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New horizons in the sociology of sport

Richard giulianotti.

1 Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom

2 University of South-Eastern Norway(USN), Bø, Telemark, Norway

Ansgar Thiel

3 Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

The relevance of a sociological view on the problems of society has never been as important as it is today. To quote the editors of the journal Nature in their editorial, Time for the Social Sciences, from 2015: if you want science to deliver for society, you need to support a capacity to understand that society. In other words, the technological and scientific disciplines cannot simply transfer their findings into everyday life without knowing how society works. But this realisation does not seem to have caught on everywhere. The sociology of sport is entering a critical period that will shape its development and potential transformation over the next decade. In this paper, we review key features and trends within the sociology of sport in recent times, and set out potential future challenges and ways forward for the subdiscipline. Accordingly, our discussion spans a wide range of issues concerning the sociology of sport, including theories and approaches, methods, and substantive research topics. We also discuss the potential contributions of the sociology of sport to addressing key societal challenges. To examine these issues, the paper is organized into three main parts. First, we identify three main concentric challenges, or types of peripheral status, that sociologists of sport must confront: as social scientists, as sociologists, and as sociologists of sport, respectively. Second, we consider various strengths within the positions of sociology and the sociology of sport. Third, in some detail, we set out several ways forward for the sociology of sport with respect to positioning within academe, scaling up research, embracing the glocal and cosmopolitan aspects of sociology, enhancing plurality in theory, improving transnational coordination, promoting horizontal collaborations, and building greater public engagement. The paper is underpinned by over 60 years (combined) of work within the sociology of sport, including extensive international research and teaching.

Introduction

The sociology of sport is a relatively young sub-discipline. In the 19th and early 20th century, prominent sociologists and social psychologists, such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Thorstein Veblen, and Norman Triplett, already discussed sport as a social phenomenon, for example with regard to the dynamics of social competition [for a detailed discussion of the history of the sociology of sport, see for example ( 1 )]. 1 However, sport, but also the body as the instrument of competition, remained only a marginal note in sociological reflections on the changes that swept societies throughout the 20th century. One of the first large-scale works explicitly devoted to the sociology of sport was published in Germany in 1921 by the sociologist Heinz Risse. Even though the 1920s were characterized by a rapid growth of interest in sports as a topic of mass entertainment, Risse's work essentially remained an outsider's venture. The continued lack of acceptance of Risse's work in scientific circles is basically symbolic of the stereotypical devaluation of any kind of deeper scientific examination of the phenomenon of sport as a rather non-intellectual pursuit.

This marginalization of sport as an “unworthy” object of social-scientific research can ultimately be understood as the consequence of a Cartesian dualism that long anchored academic thinking. In 1641, Renè Descartes published his Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (English translation: Meditations on First Philosophy , 2008) ( 3 ) which contained the principles of Cartesian Dualism. Descartes argued that, on the one hand, physical substances (res extensae) were distinguished from mental substances (res cogitans), and, on the other hand, the body was considered only as an extended “thing” steered by volitional physical processes which are controlled by the mind. The assumption of an independence of the mind, even more, of the “I”, the subject, from a rather “machine-like” functioning body, characterized Western philosophical thinking for a long time, even among those who criticized Descartes' work. The realization that the “I” only exists as something physiological, and is therefore part of the body, was rather ignored, even though this approach was becoming increasingly prevalent in research in social-psychology and neurophysiology ( 3 ).

In the 1960s and 1970s, both the increasing sportification of society and the emerging scientification of sport, led to a growing international interest in research on sport as an important part of modern society. Numerous sociological studies, for example from Elias and Dunning ( 5 ), Edwards ( 6 , 7 ), Heinilä ( 8 ), Kenyon & Loy ( 9 ), Klein & Christiansen ( 10 ), Lüschen ( 11 , 12 ), McIntosh ( 13 ), and Rigauer ( 14 ), just to name a few, marked the beginning of the “take-off” of sport sociology at universities, particularly in Europe and North America, where higher education, especially in the social sciences, was experiencing significant expansion. It was no coincidence to observe during this period an accumulation of international publications on the sociology of sport from a variety of academics. Thus, in the 1960s, the discussion about the significance of sport as a sociological object of research intensified, as did the question of suitable theories and research methods for studying sport. This discussion ultimately preceded the founding of the International Committee for the Sociology of Sport (ICSS) in 1965. Clearly then, and most appropriately, the modern genesis of the sociology of sport was very much an international process, involving many academics, and carrying a strong social and collaborative impulse to advance the development of the fledgling subdiscipline.

However, even though the following two decades could be considered as a phase of establishment and consolidation of sport sociology at universities in Europe and North America, it has been a long road to gain full acceptance for sport as a subject fit for scientific study. In 1972, Eric Dunning wrote that “it is clear that the sociology of sport is not yet widely regarded by sociologists as an area posing problems of sociological importance” [( 15 ): 101]. More than 25 years later, Dunning still saw the need to speak to this status concern, giving his sociological study of sport, violence, and civilization the umbrella title Sport Matters ( 16 ).

The sociology of sport shares this need to highlight and justify the importance of its subject matter with other sport science sub-disciplines in higher education, but also with physical education (PE) in school systems. Indeed, the reputation of the PE teaching profession is comparably low, sports lessons are sometimes taught by unqualified substitute teachers, while PE classes often undergo cuts in school curricula to accommodate other subjects (notwithstanding global medical concerns over the lack of physical activity among young people).

The international sociology of sport faces the further challenge that, as its subject is not only scientifically marginalized, so its scholars from different countries sometimes have differing conceptual understandings of “sport” per se . What is meant by “sport” is by no means unambiguous ( 17 ). In the German-speaking world, for example, even the everyday use of the term “sport” is very heterogeneous. Sport can be going to the gym, a morning jog, a yoga class, or even exercise therapy in the context of rehabilitation from coronary diseases. In contrast to the broad German meaning, “sport” is defined more clearly in the English language. Hence, for example, a more consistent distinction is made between “sport” and “physical activity” or “exercise”. The latter terms refer, often interchangeably, in common parlance to a broad spectrum of activities, such as walking and cycling through to systematic training regimes. In contrast, “sport”, on the other hand, usually refers to a form of physical activity that is characterized by an unproductive and rule-governed form of competition (cf. Caspersen, Powell & Christenson, 1985) ( 18 ). In this regard, the competitive aspect seems to be almost more significant for the understanding of the term “sport” than the physical activity, as sports such as darts, snooker and, more recently, e-sports make clear.

In line with the conceptual difference between a rather broad and a rather narrow understanding of the term, the institutional problems that the sociology of sport has to deal with are also not consistent in every respect in an international comparison. For example, networking between sociologists of sport and medical doctors, who study the benefits of physical training for heart health, may be easier in German-speaking and Scandinavian countries than in English-speaking countries, since health-oriented physical training is not necessarily an obvious subject for the sociology of sport in the Anglophone world. At the same time, we recognize too that academics may purposively seek to surmount these linguistic and disciplinary hurdles through pursuing collaborative research.

In the following, we will take a closer look at the current state of the sociology of sport, without wanting to go into too much detail about international differences. In doing so, we review key features and trends within the sociology of sport in recent times, and set out potential future challenges and ways forward for the subdiscipline.

The challenged status of social science, sociology, and the sociology of sport: periphery 1,2,3

It is not only the subdiscipline of the sociology of sport, but also the parent discipline of sociology, that continues to face a variety of major challenges with respect to its status and recognition. General concerns about the decline or demise of sociology are not particularly new: perhaps most famously, more than 50 years ago, Alvin Gouldner ( 18 ) anticipated a crisis in “Western sociology”. Yet it is our contention that these crises of sociology and sport sociology have reached particularly acute points in recent times.

It was not always so. Indeed, in the early 19th century, and prior to the founding of sociology per se as an academic discipline, the social philosopher Auguste Comte had envisioned that a preeminent “queen science” would be concerned with the study of human society ( 20 ). Yet, since the discipline was established, most sociologists have found themselves working in decidedly republican rather than regal times, where the prospect of ascent to an academic throne has long since been guillotined.

Here, we examine the marginal status of sociology and the sociology of sport with respect to three levels of peripherality: periphery 1 (as a social science), periphery 2 (as sociology, the discipline), and periphery 3 (as sociology of sport, the subdiscipline). We explore each of these levels primarily with respect to the academy, while also referring to other domains, such as policy and politics, and society and the wider public sphere.

Periphery 1 : the Status of the social sciences

To begin with, in the first level of peripherality ( periphery 1 ), most social sciences have a weak status both within their universities, and in the national and international academic sectors, compared to the natural sciences. That peripherality is further weakening in several ways. On the one hand, social sciences have to compete with natural sciences for research funding. Over the last few years, there has been a tendency for social science to increasingly fall behind scientific-technological and medical projects in this area. In this context, particularly the research of newer technologies, such as AI, IoT, and quantum computing, competes with the social sciences for the distribution of funding. On the other hand, the peripherality of social sciences is manifested in its increasing replacement by the discipline of ethics when it comes to researching consequential problems of scientific-technological or medical innovations. This holds true for large-scale scientific-technological and medical research in general. Social scientific expertise is obviously not esteemed enough to become an indispensable part of corresponding projects. In contrast, there is hardly any medical research on a larger scale on societally relevant issues without the involvement of representatives from the ethics of science. The apparent omnipotence of ethical reflections is also evident in the power attributed to ethics committees with respect to the conception of research designs and thus the perspective on the phenomenon under investigation. Critics claim that the interventions of ethics committees can lead to considerable losses in quality with regard to the analytical acuity of the investigation itself [cf ( 21 ).]. Israel and Hayes even note that “social scientists are angry and frustrated. They believe their work is being constrained and distorted by regulators of ethical practice who do not necessarily understand social science research. In the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, researchers have argued that regulators are acting on the basis of biomedically driven arrangements that make little or no sense to social scientists” [( 22 ), p. 1].

For medical research, the ethics of science has become a multi-purpose weapon for analyzing non-medical issues, both as part of the research group itself and also as an institution of meta-reflection on research. Thereby, it obviously does not matter that the competence of ethics of science rather lies in initiating (quite necessary) debates about relevant moral questions and providing guidance for concrete action (applied ethics) than in the systematic reflection of consequential societal problems of medical research. There is a fundamental difference between ethics and social science with regard to how scientific problems are approached. Zussman ( 23 ) argues, for example, that sociologists cannot answer normative questions that constitute the core of medical ethics, but they can provide a “realist” critique of medical ethics in practice, for example, by analyzing the reasons why physicians persistently deflect challenges to their authority or under what circumstances patients are able to autonomously decide on therapeutic options. In this sense, we do not argue for the abolition of ethical reflections on scientific, technological and medical research, but note that ethics is far from being able to cover all the questions that arise in connection with such research.

Some prominent natural scientists have obviously already recognized this when doubting that the technological and scientific disciplines can transfer their findings into everyday life without knowing how society works. A Nature ( 24 ) editorial titled “Time for the social sciences” emphasized the relevance of social scientific expertise for natural scientific and technological research. The editors stated that “governments that want the natural sciences to deliver more for society need to show greater commitment towards the social sciences and humanities” [( 24 ), 7,532]. Summarizing the key message of the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser's annual report for 2014 (Walport & Beddington, 2014) ( 25 ) they added that “if you want science to deliver for society, you need to support a capacity to understand that society” [( 24 ), 7,532].

From this, we might ask: How can social science manage to make itself heard? And what type of social scientific research is best positioned to be heard? The societal environment of social sciences certainly seems to have specific expectations of their services. Both medicine and scientific-technological researchers, but also the media, which report on scientific results and their practical applicability, obviously tend to prefer relatively quantitative, causal, and predictive research findings, that are rooted in large-scale datasets, and which can, for example, provide politicians and other key decision-makers with “hard data” about prospective returns on their investments. Conversely, much of social scientific research generates qualitative, interpretive, and highly contextual findings that are usually rooted in relatively small-scale empirical studies, and which are less focused on generating predictions or policy recommendations. The challenge for social scientists, then, is to find ways of responding to these circumstances, to find explanatory techniques for engaging these audiences, or to endure continuing, perhaps even intensified, peripherality vis-à-vis the natural sciences, with all the attendant institutional consequences.

Periphery 2 : the Status of sociology

A second level of peripherality—the periphery-squared or periphery 2 —involves the relatively weak standing of the discipline of sociology within the social sciences on the one hand and politics and policy on the other hand. In a similar way as compared to the social/natural science power imbalance, the lower status of sociology compared to a host of other social sciences such as economics, political science, and social psychology, is reflected in interrelated areas such as research funding and impact, student recruitment, the professional or career pathways that are afforded to sociology graduates, and the lack of influence of sociological research in the private and public sectors. A relative exception lies with demographers and other quantitative sociologists, whose “scientism”, in Gouldner's phrase, in regard to methods, findings, and recommendations, mirrors those within the natural sciences in ways that tend to be favoured by external research partners. Arguably in the UK and other nations, sociology has also been one of the disciplines most adversely affected by financial squeezes on social science, and on higher education more generally, which have occurred since the 1990s.

Sociology has been adversely affected by the long-standing hegemony of neoliberal social and economic policies, which emphasize individualism and self-responsibility, in marked contrast to the themes of society and social interdependencies that underpin much sociological scholarship. Additionally, there are few if any sociologists who can justifiably be described as public intellectuals in terms of social profile and influence. Arguably the situation has worsened since the 1980s and 1990s when Ulrick Beck, Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and Jurgen Habermas exercised significant presence in political and wider public debates. The lack of awareness of sociologists and sociological research by policymakers may also stem from sociology's failure to generate public interest. The observation that “Sociology is only marginally recognized by its own subject: society” describes this problem very accurately. Sociology generates a lot less social and political resonance than it actually should. This became abundantly clear during the Covid-19 pandemic, when its causes and consequences were almost entirely considered from a medical-scientific perspective, more precisely by virologists and epidemiologists. In contrast, the social consequences of the pandemic were as much neglected as its social dynamics. Certainly, questions with social scientific relevance were raised by both health policymakers and journalists. For example, there were strong discussions on how to allocate intensive care beds in the event of insufficient capacity, taking into account socio-economic and educational inequalities. Another topic concerned socially just vaccination priorities, considering the assurance of medical care, the issue of maintaining the economy and work vis-à-vis pandemic lockdowns, and the provision of cultural and leisure activities. Not least, critical journalists asked how medicine can meet the needs of socio-economically disadvantaged groups in the pandemic, or to what extent high-income countries should support low-and middle-income countries in coping with Covid-19 and its consequences. All these questions have direct thematic relevance to the core area of sociology. However, despite some exceptions, sociology has obviously not succeeded in convincing politicians or medical, epidemiological, and virological scientists of its particularly well-developed theoretical and methodological competence for analyzing the most complex, interconnected, and societal problems.

Two further points might be made here on the factors that lurk behind sociology's limited purchase in policy and public domains. First, the self-referentiality of sociology may be one hurdle. The prominent sociologist Peter Berger once said that “it is fair to say that the first stage of wisdom in sociology is that things are not what they seem” (2011: 41) ( 26 ). Sociological theorizing does not have a practical value per se . To critically reflect on everyday theories and to “de-construct” popular interpretations of patterns within social phenomena is a merit in itself. However, critical reflections produce little effect if they do not reach the public. In sociology itself, however, the question of how to generate political and/or public interest, seems to be discussed rather little. Rather, discussions on science-policy are largely limited to (often self-defeating) arguments about methodological paradigms (e.g., qualitative vs. quantitative research), the appropriate degree of advocacy (e.g., critical vs. descriptive-explanatory research), or basic epistemological questions (e.g., anti-positivism vs. positivism). The continuous questioning of competing theoretical models for the description and explanation of social phenomena and empirical methods for their recording is certainly necessary to keep pushing the discipline forward. From a social scientific perspective, this makes sense because critical thinking is an essential prerequisite of systematically “scrutinizing” theoretical assumptions, and replacing them with theories that carry a higher explanatory power. Positively speaking, sociologists cultivate “a kind of “art of distrust” (not only) towards the self-evident facts of everyday life” (Eickelpasch, 1999: 10) ( 27 ), but also towards the fruits of their own creations. More problematically, for non-sociologists, these important practices may resemble a form of obscure sociological navel-gazing that has no obvious beneficial outcome.

Second, and in part following from this, sociologists may also appear to be unduly preoccupied in some contexts—especially in German-speaking countries—with often fractious and inconclusive debates on the status or meaning of “critical thinking” within their discipline. The discussion on the extent to which sociology may engage in “advocacy” goes back to Max Weber and received special attention through the controversy between the sociologists Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann. This dispute was basically about whether it is sufficient for sociology to limit itself to describing how society changes, but not how it should change. (Note: here, in line with the philosophical tradition of “critical theory”, the term “critical” refers at least in part to the advocacy of social change and to envisioning alternative ways in which society should be organized.) The criticism of an “apolitical” sociology was that an exclusively “uncritical” sociology could not initiate any necessary social changes but would ultimately have a rule-legitimizing function. Luhmann's counterargument was that (normative) criticism of existing conditions leads to hasty judgments. Thus, the attempt to prove the possibility of a “better” society fails because of the complexity of the world; accordingly, criticism falls into inconsequential humanity. We return to this question of critical thinking later on, but here, the key point is that, to outside observers, sociologists fail to communicate the significance of such debates, and thus appear overly distracted with such concerns. In this sense, sociology is confronted with the dilemma of the simultaneous need for analytical value freedom and inspiration for social change. On the one hand, there are political, policy, public, and, in some areas, philosophical expectations that the “critical” standpoints of sociologists should include normative sketches of alternative social arrangements. On the other hand, however, there is the counter-expectation that such normative statements automatically fail to encapsulate or to account for the complexity of society. This latter position further contends that, to the extent that sociology claims the competence to make normative statements, it inevitably disavows its scientific analyses. From these types of debates, we would highlight the broader point, that the “critical” is understood in diverse ways within sociology, and that such diversity is indicative of the vitality of the discipline, and also its positive capacity to investigate and to engage with social phenomena in a variety of ways.

Periphery 3 : the Status of the sociology of sport

All of these challenges are magnified when we move from the positions of social science, and of sociology, to examine the specific standing of the sociology of sport, which occupies a third level of peripherality—the periphery cubed or periphery 3 —within academe, as well as in other, non-academic domains.

In academe, there are dual challenges for the sociology of sport, in its overlapping positioning within the fields of sociology and sport studies. On one hand, within the general sociological community, the subdiscipline's struggle for recognition and credibility is evidenced by the rarity with which it variously is taught or researched within mainstream sociology departments; contributes papers to leading sociology journals, particularly in the United States; and secures significant levels of competitive research funding from major foundations. At the same time, the topic of “sport” in general sociology tends to be a pastime for scholars who otherwise deal with topics such as social inequality, the evolution of the financial system, the family, or conflict, and so on. To adapt Rowe's ( 25 ) observation of sports journalism within the news media, sociologists have long tended to view sport as the “toy department” of their discipline, in marked contrast to deeply established subject areas, some of which, such as religion, have been in long-term decline in many late modern societies. This corresponds with the fact that chairs designated for sport sociology are at many universities either nonexistent or still located in institutes of sports science. Hence, one could say that the institutional problems with which the sociology of sport must deal have changed less than we representatives of the subdiscipline might wish.

On the other hand, in sport studies, the sociology of sport faces a further set of challenges at two main levels. First, at the level of periphery 1 , sociology and the other social sciences tend to have relatively marginal statuses in sport studies overall. For example, the natural rather social sciences tend to hold greater influence and presence in many departments or schools that focus on sport, physical activity, and/or exercise (or “kinesiology”, in North America). They are also viewed—by schools, faculties, and universities—as much better placed than the social sciences for attracting students, research, and enterprise income, and for influencing policy and practice within the sport sphere. Second, at the level of periphery 2 , within the social sciences of sport, sociology also faces significant challenges. Other social sciences in sport—such as sport management and those in the business spheres—are seen as having greater practical and vocational relevance, and are able to attract more students, particularly international postgraduates, by offering more direct entry to preferred employment and careers. These developments reflect a wider criticism that the sociology of sport has been slow to respond to the large and rapid expansion of the global “sport industry” since the 1980s.

These challenges have long-term consequences for the sociology of sport within academe. They threaten the volume and quality of funded research, and subsequent publications, within the subdiscipline. Many students (as future academics)—whether on sociology, social science, or sport studies undergraduate or postgraduate degree programmes—have relatively fewer opportunities to study the sociology of sport in some depth and detail. Hence, we find that many of those whom we do attract into the sociology of sport—such as PhD students, association members, and prospective contributors to subdiscipline journals—have not had the benefit of an initial, substantial grounding in the subdiscipline or in the parent discipline of sociology.

In turn, the sociology of sport finds itself in a recruitment dilemma. On the one hand, young sport sociologists need to complete their qualified training in sociology, to know and be able to apply the most important theories and methodological approaches on sport specific phenomena. On the other hand, sport is a highly complex subject that cannot be adequately understood by only observing sporting events, as some sociologists and economists still claim today. To analyze sports in a competent scientific manner, sports sociologists also need at least a basic understanding of wider sport-related issues and processes, such as how movement and training processes work, how tactical systems evolve, or what the motives of different population groups are for doing sports. Hence, an education in sports science makes perfect sense. Yet, alone, it is not sufficient for research in the sociology of sport. If young researchers in sports sociology are recruited from sports science, kinesiology, or physical education, then they must therefore acquire sociological knowledge during their doctoral studies, just as sociologists without sports science training would benefit from familiarizing themselves with other disciplines within the sport and physical activity fields, such as exercise physiology, biomechanics, sport psychology, and sport pedagogy.

Overall then, the sociology of sport finds itself in a position where three layers of peripherality (as social science, discipline, and subdiscipline) are in play. In passing, we might note too that these insights provide an uncomfortable contextualization to any references to “stars” within the subdiscipline. As sociologists, we consider it important to set out the context in which the subdiscipline is located before turning to discuss the strengths and potential ways forward for sociologists of sport.

Strengths in the position of sociology and the sociology of sport

We may highlight some of the potential strengths and positive aspects of sociology and the subdiscipline of the sociology of sport vis-a-vis academe and in wider non-academic contexts.

First, the fundamental premise of sociology should be viewed as a core strength in securing and enhancing the discipline's academic and wider standing. In 1987, the UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, opined that, “there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.” 2 In contradistinction to this New Right, neoliberal credo, sociology is the academic discipline that, more than any other, reminds us that there is such a thing as human society. There are very strong audiences for that social philosophy in most if not all societies. Moreover, it is also a central tenet of most social sciences.

Second, as we have indicated earlier, the diversity of critical dimensions of sociology, and the sociology of sport, represent a further positive. The task of sociology is not to substantiate what seems to be self-evident, but to reveal the contradictions inherent in it. In this sense, the rejection of critical analysis of social reality, with reference to Weber's postulate of value freedom ( 26 ), is based on a misunderstanding. Critical thinking also has a function from a Weberian perspective, for example, to the evaluation of a means to fulfill a purpose, i.e., whether the use of a means is appropriate to that purpose. To think “critically”, however, from this perspective, should not mean to base sociological analysis on premises foreign to science, for example, on politically motivated a priori distinctions of “good” and “bad”. In this sense, by critical, we we are referring to what sociologists sociologists, in the course of their analysis of academic literature and while undertaking social research, should focus on: de-constructing any errors, misunderstandings, inconsistencies, and contradictions that may be identified in the scientific, politic, medial, and public descriptions of social issues; examining the key features and patterns of social relations; comparing and contrasting, and identifying strengths and limitations, in theories, policies, and patterns of social relations; highlighting and investigating social relations of power, as characterized for example by social inequalities and divisions; and, identifying alternative possibilities for how societies may be organized, including within particular areas of social life, such as in sport. This type of critical ethos within the discipline has strong resonance across diverse social groups, who are both curious and furious about how sport and wider aspects of society are organized, and how power is unequally distributed in ways that lead to marginalizing and depriving outcomes for many.

Third, we appreciate also that sociology has consistently been an avant-garde discipline, in terms of identifying and highlighting progressive public issues that go on to gain some traction with wider publics, policy-makers, and corporations. Areas such as EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) and ESG (environment, social and governance)—that are rooted in themes relating to social division and social justice, which have long been a major concern for sociologists—are illustrative of this avant-garde impulse. Sociologists had been highlighting forms of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of social abuse, discrimination, and intolerance within sport long before these were addressed as serious social issues by most sport authorities. There is then the need for sociologists to continue exploring progressive new domains of research and social commentary, where they may have future influence. One approach here would be for (sport) sociologists to consider alternative possibilities for the social organization of sport for two decades' time, and to think about what social roadmap would be required to get there.

Fourth, the plural, diverse, and in many ways diffuse disciplinary nature of sociology is a strength. Unlike some other subjects such as economics or law, which rather restrict entry into their respective academic fields, sociology has been and continues to be open to diverse disciplinary contributions and influences. This is very much a two-way street: sociology has always bled into, and been significantly shaped by, other disciplines, particularly related ones such as anthropology, education, history, human geography, political science, social policy, and social psychology. Sociology is also a core constituent of many of the transdisciplinary “studies” domains, such as the vast field of cultural studies, which to a large extent encompasses other, more specific fields such as gender studies, race and ethnicity studies, and LGBTQ+ studies; as well as in the similarly vast, if rather different domain of “business studies” or “management studies”. Particularly in management studies, there is reason enough to apply sociological knowledge when analyzing the organization of sport. Many sports organizations, for example, are not commercial enterprises but voluntary organizations. However, blindly applying economic concepts to volunteer organizations negates the fact that the two types of organizations follow completely different operational logics ( 27 ). On the other hand, intellectual exchanges and collaborations with these other disciplines and transdisciplines help to invigorate and to revitalize sociology, through the infusion of fresh research theories, methods, and paradigms. They also highlight how sociology's influence in academe may be relatively broad and diffuse, reaching well beyond the formal (and, usually, shrinking) realms of academic departments of sociology.

Fifth, following from this, we may identify a diffuse influence of sociology within wider non-academic spheres—in politics, social administration, media, business, civil society, and so on. The point here might be more clearly made if we differentiate between “capital S” Sociology, representing the institutionalized master discipline as practiced by recognized, professional sociologists, often operating within named Sociology departments; and “small s” sociology, as practiced by anyone who draws upon sociological ideas, keywords, principles or themes, even without recognizing their formal association with the discipline of sociology per se . This connects to the earlier points on the avant-garde aspects of sociology, in fields such as social inclusion. It is here, in “small s” sociology, that the discipline might exercise its best influence, such as through feeding sociological themes and approaches into diverse degree programmes, research projects, policy analysis and guidance, and public debates.

Sixth, the sociology of sport has a particular need to be open to transdisciplinary views on the phenomena it is dealing with. Due to the complexity of the subject of sport and due to the necessity of frequently also having to consider economic, psychological or even physiological aspects when analyzing the sport of society, sociologists of sport have to be generalists in a certain sense. The advantages of the generalist perspective are at least two-fold. On the one hand, it ensures that the problems of sport, which are usually very complex and demand multidisciplinary study, can be understood as a whole. On the other hand, researchers in the sociology of sport are also predestined to look beyond the confines of their own subdiscipline, which in turn makes it easier to collaborate with colleagues from other scientific disciplines.

Seventh, sociologists of sport have to find ways to secure positions within academe. These prospects continue to be squeezed by the contraction and in some cases closure of sociology departments, research units, and degree programmes for a variety of stated reasons. In response, many sociology units have innovated by connecting or combining with other disciplines—such as criminology or social policy—which appear to attract more students and/or research funding. 3 In sport studies, the most obvious partner discipline is sport management, which tends to attract larger cohorts of students, particularly at postgraduate level, while affording opportunities for collaborative research and teaching, notably in areas such as social inclusion and sport for development. Indeed, it may be that such a necessary, pragmatic approach will involve “small s” rather than “capital S” sociology continuing to operate in sport studies degree programmes or departments. For example, while named “Sociology of Sport” degree programmes may be closed due to low student recruitment, it may remain feasible to feed sociological content into courses at more everyday levels through lectures and seminars. Such innovative responses will vary by context—particularly along national or regional lines, where the discipline and subdiscipline will encounter different pressures and potential opportunities—but are likely to continue to be required at least in the medium term.

Ways forward for the sociology of sport

We have discussed in detail the problematic status and other challenges that face sociology and the sociology of sport, as well as various strengths in their positions particularly within academe. It is appropriate now for us to turn here to consider some of the ways forward for the discipline and subdiscipline in this regard. There are several ways in which sport sociologists may respond here, and we begin by assessing their positionings within academe.

Positioning within academe

First, the theme of interdisciplinarity in academic work has been advocated, celebrated, and even fetishized for several decades; it has also been heavily commodified through the allocation of funding—from small travel grants through to multi-million Euro research programmes—to those who commit to undertake such work. Moreover, universities are increasingly set up to facilitate such work, notably through interdisciplinary research centres and Institutes for Advanced Studies. Here, we echo these calls for interdisciplinary activity, but would add that such work involving sociologists needs to be adventurous and open-ended wherever possible, involving for example looking beyond close, cognate disciplines (such as anthropology, history, political science) to explore collaborations with a wider array of disciplines, including in the natural sciences. The structure of sport studies departments—in which the social and natural sciences coexist—provides comparatively favourable ground for exploring such collaborations. One potential consequence is to enable sociologists to be more actively engaged in high prestige, large scale, and heavily-funded research programmes that tend otherwise to be fully dominated by the natural sciences.

Second, to build on our points earlier, we note the need for the sociology of sport to engage with other academic disciplines and subdisciplines in open, collegiate, mutually beneficial ways. On one hand, there is the concern to enhance the full participation of sociologists of sport within interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research projects and other academic initiatives. Such collaborations across disciplines have come to dominate the research funding landscape, hence the subdiscipline needs to follow this path for strategic as well as for intellectual and wider academic reasons. On the other hand, sociologists of sport would do well to engage more with, and to gain enhanced inspiration from, the broader, parental discipline of sociology. This would enable the subdiscipline to draw more fully on emergent and diverse sociological theories and methods; to highlight the work of prominent “mainstream” sociologists (such as Wacquant) who engage with sport; and, to draw more of these scholars into projects and papers on the sociology of sport. These wider engagements would serve to underline the legitimacy, significance, and vibrancy of the subdiscipline, and to start to tackle its peripherality, vis-a-vis wider communities of scholars in sociology and social science.

Third, sociologists, whether in sport or in other fields, would do well to maximize their social, cultural, and political capital within academe. University leadership roles—such as Rectors (the head of universities), Deans (of Faculties), and Heads of School—provide important positions that, ceteris paribus , may serve to safeguard the interests of sociology and other social sciences, when alternative leaders, drawn from other disciplines, may be decidedly more skeptical or even hostile. Further beneficial leadership roles in this regard include those within national and international academic associations and networks, particularly those that encompass a wide spectrum of social sciences or both social and natural sciences; and those that offer formal connections between the academy and important external organizations, such as with global sport governing bodies or UN agencies.

Fourth, in part to enhance its positioning within academe, the sociology of sport needs to be agile, inventive, and relevant in both the research that it undertakes, and in its external activities. Sociologists benefit from commitments to investigating fresh substantive areas, particularly given that sport is constantly being shaped and reshaped in economic, social, cultural, political, environmental, and technological terms. Such a research approach is more likely to enable sociologists of sport to collaborate with other disciplines that are concerned (and, often, funded) to investigate cutting-edge issues. The development of original research is also significantly enhanced if sociologists of sport engage with and potentially draw upon innovative aspects, in theory and in substantive research, within the parent discipline of sociology as well as in other disciplines or fields, such as anthropology, cultural studies, development studies, geography, international relations, and political science. Further benefits can only accrue from continuous self-critical inquiry, asking for example, what fresh theories, methods, concepts, keywords, research topics, and pedagogical techniques might be explored by us. The alternative approach—involving an instinctive, even institutionalized reluctance to explore fresh thinking—not only makes for a stultifying and boring subdiscipline. It also makes the subdiscipline appear somewhat ossified to our colleagues in mainstream sociology and other disciplines—and thus, far less likely to be considered as a worthwhile research collaborator.

Fifth, all research fields, as international communities of practice, prosper when diverse scholars engage in collegiate collaborations, and in open and temperate debates. The sociology of sport has many such examples involving teams of scholars who operate within and/or across different institutions, for example in teaching units and research projects, or in collaborative publications and gatherings at conferences. As new generations of scholars emerge, often without lifelong commitments to “defending” fixed theories and paradigms, there also appear to be fewer vituperative exchanges or interrelations than in the past few decades. Moreover, in the post-Covid academic environment, we detect strong atmospheres of friendly sociality and restored community within at least some sociology of sport gatherings. It is vital that the sociology of sport builds on such collaborative and collegiate activity to safeguard the subdiscipline.

Scale up: towards large-scale research collaborations

The sociology of sport, and indeed the wider social scientific study of sport, continues to do research that is mostly qualitative and relatively small-scale, and which commonly features individual studies of specific groups, communities, or organizations with reference to involvements in sport or physical activity. Much of this work also reflects a “methodological nationalism”, in terms of empirical focus, research team collaboration, and/or academic reference points. Even comparative studies continue to be small scale, usually focusing on a handful of research groups or locations, while engaging relatively small research teams. This stands in marked contrast to much quantitative research, especially in the natural sciences, which has the capacity to generate much wider-reaching data, and benefits increasingly from technological advances that allow for rapid large-scale data production and processing, and for the meshing of multiple datasets. Such research is also more likely to be undertaken or written up by relatively large teams of researchers, who may each contribute their own data sets, or diverse types of expertise for producing and analysing data—hence, the large numbers of co-authors that we find on many quantitative papers. Furthermore, this large-scale approach carries appeal for many grant-making foundations and external stakeholders—whether in policy, commercial, or civil spheres—in terms of promising findings with relatively greater reach, reliability, and validity, which may in turn guide investments and other strategic actions by key decision-makers.

Here, we call for academics and students in the sociology of sport, particularly those working with qualitative methods, to consider how they may “scale up” their research activities and aspirations. By “scaling up”, we are referring to various potential actions, most obviously the extensive enlargement of research teams, and/or a substantial increase in the number or variety of social groups or locations that are the focus for research. There is, then, every reason for scaled-up research in the sociology of sport to engage research teams of 20+ scholars working in a similar number of locations. Such scaling up of research teams and research designs would enable sociologists of sport to undertake challenging programmes of research that would aim to generate findings that are richer in content and depth, more rigorous in how they have been produced, more comprehensive in their reach and scope, and more influential for future researchers and external stakeholders. This would, for example, enable sociologists of sport to respond more effectively to calls by officials within government and civil society for research findings that are sufficiently specific, detailed, and wide-reaching, and which provide the basis for guiding key decision-makers on how to construct policy and on how to invest money and other resources in different areas of sport.

We may observe too that scaling up would enable sociologists of sport to contribute more fully to enlarged, interdisciplinary research programmes. A problem that has received little attention to date, but is all the more relevant and can only be adequately addressed by larger interdisciplinary teams, concerns the mechanisms of interaction between the social and the biological. In terms of research methodology, there are as yet only few multidisciplinary explanatory models of how the diverse, elusive, and chaotic, and thus ultimately unpredictable, environmental influences interact with biological adaptations at the epigenetic level ( 31 ). However, there is certainly reason to believe that social structures and social regulations are directly and causally linked to genome structures and gene regulation ( 32 ). For example, studies indicate that nutrition in early childhood, on the one hand, conditions metabolic structures at the molecular level, which in turn have an effect on nutritional physiology in adulthood ( 33 ). On the other hand, nutrition in early childhood is in turn, simply put, dependent on the parents' attitudes toward nutrition, the extent to which they have the educational prerequisites to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy food, what food is available in the first place, and what food the parents can afford in light of their economic situation. It can also be assumed with regard to individual sports activities that being socialized into sedentary living conditions leaves traces not only on the attitudinal level of people, but also in their biological makeup. Within scaled-up and interdisciplinary research programmes, the sociology of sport, together with sports medicine and epigenetics, could well contribute to finding explanations of how the “sportive body” develops in its unique, ever-changing relationships with the world, and how biological systems react to environmental influences and in this sense “learn” in a rudimentary way ( 31 , 34 ).

The sociology of sport has the professional, social, and technological infrastructure to scale up its research. Many of the research fields within the sociology of sport have a substantial critical mass of scholars located across the world. Each of these scholars will have their own networks of research groups that they study, and fellow academics with whom they tend to collaborate. A scaled-up set of research collaborations would be facilitated by a “network of networks”, drawing together these different groupings. We also have the online technologies and experience for making research collaborations viable online. The routine use of online communication platforms (Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet et al.) during the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated how social science research and teaching, engaging large numbers of participants, could be successfully undertaken through virtual technologies. The return to normal academic life—albeit, still, an uneven and incomplete process—has been a positive, social experience for many, marked for example by strong senses of community such as at international conferences and other gatherings. 4 Arguably, then, the post-Covid camaraderie within the academic community, which we noted earlier, provides relatively auspicious ground for the scaling up of research. Finally, a host of core themes in contemporary social science—relating, for example, to globalization, development, postcolonialism, decolonization, and EDI (equality, diversity, and inclusion)—has pressed the transnational academic community, still dominated by global North, to explore ways in which academics, students, and institutions in the global South may become full leaders and participants within world academe. The process of scaling up will require sociologists of sport to ensure that the global South is much better engaged in shaping research issues and designs, and in contributing to and leading research teams.

We may pick one research field, by way of illustration. Sport for development and peace (SDP) has mushroomed into one of the largest, genuinely global research fields in the sociology of sport and related subdisciplines over the past two decades. 5 Yet, most academic work in SDP continues to involve qualitative research that is relatively small-scale, both in empirical focus and reach, and in the composition of research teams. To scale up, the field of SDP research may establish a large transnational team of academics—why not 20–30 scholars?—drawn from the global South and North, pulling together their diverse research networks, to undertake a systematic programme of research across the world, focused on a common set of research issues and questions. This scaled-up research would be best placed to drive a step-change in SDP studies, providing research findings with new levels of reach and significance than hitherto, and offering a potential model for research programmes in other fields of the sociology of sport.

With regard to collaborations with researchers from other disciplines, one has to keep in mind that it is not a matter of course that the participants of an interdisciplinary research group are able to understand the language, methodology, and operational logic of representatives of other disciplines. Disciplines are per se autonomous and operationally closed systems that cannot simply exchange knowledge without translation work [cf ( 36 ).]. Cross-disciplinary collaboration requires an understanding of the theories, methods, and practices of dealing with knowledge gained in each other's disciplines, but also an acceptance of the scientific value of the knowledge produced in the “foreign” discipline. Hence, researchers from different disciplines involved in an interdisciplinary knowledge production process do not necessarily recognize or understand the object under analysis in the same fundamental ways. Thus, in any inter- and transdisciplinary work, attention also needs to be given to the “translation” that occurs between disciplines. If this translation work is not part of the process of knowledge production, then any forms of “interdisciplinary cooperation” will, in reality, be restricted to adding single disciplinary findings to an additive “multidisciplinary” bundle.

Embrace the glocal and cosmopolitan aspects of sociology

We appreciate that the sociology of sport, like the overarching discipline of sociology, has a largely glocalized academic status. In other words, while sociology and the sociology of sport constitute a global discipline and subdiscipline respectively, their shapes and statuses can vary significantly by national or regional context. 6 In much of Europe and North America, as we have outlined, the sociology of sport has been heavily marginalized by neoliberal policies, the marketization of higher education, and late modern ideologies and cultures of acquisitive individualism. The stronger presence of the public sector in higher education in some contexts, notably in France or Germany, can work to protect sociology's role to some degree. Significant cultural differences also arise. In the United States, quantitative sociology has greatest traction. In France, sociologists contribute prominently to social and political debates in the public sphere. In Latin America, social sciences, including in the sociology of sport, have tended to convey relatively direct and extensive forms of oppositional political critique—reflecting decades of structural crises, and academic activism against authoritarianism and social injustices—alongside adventurous and expansive forms of social and historical analysis. In other regions—such as in East Asia—the sociology of sport tends to be relatively well represented within sport-focused departments and universities, in part reflecting institutional commitments to housing a comprehensive array of disciplines.

The glocal aspects of sociology and the sociology of sport—particularly in how the discipline and subdiscipline are understood and performed with respect to theory and method—should be strongly embraced and nurtured. Such glocal processes reflect how sociologists, with diverse cultural and other backgrounds, seek to apply and develop the discipline and subdiscipline, in ways that are most meaningful and applicable within their different locations and traditions of scholarship. They protect and sustain the cosmopolitanism of sociology, and of the sociology of sport, by recognizing and valuing cultural “difference”, in this case with regard to the plurality of sociological perspectives per se . Further, these glocal and cosmopolitan aspects are in line with calls for global sociology to advance the voices of relatively marginalized approaches and perspectives, such as those from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and from non-Anglophone cultures (see our further comments, below). Ideally, they should also enhance greatly the vitality of the discipline and subdiscipline, by enabling diverse approaches and perspectives to commingle—such as through research projects, publications, and conference debates—in ways that inspire further, original work, in theory, method, and empirical inquiry.

Theory: plurality, and fresh approaches

Following from this, we contend that it is important for any discipline or subdiscipline in the social sciences to have as wide a range of theoretical and methodological techniques at its disposal as possible, so that in social research the most appropriate theories and methods may be used, to the greatest effect, in order to study, analyse, and explain social phenomena or processes that are under investigation. In addition, theoretical and methodological diversity and innovation represent important indices of the health and vitality of any social science. Fresh theoretical developments point to a vibrant academic community, whereas little conceptual innovation suggests a discipline that is staid if not entropic.

The sociology of sport has an uneven position in regard to theory. On one side, the subdiscipline has a long history of diverse theoretical approaches that have been utilized, often with significant variations by nation or region. Further theoretical range is afforded by referring back to the master discipline of sociology, and by engaging with cognate disciplines that often have significant sociological dimensions, such as anthropology, education, geography, and political science.

On the other side, the subdiscipline has arguably become too reliant on a small number of theories, some of which have been reproduced over three to four generations of scholars with few really significant redevelopments or reconfigurations of the main precepts or arguments. Among the most influential theorists here have been Bourdieu and Foucault, known worldwide in the social sciences; Elias, mainly known and used in the UK and some parts of the European continent; and, Luhmann, best known and understood in Germany and Scandinavia. Notably, with the exception of the even older Elias (1897–1993), these modern theorists were of a largely similar historical period, being born in the interwar period (1920s–1930), and developing their oeuvres and magni opi in the 1960s through to the 1980s. In other words, their main work was developed some 40–60 years ago, with the apogee in their usage within sociology and the sociology of sport perhaps having been in the late 1980s or early 1990s, some 30 years ago.

We have no doubt that sociologists of sport will continue to draw significantly on these theorists. Indeed, as the space and time allocated to sociology within sport-related degree programmes come under pressure, it becomes more likely that they will be among the few if only social theorists that students encounter to any significant extent. However, we contend that the sociology of sport needs to pursue and to sustain a wider range of theoretical approaches, for the reasons mapped out above, including with respect to the benefits of maintaining a cosmopolitan and glocal array of standpoints, and to enhance the subdiscipline's vitality and capacity to respond to fresh research challenges. Thus, looking forward a further 20–30 years, to the 2040s–2050s, sociologists of sport should aspire to engage with a wider array of theorists and theoretical frameworks, keeping in mind that the primary works of the quartet above would by that point be some 60–90 years old, and in the case of Elias (1939) ( 38 ), even over a century in vintage. As noted earlier, lack of theoretical variation and renewal would leave the sociology of sport more open to appearing staid and entropic to those in sociology or wider social science. In turn, it would weaken our appeal in terms of securing research funding, or being invited into multi-disciplinary research collaborations.

Transnational coordination

Given its challenging circumstances, sociologists of sport across the world need to do all they can to transform and enhance the transnational constitution and coordination of their global field. Three key points follow here.

First, the transnational sociology of sport continues to be dominated by the Anglophone global North, most obviously involving North America, the UK, Australasia, and Anglophone scholarship in Europe, East Asia, and elsewhere. This transnational field has far more to do in order to engage fully with actual, emergent, and potential scholarship across the vast diversity of low- and middle-income countries. Such an engagement is vital if the sociology of sport is to be a genuinely “global” field. It is also vital if the subdiscipline is to observe, through a kind of collective self-practice, its own incessant and ubiquitous demands for all institutions in sport to tackle fundamental issues of marginalization, colonization, and decolonization. This would enable the subdiscipline to rethink its ontological, epistemological, methodological, and substantive dimensions in ways that fully engage LMIC and non-Anglophone perspectives. Moreover, it is essential that we recognize the vast social divisions and inequalities across the global South; hence, for example, we must do all we can to ensure that the social scientific “voices” of the “global South” are not purely or primarily those of national or regional elites.

A particular problem of international collaboration, however, lies in what we might term the language and the ontology of publication. For many years, the Anglophone research community took little notice of research in other countries. This is, of course, because representatives from Anglophone countries have had no need to adopt another language for international discourse. However, in so many other countries—for example France, Spain, Germany, and Poland in Europe; Brazil, Argentina, and Chile in South America; China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in East Asia—research projects were and continue to be conducted, books written, and articles published, but in the local languages. The increase in the importance of world rankings for the self-image of universities and the increasingly demanded internationalization of research cooperation has led to a rethinking of academic work (including in the social sciences) in these countries. Now, English is increasingly the lingua franca of scientific communication for these countries as well. And yet, there is a large number of highly interesting research results that have not been published in English and will never find their way into the international sport sociology community if they are not translated. At the same time, academics in many of these countries argue that the Anglophone ontologies of writing or publishing in the social sciences—particularly for journal articles, but also for larger works such as PhD theses—are very different to the approaches found in their home nations. Again, there is a concern that global sociology may become too homogenized, and undermine its glocal diversity, if scholars in Anglophone countries fail to recognize significant cultural differences in how sociology and other social sciences are “done” in non-Anglophone and/or global South contexts.

Second, the principles behind the points above—centred on tackling tendencies towards homogenization and marginalization within the subdiscipline—apply across the world, including of course in the global North. Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) concerns must be directed onto the subdiscipline in full, and that means by looking beyond “acknowledgements of privilege”, to continue to press higher education institutions to redistribute resources such as studentships, posts, research grants, leadership roles, and academic status. Thus, the sociology of sport is ripe for transformation with regard to repairing the consequences of social divisions along the lines of class, gender, ethnicity, race, disability, and, as flagged above, North/South and Anglophone/Non-Anglophone divisions.

Third, transnational networks and associations need to identify ways in which the subdiscipline can become far more coherent and coordinated, to tackle tendencies towards fragmentation. The most obvious area lies in respect of the international associations for sociologists of sport, such as EASS, ISSA, NASSS, 3SLF, and also the various national or regional associations and networks within the subdiscipline, such as in different parts of Europe, East Asia, and Oceania. 7 Currently, each association tends to engage particular clusters of academics, with some overlaps. However, we find that North American academics tend not to attend conferences in Europe hosted by EASS/ISSA in the summer, while NASSS conferences (staged in November) tend to attract a relatively limited cohort of European academics, especially non-Anglophone ones. It is vital that these associations, particularly through their leadership groups, explore ways to facilitate more effective communication and coordination. The benefits here would include greater volume of interaction and exchanges between individuals and research groups across these diverse associations and networks; and, a stronger cross-fertilization of research ideas, networks, and projects. This would also enable associations potentially to co-stage events—as we saw with the EASS and ISSA joint conference in Tübingen in 2022—and it would also avoid the particularly counter-productive occasions, which have happened twice in recent years, when two international associations have staged their own conferences at the same time as each other. Further, a focus on international associations and conferences would draw sociologists of sport to reflect on how they may engage with other associations, whether these are more all-encompassing ones (such as the European College of Sport Sciences, which includes a significant social science dimension), or more disciplinary specific ones (such as those in sport management, physical education, sport history, sport philosophy, sport economics, and so on).

More horizontal and less vertical collaborations

There needs to be a better balance between vertical and horizontal types of networking and collaboration in the sociology of sport. By “vertical”, we mean hierarchical collaborations, mainly between academics at senior (e.g., professor), mid-career (e.g., associate professor), early career (e.g., assistant professors, postdoctoral research associates), and doctoral researcher levels. Conversely, “horizontal” refers to collaborations among academics at the same level, such as between early career researchers or between PhD students.

We recognize that the volume and variety of vertical collaborations have grown substantially over the last two or three decades. Doctoral researchers and their supervisors now co-author many more papers than in the past, in ways that are coming to mimic the formats found with colleagues in the natural sciences. We find that funded research projects often feature teams of researchers, usually led by an established academic, with early career and doctoral researchers also on board with the role of collecting and analysing data. We appreciate there are further structural and cultural reasons for these hierarchies. In some countries, university employment and departmental structures are set up with Chairs (professors) at the centre, supported by collaborating clusters of more junior colleagues. Younger academics may also seek to work with specific senior colleagues, developing their research skills, publication profiles, and, crucially in many contexts, professional networks in ways that enhance future employment and career-building opportunities. On occasion, however, these vertical relations can inhibit the academic development and personal freedoms of younger colleagues, such as when senior staff act almost as conservators with their early career and doctoral researchers, controlling which other academics they can talk to, or restricting their freedom of association at conferences.

In our view, this verticality in academe needs to be balanced by a much greater focus on horizontal collaborations, particularly with doctoral and early career researchers. More horizontal collaborations of this kind would help to enhance the vitality of the sociology of sport; the exploration of new theories, methodologies, and substantive areas of research; and, the array of interdisciplinary and international partnerships across the subdiscipline. These horizontal forms of networking enable young academics to gain valuable experience in genuinely collaborative, creative research projects and publishing; to build new networks and communities of colleagues internationally; and, to share their accounts, experiences, and perspectives with peers at similar stages of career development.

It is worth recalling that, from the late 1960s onwards, it was groups of young academics at similar career stages who undertook much of the foundational work within the sociology of sport, and also who led much of the adventurous development of new research paradigms across the subdiscipline. Such horizontal collaborations among young scholars would help to revitalize the sociology of sport in this way. Of course, to facilitate this process, more powerful, senior staff would at least be required to take a step back, or, better still, to positively encourage and enable such peer-based collaborations.

Public engagement

Famously, CW Mills (1959) ( 39 ) argued that a defining feature of the sociological imagination was the capacity to view “personal troubles” as “public issues”, that impact on many people, and which are shaped by diverse structural factors and cultural processes. From this, we may consider how this sociological imagination may be fostered and harnessed by sociology, and the sociology of sport, in ways that enhance their social relevance and public engagement. Crucially, if sociology is to enhance its public engagement, it has no choice but to break away from a pure observer role and to develop greater competence in the translation of its results. In this context, contact with both politics and sports practice plays an important role.

Public engagement takes many forms, including advising leading decision-makers and other officials within key organizations; working with organizations to enhance their policy and practice; and, contributing to debates in the public sphere (e.g., through mass and social media). The easiest way of doing this latter form of public engagement is through short articles in media open to sociological contributions; the online outlet, The Conversation , provides an obvious example. These outputs may accumulate many “reads” or “clicks”, and may enable PhD students and early career researchers to put down markers for their research and academic presence, but the extent to which they have direct non-academic influence or impact is very much open to debate. On the other side, perhaps the most fully impactful approach is to ensure that sociologists are able to take positions on scientific advisory bodies and other such panels, which feed directly into policymaking at national and international levels. Further impactful and direct modes of external engagement include organizational collaborations, which may involve the “co-creation” of research projects, and the translation of findings into fresh strategies, policies, and practices for the outside partner.

There is a long-term trend for national and international research foundations to direct social scientists towards these types of external collaboration or impact in order to secure research funding. Hence, sociologists would do well to build these links in the pursuit of funding. We should recall also that these external partners take many forms. Certainly, sport clubs and governing bodies, governmental bodies (local, national, and international), and corporations are included here, but so too are NGOs, campaign groups, social movements, and other agencies that are perhaps more likely to engage directly with, and to champion the causes of, marginalized social groups, and which perhaps also offer relatively close fits with the theories and perspectives that are held by some sociologists. In many universities—especially for sociologists and other academics holding privileged positions within “research-intensive”, low-teaching institutions—the pursuit of this research funding is a strategic necessity. Failure to do so serves mainly to marginalize further the discipline in terms of securing its requisite share of research funding, its relevance or influence with external organizations and publics, and its future within higher education; otherwise, university leaders will inevitably be required to ask: why invest in this discipline, and not in others that are willing to pursue funded research and external impact?

Our aim here has been to examine critically the academic and wider societal position of the sociology of sport, and to advance specific ways forward (or “new horizons”) for the subdiscipline. We have argued that social science, sociology, and the sociology of sport hold comparatively peripheral positions—which we have termed periphery 1,2,3 respectively—within academe and more broadly; indeed, much of the subdiscipline's marginality derives from its location within these wider academic milieux. In contrast, we also highlighted a range of strengths and advantages that sociology and the sociology of sport possess within academic and wider, non-academic fields. These two sections provided the critical context for our discussion of routes ahead for the sociology of sport, specifically in improving its positioning within academe, scaling up to produce large-scale research collaborations, embracing and building upon its glocal and cosmopolitan aspects, enhancing transnational coordination, advancing horizontal collaborations, and strengthening public engagement.

To conclude, we put forward three main points. First, our intention has been to advance an analysis that is critically realistic and plausibly aspirational with regard to the contemporary position and future possibilities of the sociology of sport, particularly within the academic context. In doing so, we have sought to exercise the type of critical reflexivity that is broadly advocated in much of sociology and the sociology of sport, and to refer this back onto the discipline and subdiscipline themselves. In our view, this type of concerted critical reflection is essential for the future development of any subdiscipline within sport studies, whether these might be located within the social or natural sciences. Hence, we would encourage scholars in diverse fields such as sport biomechanics, geography, history, management, medicine, nutrition, physiology, political science, and psychology also to reflect critically on their respective conditions, positions, and future possibilities, within academe and beyond. Many of the key themes that we highlight here—such as the relative positioning of the subdiscipline within academe, its transnational coordination, and public engagement—may be relevant and applicable to such critical assessments.

Second, our analysis is ultimately directed towards enhancing the sociology of sport, particularly within the academic realm. Sociology has a critical role to play in the full gamut of interdisciplinary research fields within and beyond sport. As we have argued, we do not work in the most auspicious circumstances: disciplines such as psychology and biology tend to have greater prominence, and at times to display a degree of triumphalism, within many research fields. Yet, as the Covid-19 pandemic alone has demonstrated, there is an essential need to look beyond the biological and the psychological, and to examine the sociological dimensions of any research issue. 8 At the same time, a critical task for sociologists within sport and other fields is to adapt and to reposition the discipline, in the ways that we have outlined, to secure its necessary centrality within the academy and beyond.

Third, in this context, we would also like to emphasize once again that even the most advanced empirical methodology for capturing psychological, biological, and social patterns of human coexistence is no substitute for theory-led, critical sociological reflection. Big data research provides a current example for the irreplaceability of critical sociological reflections where they are increasingly being considered as unnecessary. The number of researchers who are convinced that collecting tons of behavioural or communicational data from millions of people automatically leads to “the truth” is continuously rising. Using big data research techniques to analyse patterns of social interactions, collective behavioural patterns, or consumer trends, certainly means progress for certain types of studies in social science studies, considering the chaos of societal communication. However, this does not mean that critical thinking, and particularly a critical theory-driven sociological analysis, has become useless. On the one hand, pure big data approaches have the disadvantage that “no matter their “depth” and the sophistication of data-driven methods (…) in the end they merely fit curves to existing data” ( 41 ). To give one example ( 42 ): even if it is possible to collect billions of data about sentiments of football fans' tweets, the findings regarding collective emotionality in football still remain superficial if the tweets cannot be contextualized against the background of discursive strategies on Twitter, emotional contagion in larger groups, the typical “language” of fans in this sport (or in other words, theoretical sociological reflections on the dynamics of collective emotions in sports), as well as the large-scale, social structural processes (such as globalization, commodification, securitization, mediatization, and postmodernization) that have reshaped elite-level global football over the past few decades ( 43 ). On the other hand, to avoid an uncritical approach to the results of big data surveys, it is necessary to figure out “the sociotechnical processes involved along the “data building chain”” ( 44 ). Data does not just appear out of thin air. They build on previous research, but they are also influenced by existing actor constellations in the relevant research field, by power relations in scientific circles, and, last but not least, by scientific trends. Research, including big data research, is therefore always characterized by a pre-selection of questions, variables and study populations, which in turn depend on the social context in which they are “created”.

Sociological thinking, it can be said, is therefore not replaceable, either in science in general or in sports science in particular. On the contrary: in a world in which it is possible to manipulate publics via social networks, in which political pressure can influence the selection of research questions that are publicly considered relevant, and in which complexity is a central characteristic of every world problem, critical sociological thinking is even more important than ever.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editor and the two reviewers for their very constructive and insightful comments on the initial version of this paper.

1 Triplett ( 2 ) – likely less familiar to sociologists – wrote what is widely considered to be the first study in sport psychology.

2 Interview for Women’s Own magazine, published 1 October 1987.

3 In the UK, many sociology departments have established criminology programmes. One of us recommended and planned out a full criminology undergraduate programme in the mid-2000s for a sociology section at a university in Scotland, but this failed to gain the support of the section head. 15 years later, a criminology undergraduate programme was established by that same sociology section.

4 We have in mind here the communal atmosphere at the joint European Association for Sociology of Sport (EASS) and International Sociology of Sport Association (ISSA) conference at the University of Tübingen in June 2022.

5 See for example Collison et al. ( 35 ).

6 On glocalization as a theory and social process, see Robertson ( 37 ).

7 These refer to European Association for Sociology of Sport (EASS), International Sociology of Sport Association (ISSA), North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS), and Société de Sociologie du Sport de Langue Française (3SLF).

8 See for example the arguments of Connell ( 40 ) on the role of sociology with respect to Covid-19.

Author contributions

The two authors made relatively equal contributions to the paper. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Sociology of Sport Journal

Official Journal of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport

Indexed in: Web of Science, Scopus, ProQuest, APA PsycINFO, EBSCOhost, Google Scholar

Print ISSN:  0741-1235             Online ISSN:  1543-2785

Cover Sociology of Sport Journal

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Free access Brittney Griner, Intersectionality, and “Woke Politics”: A Critical Examination of Brittney Griner’s Return to the United States Authors: Ajhanai C.I. Keaton , Evan Frederick , Keisha Branch , and Ann Pegoraro

Volume 40 (2023): issue 4 (dec 2023): special issue “futures—past,”: liberation, futurity, intersectionality, and interdisciplinarity: reading sport, physical culture, and the (physically active) body.

  • Guest Editors: Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown, Anthony Jean Weems, Tomika Ferguson, Courtney Szto, Chen Chen, and Natalie Welch
  • Letter From the Editor
  • “Futures—Past,” A Reflection of 40 Years of the Sociology of Sport Journal : An Introduction
  • Feminist Sport Media Studies in SSJ : Mapping Theoretical Frameworks and Geographies of Knowledge Production
  • Unrealistic Expectations and Future Status Coercion in Minor League Baseball Players’ Future-Oriented Labor
  • Critical Friends, Dialogues of Discomfort, and Researcher Reflexivity in the Sociology of Sport
  • Virtually Masculine: Queer Men’s Experiences With Harassment in Online Video Games
  • Stereotype Threat and Interscholastic Athletic Leadership
  • Indigenizing Sport Research: Analyzing Protective Factors of Exercising Sovereignty in North America
  • Through the Decades: Critical Race Theory and Pathways Forward in Sport Sociology Research
  • Beyond Reconciliation: Calling for Land-Based Analyses in the Sociology of Sport
  • The Case for Marxist–Leninist Sport: Going Beyond the Limitations of Western Liberalism
  • The Penalty That’s Never Called: Sexism in Men’s Hockey Culture
  • Ahead of Print
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Top 40 at 40

The Sociology of Sport Journal is celebrating 40 years of publishing by revisiting our top-10 articles for each decade. We've invited emerging scholars to comment on the continuted significance of these articles and what has changed in the time since they were published. All of the articles are permanently free to read. We hope you enjoy seeing SSJ 's history and will look to the future of the sociology of sport with us.

Sports and Male Domination: The Female Athlete as Contested Ideological Terrain

By Michael A. Messner. 1988. Sociology of Sport Journal, 5 (3), 197–211.

The Construction and Confirmation of Identity in Sport Subcultures

By Peter Donnelly and Kevin Young. 1988. Sociology of Sport Journal, 5 (3), 223–240.

Program for a Sociology of Sport

By Pierre Bourdieu. 1988. Sociology of Sport Journal, 5 (2), 153–161.

The Socialization of Elite Tennis Players in Sweden: An Analysis of the Players’ Backgrounds and Development

By Rolf Carlson. 1988. Sociology of Sport Journal, 5 (3), 241–256.

Denial of Power in Televised Women’s Sports

By Margaret Carlisle Duncan and Cynthia A. Hasbrook. 1988. Sociology of Sport Journal, 5 (1), 1–21.

Divergence in Moral Reasoning about Sport and Everyday Life

By Brenda Jo Bredemeier and David L. Shields. 1984. Sociology of Sport Journal, 1 (4), 348–357.

Racial Relations Theories and Sport: Suggestions for a More Critical Analysis

By Susan Birrell. 1989. Sociology of Sport Journal, 6 (3), 212–227.

From Public Issue to Personal Trouble: Well-Being and the Fiscal Crisis of the State

By Alan G. Ingham. 1985. Sociology of Sport Journal, 2 (1), 43–55.

The Relationship between Children’s Legitimacy Judgments and Their Moral Reasoning, Aggression Tendencies, and Sport Involvement

By Brenda Jo Bredemeier, Maureen R. Weiss, David L. Shields, and Bruce A.B. Cooper. 1987. Sociology of Sport Journal, 4 (1), 48–60.

Work Routines in Newspaper Sports Departments and the Coverage of Women’s Sports

By Nancy Theberge and Alan Cronk. 1986. Sociology of Sport Journal, 3 (3), 195–203.

Positive Deviance Among Athletes: The Implications of Overconformity to the Sport Ethic

By  Robert Hughes and Jay Coakley. 1991. Sociology of Sport Journal , 8(4), 307–325.

Firm but Shapely, Fit but Sexy, Strong but Thin: The Postmodern Aerobicizing Female Bodies

By Pirkko Markula. 1995. Sociology of Sport Journal , 12(4), 424–453.

Burnout Among Adolescent Athletes: A Personal Failure or Social-Problem

By Jay Coakley. 1992. Sociology of Sport Journal , 9(3), 271–285.

Body Talk : Male-Athletes Reflect on Sport, Injury, and Pain

By  Kevin Young, Philip White, and William McTeer. 1994. Sociology of Sport Journal , 11(2), 175–194.

Fraternal Bonding in the Locker Room: A Profeminist Analysis of Talk About Competition and Women

By Timothy Jon Curry. 1991. Sociology of Sport Journal , 8(2), 119–135.

Sports Photographs and Sexual Difference: Images of Women and Men in the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games

By Margaret Carlisle Duncan. 1990. Sociology of Sport Journal , 7(1), 22–43.

Accepting the Risks of Pain and Injury in Sport: Mediated Cultural Influences on Playing Hurt

By Howard L. Nixon II. 1993. Sociology of Sport Journal , 10(2), 183–196.

Disqualifying the Official: An Exploration of Social Resistance Through the Subculture of Skateboarding

By Becky Beal. 1995. Sociology of Sport Journal , 12(3), 252–267.

Making Decisions: Gender and Sport Participation Among British Adolescents

By  Jay Coakley and Anita White. 1992. Sociology of Sport Journal , 9(1), 20–35.

Fanship and the Television Sports Viewing Experience

By  Walter Gantz and Lawrence A. Wenner. 1995. Sociology of Sport Journal , 12(1), 56–74.

Autoethnography and Narratives of Self: Reflections on Criteria in Action

By Andrew C. Sparkes. 2000. Sociology of Sport Journal , 17(1), 21–43.

Power, Discourse, and Symbolic Violence in Professional Youth Soccer: The Case of Albion Football Club

By  Christopher Cushion and Robyn L. Jones. 2006. Sociology of Sport Journal , 23(2), 142–161.

New Writing Practices in Qualitative Research

By Laurel Richardson. 2000. Sociology of Sport Journal , 17(1), 5–20.

The Technologies of the Self: Sport, Feminism, and Foucault

By Pirkko Markula. 2003. Sociology of Sport Journal , 20(2), 87–107.

Female Fandom: Identity, Sexism, and Men's Professional Football in England

By Katharine W. Jones. 2008. Sociology of Sport Journal , 25(4), 516–537.

"An Eye for Talent": Talent Identification and the "Practical Sense" of Top-Level Soccer Coaches

By Mette Krogh Christensen. 2009. Sociology of Sport Journal , 26(3), 365–382.

Bourdieu, Feminism and Female Physical Culture: Gender Reflexivity and the Habitus-Field Complex

By Holly Thorpe. 2009. Sociology of Sport Journal , 26(4), 491–516.

"Just Do It?": Consumption, Commitment, and Identity in the Windsurfing Subculture

By Belinda Wheaton. 2000. Sociology of Sport Journal , 17(3), 254–274.

No Pain Is Sane After All: A Foucauldian Analysis Of Masculinities and Men's Experiences in Rugby

By  Richard Pringle and Pirkko Markula. 2005. Sociology of Sport Journal , 22(4), 472–497.

Rethinking the Relationships Between Sport and Race in American Culture: Golden Ghettos and Contested Terrain

By Douglas Hartmann. 2000. Sociology of Sport Journal , 17(3), 229–253.

Power, Politics and "Sport for Development and Peace": Investigating the Utility of Sport for International Development

By Simon C. Darnell. 2010. Sociology of Sport Journal, 27 (1), 54–75

Feeling Second Best: Elite Women Coaches' Experiences

By Leanne Norman. 2010. Sociology of Sport Journal, 27 (1), 89–104

It's Not About the Game: Don Imus, Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Media

By Cheryl Cooky, Faye L. Wachs, Michael Messner, and Shari L. Dworkin. 2010. Sociology of Sport Journal, 27 (2), 139–159

Foucault in Leotards: Corporeal Discipline in Women's Artistic Gymnastics

By Natalie Barker-Ruchti and Richard Tinning. 2010. Sociology of Sport Journal, 27 (3), 229–250

Toward a Physical Cultural Studies

By Michael L. Silk and David L. Andrews. 2011. Sociology of Sport Journal, 28 (1), 4–35

What is this "Physical" in Physical Cultural Studies

By Michael D. Giardina and Joshua I. Newman. 2011. Sociology of Sport Journal, 28 (1), 36–63

Gender Ideologies, Youth Sports, and the Production of Soft Essentialism

By Michael Messner. 2011. Sociology of Sport Journal, 28 (2), 151–170

That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: Racial Microaggressions, Color-Blind Ideology and the Mitigation of Racism in English Men's First-Class Cricket

By Daniel Burdsey. 2011. Sociology of Sport Journal, 28 (3), 261–283

The Birth of the Obesity Clinic: Confessions of the Flesh, Biopedagogies and Physical Culture

By Geneviève Rail. 2012. Sociology of Sport Journal, 29 (2), 227–253

Sporting Spinal Cord Injuries, Social Relations, and Rehabilitation Narratives: An Ethnographic Creative Non-Fiction of Becoming Disabled Through Sport

By Brett Smith. 2013. Sociology of Sport Journal, 30 (2), 132–152

SSJ 2022 JIF: 1.7

The purpose of the Sociology of Sport Journal is to stimulate and communicate research, critical thought, and theory development on issues pertaining to the sociology of sport. The journal publishes peer-reviewed empirical and theoretical papers; book reviews; and critical essays. Analyses of sport and physical culture from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives are encouraged. Submissions concerned with sport and physical culture as related to race, class, gender, sexuality, popular media, political economy, globalization, technology, and youth culture are especially welcome.

Cheryl Cooky, PhD Purdue University, USA [email protected]  

Editors Emeriti

Jay Coakley (Founding Editor: 1984–1989) Peter Donnelly (1990–1994) Cynthia Hasbrook (1995–1998) Christopher Stevenson (1999–2001) Nancy Theberge (2002–2004) Annelies Knoppers (2005–2008) Pirkko Markula (2009–2011) Michael Atkinson (2012–2014) Michael D. Giardina (2015–2020)  

Associate Editors

Joseph Cooper University of Massachusetts-Boston, USA

Audrey Giles University of Ottawa, Canada

Shannon Jette University of Maryland, USA  

Interim Book Review Editor

Cheryl Cooky Purdue University, USA

Editorial Board

Sine Agergaard, Aalborg University, Denmark

Kristi Allain, St. Thomas University, Canada

Shaonta’ Allen, Dartmouth, USA

Daniel Anorve, Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico

Dunja Antunovic, University of Minnesota, USA

Constancio Arnaldo, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA

Ali Bowes, Nottingham Trent University, UK

Scott Brooks, Arizona State University, USA

Tarlan Chahardovali, University of South Carolina, USA

Jim Cherrington, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Chen Chen, University of Connecticut, USA

Yeomi Choi, University of Lethbridge, Canada

Roxane Coche, University of Florida, USA

Katelyn Esmonde, Johns Hopkins, USA

Kirsten Hextrum, Oregon State University, USA

Michelle H. S. Ho, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Jonathan Howe, Temple University, USA

Janelle Joseph, University of Toronto, Canada

Ajhanai Keaton, University of Louisville, USA

Yannick Kluch, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA

Chris Knoester, Ohio State University, USA

Lucen Liu, Zhejiang University, China

Chris McLeod, University of Florida, USA

Mitch McSweeney, University of Minnesota, USA

Rob Millington, Brock University, Canada

Moss Norman, University of British Columbia, Canada

Thomas Oates , University of Iowa, USA

Joyce Olushola Ogunrinde, University of Houston, USA

Stacey Pope, Durham University, UK

Tatiana Ryba, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Bárbara Schausteck de Almeida, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil

Courtney Szto, Queens University, Canada

Minhyeok Tak, Loughborough University, UK

Sarah Teetzel, University of Manitoba, Canada

Nicola de Martini Ugolotti, Bournemouth University, UK

Meredith Whitley, Adelphi University, USA

Grace Yan, University of South Carolina, USA

Human Kinetics Staff Tammy Miller, Senior Journals   Managing Editor

Prior to submission, please carefully read and follow the submission guidelines detailed below. Authors must submit their manuscripts through the journal’s ScholarOne online submission system. To submit, click the button below:

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Authorship guidelines, open access, specific guidelines for book reviews, specific guidelines for special issues, submitting a manuscript, additional resources.

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The Journals Division at Human Kinetics adheres to the criteria for authorship as outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors*:

Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to:

a. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND b. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND c. Final approval of the version to be published; AND d. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Conditions a, b, c, and d must all be met. Individuals who do not meet the above criteria may be listed in the acknowledgments section of the manuscript. * http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

Authors who use artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in their work must indicate how they were used in the cover letter and the work itself. These technologies cannot be listed as authors as they are unable to meet all the conditions above, particularly agreeing to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Human Kinetics is pleased to allow our authors the option of having their articles published Open Access. In order for an article to be published Open Access, authors must complete and return the Request for Open Access form and provide payment for this option. To learn more and request Open Access, click here .

Manuscript Guidelines

All Human Kinetics journals require that authors follow our manuscript guidelines in regards to use of copyrighted material, human and animal rights, and conflicts of interest as specified in the following link: https://journals.humankinetics.com/page/author/authors

The Sociology of Sport Journal ( SSJ ) publishes theoretical and empirical work, framed by social theory, on exercise, sport, and the (physically active) body. Papers submitted to this journal should not be published elsewhere. If an author uses the same data in previously submitted work, then the author should describe in a cover letter how the current paper is significantly different from other submissions or articles. Submissions should not be under consideration for any other publication at the same time.

The editorial staff for SSJ consists of the editor, two associate editors, and the past editor. Each paper is initially reviewed by the editor. If its content is deemed to be congruent with the mission of SSJ , the paper will be assigned to one of the editorial staff who will then send it to referees for blind peer review. The review process usually takes 10 weeks. The editor will decide, based on the reviewers’ and associate editor's recommendations, whether the paper should be accepted as is, revised, or rejected. Manuscripts will be evaluated in terms of relevance to the sociocultural studies of sport and physical activity, theoretical contribution, methodological appropriateness, clarity and thoroughness of data analysis, and presentation of results and discussion/conclusion.

All manuscripts must be preceded by an abstract of 75–125 words typed on a separate page. Manuscripts should be double-spaced including the abstract, block quotations, endnotes, references, and tables. The length of submitted Articles should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words, references and endnotes included. Articles that are longer might be returned to the authors for shortening. Research Notes should be succinct presentations of contemporary and important sociological issues in sport and physical culture. Research Notes may present preliminary analyses and/or exploratory findings, methodological considerations for data collection and analysis, and/or development of a theoretical point or model. The empirical findings and/or theoretical developments must be explained and documented concisely between 3,000 and 4,000 words, references and endnotes included.

For both Articles and Research Notes, authors should follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition, 2020) guidelines for journal article style. Endnotes should be limited in number (all important information should be included in the text of the article).

Because a blind review process is used to evaluate manuscripts, all clues to the identity of the author must be eliminated throughout the manuscript. Make sure that all references to the author and to other publications by the author are referenced as “author” and not by name. The reference list should not include these references. The first page of the manuscript should not include author names or affiliations, but it should include the title of the paper and the date of submission.

All art must be professionally prepared, with clean, crisp lines, and be camera-ready; freehand or typewritten lettering will not be accepted. If photos are used, they should be black and white, clear, and show good contrast. Each figure and photo must be properly identified. In graphs, use black and white only, no shading or color. Keep labels proportionate with the size of the figures on the journal page. Digital images should be 300 dpi at full size for photos and 600 dpi for line art. Format tables in the table function of your word-processing program rather than aligning columns in text with tabs and spaces or using text boxes. See additional figure guidelines here .

The Sociology of Sport Journal is committed to publishing reviews of recent books that contribute to the sociology of sport or related fields. In most cases, reviews will be solicited by the Book Review Editor. Scholars who are interested in reviewing for the journal should contact the Book Review Editor to indicate their areas of expertise. The current editor is Dr. Guy Harrison ( [email protected] ).

Review Format

Book review authors should follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition, 2020) guidelines for journal article style. Endnotes should be limited in number (all important information should be included in the text of the article). Avoid footnotes. Keep references to a minimum. Check for the correct spelling of proper names. Check quotations for accuracy and make sure to provide page numbers for quotes. Reviews should be approximately 1,500 to 1,800 words. The text, including quotes and bibliographic information, should be double-spaced.

Bibliographic information for the book should be placed at the top of the review in the following format:

Title By Author(s). Publisher, year of publication, location of publisher. Reviewed by: Reviewer, institutional affiliation, location.

For example:

Body Panic: Gender, Health and the Selling of Fitness By Shari Dworkin and Faye Wachs. New York University Press, 2009, New York, NY. Reviewed by: Cheryl Cooky, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.

Review Content

A good review provides description and analysis and attempts to situate a book in a larger context. You should describe the author’s central argument, intent, or goal and the author’s approach to the subject. Please avoid a chapter-by-chapter listing of themes. You might want to contextualize the text by situating it in relationship to the author’s previous works, to debates in the broader culture, or to relevant literature. Your analysis of the book could include a discussion of what makes it unique, its strengths and weaknesses, the implications of its arguments, and/or its relationship to other texts. You could also comment on the book’s potential impact on the field or on a specific area of study, theoretical approach, or methodology. Illustrate your points with examples from the text. First-time reviewers are encouraged to read reviews that have appeared in past issues of the journal.

Editorial Process

The submission of a review confirms that the review has not and will not appear elsewhere in published form. Book reviews will be received and edited by the Book Review Editor. Reviewers should note that the solicitation of a book review or the submission of an unsolicited review does not guarantee publication in the Sociology of Sport Journal . Reviewers may be asked by the Book Review Editor to revise their reviews. The Book Review Editor makes recommendations for acceptance of reviews to the Editor of the journal. The Editor makes all final decisions about what will appear in the journal.

The following guidelines are intended to help scholars prepare a special issue proposal. In no more than four pages author(s) should address the following questions using the headings provided.

1. Synopsis

In 150 words or less, what is your special issue about? Important: Be sure to include its main themes and objectives.

2. Rationale

What are you proposing to do differently/more innovatively/better than has already been done on the topic (in SSJ specifically, as well as in the field more generally)? Why is now the time for a special issue on this topic? Why is SSJ the most appropriate venue for this topic? What are the main competing works on the topic (e.g., edited books, other special issues)?

3. Qualifications

Why are you the right person(s) to edit a special issue on this topic? Why are you an expert in this area? What have you previously written on the topic? Have you edited/co-edited a special issue before? If yes, please give the citation(s). Have you edited/co-edited a book before? If yes, please give the citation(s). Do you currently serve on any journal editorial boards? If yes, please list. Please provide your vitae.

4. Timeline

Given that it takes approximately 12 months to complete a special issue, please provide a detailed timeline including estimated dates or time frames for the following steps: (a) Call for papers, (b) Submission deadline, (c) Review process, (d) Revision process, (e) Copyediting, (f) Final editing and approval from SSJ editor, (g) Completion and submission to Human Kinetics

Authors should submit manuscripts electronically through ScholarOne (see submission button at the top of this page). Please access the site and follow the directions for authors submitting manuscripts. Problems can be resolved by choosing “Help” in the upper right corner of the screen.

Authors are advised to proofread the final copy carefully and to verify the accuracy of references before submitting. There are no page charges for contributors. Authors of manuscripts accepted for publication must transfer copyright to Human Kinetics, Inc.

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Individuals may purchase online-only subscriptions directly from this website. To order, click on an article and select the subscription option you desire for the journal of interest (individual or student, 1-year or 2-year), and then click Buy. Those purchasing student subscriptions must be prepared to provide proof of student status as a degree-seeking candidate at an accredited institution. Online-only subscriptions purchased via this website provide immediate access to all the journal's content, including all archives and Ahead of Print. Note that a subscription does not allow access to all the articles on this website, but only to those articles published in the journal you subscribe to. For step-by-step instructions to purchase online, click here .

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Institution subscriptions must be placed directly with our customer service team. To review format options and pricing, visit our Librarian Resource Center . To place your order, contact us . 

SSJ Article of Year Award

This award is presented by the north american society for the sociology of sport to the author(s) of the best article published in ssj from the previous calendar year., 2023: awakening to elsewheres: collectively restorying embodied experiences of (be)longing.

By Tricia McGuire-Adams, Janelle Joseph, Danielle Peers, Lindsay Eales, William Bridel, Chen Chen, Evelyn Hamdon, and Bethan Kingsley

2022: The Nature of the Body in Sport and Physical Culture: From Bodies and Environments to Ecological Embodiment

By Samantha King and Gavin Weedon

2021: “Where I’m From”: Jay-Z’s “Hip Hop Cosmopolitanism,” Basketball, and the Neoliberal Politics of Urban Space

By Thomas P. Oates

2020: Indigenous Gender Reformations: Physical Culture, Settler Colonialism and the Politics of Containment

By Moss Norman, Michael Hart, and LeAnne Petherick

2019: Educating Parents of Children in Sport About Abuse Using Narrative Pedagogy

By Jenny McMahon, Camilla J. Knight, and Kerry R. McGannon

2018: "We Cannot Stand Idly By”: A Necessary Call for a Public Sociology of Sport

By Cheryl Cooky

2017: Athletic Women’s Experiences of Amenorrhea: Biomedical Technologies, Somatic Ethics and Embodied Subjectivities

By Holly Thorpe

2016: “It’s Recovery United for Me”: Promises and Pitfalls of Football as Part of Mental Health Recovery

By Jonathon Magee, Ramón Spaaij, and Ruth Jeanes

2015: “When Is a Drug Not a Drug? Troubling Silences and Unsettling Painkillers in the National Football League

By Samantha King, R. Scott Carey, Naila Jinnah, Rob Millington, Andrea Phillipson, Carolyn Prouse, and Matt Ventresca

2014: Translation With Abusive Fidelity : Methodological Issues in Translating Media Texts About Korean LPGA Players

By Kyoung-Yim Kim

2013: Corporate Nationalism and Globalization of Nike Advertising in “Asia”: Production and Representation Practice of Cultural Intermediaries

By Koji Kobayashi

2012: Gender Ideologies, Youth Sports and the Production of Soft Essentialism

By Michael A. Messner

2011: Danny Almonte: Discursive Construction(s) of (Im)migrant Citizenship in Neoliberal America

Ryan King-White

2010: New Media and the Repackaging of NFL Fandom

By Thomas Patrick Oates

2009: What's Queer about (Queer) Sport Sociology Now? A Review Essay

By Samantha King

2008: A Governmental Analysis of Children "At Risk" in a World of Physical Inactivity and Obesity Epidemics

By Lisa McDermott

2007: (Un)Disciplined Bodies: A Foucauldian Analysis of Women's Rugby

By Laura Frances Chase

2006: Athletes as Agents of Change: An Examination of Shifting Race Relations Within Women's Netball in Post-Apartheid South Africa

by Cynthia Fabrizio Pelak

2005: From Corporate Welfare to National Interest: Newspaper Analysis of the Public Subsidization of NHL Hockey Debate in Canada

By Jay Scherer and Steven J. Jackson

2004: Posthuman Podiums: Cyborg Narratives of Elite Track and Field Athletes

By Ted Butryn

2003: Mapping the Field of "AR": Adventure Racing and Bourdieu's Concept of Field

By Joanne Kay and Suzanne Laberge

2002: Together We're One? The “Place” of the Nation in Media Representations of the 1998 Kuala Lompur Commonwealth Games

By Michael Silk

2001: The Expendable Prolympic Self. Going Beyond the Boundaries of the Sociology of Sport

By Alan G. Ingham, Bryan J. Blissmer, and Kristen Wells Davidson

1999: Turning the Closets Inside/Out: Towards a Queer-Feminist Theory in Women's Physical Education

By Heather Sykes

1997: Networks: Producing Olympic Ice Hockey for a National Television Audience

By Margaret MacNeill

1995: Participation in High School Competitive Sports: A Subversion of School Mission or Contribution to Academic Goals?

By Naomi Fejgin

1993: Fraternal Bonding in the Locker Room: A Profeminist Analysis of Talk about Competition and Women

By Tim Curry

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Sociology of Sport: Meaning, Theories and Overview

Sociology of sport, otherwise known as sports sociology, is a discipline of sociology that studies sports as a social phenomenon. Sports sociologists critically examine the functions, impacts and roles that sports have on different societies. The sociology of sport encompasses research in various other fields such as political science, history and anthropology (Maguire 2013). This article describes the origin of the sociology of sports as a sub-field of sociology. It then moves ahead to detail the four major sociological theories that are employed in the study of sports. These are the functionalist theory, conflict theory, interactionist theory and feminist theory . Afterwards, the topics of gender and race and ethnicity are touched upon. The article concludes with a description of what the future holds for the domain of sports sociology.

ORIGIN OF SOCIOLOGY OF SPORT

Sports sociology began to emerge as a formal discipline in the second half of the 20 th century. By the 1960s, television had started to dedicate copious amounts of time to sports. Professional leagues for various sports such as baseball and football began to emerge in the United States. This was accompanied by the Olympics being a playground for the Cold War. During this period, many social scientists like David Reisman, Charles Page and Erving Goffman published works related to sports. In 1978, the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport was founded with the objective of exploring this field. A few years later, their research outlet called the Sociology of Sport Journal was formed in 1984 (“Sociology of Sport” 2018).

sociology of sport

It is important to note that Harry Edwards is considered by many to be the founder of sports sociology. His career has spanned five decades and encompassed professions such as professor, consultant and athlete-activist. Edwards asserted that sports is a recapitulation of the power relationships in a society and hence it is impossible to have a non-racist sports structure within a racist society. He has advocated diversity within the major leagues of NFL, NBA and the MBL in the United States (O’Neal 2018).

THEORETICAL PARADIGMS

Four major sociological paradigms can be applied to the field of sports. These are the functionalist theory, conflict theory, interactionist theory and feminist theory.

Functionalist Theory

The functionalist theory views each sport in terms of its contributions to the whole world of sports. Sociological research using this theory focusses upon positive outcomes of sports for both individuals and the society at large. Those who follow this theory emphasize the growth and development of organized sports. But this theory has many weaknesses since it overstates the positive impact that sports have on society by assuming that all social groups benefit equally from them. Moreover, it also fails to recognize that sports are social constructions that might be more accessible to few as compared to others (Coakley 2001).

Conflict Theory

The conflict theory asserts that society is shaped by economic forces and that sports must be studied in terms of capitalist expansion and economic exploitation. Sociologists often use this theory to throw light upon how sports perpetuate the privilege and power of the existing elite group within society. However, this theory is seldom used in mundane sports discourse since it portrays sports as an opiate that deadens awareness of social issues. This theory also has one shortcoming since it only emphasizes the economic determination of social life and fails to acknowledge that participation in sports may also be a socially and personally empowering experience (Coakley 2001).

Jean- Marie Brohm is a French Sociologist that popularized a Marxist critique of organized sports in her book titled, “Sport: A Prison of Measured Time”. While talking about sports, she referred to the institutionalization of mass sports rather than natural physical activities like exercise. Brohm viewed sports as an instrument used by the bourgeoisie for subordination and indoctrination of the masses. Her contributions to the field of sociology of sports are important since she brings to light the fact that sports acts as a distraction from the issues of the real world by whitewashing many genuine problems (Brohm 1978).

Interactionist Theory

The interactionist theory focusses on how people’s identities are created and maintained due to participation and interaction with sports and cultures. Sociologists studying sports through this perspective aim to make sports associations less autocratic, more democratic and condemn the hierarchical organization of sports. However, this theory ignores issues of power relations in society by choosing to look at society from a micro-scale (Coakley 2001).

Feminist Theory

Feminist research studies how sports reproduce gendered ideas and practices related to sexuality, physicality and the body. Sociologists use this theory to study how different sports help produce ideas of masculinity and femininity and how women are represented in media sports coverage. Feminist theorists also take social action by challenging those aspects of sports that systematically privilege men over women. They also expose oppressive forms of homophobia and sexism in sports (Coakley 2001).

GENDER WITHIN SPORTS                          

A sociological insight into the gendered realm of sports is required to understand the minute and major differences between men’s and women’s sports. In most societies, gender roles related to sports are enforced from a very young age. The idea that sports are too masculine for women and that they must stick to non-competitive games is planted through socialization in schools and within families. The separation of male and female roles within the sports world is exposed through their representation in media. For example, men’s sports are more prominent within media and have a larger viewership as compared to women’s sports. Moreover, there is a contrast in the types of sports that each gender is expected to play. Men’s sports are usually confrontational, coordinated and combative such as wrestling and rugby while women’s sports are more individualized and less aggressive such as gymnastics and figure skating. Participation in traditionally “masculine” sports leads to gender identity conflict for women and the same applies to men that take part in traditionally “feminine” sports.

Read: Sociology of Gender

Those studying sports, and especially sociologists interested in the field, must recognize the theoretical importance of feminism in their research. More importantly, the discourse on gender and sports must move away from a restricted focus on women, to the nature and impact of gendered social norms on the behavior of both sexes (Scraton & Flintoff 2002).

RACE & ETHNICITY WITHIN SPORTS

In the past, sports were viewed as an apolitical space where athletes were insulated from the real world and their focus solely on their performance. But despite these views, the realm of sports does not operate in isolation from the wider society. Race and ethnicity have always played an important role in social activism within the field of sports. Recent actions, especially those taken by African- American athletes have raised the topic of activism within sports (Cooper et al. 2019). The Black Lives Matter movement has triggered a range of protests among the most popular competitive sports.

  • Basketball : In August 2020, the Milwaukee Bucks staged a boycott over the police shooting of African-American Jacob Blake. This forced the NBA to halt its playoffs and also prompted a wave of walkouts by other teams. Basketball superstar LeBron James also voiced his solidarity with the Buck’s boycott and stated that the Los Angeles Lakers had voted to abandon the season.
  • Tennis: Naomi Osaka, a two time Grand Slam champion also recently announced her withdrawal from the Western & Southern Open semi-finals this year. She explained her actions by stating that she was a black woman before she was an athlete. And as a black woman, she felt that were more important matters that needed attention at the moment than people watching her play tennis (Staff 2020).
  • Formula 1 Racing: The Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton also spoke up about the movement in July of this year. As the only black driver in history, he has regularly used the Black Lives Matter slogan. But this year, he also urged others in the industry to do the same. He and other drivers kneeled when the national anthem was played as a sign of protest whose history can be traced to Colin Kaepernick kneeling at the NFL four years back.

FUTURE OF SOCIOLOGY OF SPORTS

The sociology of sports has recently begun researching new areas within the field of sports. The analysis of the following topics is being done through various theories and methodologies:

  • Sports and globalization have gained popularity among sociologists and new areas of research are dealing with the relationship between social development and sports within developing nations.
  • A few sociologists have also employed qualitative and quantitative data to shed light on the relationship between sports and social class.
  • Finally, democratization studies has gained vast popularity within the last few years within the field of sports. In the future, issues of participation in sports will also be studied through the lenses of social exclusion and inclusion (“Sociology of Sport” 2018).

Brohm, J. (1978).  Sport, a Prison of Measured Time: Essays . Ink Links Limited.

Coakley, J. J. (2001).  Sport in Society: Issues & Controversies (7th ed., Health professions series). McGraw Hill.

Cooper, J. N., Macaulay, C., & Rodriguez, S. H. (2019). Race and resistance: A typology of African American sports activism. International Review for the Sociology of Sport ,  54 (2), 151–181.  https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690217718170

Maguire J. (2013) Sport, Sociology of. In: Runehov A.L.C., Oviedo L. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8265-8_1332

O’Neal, L. (2018). Harry Edwards, a giant of sports activism, still has people shook. Retrieved August 28, 2020, from https://theundefeated.com/features/harry-edwards-mexico-city-olympics-sports-activism-john-carlos-tommie-smith-1968/

Scraton, S., & Flintoff, A. (2002).  Gender and Sport: A Reader . Psychology Press.

Sociology of Sport (2018). Retrieved August 28, 2020, from https://sociology.iresearchnet.com/

Staff, S. (2020). Black Lives Matter: NBA walkout sparks historic sport boycott in US; Osaka withdraws, tennis halted. Retrieved August 28, 2020, from https://scroll.in/field/971490/black-lives-matter-nba-walkout-sparks-historic-sport-boycott-in-us-osaka-withdraws-tennis-halted

About Author: Arushi Chopra is currently an undergraduate student pursuing sociology and environmental studies. She is passionate about writing and researching about these two fields. She has a keen interest in social work and has collaborated with many volunteering programs in the past. Her hobbies include horse riding, trekking and painting.

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Sports sociology an important aspect

Profile image of International Research Journal Commerce arts science

Sport is a major component in daily life today. Sport plays a huge role in our everyday life. Whether it’s mentally, physically or spiritually, sport has a big impact on anyone’s life, especially, to the average sport fan. Sport has became more commercialized and globalize over the past years for an example the world cup has lots of sport company sponsors and supporters. By watching the world cup and the olympics this creates excitement to the the human eye. In this essay there will be the components of sport in health , organizations , why people do this during their free time and how people play sport as a job.

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Juliano de Souza

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Clive Palmer (National Teaching Fellow)

Imagine a world without sport; the euphoric triumphs, the heart-breaking losses and the everyday sporting controversies which captivate a global audience would no longer exist. For millions of people around the world the excitement that sport entails ‘are like lightning bolts that interrupt an otherwise continuous skyline’ (Cashmore, 2000:6). Without sport, the world would never have witnessed Andy Murray make history by being the first Briton in 77 years to win the Wimbledon men's title, Victoria Pendleton would never have powered her way to winning gold in the women’s Keirin during the 2012 London Olympics, and Alex Ferguson would not have retired as the ‘greatest’ football manager of all time (?). Needless to say, there is more to sport than the sports themselves. Sport has become so deeply entrenched as a pillar of modern society, that to envisage a world without it seems inconceivable; neither the globalisation of commercial sports (Coakley, 2003) nor the intimate relationship between sport and politics (Houlihan, 2002) would ever have been formed. Additionally, the idea of using mega-sporting events, such as the Olympics, as global platforms for protest (Cottrell and Nelson, 2010), or as backdrops for terrorism (Giulianotti and Klauser, 2012), would be non-existent.

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Sociology of Sport Research Paper

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Organized sport, as an area of social life, has become increasingly significant in the last 150 years. Sport now attracts the attention, time, resources, and energy of many millions of people around the world. In addition to the significance of sport itself as a cultural form, it is an activity that is related to and has the ability to shed light on many other aspects of society such as education, the media, health, the economy, politics, families and communities, and to expose social processes such as globalization, democratization, and socialization to sociological analysis. Despite this, sociological attention to such a significant area of social life continues to be limited, with some suggesting that the sociology of sport has been the “Rodney Dangerfield” of sociology.

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This research paper examines the origins of the sociology of sport and explores its interdisciplinarity particularly in terms of its dual “location” in the disciplines of sociology and physical education. The development of sociology of sport is examined over three phases, together with a consideration of recent developments; and this is followed by an examination of the achievements of the sociology of sport in adding to the body of knowledge in sociology over the same three overlapping phases and a consideration of recent developments and attempts to win “respect.” The paper concludes by speculating about the future of a field of study that Ingham and Donnelly (1997) characterized as “disunity in unity.”

The sociology of sport began to emerge as a formally recognized subdiscipline of sociology in the second half of the twentieth century. There were a number of earlier examples of sociological attention to the field of sport. In the United States, Veblen (1899) referred to sports as “marks of an arrested spiritual development” (1934:253) and to college sports as “manifestations of the predatory temperament” (p. 255) in his The Theory of the Leisure Class. W. I. Thomas (1901) and G. E. Howard (1912) dealt with “the gaming instinct” and the “social psychology of the spectator,” respectively in articles published in the American Journal of Sociology. Spencer, Simmel, Weber, Piaget, Hall, Sumner, Huizinga, and Mead all made reference to play, games, and/or sport in their work, but it was probably the German, Heinz Risse (1921) who first characterized sport as a sociological field of study in his book Soziologie des Sports.

Following World War II, there was growing interest in sport from a sociological perspective. By the 1960s, television was beginning to devote significant amounts of time to sport, professional leagues were developing and expanding, organized youth sports in communities and educational institutions were beginning to proliferate, and the Cold War was being fought at the Olympics and other international competitions. In the United States, social scientists such as Gregory Stone, David Riesman, Erving Goffman, Eric Berne, James Coleman, and Charles Page all produced works referring to sport. Their interests were reflected internationally in the emergence of the first academic association in the field in 1964. The International Committee for the Sociology of Sport (now named the International Sociology of Sport Association) was comprised of both sociologists and physical educators from East and West Germany, France, Switzerland, Finland, England, the Soviet Union, Poland, the United States, and Japan. The Committee/Association, which is affiliated with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization through the International Council of Sport Sciences and Physical Education and the International Sociological Association, has held annual conferences since 1966 and began to produce a journal (the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, now published by Sage) in that same year.

The first English language books in the field also began to appear in the 1960s (e.g., McIntosh 1963; Jokl 1964). Kenyon and Loy’s (1965) call for a sociology of sport is considered to be a key programmatic statement, and the same authors produced the first anthology in the field, Sport, Culture, and Society: A Reader on the Sociology of Sport (Loy and Kenyon 1969).

Interdisciplinarity

The sociology of sport provides a large social scientific umbrella and may be one of the more interdisciplinary, or at least multidisciplinary, subdisciplines in the social sciences. In addition to sociology, researchers whose work is perhaps more recognized as belonging to other mainstream social science disciplines such as political science, economics, political economy, social psychology, cultural anthropology, history, human/cultural geography, and religious studies have all published in sociology of sport journals and presented papers at sociology of sport conferences. Thus, the sociology of sport is, in many ways, a shorthand term for the social science of sport. This occurred mainly because the sociology of sport became organized early and, because it remained open to a wide range of social sciences, organizations, journals, and conferences did not develop in other fields. Some exceptions include The Anthropological Association for the Study of Play, and its short-lived journal, Play and Culture ; the history of sport, with its own national and international organizations and journals; and some researchers involved in economics and policy studies who have also become involved recently with sport management associations (e.g., the European Association for Sport Management and the North American Society for Sport Management).

The sociology of sport has also experienced the same type of fragmentation as mainstream sociology in the last 30 years. The emergence of departments such as “policy studies,” “gender studies,” “media/communications studies,” and “race and ethnic studies,” many employing individuals trained as sociologists, produces another layer of social sciences. Scholars in these departments are also carrying out sport-related research and presenting and publishing work in the sociology of sport.

A third area of interdisciplinarity involves the relationship of sociology of sport to both sociology and physical education (now sometimes called kinesiology or human kinetics).

Many of the subdisciplines of sociology have dual affiliations—for example, the sociology of religion may be found in both sociology and religious studies departments. However, the connections between the sociology of sport, physical education, and sociology may be more striking and consequential. The sociology of sport began to emerge in North America at a time (1960s) when physical education (and other applied professional) departments in universities, which had until then primarily emphasized teacher preparation, were under pressure to develop an academic body of knowledge and to increase research productivity. The solution, proposed by physical educator Franklin Henry (1964) at the University of California, Berkeley, was to seek legitimacy in the disciplines. He proposed that “there is indeed a scholarly field of knowledge basic to physical education. It is constituted of certain portions of such diverse fields as anatomy, physics and physiology, cultural anthropology, history and sociology, as well as psychology” (p. 32). Thus, just as some sociologists were beginning to see sport as a legitimate area of sociological inquiry, physical educators were being encouraged to establish a disciplinary specialty, and graduate education in physical education soon began to emphasize those specialties, including sociology. The disciplinary emphasis in physical education became widespread internationally and was adopted in the university physical education curricula of most developed nations.

Sage (1997) provides a detailed account of the relationships between sociology and physical education in the sociology of sport, pointing out the closeness of the relationship, and its complexities. Describing “the development of the sociology of sport [as] a joint venture for physical educators and sociologists,” (p. 325) he points to examples such as the following:

  • Sociology of sport courses, required by physical education departments, being taught by sociology departments
  • Physical education graduate students specializing in the sociology of sport taking course work in sociology departments
  • Sociologists serving on thesis and dissertation committees for such graduate students
  • Professors employed by sociology and physical education departments being cross-appointed to the other department

The University of Massachusetts in the 1970s and, more recently, the University of Illinois are examples of places where extremely close relations developed between faculty members and graduate students in both physical education and sociology departments. Sage (1997) goes on to note that both sociologists and physical educators specializing in the sociology of sport have served together on the boards of national, regional, and international sociology of sport associations, and on the editorial boards of sociology of sport journals. In addition, the leading organization in the field (the International Sociology of Sport Association) exposes this dual affiliation by meeting biennially at the World Congress of Sociology (as Research Committee No. 27 of the International Sociological Association), and the Pre-Olympic (Sport Sciences) Congress, respectively.

Despite this closeness, relations are not always harmonious. For example, in countries such as Germany and Japan two different sociology of sport associations exist, one sponsored by physical education and the other by sociology. Membership may cross over, but attempts to merge the two organizations have been resisted. Issues of prestige and status are involved here. Sociology may not feel that it ranks very highly in university departmental prestige rankings, but it knows that it ranks more highly than physical education (which has found the “dumb jock” image to be stubbornly persistent).

Similarly, the study of sport carries little prestige in sociology departments, and Ingham and Donnelly (1997) noted that some individuals graduating with Ph.D.s in sociology, and whose doctoral theses had dealt with sport, were counseled against continuing work in that area—one noting that he had been advised to seek a more “mainstream and rigorous” area of sociology.

Sociologists of sport in physical education departments may find themselves in a double bind. Not only has their work carried little prestige in the discipline of sociology but it also may put them at odds with their colleagues in departments of physical education. As Hollands (1984) noted, “The very structure of sport study in North America ironically pairs the social critic [sociologist of sport] with those very individuals in sport science whose professional ideology reinforces ahistorical and functionalist approaches to the subject” (p. 73). Although the field of sociology of sport provides an important exemplar of interdisciplinarity, some 40 years of research in the field may also be characterized as an attempt to win “respect.”

Development of the Field

In 1988, Jean Harvey and Hart Cantelon provided a contemporary sociological rationale for the sociology of sport:

Sport is primarily a social activity, and the sports problems that the media report on every day are essentially social problems. Sport is neither an idle flexing of the muscles without cause or consequence, nor merely a series of motor gestures devoid of social significance. It is a set of social structures and practices whose orientations and objectives have been adopted or challenged from the very beginning by various social agents. (P. 1)

This rationale reflected over 20 years of development in the field and would not have been widely understood in the 1960s. Ingham and Donnelly (1997) identified three widely overlapping stages in the development of sociology of sport in North America, which they labeled (1) searching for a sociology for the sociology of sport, (2) early confrontations with Marxism, and (3) cultural studies.

Donnelly (1996, 2003), borrowing heavily from ideas expressed by John Loy, characterized these three phases as “reflection” (sport reflects society), “reproduction” (sport is heavily implicated in social reproduction), and “resistance” (the status quo may be challenged through sport). The quote from Harvey and Cantelon (above) captures the third (“resistance”), more mature phase, but not the struggles to reach that level of analysis. The following section outlines developments in the field in each of these three periods and concludes with an examination of recent developments.

Reflection/Searching for a Sociology for the Sociology of Sport

The sociology of sport emerged at a time when U.S. sociology was dominated by structural functionalism and instrumental positivism. The prevailing view of sport in most countries where the sociology of sport was developing was that “sport reflects society”/“sport is a mirror (or microcosm) of society.” Functionalism and positivism provided a comfortable, if somewhat contradictory, fit for physical educators in the sociology of sport: Adopting a functionalist approach permitted them to “find support for the so-called ‘social development’ objectives of physical education” (Kenyon 1969:172), to identify the functions of sport, exercise, and recreation, and to determine how sport functioned to socialize individuals to set goals, maintain discipline, manage aggression, and adapt to change (Parsons’s four-system needs); adopting a positivist approach fitted well with the newly scientized departments of physical education, but scientific “objectivity” was compromised by seeking functionality and becoming what Kenyon (1969) termed “evangelist[s] for exercise” (p. 172).

However, this was also the 1960s, when both sociology and Western society were beginning to experience radical changes. In parallel with the emergence of a disciplinary sociology of sport, Ingham and Donnelly (1997) also identify the emergence of a (often overlapping) “social problems in athletics” orientation. Feminist critiques (e.g., Hart 1976) led eventually in the United States to the inclusion of sport in Title IX, the Educational Amendments to the Civil Rights Act, in 1972, and subsequently to gender equity provisions for sport in many other countries. Racial critiques of sport in the United States were manifested most obviously in Smith and Carlos’s “black power” demonstration at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, described by Edwards (1969) in The Revolt of the Black Athlete, and were then expressed internationally in the anti-apartheid movement. More general radical critiques of North American sport were provided by Jack Scott (1971) and Paul Hoch (1972).

This critique of sport was anticipated by neo-Marxist scholars in France and Germany (e.g.,Vinnai 1973; Brohm 1978; Rigauer 1981), but their work did not become available in English until later (cf. the publication dates noted above). Meanwhile, in England, Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning were beginning to develop a figurational sociology of sport, an approach that has continued to influence some research in both the history and the sociology of sport.

Reproduction/Early Confrontations with Marxism

The view that sport reflects society was an important starting point for the sociology of sport. 2 It helped overcome the view, held particularly among some philosophers (e.g., Novak 1976) that sport was a distinct sphere of activity, somehow separate from and perhaps even transcending history and social life. Although the “reflection” thesis was an accurate description of the relationship between sport and society and persists even today in the way some sociology of sport courses are taught, it had no interpretive or explanatory power with regard to that relationship. By the 1970s, the increasing influence of the “social problems in athletics” perspective combined with an increased reading of critical social theory from both North America (e.g., Mills 1959, 2000; Gouldner 1970; MacPherson 1985) and Europe produced the start of a “critical shift” in the sociology of sport (a shift also evident in mainstream sociology). This was initially distinct from, but later combined with (under a “cultural studies” perspective), a growing interest in interpretive sociology in the sociology of sport.

The European neo-Marxist critique of sport asserted that sport was implicated in socializing individuals into work discipline, assertive individualism, and hypercompetitiveness. In other words, sport not only reflected capitalist society, it helped reproduce it and reproduce dominant social and cultural relations in society as a whole (see Hargreaves 1986). This idea of social reproduction is developed in Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1977) work showing how the French education system helps reproduce the class structure of French society. Thus, in the sociology of sport, rather than passively mirroring society sport could now be seen as actively helping to maintain a particular set of power relations in an inequitable society.

A shift in emphasis in social inequality studies occurred in the sociology of sport during the 1980s, placing greater emphasis on race and gender (and less on social class); and the reproduction thesis proved to be extremely valuable. Sport came to be seen as a “school for masculinity”—at a time of rapidly changing gender relations and increasing social power for women, sport came to be seen as one of the last bastions of masculine power, socializing in males a sense of gender superiority that was considered to extend beyond the bounds of sport. And, in addition to reproducing traditional gender relations, sport also came to be viewed as one of the barriers to changing race relations— helping to reify and promote certain stereotypical mental and physical racial characteristics.

The reproduction thesis is grounded in structuralist approaches to sociology, with no evidence of agency (or counterhegemony) in analyses that focus on social processes rather than social relations. The thesis came to be considered as an accurate and dynamic but partial attempt to characterize the relationship between sport and society.

Resistance/Cultural Studies

The reproduction thesis describes a dynamic, but oneway relationship between sport and society. If the status quo was effectively reproduced from generation to generation, no changes in the relative power of social groups, and their social and cultural relations, would occur. Individuals are rendered as passive agents, falsely conscious consumers of the new “opiate of the masses” (sport), and unaware of the forces involved in producing and reproducing inequality and maintaining their subordinate status. As Coakley (1993) notes (see also Wrong 1961), structuralist views of socialization (both functionalist and critical/ social reproduction) see individuals “as passive learners ‘molded’ and ‘shaped’ by ‘society’” (p. 170). If individuals are believed to have some part in understanding, giving meaning to, and shaping their destiny, it is necessary to reintroduce agency. The resistance thesis attempts to capture the two-way process in which reproductive forces are resisted—in which agency articulates with social structure.

This synthesis of agency and structure was first characterized by Gruneau (1983), whose book Class, Sport, and Social Development is considered a theoretical turning point in both the sociology and history of sport. His solution, sometimes referred to as hegemony theory, was developed from the work of Antonio Gramsci (1971), Raymond Williams (e.g., 1977), Pierre Bourdieu (e.g., 1984), and Anthony Giddens (e.g., 1976), and relied heavily on Gramsci’s ideas about social power and hegemony. As Bourdieu (1978) noted, in an idea that resonated strongly with many sociologists of sport,

Sport, like any other practice, is an object of struggles between the fractions of the dominant class, and also between the social classes . . . the social definition of sport is an object of struggles . . . in which what is at stake, inter alia, is the monopolistic capacity to impose the legitimate definition of sporting practice and the legitimate function of sporting activity. (P. 826)

These ideas permitted sport to be seen not only as dominated by elites (often characterized during the 1980s and 1990s as upper class, white males) and by hegemonic groups such as the International Olympic Committee, FIFA (the international soccer federation), sporting goods manufacturers, and media conglomerates but also as “contested terrain,” as the “site of struggles” over “the forms, circumstances and meanings of participation” (Donnelly 1993: 17).

In this way of understanding sport, individuals are seen as active, self-reflexive agents

  • who “might quite consciously value sports as meaningful and beneficial aspects of their lives, while at the same time being aware that ruling groups attempt to use sport as an instrument of control” (Hargreaves 1986:43);
  • who have the capacity to change the conditions under which they practice sport and recognize and change the conditions that maintain their subordinate status; and
  • whose attempts at resistance sometimes have an opposite effect, serving to reinforce the conditions of their subordination (see Donnelly 1988).

Thus, approaches to the sociology of sport adopting the resistance thesis focused on sport as an aspect of culture, produced (socially constructed and reconstructed) by the participants, but not always in the manner of their own choosing (to paraphrase Marx [1852] 1991).

Recent Developments/Disunity in Unity

During the 1990s, there was an evident “postmodern shift” in the sociology of sport, accompanied by the type of fragmentation, noted previously, evident in mainstream sociology. “Cultural studies” began to overtake sociology in the sociology of sport, “postmodern” theories, including “queer theory” came to the fore; new qualitative methodologies became fashionable (narrative sociology, autobiographical studies, case studies); and the subject matter of the sociology of sport broadened to include all forms of physical culture from sexual activity and dance to exercise in all its various forms. In 1997, Ingham and Donnelly asked, “whether the future of our ‘community’ [‘sociologists’ of ‘sport’] will be anchored in sociology or sport at all and, if not, what will be its alternatives?” (p. 395). While these trends are ongoing, research representing the whole range of development (from functionalist to “hegemony theory” to postmodernist) is still being produced, and there is some recent evidence of a “sociological revival” (noted below). While the field may not be concerned specifically with sociology in its traditional sense, or only with sport, and while there have been some debates in the field about a change of name (e.g., “cultural studies of physical culture”), a recognizable sociology of sport still exists as “disunity in unity.”

Achievements/Winning “Respect”

Some 30 years ago, Gunther Luschen (1975) argued that the sociology of sport could serve to (1) contribute to sociological theory; (2) contribute to the body of knowledge of physical education, physical culture (or sport science); (3) contribute to public policy problems; and (4) provide sport personnel with a better understanding of their own status and role within society (cited in Loy 1996:959). Since that time, while there is some question as to whether sociology of sport has contributed to sociological theory (although sport has provided an ideal forum for testing theory), it has certainly contributed to the body of knowledge in both sociology and physical education, contributed to public policy, and provided many sport personnel with “a better understanding.” In parallel with the previous section, the following provides a brief overview of the research accomplishments of the sociology of sport in each of the periods identified above, and concludes with an examination of recent developments and gaining respect.

The research achievements during this period are characteristic of both the time and an emerging field of study. 3 Initially, there was work to “legitimize” and justify the emergence of a new field of study, and definitional work identifying the meaning of, and differences between, play, games, and sport. Such attempts to develop rigid definitions eventually declined with growing acceptance that sports are social constructions, whose definition depends on contextual factors such as time and place.

A great deal of the early work in the field reflected the close relationship at the time between the sociology of sport and the psychology and social psychology of sport— a relationship that echoes an earlier (late nineteenth and early twentieth century) similar relationship in mainstream sociology. This relationship manifested itself in research on group dynamics, group cohesion, leadership, social facilitation, and what is now termed “social loafing.” The relationship was also evident in some of the early socialization research, which focused on roles and motivation; and some of the group dynamics research on sports teams subsequently led to research on sport subcultures. However, the socialization research, which was primarily developed at the University of Wisconsin and by graduates from Wisconsin, was where the functionalist and instrumental positivist aspects of U.S. sociology in the 1960s and early 1970s was best expressed. The approach led eventually to sophisticated statistical modeling (e.g., path analysis) of the ways in which people became involved in sport, only falling out of favor as the “socialized” came to be recognized as active agents in the process.

Research on sport and social stratification, social differentiation, and social mobility initially took the form of categorical analyses of class, race, and gender. Some early distributive analyses, combined with the emerging critiques characterized previously as the “social problems in athletics” approach, provided evidence for social policy changes that began to occur with regard to race and gender participation in sport. Perhaps the research that best characterizes this period is Loy and McElvogue’s (1970) distributive analyses of “stacking” and the related work of Loy, McPherson, and Kenyon (1978: chap. 3) on leadership. Combining research on group dynamics with social differentiation and social problems approaches, and incorporating research by H. M. Blalock and Oscar Grusky, Loy and McElvogue (1970) showed how (and provided a powerful interpretation of the reasons why), in baseball and football, white players were predominantly in “central” positions and black players were predominantly in “peripheral” positions. As Ball (1973) noted, “Stacking . . . involves assignment to a playing position, an achieved status, on the basis of an ascribed status” (p. 98). The work developed to describe and explain why coaching and administrative positions were occupied predominantly by individuals who formerly held “central” positions as players (i.e., whites) (Loy et al. 1978). This research fulfilled a number of Luschen’s (1975) predictions, not only adding to the body of knowledge and contributing to “middle range” theory development but also contributing to social policy and to the “understanding” of sports personnel. “Stacking” became a widely known phenomenon; professional team managers found it increasingly difficult to reassign player positions if such reassignment appeared to be on the basis of race, and the leadership (coaching and management) of teams is still being monitored for racial representation and critiqued for the underrepresentation of blacks.

It was during this period of development that the influence of C. Wright Mills (1959) began to become apparent—both the duality of “private trouble/public issue” and the idea that “no social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history, and of their intersections within society has completed its intellectual journey” (p. 4). The “social problems in athletics” perspective merged with critical theory to become indistinguishable—as evidenced in the best-selling textbook in the field (Coakley 1978, now in its ninth edition). Also, the “cultural turn” started here, and the sociology of sport began to take on an Anglo-Canadian critical theoretical perspective. These changes were reflected in the kind of research carried out.

Historical sociology of sport, following Mills’s call for a temporal context, resulted in a number of important studies. These include sociologically informed studies of the origins and development of specific sports (e.g., Dunning’s work on soccer and Dunning and Sheard’s (1979) classic study of rugby) and theoretically informed studies of the social development of sport in Canada (Gruneau 1983) and the United States (Ingham 1978).

These studies examined the processes of industrialization, urbanization, and modernization in the second half of the nineteenth century and showed how the commercialization and professionalization of sport resulted. However, the reification of these processes tended to obscure the social relational struggles involved (see Hardy and Ingham 1983).

Establishing a temporal context inevitably led to consideration of the spatial context of the social development of sport. Initially, social historians considered the struggles over the use of urban space (e.g., Rosenzweig 1979; Hardy 1982; McDonald 1984). More recent studies of urban space relate primarily to stadium construction, and this resulted in a rich body of work from a political economy perspective (e.g., Lipsitz 1984; Ingham, Howell, and Schilperoort 1987; Kidd 1995). Studies of the origins, development, and spread of sports are still being carried out, particularly by figurational sociologists exploring the civilizing process, parliamentarization, and sportization; and the ongoing use of public funds to finance Olympic facilities in various countries and professional sports stadia in the United States (Canadian taxpayers made it clear in the 1990s that they would no longer support such funding) continues to provide rich data for research.

Interpretive sociology, particularly in the form of research on sport subcultures, also developed during this period (see Donnelly 2000). Initially, this work took a “career” focus emphasizing professional sport subcultures (e.g., Ingham 1975; Theberge 1977). However, “career” subsequently came to be defined more broadly to include analyses of any time spent progressing in sport. Although this view of careers in sport was widely evident at the International Committee for the Sociology of Sport (now ISSA) Regional Conference in Vancouver, 1981 (Ingham and Broom 1982), two additional influences on sport subcultures research also became evident for the first time: (1) a shift to much richer and more nuanced ethnographic analyses exemplified by Geertz’s (1973) approach to “thick description” and (2) more politicized and theorized analyses of sport subcultures derived from the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham (England). Researchers in the sociology of sport were now beginning to show how, “subcultures, with their various ‘establishment’ and ‘countercultural’ emphases, have been constitutively inserted into the struggles, the forms of compliance and opposition, social reproduction and transformation, associated with changing patterns of social development” (Gruneau 1981:10). By the 1990s, subcultural research was beginning to focus on “alternative” sport subcultures such as skateboarding, snowboarding, and windsurfing.

A third strand of research that saw important changes during this period was the sociology of gender. By the end of the 1980s, Hargreaves (1990) was able to declare that “gender [was] on the sports agenda,” and Birrell (1988) characterized the shift in approach during this period as being “from women in sport to gender relations.” There was a brief period in the early 1980s when gender research took a critical political economy perspective (e.g., Bray 1984), showing how domestic labor carried out by women supported men’s access to sport. This approach was picked up in the United Kingdom and New Zealand (e.g., Thompson 1999); however, much of the research in the United States still involved distributive analyses, supporting a liberal feminist search for “equality.” Despite Birrell’s theoretical declaration of “gender relations,” few studies involved relational analyses. One of the most significant of these (Birrell and Richter 1987) involved a study of feminist softball leagues and placed the issue of feminist resistance to, and transformation of, “malestream” sport firmly on “the sports agenda.” Studies of race and sport still largely involved distributive analyses, and there were no parallel theoretical breakthroughs; and studies of social class all but disappeared during this period.

During this stage of development, the “cultural turn” was completed, and “cultural studies” became the predominant perspective in the sociology of sport. Major research trends evident during this period include media studies, sociology of the body, studies of masculinity, globalization studies, and an increasing number of ethnographic studies.

Media studies, up to this time, had largely taken the form of distributive analyses of gender coverage in the media. However, MacNeill (1988) and Duncan (1990) introduced the tools to enable a closer textual reading of photographs, text, and commentary, which showed how women were not only underrepresented and marginalized in the sports media but also sexualized and trivialized. Numerous studies have since applied these methodological tools to various sports media and events and have also gone beyond gender to consider representations of race, nationality, and violence in the sports media. Some of the more insightful media studies, however, took the form of case studies of specific incidents such as the following: • Birrell and Cole (1990) on Renée Richards and the issue of transgendered athletes

  • Kane and Disch (1993) on Lisa Olsen and the issue of female reporters in male professional team locker rooms
  • King (1993) and Cole and Denney (1995) on Magic Johnson and AIDS
  • McKay and Smith (1995) on the O. J. Simpson case
  • Messner and Solomon (1993) on Sugar Ray Leonard and wife abuse
  • Young (1986) on coverage of the 1984 soccer riot at Heysel Stadium in Belgium
  • Theberge (1989) on media responses to violence at the 1987 World Junior Hockey Championships

The first production ethnographies (e.g., MacNeill 1996) added a whole new dimension of media analysis to the outpouring of textual analyses.

Since sport is such a completely embodied experience, it is surprising that the sociology of the body did not emerge earlier in the sociology of sport. However, research in this area was at least contemporary with a wider sociological interest in “the body,” and the “body” became the main theme (“The body and sport as contested terrain”) for the 1991 conference of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport. Shilling (1993) affirmed that the athletic body was an important part of this field of study, and Pronger’s (2002) recent book Body Fascism: Salvation in the Technology of Physical Fitness captures current approaches to the body and exercise.

The emphasis on gender relations from a feminist perspective spurred male scholars to begin to consider gender relations from a masculine perspective. Connell (1987) and Messner and Sabo (1990) raised the issue of “multiple masculinities” and sexualities (see Pronger 1990) and “showed that men were capable of deconstructing their own sexual politics” (Ingham and Donnelly 1997:389). The sociology of the body and the sociology of gender formed an obvious connection but also began to combine in an interesting way in a branch of research relating to “risk” and to sports injuries (see Young 2004). The high rate of injuries, the emphasis on treatment for rehabilitation rather than prevention, and the clear links that are made between playing with pain and injury and “character” have led a number of researchers to explore the “masculine” nature of that character, and to struggle to understand the recent complicity of female athletes in playing with pain and injury.

The shift to cultural studies led to an increased number of ethnographic studies of sport groups and subcultures and to the emergence of new qualitative methodologies (and an increased discussion of the politics of ethnography). Identity issues formed a major part of this research, and identity politics took an increasing part in research relating to gender, race, and sexuality.

Finally, identity politics were also evident as the sociology of sport began, at around the same time as mainstream sociology, to deal with globalization. This began with a debate (a series of articles responding to Maguire’s [1990] article on American football in Britain) about how to best approach globalization issues theoretically and was followed by a special issue of the Journal of Sport and Social Issues (Vol. 20, No. 3 1996) attempting to determine whether the primary process we were experiencing in sport was “globalization” or “Americanization.” The same issue also introduced the articulation of the local and the global in sport. A number of the topics noted above came together in a special issue of the Sociology of Sport Journal (Vol. 13, No. 4 1996) where “a postmodern shift in American cultural studies . . . resulted in concerns with consumption, commercialization, and images of race—all wrapped up around NIKE and Michael Jordan” (Ingham and Donnelly 1997:384).

Recent Developments/Gaining Respect

The theoretical fragmentation described above, and characterized by Harvey (1990) as being “de l’ordre au conflit,” continues in the sociology of sport, and the subject matter now covers a wide spectrum of issues relating to sport, body culture, and social life.

Recent research issues that appear likely to continue into the future are discussed in the concluding section. What remains is to determine how the sociology of sport has won “respect” over the last 40 years.

There are now four English language journals devoted specifically to the sociology of sport—the International Review for the Sociology of Sport (now in its 40th year of continuous publication, making it older than many sociology journals) and the Journal of Sport and Social Issues are published by Sage in the United Kingdom and the United States, respectively; the Sociology of Sport Journal is published by Human Kinetics in the United States and Sport in Society is published by Taylor & Francis in the United Kingdom. Sociology of sport journals are published in other languages (e.g., Japanese), and sociology of sport research regularly appears in various social sciences, sociology, and physical education journals. There are now probably 40 to 50 books published in English each year relating to the sociology of sport, and several dozen textbooks and readers are available in English.

In addition to the International Sociology of Sport Association, there are major regional organizations such as the European Sociology of Sport Association, the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, and the Société de Sociologie du Sport de Langue Française. There are also national associations in a number of countries, including Japan and Korea, and interest in the sociology of sport is growing in places such as China and South America. In some countries, sociology of sport is a branch of the national sociological and/or physical education association. The sociology of sport associations hold annual conferences, and national and regional sociological associations frequently organize conference sessions on the sociology of sport.

This is by way of establishing that the sociology of sport is now a well-established subdiscipline, producing a great deal of research each year. Leading theorists such as Norbert Elias and Pierre Bourdieu considered sport a legitimate field of study; leading publishers of sociological books and journals recognize the sociology of sport as a legitimate (and profitable) field of study; dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks of sociology such as this one now often include the sociology of sport; and national and international sociological associations include the sociology of sport at their annual conferences. Clearly, a degree of “respect” has been won, and yet Maguire and Young (2002) recently pointed out that

over the past decade, despite some exceptions, sociologists have failed to emancipate themselves from the discipline’s dominant value system in which primacy is given to work and the other so-called “serious” aspects of society. [Sport] is confined to the “non-serious” sphere. Rarely, if ever, is discussion of sport provided in introductory sociology texts. (P. 7)

The Future of Sociology of Sport: “Disunity in Unity”?

Making predictions about the future is always risky, and the best that can be achieved is to attempt to “divine” the future from current events. Although the types of research outlined previously are continuing, there is also evidence that some changes are occurring. For example, there appears to be an increasing level of theoretical and methodological sophistication in analyses of the following:

  • Sport and globalization: There are an increasing number of studies of the local-global nexus and an emerging area of research deals with sport and social development in developing nations.
  • Sport and social class: This has reemerged as an area of study, employing both qualitative and quantitative data and theoretical approaches that are shedding new light on the relationship.
  • Community studies: These are beginning to explore issues of sport and social capital, and to compare and contrast Bourdieu and Putnam in their approaches to the issue of community.
  • Sport and identity issues. These are being problematized and theorized in new and interesting ways.
  • Race and ethnic relations: Recent studies employing critical race theory and postcolonial theory suggest potential theoretical breakthroughs.
  • Democratization studies: Issues of participation in sport, and barriers to participation, are being examined again in terms of, for example, social inclusion/exclusion.
  • Sport media studies: In addition to ongoing content and textual analyses, there are an increasing number of audience and production studies.
  • Sport spectators: There has been a reemergence of interest in spectators, using both survey and ethnographic methods.

There are also increasing signs of the reemergence of more traditional forms of sociology in the sociology of sport. This is not to say that cultural studies have not been sociological, but the adequacy of evidence has been limited in some postmodern approaches to research. Tilly (1997), writing with reference to the contrast between the relativism of some aspects of postmodernism and the accumulation of verifiable and reliable social knowledge, notes that postmodernism may undercut

all interpersonal procedures for assessing the relative validity of competing propositions about social life in general or in particular. It attacks any claim of superior knowledge and thereby removes all justification for the existence of social science as a distinctive enterprise. (P. 29)

Evidence for the reemergence of sociology lies in an increasing number of well-theorized quantitative studies; in several recent books exploring sport and social theory and the contributions of both classical and modern theorists to the study of sport (e.g., Maguire and Young 2002; Giulianotti 2004); in the very recent emergence of a Marxist studies group in the sociology of sport; and in more demanding reviews of research, especially concerning the adequacy of evidence and the limits of interpretation.

Finally, there is increasing evidence of “disunity in unity” in the sociology of sport. Not only is an extremely broad range of theoretical approaches, topics of research, and methodologies represented in the field but also there are an increasing number of subfields of study. For example, “football studies” are growing in Europe, and this subfield has its own journal. Policy studies are also growing, spurred by an increasing number of research contracts with governments and sport organizations in countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Norway and an increasing call by governments for “evidence-based social policy.” Despite Maguire and Young’s (2002) warning that such research will result in a loss of “the critical and sceptical character of sociology of sport” (p. 1), there are no signs of this occurring. Research of this type is still dealing with key sociological issues such as social inequality and democratization, abuses of power (e.g., sexual harassment in sport), and community studies of, for example, volunteerism, which are concerned with the development of social capital. This diversity (disunity) is still, for the most part, holding together under the umbrella of sociology of sport. The field of study is now quite well established and, while there are internal stresses, there are no signs at this time that these cannot be negotiated.

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  1. The cultural sociology of sport: a study of sports for sociology

    The subdiscipline of sport sociology—balancing its integrity amid applied, ameliorative research, and its predominant use of the critical cultural studies tradition (Coakley and Dunning 2002 )—has bred a field content with viewing social inequalities through the lens of sport, to evaluate sport actors and organizations.

  2. Topics and trends: 30 years of sociology of sport

    Through the method of topic modelling, I will investigate the content of all articles (full text, N = 1923) from what has historically been the three leading sociology of sport journals - Sociology of Sport Journal, International Review for the Sociology of Sport and Journal of Sport and Social Issues - from 1984 to 2014.

  3. International Review for the Sociology of Sport: Sage Journals

    First published Jan 31, 2024 From combat boots to running shoes: The role of military service in shaping masculine identity in Israeli long-distance running groups Assaf Lev Restricted access Research article First published Jan 22, 2024

  4. 30 Sociology of Sport Research Paper Topics

    30 Sociology of Sport Research Paper Topics Alternative Sports Amateur Sports Consumption of Sport Deviance in Sport Disability Sport Ethnicity in Sport Exercise and Fitness Figurational Sociology Gambling on Sports Gender and Sports Health and Sports Ideology and Sports Professional Sports Race and Sports Social Theory and Sport Sport and Culture

  5. Journal of Sport and Social Issues: Sage Journals

    Journal of Sport and Social Issues (JSSI) brings you the latest research, discussion and analysis on contemporary sport issues. Using an international, interdisciplinary perspective, JSSI examines today's most pressing and far-reaching … | View full journal description This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

  6. New horizons in the sociology of sport

    Introduction. The sociology of sport is a relatively young sub-discipline. In the 19th and early 20th century, prominent sociologists and social psychologists, such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Thorstein Veblen, and Norman Triplett, already discussed sport as a social phenomenon, for example with regard to the dynamics of social competition [for a detailed discussion of the history ...

  7. Full article: Qualitative research in sports studies: challenges

    Qualitative research in sports studies: .... European Journal for Sport and Society Volume 18, 2021 - Issue 1 Free access 23,488 Views 12 CrossRef citations to date 0 Altmetric Listen Editorial Qualitative research in sports studies: challenges, possibilities and the current state of play Adam B. Evans , Natalie Barker-Ruchti , Joanna Blackwell ,

  8. Sociology of Sport Journal

    The purpose of the Sociology of Sport Journal is to stimulate and communicate research, critical thought, and theory development on issues pertaining to the sociology of sport. The journal publishes peer-reviewed empirical and theoretical papers; book reviews; and critical essays.

  9. Research impact in the sociology of sport: views from stakeholders

    1,839 Views 4 CrossRef citations to date 0 Altmetric Listen Editorial Research impact in the sociology of sport: views from stakeholders outside academia Adam B. Evans Pages 185-195 | Published online: 14 Sep 2020 Cite this article https://doi.org/10.1080/16138171.2020.1737447 In this article Full Article Figures & data References Citations Metrics

  10. (PDF) Sociology of sports and the space of sports practices: Social

    The article examines the origins and prerequisites for the formation of sociology of sport as a relatively independent scientific discipline; presents the issues of sports sociology in the...

  11. International Studies in Sport and Society

    Due to the growing importance of sport, the exploration of its sociocultural, sociopolitical, and socioeconomic functions is becoming an increasingly essential task for the sociology of sport. In this context, a new scientific orientation has evolved, accompanied by new perspectives for research activities concerning the development of sport ...

  12. Where's all the 'good' sports journalism? Sports media research, the

    SUBMIT PAPER. International Review for the Sociology of Sport. Impact Factor: 2.3 / 5-Year Impact Factor: 2.7 . JOURNAL HOMEPAGE. SUBMIT PAPER. Close Add email alerts. ... Sports media research, the sociology of sport, and the question of quality sports reporting. Gavin Weedon [email protected], ...

  13. PDF Sport Sociology

    and high-quality research and teaching content. Today, we publish over 900 journals, including those of more than 400 ... Sport Sociology Peter Craig 3rd Edition 00_Craig_3e_Prelims.indd 2 19-Apr-16 5:24:01 PM. Sport Sociology ... When we print overseas we ensure sustainable papers are used as measured by the PREPS grading system.

  14. Research methods in the sociology of sport: Strategies and problems

    The theoretical frameworks borrowed from other areas in sociology generate relevant questions, while the research methods borrowed from other areas in sociology often require adaptation to the particular situations found in the sociology of sport. This paper looks at three specific areas of sports study, and points to those problems that ...

  15. The social significance of sports

    The social significance of sports. E. Pike, J. Coakley. Published 10 October 2009. Sociology. Research Papers in Economics. The sociology of sport has a history of academic marginalisation: for being a sociological study of an activity prioritised for its physical, rather than socio-cultural attributes; and for being a study of an area of life ...

  16. PDF The cultural sociology of sport: a study of sports for sociology?

    The subdiscipline of sport sociology—balancing its integrity amid applied, ameliorative research, and its predominant use of the critical cultural studies tradition (Coak-ley and Dunning 2002)—has bred a ield content with viewing social inequalities through the lens of sport, to evaluate sport actors and organizations.

  17. Sociology of Sport: Meaning, Theories and Overview

    Sociology of sport, otherwise known as sports sociology, is a discipline of sociology that studies sports as a social phenomenon. Sports sociologists critically examine the functions, impacts and roles that sports have on different societies. The sociology of sport encompasses research in various other fields such as political science, history ...

  18. Irina BYKHOVSKAYA

    The two main stages of the formation and development of the Soviet sociology of sport, the first, covering the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, and the second covering the 1960-1980s, are ...

  19. Sports sociology, journals and their editors

    Abstract. This article discusses the role that journals and their editors have played in the growth of sports sociology as an academic discipline. It is suggested that journals are not neutral spaces in which academics share their research but, rather, they and their editors occupy a powerful position within academic life and are thus worthy of ...

  20. (PDF) Sports sociology an important aspect

    In 1970, sports sociology gained significant attention as an organized, legitimate field of study. The North American Society for the Sociology of Sport was formed in 1978 with the objective of studying the field. Its research outlet, the Sociology of Sport Journal, was formed in 1984.

  21. Social Sciences

    Feature papers represent the most advanced research with significant potential for high impact in the field. A Feature Paper should be a substantial original Article that involves several techniques or approaches, provides an outlook for future research directions and describes possible research applications.

  22. Sociology of Sport Research Paper

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  23. What sports psychology research reveals about athletes' performance

    Psychological studies of sports appeared as early as the late 19th century. During the 1970s and '80s, sports psychology became a fertile research field. And within the last decade or so, sports psychology research has exploded, as scientists have explored the nuances of everything from the pursuit of perfection to the harms of abusive coaching.

  24. A Big City as an Independent Central Place System, a Case Study of

    There is a strong interrelation between Moscow's radial-circular structure and a relatively uniform reduction in the value of central functions with increasing distance from the city center, which is disturbed by the largest highways, which concentrate a significantly higher value of the key factor compared with neighboring elements. The paper studies a big city as an independent central ...