The 2020 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) Presidential Address analyzed aspects of the National Football League’s (NFL) current socially conscious marketing to make sense of corporatized racial justice politics following a summer of mass political mobilization triggered by the police killing of George Floyd. The analysis shows that the mass, multiracial racial justice activism

In this paper, which is a revised and modified version of the 2019 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Alan Ingham Memorial lecture, the author shares four views, contributions, and opportunities that sports sociologists might consider useful in how to decolonize as well as indigenize our discipline together. The need to actively engage in the theory and practice of how to decolonize

This article raises the ecological substance and relational co-constitution of bodies as a generative question for sociologists of sport and physical culture. It proceeds from our observation that recent research on the materiality of athletic bodies, and on the environmental issues in which sport is implicated, tends to run on parallel tracks. By exploring how biological, environmental, and social

The avant-garde has much to offer sport studies and many paths to explore for sport studies’ scholars. In this article, I makes a case for the use of the avant-garde as a metaphor for sport studies, sport scholars, and the public at large. To do this, I sketch out some of the foundational and pertinent characteristics of the avant-garde, provides exemplars from art, considers the similarities between

In October 2018, Canadian retailer Mountain Equipment Co-op publicly asked, “Do white people dominate the outdoors?” and acknowledged that their representations were “part of [a] problem.” Relying on Ahmed’s theorizations of diversity work, this paper offers an intersectional interrogation of Mountain Equipment Co-op’s (MEC’s) commitment to including more “diversity” in their representations and considers

This article draws on the responses of 2,347 football fans (male = 83.4%; female = 16.6%) collected via an online survey from September 2015 to January 2016 regarding the position of women (as fans, coaches, referees, journalists, board members, and administrators) in the gender order in men’s professional association football in the United Kingdom. Engaging with the theoretical framework of hegemonic

Policy makers often ascribe sports clubs an important societal role, as they can encourage the integration of people with amigration background. Questions then arise as to the extent that members with a migration background are integrated in sportsclubs and what the factors are that play a role in this integration. The data for this research are drawn from a comparative study of10 European countries

Despite an increase of advocacy by established nongovernmental sport organizations, little is known about how advocacy is enacted and with what effects. Building conceptually on frame alignment the ...

Pain has long been associated with sports participation, being analyzed variously as a physical phenomenon, as well as a socio-cultural construct in sport sociological literature. In this article, we employ a sociological-phenomenological approach to generate novel insights into the under-researched domain of ‘lived’ pain in competitive swimming. Analytic attention is paid to specific aspects of pain

The new urban sporting territory in Edmonton’s city center was constructed within the framework of continued settler colonialism. The main catalyst for this development was sport-related gentrification: a new, publicly financed ice hockey arena for the National Hockey League’s Edmonton Oilers, and a surrounding sport and entertainment district. This two-year ethnography explores this territory, in

Although women athletes in professional sport are uniquely positioned to expose the limits of gender essentialist ideology and challenge its relationship with inequality, little empirical research has considered how professional women athletes understand and negotiate gender ideologies. Drawing on 19 in-depth interviews and one e-mail exchange with U.S. women’s professional soccer players, this article

This article deploys a qualitative media content analysis to examine discourses linking sport, head injury, and longer term neurocognitive decline. It draws on a seminal British television documentary and associated print media coverage to demonstrate that the representation of sport-related brain injury is intricately connected to both conceptions of risk in sport and a wider social response to aging

This paper examines the articulation of the Black ghetto to authenticity through the involvement of hip hop star Jay-Z in two highly publicized basketball-related ventures during 2003. During that ...

Building upon prior theoretical and empirical work, this study explores the sport participation trajectories of children across different socio-economic status (SES) categories to assess the possib...

Using data from the Add Health, the authors consider whether male high school sport participation had an association with intimate partner violence perpetration into adulthood, controlling for other known predictors. Results show that sport participation is associated with a reduced risk of perpetrating intimate partner violence in adulthood, which the authors interpret as generally supportive of the

This article explores the nexus between power, sport, and disability with a focus on Deaf rugby in Fiji. Based on semistructured interviews with players, officials, and stakeholders, this article outlines their pursuit of rugby and participation in a recent international tournament under Fiji’s specific postcolonial social conditions. It examines what this experience means to the players and officials

Bicycles have been hailed by the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations for use in social and economic development. However, there is a lacuna of research exploring the value of bicycles for development (BFD) outside of Europe and America. Specifically, there is a lack of research on the structure and perspectives of BFD organizations. This study draws on 19 semistructured interviews with

This cultural-interpretive essay offers critical commentary on Koreanness, racial ideology, hegemonic racial power, and racialized cultural taste with the aim of interpreting the sport–music nexus by examining a case of the interface between music and sport: The authors focus on the case of the Olympic ice dance that the South Korean team performed for the Korean traditional folk song Arirang at the

Between 2000 and 2018, the number of fights in professional hockey decreased by more than half, reflecting rule changes intended to preserve player health. A 2019 playoff fight ignited debate on social media over the place of fighting in hockey. This research involved a content analysis of an incendiary tweet and the 920 replies it solicited. Content analysis confirmed that cultural backlash exists

This article contextualizes recent concerns about rest in the National Basketball Association by considering the concurrent rise of a promotional sleep culture. This work builds upon Grant Farred’s analysis of the event of the Black athletic body at rest. Drawing on research from the cultural studies of sport and the critical sleep literature, the author complicates the idea that rest, broadly conceived

The research examined spatiality of The Village during the Commonwealth Games XXI. Central to the research is the perspective of the parasport athlete. By foregrounding this perspective, new understandings of the geography of sporting spaces become possible. The integrated nature of the Games establishes The Village as a significant space to consider spatiality and disability. Ethnographic methodology

Previous researchers have demonstrated that sport participation can be a place of purpose, a place of celebrated deviance, and/or a value-neutral endeavor for children who have experienced developmental trauma. While previous research has focused primarily on sport as a positive influence, the purpose of this paper is to examine where disillusionment, disengagement, and damage occur through participation

This article presents the performance factors identified by Olympic athletes and analyzes how they were prioritized and implemented during the 2012–2016 Olympiad. To address this issue, 28 semistructured interviews were conducted with French athletes who participated in the Olympic Games in 2016. The analysis shows that to achieve performance, only two factors were implemented by all the athletes:

It is often claimed that elite sport success increases national pride as well as the international prestige of a country. To scrutinize this broad-shed assumption, we draw on data from an online su...

To date, no sociological studies of professional athletes have investigated the lived experiences of sportspeople in highly publicly-visible occupations that provide relatively few opportunities for back-stage relaxation from role demands. Drawing on findings from a British Academy-funded project examining high-profile sports workers, and employing Goffman’s dramaturgical insights, this article provides

Drawing on contact, social identity, and self-categorization theories, this study examines the extent to which adolescent sports participation associates with (a) concern about the treatment of min...

Journal Name: Sociology of Sport Journal Volume: 38 Issue: 1 Pages: 98-99

Recent scholarship suggests that women in martial arts and combat sports have increasingly begun to undo gender by challenging gender norms and constructing new femininities. Most of this research, however, has focused on gender dynamics within martial arts and combat sports settings, rather than outside of them. For this study, I conducted semistructured interviews with 40 professional women’s mixed

Families and sports are spaces for “doing” and “undoing” gender. The author presents qualitative interviews with 30 American men who recall their parents’ involvement in the gender atypical sport of baton twirling. The author analyzes the data using “doing” and “undoing” gender as well as “hard” and “soft” essentialism frameworks. Mothers are often supportive of their sons’ twirling, contributing to

In the 2016 National Football League (NFL) Draft, Moritz Böhringer became the first international player ever selected without having previously played in North America. The current study examined media coverage of Böhringer during the process of him being identified as an NFL prospect, working out for NFL scouts, being drafted, and trying to make an NFL roster. Ultimately, Böhringer was framed as

In 2019, the International Paralympic Committee produced a new strategy that highlighted the need to promote disability activism through Para sport. The purpose of this study is to understand what promoting disability activism through Para sport means to key stakeholders within an Irish national-level sociopolitical and Para sport context. Three groups of Irish stakeholders participated in interviews

Athletic success in women’s sports, in particular in women’s soccer, is strongly linked to macrolevel gender equality within societies. There is also evidence that macrolevel gender equality matters for sport consumption. This study explored the role of mesolevel institutions for the popularity of women’s soccer. The example of reunified Germany illustrates that macrolevel gender equality might be

Sport is often considered an important part of United Kingdom (U.K.) university life. However, a limited amount of research has explored inclusion in university sport, particularly considering student union officers’ perceptions. As part of a wider study on LGBT+ sport, a U.K.-wide survey was conducted with officers, alongside focus groups at four institutions. Findings suggest further action can be

In this study, scholarship was extended on the cultural meanings of race and athlete activism by interrogating one key media spectacle surrounding athlete protests: President Trump’s 2017 speech questioning the National Football League (NFL) players’ character, with a focus on NFL owners’ responses. The NFL owners’ statements (n = 32) were subjected to critical discourse analysis. Discourses of post-racial

Journal Name: Sociology of Sport Journal Volume: 37 Issue: 4 Pages: 376-377

The 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games (GC2018) were the first to offer equal medal opportunities to men and women as part of a broader strategic push by the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) to promote gender equality. In this article we analyze images of GC2018 sportswomen and associated headlines and captions in what we are calling “traditional” and “non-traditional” media outlets. At first glance

Curling was perhaps once the sport the least associated with discipline and athleticism, instead having a reputation for drinking and smoking, an ethos prizing conviviality over competition, and a ...

Journal Name: Sociology of Sport Journal Volume: 37 Issue: 4 Pages: 378-379

Social structure remains an equivocal term in (sport) sociology. Our understandings of its constitution and role in causally influencing behaviour are arguably underdeveloped. Using a critical realist approach, this paper examined how structural entities and reflexive agency combined to influence behaviour in an elite youth cricket context (e.g., athletes, coaches). A methodological bricolage was used

Academics and sport organizations have recently recognized Para-sport as a powerful platform for disability activism. However, little attention has been given to Para-sport activism in non-Western cultures. This study explored the influence of Confucianism on South Korean Para-sport activism. Data were collected through interviews conducted with four stakeholders from the Korea Paralympic Committee

There is a key tension associated with ethnographic explorations into the lives of people in the Global South – ‘outsider’ researchers from the Global North who lack experience of the environments they are seeking to understand. A considered response, therefore, is for scholars to seek physical immersion in a field—to live among those they are trying to understand. Such ethnographic inquiries are optimal

This article presents the findings of 2,415 posts collected from two prominent Australian Football League message boards that responded to a racist incident involving a banana being thrown at Adelaide Crows player, Eddie Betts, in August 2016. It adopts Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to examine the online practice of fans for evidence of racist discourse and the extent to which this was supported or

Diversity and representation in sport governing bodies has become an issue for both public discussion and academic debate in recent times. Previous work has primarily centered on gender inequalities within the forever changing masculine terrain of sport. However, no work has yet examined the representation and participation of young people in the decision-making structures of sporting bodies. This

In this article, which is an expanded and updated adaptation of the 2018 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Presidential Address, I look at the challenges and opportunities presented to the field by the Sokal 2.0 hoax. Specifically, I look at issues of epistemology and politics as expressed in, and produced through, the field(s) of sport sociology, physical cultural studies, and critical

Sociologists of sport and coaching have repeatedly drawn upon the theoretical tools of Michel Foucault to map and critique the negative effects of coaches’ use of disciplinary practices. Three SCCs and two coach developers participated in multiple learning community meetings interrogating Foucault’s concepts to understand how power moves, create new, less disciplinary practices, and address the problems

In this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight Victorian swimming coaches to examine the discourses of disability1 and inclusion that they expressed in relation to their current coaching practices. Analysis specifically pursued links between neoliberalism, ableism, elitism, classification and inclusion in coaching, with the intention of exploring what discourse relations are possible

Using Fragile Families data (N = 2,581), this study analyzes father’s engagement in sports and outdoor activities with their nine year-old child. It also considers the implications of these interactions for health and father-child relationships. First, the results indicate patterns of relatively high levels of father engagement. Most fathers reported doing sports or outdoor activities with their child

In this paper, we use data from focus group interviews with young athletes to explore their thinking about coach-athlete sexual relationships (CASRs). Our aim is to further the understanding of the ambivalence surrounding CASRs in the sports field, which are simultaneously viewed as ethically problematic and acceptable—at least when they involve high-profile adult athletes. Inspired by Swidler’s toolkit

Journal Name: Sociology of Sport Journal Volume: 37 Issue: 4 Pages: 380-381

We study (fe)male adolescents’ interest in watching sports as a spectator using logistic multilevel analyses based on a representative sample of 5837 Flemish (Belgian) pupils in the first year of s...

This study addressed the issue of interpersonal trust and distrust in the (sporting) workplace. Data were generated through cyclical, in-depth interviews with 12 community sports coaches. The interview transcripts were subjected to emic and etic readings, with Hardin and Cook’s theorization of (dis)trust and Goffman’s dramaturgical writings providing the primary heuristic devices. Our analysis produced

Women now compete in the Ultimate Fighting Championship for which Muay Thai is a feeder discipline. It is timely to analyze how the tools of this pugilist trade, women’s bodies, are lived and discursively positioned. We explore how bodily attributes (strength and beauty) are positioned vis-a-vis women fighters by drawing on 17 interviews with women Muay Thai fighters. We argue while women are in control

There exists a broad body of scholarly work that focuses on how communities, and individuals therein, mobilize, respond, and harvest collective action in response to tragedy. Despite this interest,...

There are two cultural narratives often purported within the American sports cultures of basketball and football. First, those participating within these sports are African American athletes from p...

The increasingly popular sport of feline agility animates human and feline bodies through the construction of rules, obstacles, technologies, and norms. Feline agility, then, involves the managemen...

In the past 15 years, sport scholars have expressed an increased interest in public sociology, while the rapid acceleration of digital media has led to significant shifts in the sport media landsca...

This article focuses on the reflections of 1,015 sports fans collected via an online survey from June 2017 to September 2017 regarding their experience and perception of risk, security, and terrori...

This paper concerns the performance of sport politics. We carry out a text analysis of a year-long media debate that raged in Norwegian newspapers throughout 2016. After the Medias had critiqued ho...