Change
Despite the fact that athletic activism is non normative behavior, there is still a long, albeit small, tradition of individuals who use the playing field to advocate for political and social justice. This article examines such individuals who, while in their role as athletes, engage in social or political activism to foster progressive social change. […]
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