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Monday Night Football and the Racial Roots of the Network TV Event
Launched in 1970, American Broadcasting Company’s (ABC) Monday Night Football made live prime time sports television viable when most sports broadcasts were relegated to weekends. It did so in part by packaging games for a crossover viewership. To this end, it suppressed racial divisiveness that might splinter the mainstream audience it sought. ABC parlayed Monday […]
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MoneyRoundball? The drafting of international players by National Basketball Association teams
National Basketball Association (NBA) teams have drafted international players regularly since 1996. Did NBA teams value international prospects accurately relative to U.S. players? Regressions of NBA performance reveal that international players drafted through 2001 tended to outperform expectations adjusted for draft positions. Teams subsequently drafted more international players, but first-round picks tended to underperform, implying […]
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More than a sport: Tennis education and health
Youth interest and participation in tennis is growing in the United States, and tennis is among the top nine most popular school sports that girls and boys participate in at the high school level (NFHS, 2012). Tennis also engages both girls and boys, and often facilitates competition across generations. In order to expand interest and […]
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More than just games: the global politics of the Olympic Movement
This paper is rooted in the premise that the Olympic Movement represents an important – yet often overlooked – global political site, and it begins by situating the Olympic Movement within the global policy by focusing on its role as a forum in which participating states can both affirm their sovereignty and propagate a virtuous […]
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More than just play: Unmasking black child labor in the athletic industrial complex
African Americans’ hypervisibility in sports remains a frequent point of critique. There has been a tendency to blame Black youths for their supposed “sports fixation.” Complicating this narrative of cultural pathology, I examine the foundational importance of Black Boys’ athletic labor to the profitability of the sporting industries. I first trace the structural conditions (imperialism, […]
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More than murder: Ethics and hunting in New Zealand
In this article I examine the practice of hunting in New Zealand with particular reference to the ways in which hunters make sense of hunting, the embodied experience of hunting, and the moral status of animals. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data I reflect on how the practice and understanding of hunting is guided by […]
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Male Team Sport Hazing Initiations in a Culture of Decreasing Homohysteria
In this longitudinal ethnographic research, we report on 7 years of hazing rituals on two separate men’s sports teams at one university in the United Kingdom. Using 38 in-depth interviews alongside naturalistic observations of the initiation rituals, we demonstrate that hazing activities have changed from being centered around homophobic same-sex activities to focusing on extreme […]
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Managing Black Guys: Representation, Corporate Culture, and the NBA
This article explores the intersection of representation, management, and race in the National Basketball Association (NBA) through a larger question on the relationship between corporate strategies for managing racialized subjects and popular representations of race. The NBA “brand”is situated in terms of recent developments in corporate and popular culture and then analyzed as an example […]
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Managing Emotional Manhood: Fighting and Fostering Fear in Mixed Martial Arts
Based on two years of fieldwork and over 100 interviews, we analyze mixed martial arts fighters’ fears, how they managed them, and how they adopted intimidating personas to evoke fear in opponents. We conceptualize this process as “managing emotional manhood,” which refers to emotion management that signifies, in the dramaturgical sense, masculine selves. Our study […]
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Managing ethnocultural and ‘racial’ diversity in sport: Obstacles and opportunities
Diversity involves coming to terms with alterity (otherness) and negotiating inclusion (togetherness). That goal is more likely, philosopher Emmanuel Levinas argues, when people usually separated – socially culturally, politically, economically geographically – are brought together in consensual face-to-face contact and in social contexts where equitable interpersonal co-operation and group cohesion are fostered (Burggraeve, 2002, 2008). […]
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Managing sport for social change: The state of play
•Sport can build social capacity and develop healthy communities.•Critically engages with sport management theory with sport for social change.•Discusses associated practical and policy implications for sport for social change.•Future research: local engagement, innovative methods and broader scope. Sport-for-development (SFD) provides a platform for sport to be used as a tool or “hook” to contribute to […]
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Masters Sport as a Strategy for Managing the Ageing Process
In contemporary western society, regular physical activity is promoted and understood as a means of maintaining one’s health and independence, particularly for older people. The social and economic concerns of an aging population have prompted governments and businesses alike to provide opportunities for older people to participate in sport and exercise. For example, advocating participation […]
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May the Circle Be Unbroken: The Research Recommendations of Aboriginal Community Members Engaged in Participatory Action Research With University Academics
This study was conducted by university and Aboriginal co researchers in Canada, utilizing a participatory action research (PAR) approach akin to a decolonizing methodology. The purpose was to empower nine Aboriginal co researchers to share their recommendations for meaningful research practice, grounded in their cultural perspectives and lived experiences. Data were collected through conversational interviews. […]
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Media consumption and the contexts of physical culture: Methodological reflections on third generation study of media audiences
In this paper we argue that sport media research would be enhanced by: (a) engagement with the audience research tradition, including “third generation” audience studies that emphasize relationships between viewer interpretations of media and everyday social practices; and (b) the adoption of multimethod research approaches that are sensitive to contradictions and complexities that exist in […]
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Media events spectacles and risky globalization: a critical review and possible avenues for future research
We review the research conducted to date on media events and media spectacles. We posit that the main phenomena challenging the current conceptualizations of media event and media spectacleare (1) the understanding of risk, (2) the context of disasters and (3) globalization and the mediation of news in the context of transnational and transitional societies. […]
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Media representations of multiracial athletes.
There is a substantial body of research examining racialized narratives about Black and White athletes. However, there is an absence of literature that has specifically explored multiracial identities in the sport context. The purpose of the current study was to examine narratives constructed in the media when discussing the race(s) of multiracial athletes. Investigators conducted […]
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Mediating mega events and manufacturing multiculturalism: The cultural politics of the world game in Australia.
Contemporary global politics is characterized by intense debate about the status of multiculturalism. Framed within discourses of crime, counter-terrorism and moral decline, multiculturalism has been declared redundant just as the Australian government has rehabilitated the term in local citizenship legislation and policy making. Tensions between the local and the global are complex and multifaceted, taking […]
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Meet me at the crossroads: African American athletic and racial identity.
How individuals define themselves has considerable implications within the realms of sport. Considering the large proportion of African Americans participating in high profile college sports, matters of identity likely become quite relevant. This article addresses issues related to athletic and racial identity contextualized in the sport domain. The potential relationship between athletic identity (Brewer, Van […]
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Mega events in sports and crime: Evidence from the 1990 Football World Cup.
Despite an increasing desire to host major sport events there is almost no research that tries to identify and measure the possible negative spillovers they generate. In particular, there is limited understanding about crime responses. This article investigates the causal relation between hosting the 1990 Football World Cup and crime rates at the province level. […]
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Mega sport events: A probabilistic social cost–benefit analysis of bidding for the games.
The debates on whether to bid for organizing a mega sports event like the World Cup Soccer or the Olympic Games ignore either the bidding costs or the probability not to win the bid or both. In this short article, I discuss why the bidding costs and probabilities should be taken into account and I […]
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Mega sporting events and public funding of sport in Brazil (2004-2011)
Brazilian law states that it is the duty of the State to promote sport as a right of each citizen, noting the allocation of public funds for the priority promotion of educational sports and – in specific cases – of elite sports. In view of this legislation, the objectives of this study were to investigate […]
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Megaeventos esportivos e Educação Física: alerta de tsunami
Este texto analisa as implicações dos megaeventosesportivos em diferentes âmbitos da realidade nacional. Nesteínterim, a partir da relacional Estado, organização esportiva emercado, problematiza as relações de hegemonia e estratégiasde acumulação inerentes à agenda Rio 2016. Além disso,apresenta uma discussão sobre como a Educação Física e asCiências do Esporte se inserem neste processo, registrandoalguns apontamentos para […]
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Lifestyle and Adventure Sport Among Youth
An important characteristic and intensifying trend in the twenty-first century within Western sporting cultures is an increase in the range and diversity of sports practices, particularly more informal and individualistic activities. A vibrant example of this trend is the emergence and growth of what the academic and popular literature has variously termed extreme, alternative, adventure […]
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Lifestyle sport, public policy and youth engagement: Examining the emergence of parkour.
In this article we consider the development of parkour in the South of England and its use in public policy debates and initiatives around youth, physical activity and risk. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with participants and those involved in the development of parkour in education, sport policy and community-based partnerships, we explore the potential […]
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Lifting the veil: Exploring colorblind racism in black student athlete experiences.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of post-racial narratives and colorblind racism in a case of Black intercollegiate student athlete experiences. This case study engaged a critical race theory (CRT) perspective and colorblind ideologies to advance an understanding of participant experiences and extend the CRT literature. Findings indicate that participants recognize […]
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Limited or lasting legacy? The effect of non-mega sport event attendance on participation
Research question: It is often claimed by event promoters that hosting major sports events will inspire increased participation at grassroots level. However, evidence of this linkage is scarce. This paper addresses the research gap by examining the legacy effect of ‘non-mega’ events on the sport participation levels of those who attend them. Research methods: Data […]
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Lively Infrastructure
This paper examines the social life and sociality of urban infrastructure. Drawing on a case study of land occupations and informal settlements in the city of Belo Horizonte in Brazil, where the staples of life such as water, electricity, shelter and sanitation are co-constructed by the poor, the paper argues that infrastructures – visible and […]
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Living by numbers: Media representations of sports stars’ careers
This article will address the making and unmaking of elite sporting careers, by focusing on the media reporting of the rise and fall of two elite sport stars, Roger Federer and Lance Armstrong. Sport stars are not simply the raw, unmediated products of innate or mysterious physical ability. Their physical capital is constituted through techniques […]
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Living the dream or awakening from the nightmare: race and athletic identity
Education is often viewed as the door that leads out of poverty for many students of color. But for many African American boys and young men, the dream of becoming a professional athlete is a door that appears to be wide open. Considering the over-representation of African American athletes in revenue-producing sports in colleges, universities […]
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Local meanings of a sport mega-event’s legacies: Stories From a South African urban neighbourhood
Studies on sport mega-events and their legacies often seem only loosely connected to local experiences. Stories on sport mega-event legacy appear as a setting-the-scene or function as a reference to illustrate specific types of legacy. However, stories themselves are never the primary focus in these studies. What is generally lacking from these studies is an […]
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Locating the modern sacred: Moral/social facts and constitutive practices
Durkheim’s theory of the sacred, which posits the distinction between sacred and profane as the keystone of human understanding, grounds not only his approach to religion and epistemology but also his theory of modernity. This distinction between traditional and modern social forms is essential to Durkheim’s position. In traditional society, social facts are produced through […]
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Lockouts and player productivity: Evidence from the National Hockey League.
We implement a propensity score matching technique to present the first evidence on the impact of professional sports lockouts on player productivity. In particular, we utilize a unique natural experiment from the 2012-2013 National Hockey League lockout, during which approximately 200 players decided to play overseas, while the rest stayed in North America. We separate […]
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London 2012 and beyond: concluding reflections on peacemaking sport and the Olympic movement
The 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games have reinvigorated the debate on Olympic legacies for peace and development. Addressing this debate and building on the articles in this collection, this epilogue argues that the theoretical-conceptual understanding of peace and peacemaking remains poorly developed within the peacemaking discourse espoused by the Olympic movement. The authors draw […]
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London 2012 and sports participation: The myths of legacy.
Today’s young people play far less sport than before. Or do they? The evidence, says Ken Green, shows quite the reverse. We have been promised “a deep and lasting legacy” from the Olympics. The evidence shows the Olympic sports model to be irrelevant to youth participation. Have we a misguided response to a fictitious illness?
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London 2012: A legacy for disabled people—setting new standards, changing perceptions.
DCMS and the Office for Disability Issues have worked with a range of organisations to publish a report outlining the opportunities available…
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Look after yourself, or look after one another? An analysis of life skills in sport for development and peace HIV prevention curriculum.
HIV/AIDS education and prevention are often described as one way that SDP can contribute to international development, yet there has been little critical analysis of how discourses legitimize particular conceptions of HIV/AIDS and constructions of life skills. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to conduct a critical discourse analysis, guided by the concept of […]
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Looks Good on Your CV: The Sociology of Voluntourism Recruitment in Higher Education
The recruitment for what has become known as ‘voluntourism’ takes place on campuses at many universities in Australia. Under the banner of ‘making a difference’ students are solicited to travel to developing countries to aid poor communities, to enjoy the sights and tastes of the distant and exotic ‘other’, the ‘experience’ touted as a useful […]
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Love thy Rival: what Sports’ Greatest Rivalries Teach Us about Loving Our Enemies
In his first book, the best-selling God & Football: Faith and Fanaticism in the SEC, humorist Chad Gibbs explored his own struggles to balance faith in God with passion for pigskin. Now Gibbs is back asking how Christian fans can love their enemies, when we can’t even love rival fans.
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Maintaining Dominican identity in the Dominican Republic: Forging a baseball landscape in Villa Ascension
Much research concerning the Dominican Republic and baseball focuses on globalization. In acknowledging the importance of such research, this study contributes a particular understanding of sport in a rural heterogeneous community, by addressing landscape and place identity. Villa Ascension and Caraballo are adjacent rural communities in the northern Puerto Plata Province. Currently there exists one […]
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Major League Baseball Attendance and the Role of Fantasy Baseball
Many explanations exist for the resurgence of the Major League Baseball (MLB) fan base following the 1994-1995 strike. The most prevalent explanations include the 1998 McGuire-Sosa home run race and Cal Ripken Jr.’s consecutive games record. While such explanations certainly impacted fan interest in the sport, it is remiss to ignore the impact of online […]
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Making the global turn: The USLPGA, commissioner rhetoric of difference, and “new imperialism.”
Focusing on the cultural and structural contours of the global sport of golf, this analysis features the rhetorical power of U.S. Ladies Professional Golf Association (USLPGA) commissioners in narrativizing this “American” global tour. Selected mediated rhetoric of each of these commissioners is read within a post-title 9/11 context, attending to Winant’s notion of “new imperialism” […]
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King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution.
Bill Russell was not the first African American to play professional basketball, but he was its first black superstar. From the moment he stepped onto the court of the Boston Garden in 1956, Russell began to transform the sport in a fundamental way, making him, more than any of his contemporaries, the Jackie Robinson of […]
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Knee Osteoarthritis Is Associated With Previous Meniscus and Anterior Cruciate Ligament Surgery Among Elite College American Football Athletes
Background: Football puts athletes at risk for knee injuries such meniscus and anterior cruciate ligament(ACL) tears, which are associated with the development of osteoarthritis (OA). Previous knee surgery, player position, and body mass index (BMI) may be associated with knee OA. Hypothesis: In elite football players undergoing knee magnetic resonance imaging at the National Football […]
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Knocked out: Ritual disruption and the decline of Spanish boxing
Scholars have written extensively on the emergence of mass sports in modern industrial societies, and the factors that have facilitated the development of ‘hegemonic sports cultures’. Less has been written on how the structure and content of ‘national sport spaces’ change over time, and the reasons that certain sports cultures have failed to sustain their […]
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Ladies of Besiktas: A dismantling of male hegemony at Inönü Stadium
Founded by four friends in 2006, the fan group Ladies of Besiktas are supporters of one of the largest football clubs in Turkey, with hundreds of active members and representatives in almost all Turkish cities as well as in Germany and Japan. On their official Facebook page their mission is listed as reconciling the three […]
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Lady or woman? The debate on lexical choice for describing females in sport in the Turkish language.
The study investigates linguistic sexism in communication in sports within a sociolinguistic context. The starting point of the research is a recent debate in Turkish society about the appropriate word to refer to females in sport. Specifically, the manuscript focuses on the preference between the near-synonymous Turkish words kadın and bayan (the corresponding English words […]
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Latinos in the End Zone: Conversations on the Brown Color Line in the NFL
Contrary to recent trends of major sport federations that popularize and narrate the sudden emergence of the Hispanic/Latino/Brown athlete in US sport through multicultural marketing campaigns, Latinos have long played a pivotal role in the creation, circulation and consumption of multiple sporting worlds across the North American continent. At least this is the case abundantly […]
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Lay Down Sally: Media Narratives of Failure in Australian Sport
This article analysis media narratives of failure in sport using a case-study of the collapse of Australian rower Sally Robbins at the 2004 Olympic Games. Media coverage of Robbins’ breakdown was driven by conflicting narratives. In the dominant version Robbins was initially denigrated as being ‘UnAustralian’. However, this disparagement precipitated several counter-narratives whereby Robbins was […]
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Leading Their Flocks to Health? Clergy Health and the Role of Clergy in Faith-Based Health Promotion Interventions
Faith-based organizations are a frequent partner in health promotion due to their large and expansive reach across multiple demographics of the United States. These faith-based organizations are led by clergy members who have a strong influence over their institutions and who shape the physical and social environments of their institutions for health-related matters. The purpose […]
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Learning the game: Football fandom culture and the origins of practice.
Based on the partial results of a doctoral programme, this article explores the significance of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice for explaining the experiential processes involved in becoming a football fan. Whilst recognizing value in the theoretical construct habitus, in the sense that football cultures appear to be self perpetuating (in part) based on histories […]
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Learning to be a ‘goody-goody’: Ethics and performativity in high school elite athlete programmes.
Over the past few decades, New Zealand schools have started elite athlete programmes (EAPs) to develop talented sportspeople. The purpose of this study was to evaluate teachers/coaches and elite athletes’ perspectives of their learning experiences in two EAPs. Ball’s concept of performativity and Gore’s techniques of power were integral in examining the relationships between power, […]
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Learning to get drunk: The importance of drinking in Japanese university sports clubs
This paper draws on two ethnographic research projects in Japanese university sports clubs to examine the role alcohol plays in the social and cultural education of students. Over the course of a four-year membership, the university sports club is a site where members learn to negotiate drinking. This negotiation is demonstrated by the range of […]
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Leveling the Playing Field? Perspectives and Observations of Coed Intramural Flag Football Modifications
Although sport is regarded as a bastion of male hegemony, coed settings offer females the opportunity to compete alongside males. Coed environments, however, often include rule modifications that intend to facilitate female participation, which promote female inferiority assumptions. This study sought to critique modifications in the divisive world of coed flag football through the lens […]
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Leveraging parasport events for community participation: Development of a theoretical framework
Research question: Sporting events have become highly sought after tools for economic, tourism, and social development in cities around the world; however, little is understood about how to effectively leverage events. This purpose of this paper is to present a framework for leveraging small-medium scale sporting events for increasing community accessibility and opportunities for persons […]
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Leveraging sport mega-events: new model or convenient justification?
A range of recent studies have shown that the social and economic impacts of mega-events are often disappointing. This has stimulated interest in the notion of leveraging; an approach which views mega-events as a resource which can be levered to achieve outcomes which would not have happened automatically by staging an event. This paper aims […]
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Leveraging the London 2012 Paralympic Games: What Legacy for People with Disabilities?
The International Paralympic Committee, U.K. Government, and the Organizing Committee for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games all contended that the London 2012 Paralympic Games would positively impact the lives of disabled people in the United Kingdom, particularly with regard to changing nondisabled attitudes toward disability. All three have claimed partial success during the […]
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LGBT inclusive athletic departments as agents of social change.
Despite advances, prejudice against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals continues to plague many areas of sport, including intercollegiate athletics. There are, however, some athletic departments that are inclusive of LGBT athletes, coaches, and administrators, and that have inclusive organizational cultures and practices. In this paper, the author draws from an institutional theory perspective […]
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Life at the track: Country race clubs and social capital
The aim of this article is to report the findings of a study that explored both the contributions of country race clubs to social capital within rural and regional communities as well as their utilization of social capital. The article reviews the key concepts associated with social capital and their relationships to sport, and presents […]
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Is There Salary Discrimination by Nationality in the NBA?: Foreign Talent or Foreign Market
The authority of the National Basketball Association (NBA) over the past decade has actively internationalized the game by recruiting potential international players and expanding overseas markets. This article examines the determinants of salaries for NBA players, aiming to identify the existence of nationality discrimination on players’ salary and whether the market size of international players’ […]
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Islam, Hijab and Young Shia Muslim Canadian Women’s Discursive Constructions of Physical Activity
This article focuses on the results of a study exploring young Shia Muslim Canadian women’s discursive constructions of physical activity in relation to Islam and the Hijab. The aims of the study were primarily informed by feminist poststructuralist and postcolonial theories. Poststructuralist discourse analysis was used to analyze the transcripts of conversations with 10 young […]
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Israel and a sports boycott: Anti-semitic? Anti-Zionist?
The paper identifies and summarises the debates that surround the place of Israel in international sport and assesses how that place is increasingly being contested. The long-standing conflict between Israel and Palestine has begun to manifest in the world of sport with the paper sketching the debates of those calling for, and those opposed to, […]
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ISSP Position Stand: Culturally competent research and practice in sport and exercise psychology
The multicultural landscape of contemporary sport sets a challenge to rethink sport and exercise psychology research and practice through a culturally reflexive lens. This ISSP Position Stand provides a rigorous synthesis and engagement with existing scholarship to outline a roadmap for future work in the field. The shift to culturally competent sport and exercise psychology […]
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It is never too late to win – sporting activities and performances of ageing women
Sport is an area in which masculinity, youth and their achievements are celebrated and rewarded. Thus, ageing women face a double barrier when they wish to participate and perform in an endeavour which is currently of major interest in the industrialized world. However, the understanding of women and ageing is undergoing change, because of changing […]
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It is Passable, I Suppose – Adult Norwegian Men’s Notions of Their Own Bodies
The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of how men aged 40–90 years with different educational and ethnic backgrounds talk about their own bodies, and how social dimensions, especially masculinity and age, are reflected in their talk. Eighteen men from a small rural town in Norway were interviewed. The findings […]
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It’s Actually Very Normal That I’m Different’. How Physically Disabled Youth Discursively Construct and Position Their Body/Self
In this paper, we explore how physically disabled youth who participate in mainstream education discursively construct and position themselves in relation to dominant discourses about sport and physicality that mark their bodies as ‘abnormal’ and ‘deviant’. We employ a feminist poststructuralist perspective to analyze the narratives about sport, physical education (PE), the body and self […]
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It’s not like you are less of a man just because you don’t play rugby’—boys’ problematization of gender during secondary school physical education lessons in New Zealand.
Despite clear messages from current physical education (PE) curricula about the importance of adopting socially critical perspectives, dominant discourses of gender relating to physical activity, bodies and health are being reproduced within this school subject. By drawing on interview data from a larger ethnographic account of boys’ PE, this paper aims to contribute to our […]
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It’s a Long Way to the Super League: The Experiences of Australasian Professional Rugby League Migrants in the United Kingdom
This article investigates the embodied experiences of a group of professional sports labour migrants whose experiences have largely been ignored by sociological literature: southern hemisphere rugby players playing professional rugby league in the United Kingdom. The migrant pathway from Australasia to the UK is well established. Moreover, rugby league is a sport in which debate […]
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It’s Just Girls’ Hockey: Troubling progress narratives in girls’ and women’s sport
The current historical moment abounds with social ideologies suggesting that girls’ and women’s sport has come a long way. Narratives of achievement, success and the gains that have ostensibly been made over the last three decades hold up these ideologies. In this interview-based study, we consider girls’ minor hockey in Southern Alberta, Canada to examine […]
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It’s Not That Easy Being Green: The Environmental Dimension of the European Union’s Sports Policy
This article starts from the assumption that the European Union (EU) could play a leading part in reducing the negative environmental impacts of sport. The extent to which the EU fulfills its potential in this regard depends upon the integration of environmental objectives in EU sports policy. The article has a dual purpose. First, it […]
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Jacques Mornève: Narrative Glorification of Catholic Sport
The article analysis the role of a writer committed to spreading moral and religious values and who, through popular sports novels, deciphers the signs concerning the spreading of ideological messages by Catholic intellectuals or those in charge of charity work. Following the trend of Catholic writers who wished to re-establish religion in France through complementary […]
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Just a wind-up? Ethnicity religion and prejudice in Scottish football-related comedy
This article probes how media representations of football in Scotland sustain the hegemonic ideologies associated with ethnicity and religion. The paper probes the football-related comedy output of one radio programme; radio output and football comedy are both neglected cultural material in studies of sport in Scotland. It argues that ambiguity and allusive language in comedy […]
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Just be empowered: how girls are represented in a sport for development and peace HIV/AIDS prevention manual.
HIV/AIDS prevention is often described as one way that sport for development and peace (SDP) organizations can contribute to international development, particularly through the empowerment of girls and young women. However, there has been little research examining how SDP organizations (re)produce gendered identities in educational texts for those identified as being at-risk for contracting HIV/AIDS, […]
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Just Don’t Hit On Me and I’m Fine: Mapping High School Wrestlers’ Relationship to Inclusive Masculinity and Heterosexual Recuperation
This article examines the gender and sexual understandings of high school wrestlers, mainly through the lens of inclusive masculinity theory. It does so by exploring the level of acceptance participants exhibited toward gay wrestlers, as well as by how they made sense of and negotiated the popular claim: ‘wrestling is gay.’ Through 10 months of […]
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Kicking “No-Touch” Discourses into Touch: Athletes’ Parents’ Constructions of Appropriate Coach–Child Athlete Physical Contact.
It has been suggested that sport is increasingly becoming a “no-touch zone” as some coaches, driven by a desire for self-protection, restrict their use of physical contact with (child) athletes in the belief that this reduces their risk of being accused of abuse. Research on coach–athlete physical contact is limited, however, and no studies have […]
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Intersecting Selves: African American Female Athletes’ Experiences of Sport
Stereotypes have the power to dynamically structure African American female athletes’ oppression (Buysse & Embser-Herbert, 2004; Kane, 1996), for example, by trivializing their athletic efforts (Douglas, 2002). The purpose of this paper was to examine how African American women athletes experience such stereotypes. Drawing from Collins (1990) and Crenshaw’s (1991) work on intersectionality, data were […]
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Intersectionality and Global Gender Inequality
Bose discusses how global intersectional projects have focused both on particular groups and on interactions between dimensions and demonstrates how systems generate intersectional effects. Here, she provides examples of international nongovernmental organizations that try to develop policies that deal with complex, multi institutional interactions, policies that reflect gendered inequalities as shaped by a range of […]
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Intersectionality, Microaggressions, and Micro-Affirmations: Toward a Cultural Praxis of Sport Coaching.
Despite its prevalence as a sensitizing concept for research in psychology, the sociology of sport literature on microaggressions is limited and it has not been used to understand sociocultural aspects of sport coaching. In this poststructural creative analytic practice, we provide three short stories of microaggressions in men’s sport coaching and their plausible negative effects […]
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Introduction to special issue on sport and alcohol: On the contemporary agenda of research on alcohol within the sociology of sport
This introductory essay by Special Issue Editor, Catherine Palmer, introduces a double issue of the International Review for the Sociology of Sport focused on the contemporary agenda of research on alcohol within the field of sociology of sport. In introducing the articles in the special issue, Palmer considers the diverse intersectional concerns relevant to understanding […]
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Introduction: Sociology as a combat sport.
This introduction sets out from the unresolved paradox to be found in the writings of Bourdieu, namely the theoretical impossibility of public sociology and his own sustained practical engagement with publics. I appropriate and develop his concept of the ‘field’ to account for his success as a public sociologist. It requires us to understand that […]
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Introduction: sport matters.
On Saturday October 15th 2011 Liverpool Football Club played Manchester United Football Club at Liverpool’s home ground, Anfield. England’s two most successful football (soccer) teams played out a closely fought 1-1 draw but the result of the game would be overshadowed by a series of verbal exchanges between two players. By the end of the […]
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Investigating corruption in corporate sport: The IOC and FIFA
Global sport governing bodies proclaim lofty ideals and espouse generic principles that set high moral standards for themselves and others. None more so than two of the world’s largest, most influential, and most high profile sporting organizations, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). Behind the façades of principled […]
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Investigating corruption in corporate sport: The IOC and FIFA.
Global sport governing bodies proclaim lofty ideals and espouse generic principles that set high moral standards for themselves and others. None more so than two of the world’s largest, most influential, and most high profile sporting organizations, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). Behind the façades of principled […]
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Invisible Women in America’s National Pastime
American popular culture holds that girls do not play baseball, and any news to the contrary is greeted with incredulity. But girls and women have played the national pastime since the game was first invented, in spite of the fact that softball has served as a vehicle for the most strident sex segregation in American […]
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Involvement in sport and social connectedness.
This paper explores the relationship between involvement in sport and non-sport community organisations and social connectedness. Data were collected on types of community involvement, selected demographic variables and social connectedness. The findings support the contention that involvement in sport organisations is associated with increased levels of social connectedness. Sport involvement was found to be a […]
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Iranian Women’s Sports Fandom: Gender Resistance and Identity in the Football Movie Offside
As sport enters new global territories, attending to questions of cultural difference is increasingly important to studies of women’s sports fanship. This article draws on theories of transnational feminism and feminist sports scholarship to contemplate the cinematic portrayal of the non-Western female football supporter. Women sports fans rarely appear as film protagonists, with the notable […]
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Is hockey just a game? Contesting meanings of the ice hockey life projects through a career-threatening injury
This study is situated within an existential-narrative theoretical framework to examine the impact of career-threatening injury on professional ice hockey players’ well-being and career construction. Professional ice hockey culture is construed as a privileged space characterised by hegemonic masculinity, fierce competition as well as high-risk behaviours often resulting in sports injuries. In this paper, we […]
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Is it in the Game? Reconsidering Play Spaces, Game Definitions, Theming, and Sports Video Games.
From the very first days of digital gaming, sport-themed video games have been a constant and ever-popular presence. However, compared with many other genres of games, sports-themed video games have remained relatively under researched. Using the case of “sports video games,” this article advocates a critical and located approach to understanding video games and gameplay. […]
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Is it possible to create a politically engaged, contextual psychology of disability?
Until recently disability studies has ignored questions regarding the psychological nature of oppression. Proponents of the social model have viewed such concerns as diversionary, diluting their emphasis on material and economic barriers to inclusion. This paper argues that the discipline’s role of reflecting and interrogating disablism will remain incomplete and lacking in transformative power without […]
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Is Nadeshiko Japan “Feminine?” Manufacturing Sport Celebrity and National Identity on Japanese Morning Television
When the Japan women’s soccer team, more affectionately dubbed “Nadeshiko Japan,” emerged FIFA World Cup champions in 2011, its members became celebrities overnight. However, central to their celebrityhood is the media’s obsession with “femininity.” Through constructing sport celebrities, or tarento (“talents”), I argue that the Japanese media shift between representations of Nadeshiko Japan as glorified […]
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Is Self-Sufficiency for Women’s Collegiate Athletics a Hoop Dream? Willingness to Pay for Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tickets
Universities spend almost $2 billion subsidizing their collegiate sports programs. Even the most popular women’s sport, basketball, fails to break even. An application of Becker’s theory of customer discrimination is used to calculate the relative preference for men’s basketball for both men and women. Median willingness to pay for men’s basketball relative to women’s basketball […]
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Is there an expertise of production? The case of new media producers
The rise of Web 2.0 has prompted debates around the legitimacy and contributions of professional and amateur producers in fields such as journalism and popular culture, but it also begs the question: what is the substance of the expertise now under threat by the anonymous, amateur masses? This article extends recent debates in Science and […]
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Inclusive masculinity and the gendered politics of men’s rugby.
This ethnographic research uses one year of participant observation and 24 interviews to examine the construction of masculinity among team-members within a highly successful rugby squad, at a high-ranked academic university in England. We find that the players and coaches share a sporting field in which variations in their gendered belief systems are sharply contested. […]
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Inclusive Soccer–Exclusive Politics? Sports Policy in Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement
This article examines the proposals of a ministerial advisory panel that was set up in 2000 to examine the problems confronting soccer in Northern Ireland, not least of which is that the game has been perceived to be administered by and for Ulster unionists. It is argued that although the panel made the case for […]
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Inconspicuous dressing: a critique of the construction-through-consumption paradigm in the sociology of clothing
Based on ‘wardrobe interviews’, this article studies how young Dutch men dress themselves. We argue that existing sociological studies of clothing have gone too far in emphasizing the symbolic aspects of clothing and have not paid sufficient attention to the role of routines and rules in daily dressing. Moreover, we find that young Dutch men […]
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Increasing Lower Extremity Injury Rates Across the 2009-2010 to 2014-2015 Seasons of National Collegiate Athletic Association Football: An Unintended Consequence of the “Targeting” Rule Used to Prevent Concussions?
Background: Sports-related concussions (SRCs) have gained increased societal interest in the past decade. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has implemented legislation and rule changes to decrease the incidence and risk of head injury impacts. The “targeting” rule forbids initiating contact with the crown of a helmet and targeting defenseless players in the head and […]
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Individual and contextual determinants of stable volunteering in sport clubs
This article addresses factors that influence voluntary sport club(VSC) members’ loyalty to voluntary engagement. The question asked is an issue of VSC volunteers’ commitment; whether they decide to quit or continue their engagement. A multilevel approach was used that considered both individual characteristics of volunteers and corresponding contextual features of VSCs to analyse members’ voluntary […]
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Individual and Institutional Influences on Faith-based Health and Wellness Programming
The majority of the US population is affiliated with faith-based organizations (FBO). Health and wellness activities (HWAs) within FBOs have great potential for reach, though the factors influencing faith-based HWA are not well understood. The purpose of this study was to examine individual faith leader and institutional influences on HWAs offered within FBOs. A national […]
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Inequality in Intercollegiate Athletics: Origins, Trends and Policies
In this paper, the author provides an overview of economic inequality in intercollegiate athletics, tracing it from its origins in the late 19th century, through home rule, the introduction of the NCAA’s national broadcasting policy and its subsequent regionalization after Oklahoma v. NCAA, conference realignments, RSNs, the BCS and NCAA distribution policies. The paper argues […]
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Infiltrating the boys’ club: Motivations for women’s fantasy sport participation.
Understanding gender differences in fantasy sport consumption involves in-depth assessment of personal attributes, consumption, sport fandom, and motivations to participate. The study addresses the area of gender and fantasy sport, examining motivation and consumption behaviors of men and women concerning this activity. In this research, a total of 530 men and women fantasy sport users […]
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Initiate: Constructing the ‘reality’ of male team sport initiation rituals
This article re-enacts a typical experience of male sport initiation at a university in the south of England and presents a confessional account of my own shifting epistemological position and desire to create more balanced, ethical, reflexive and self-effacing research. The tale of initiation is constructed from ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with male collegiate football […]
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