bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
“Arguably the Greatest”: Sport Fans and Communities at Work on Wikipedia
Authors: Ferriter Meghan M.
Published: August 2016

This article explores the socially constructed space of Wikipedia and how the process and structure of Wikipedia enable it to act both as a vehicle for communication between sport fans and to subtly augment existing public narratives about sport. As users create article narratives, they educate fellow fans in relevant social and sport meanings. This study analyzes two aspects of Wikipedia for sports fans, application of statistical information and connecting athletes with other sports figures and organizations, through a discourse analysis of article content and the discussion pages of ten sample athletes. These pages of retired celebrity athletes provide a means for exploring the multidirectional production processes used by the sport fan community to celebrate recorded events of sporting history in clearly delineated and verifiable ways, thus maintaining the sport fans’ community social values.
More than a Game: Sports-Themed Video Games and Player Narratives
Authors: Crawford Garry , Gosling Victoria K.
Published: August 2016

This article considers the social importance of sports-themed video games, and more specifically, discusses their use and role in the construction of gaming and wider social narratives. Here, building on our own and wider sociological and video games studies, we advocate adopting an audience research perspective that allows for consideration of not only narratives within games but also how these narratives are used and located within the everyday lives of gamers. In particular, we argue that sports-themed games provide an illustrative example of how media texts are used in identity construction, performances, and social narratives.
Starting at “Start”: An Exploration of the Nondiegetic in Soccer Video Games
Authors: Conway Steven Craig
Published: August 2016

This article is a critical qualitative textual analysis of a selection of soccer video games, focusing on the representational and functional aspects of machine actions outside the game (Galloway, 2006) as illustrated by the “Introductory Video” and “Start Menu.” I analyze the figurative and ludic implications of these components comparatively, illustrating their crucial role in configuring audience expectations and pleasures for the game genre as well as for game play. By doing so I hope to illuminate how the socio-ideological values of sport video games (and video games in general) are not only exhibited through the main content of the game but also through something as simple as the start screen. This research concludes by examining what these nongame spaces have to tell us about representations of soccer in new media, and how these mediations affect our understanding of the sport’s culture.
The Glocalization of U.S. Sports in South Korea
Authors: Cho Younghan
Published: August 2016

This study uses the lens of glocalization (Robertson, 1995) to explore how the expansion of U.S. sports in South Korea since the late 1990s influences the de/reconstitution of the national among local sports fans. I specifically look at how the impact of global sports such as Major League Baseball transforms structures of the national among Korean sports fans. I conclude that the term individuated nationalism best explains the ways that fans rationalize national fandom of Major League Baseball in terms of their personal tastes.
The Good and Bad of It All: Professional Black Male Basketball Players as Role Models for Young Black Male Basketball Players
Authors: May Reuben A. Buford
Published: August 2016

It is a generally accepted belief, affirmed in the media, that professional Black male basketball players from the National Basketball Association serve as role models for young Black males. Very little empirical evidence, however, is available about how the young men think about these relationships. Using the concept of role model from social learning theory as a lens, I analyze interview data drawn from a convenience sample of 19 young Black men who participated in high school basketball to investigate the idea of “professional Black male basketball players as role models.” I find that young men do not necessarily accept the “good/bad” role-model dichotomy presented in the media, but rather, they are discerning in their acceptance and rejection of certain role-model attitudes and behaviors.
The Limits to “NASCAR Nation”: Sport and the “Recovery Movement” in Disjunctural Times
Authors: Newman Joshua I. , Beissel Adam S.
Published: August 2016

This article profiles the ascent of stockcar racing from parochial pastime of the late industrial American South into an internationally-distributed corporate sport conglomerate. We explicate the role NASCAR (the sport’s governing body), its spectacles, and its consumer-spectators played in reproducing the political, economic, and cultural conditions by which it was made both “local” and “global.” It also briefly illustrates the problematic nature of recent initiatives to sell historically localized NASCAR commodities to “nontraditional” national and international markets.
Risk and Sport: An Analysis of Sociological Theories and Research Agendas
Authors: Giulianotti Richard
Published: August 2016

Risk has been a prominent keyword in public and academic spheres since the early 1990s. Discourses of risk assessment and management now underpin a vast range of professional, social and political domains, from the planning of children’s leisure to global diplomacy on nuclear proliferation. Similar to “cultural” and “global” turns, we may speak of a “risk turn” that marks an epistemological and ontological step-change from the early 1990s onwards in social sciences.
Sport Sociology, NASSS, and Undergraduate Education in the United States: A Social Network Perspective for Developing the Field
Authors: Nixon Howard L.
Published: August 2016

There has been no research about the prevalence of undergraduate sport sociology courses or about the links between NASSS and the institutions and faculty offering these courses. This article begins to fill this research gap. It uses a social network perspective to show how NASSS is connected to the “idea space” of undergraduate sport sociology courses in the U.S. and to the “social space” of institutions and instructors offering these courses. The data concern the prevalence, distribution, and content of undergraduate sport sociology courses in the U.S. and their connection to NASSS. A “call to action” for NASSS is proposed, especially in terms of how NASSS could expand its social network and its influence over the curricular idea space of sport sociology by reaching out to instructors of sport sociology courses. Suggestions for related future research are also proposed.
Feeling Second Best: Elite Women Coaches’ Experiences
Authors: Norman Leanne
Published: August 2016

This study centers upon accounts of master women coaches in the UK, connecting the participants’ experiences of the structural practices within the coaching profession to their feelings of being undervalued and marginalized. By going beyond previous positivist and interpretive approaches to the issue of women coaches’ underrepresentation, I locate the participants’ narratives and their oppression within the wider sociocultural context of sport. The strength of patriarchy within sport and coaching is revealed in the private lives of the coaches. Consequently, the findings provoke methodological and theoretical implications for an alternative approach to understanding women’s long standing minority status within sports leadership.
It’s Not About the Game: Don Imus, Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Media
Authors: Cooky Cheryl , Wachs Faye L. , Messner Michael , Dworkin Shari L.
Published: August 2016

Using intersectionality and hegemony theory, we critically analyze mainstream print news media’s response to Don Imus’ exchange on the 2007 NCAA women’s basketball championship game. Content and textual analysis reveals the following media frames: “invisibility and silence”; “controlling images versus women’s self-definitions”; and, “outside the frame: social issues in sport and society.” The paper situates these media frames within a broader societal context wherein 1) women’s sports are silenced, trivialized and sexualized, 2) media representations of African-American women in the U. S. have historically reproduced racism and sexism, and 3) race and class relations differentially shape dominant understandings of African-American women’s participation in sport. We conclude that news media reproduced monolithic understandings of social inequality, which lacked insight into the intersecting nature of oppression for women, both in sport and in the United States.
Foucault in Leotards: Corporeal Discipline in Women’s Artistic Gymnastics
Authors: Barker-Ruchti Natalie , Tinning Richard
Published: August 2016

Women’s artistic gymnastics is an Olympic sport that involves intricate acrobatic and rhythmic activities. This kinesthetic proficiency demands muscular strength and courage, which have been argued to serve its athletes as a source of empowerment.

Various scholars question the positive effects of sport participation. This article builds on these doubts through a feminist Foucauldian study of WAG. An essayistic research story, compiled from data gained in an ethnographic study, serves as the basis for our analyses. The results demonstrate the complexity of WAG experiences and illustrate that gymnasts’ athletic proficiency is only possible through an extensive and elaborate process of corporeal discipline.
Toward a Physical Cultural Studies
Authors: Silk Michael L. , Andrews David L.
Published: August 2016

Within this paper we offer what is hopefully both a suggestive (as opposed to definitive) and generative (as opposed to suppressive) signposting of the ontological, epistemological, and methodological boundaries framing the putative intellectual project that is Physical Cultural Studies (PCS). Ground in a commitment toward engaging varied dimensions or expressions of active physicality, we deliberate on an understanding of, and approach to, the corporeal practices, discourses, and subjectivities through which active bodies become organized, represented, and experienced in relation to the operations of social power. Further, drawing on Toby Miller, we suggest that this approach requires a motivation toward progressive social change. We consider the political and axiological contingencies of PCS, how it is differentiated from the “sociology of sport,” and how we may produce the type of knowledge that is able to intervene into the broader social world and make a difference. We are sure many will disagree—perhaps with good reason—with our assumptions. Indeed, such differences are welcomed for we feel that there is greater progressive potential in a field in tension, in healthy contestation, and, in which debates surrounding ontology, epistemology, political intent, method, interpretation, expression, and impact flow freely.
Gender Ideologies, Youth Sports, and the Production of Soft Essentialism
Authors: Messner Michael
Published: August 2016

By the mid-Twentieth Century in the U.S., a dominant ideology of natural, categorical differences between women and men was an organic part of the unequal distribution of women and men into domestic and public realms, especially in middle class families. Sport was a key site for the naturalization of this ideology, which I call “hard essentialism.” Since the 1970s, an explosion of female athletic participation mirrored the movement of women into the professions, leading scholars to examine sport as a terrain of contested gender relations. This paper extends that discussion by positing a four-part periodization of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic gender ideologies, stretching from the mid-Twentieth Century to the present. Touching down empirically on contemporary professional class youth sports coaches’ views of children and gender, I identify an ascendant gender ideology I call “soft essentialism.” I argue that youth sports has become a key site for the construction of soft essentialist narratives that appropriate the liberal feminist language of “choice” for girls, but not for boys, thus serving to recreate and naturalize class-based gender asymmetries and inequalities. I end by outlining emergent strategies that spring from the contradictions of soft essentialism.
Women Sports Journalists in Switzerland: Between Assignment and Negotiation of Roles
Authors: Schoch Lucie , Ohl Fabien
Published: August 2016

In this paper, we analyze working experiences of female sports journalists in the French-speaking Swiss daily press. We draw on Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and field to examine how structures of power shape these journalists’ lives. Based on 27 semistructured interviews and observations in the field, we found that women journalists’ work experiences depend on the relationship between their position in the field and their ethos and hexis. We identified three main strategies through which the women journalists negotiated their experiences: (1) conforming to the dominant male ethos (2) threatening the orthodoxy (3) resisting while hijacking the assigned role.
The Active Aging Agenda, Old Folk Devils and a New Moral Panic
Authors: Pike Elizabeth C.J.
Published: August 2016

The proposal that older people should engage in “active aging” has come to dominate local, national, and international policy agendas. This encompasses a variety of ways that older persons might maintain active citizenship, but invariably promotes physical activity and exercise as having health and social benefits, despite a lack of conclusive evidence to support such claims. In this paper, I further examine the meaning of these claims through an analysis of policy documents, reports, and media articles which promote the perceived benefits of physical activity in later life. I revisit Cohen’s (2002) concepts of folk devils and moral panics to understand how these messages simultaneously problematize older people while creating a market for emergent moral entrepreneurs who claim to have the solution to the problem they have in part created. I conclude with recommendations for improved understanding of the benefits and appropriate provision for active aging.
That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore: Racial Microaggressions, Color-Blind Ideology and the Mitigation of Racism in English Men’s First-Class Cricket
Authors: Burdsey Daniel
Published: August 2016

This article investigates the presence and effects of racial microaggressions in English first-class cricket. Drawing on interview data with British Asian players, it not only highlights players’ experiences of racism, but also identifies their tendency to downplay the repercussions of some of the forms that this prejudice takes. The analysis demonstrates that color-blind ideology is so entrenched in contemporary Western sport that its reproduction is not exclusively the preserve of white groups; it can also at times compel minority ethnic participants to endorse dominant claims that the effects of racism are overstated as well. As a consequence they are often pressured into denying or downplaying those forms of verbal discrimination which are articulated between team-mates and in a seemingly playful manner, dismissing incidents as merely “banter” or “jokes”.
Choppy Waters: Elite Rowers’ Perceptions of Coaching
Authors: Purdy Laura G. , Jones Robyn L.
Published: August 2016

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between elite rowers and their coaches. We were particularly interested in how the rowers constructed and negotiated the interactions and pedagogical actions of the coaches. Drawing upon participant observation and the principal researcher’s reflexive journal, data were collected over a five-month period while ten rowers participated in a preparatory training camp for subsequent selection to compete at upcoming major events. The data were analyzed inductively (Rubin & Rubin, 1995). The findings demonstrate the importance of social expectations within the coaching context. Such expectations have to be at least partially met if the coaching “contract” is to be honored (Jones, 2009). Not doing so, puts at risk the respect of athletes, without which coaches simply cannot operate (Potrac, Jones & Armour, 2002).
Sport’s Doping Game: Surveillance in the Biotech Age
Authors: Sluggett Bryan
Published: August 2016

While a considerable amount of work has centered on the doping problem within sport scholarship, little extended attention has been given to drug testing as a surveillance system in itself. The paper draws from Haggerty and Ericson’s (2000) surveillant assemblage model to highlight the increasing convergence of once discrete surveillance systems now evident in the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) recent policy changes. It outlines the unique contribution that Deleuzian assemblage theory offers doping and sport scholarship. Assemblage theory opens up a line of research to study how surveillance is produced through the continuous monitoring of information across multiple interacting control systems. The article draws from WADA policy documents to suggest that the changing dynamics of transparency within sport increasingly place all athletes under more intense and nuanced scrutiny for any signs of suspicious activity.
“If You’re Reading This, It’s Because I’ve Died”: Masculinity and Relational Risk in Base Jumping
Authors: Laurendeau Jason
Published: August 2016

In this autoethnography, I highlight the relationship between risk and responsibility in my gender project as I first take up, and then walk away from, BASE jumping. To address these issues, I write into a space of uncertainty, exploring the productive potential of polyvocality and writing as a method of inquiry.
Intersecting Selves: African American Female Athletes’ Experiences of Sport
Authors: Withycombe Jenny Lind
Published: August 2016

Stereotypes have the power to dynamically structure African American female athletes’ oppression (Buysse & Embser-Herbert, 2004; Kane, 1996), for example, by trivializing their athletic efforts (Douglas, 2002). The purpose of this paper was to examine how African American women athletes experience such stereotypes. Drawing from Collins (1990) and Crenshaw’s (1991) work on intersectionality, data were gathered from eight African American female athletes regarding their sport experiences. Qualitative analyses revealed two major themes: Gendered Stereotypes and Racial Stereotypes. Findings suggested that complex intersections of these stereotypes significantly impacted African American female athletes’ sport experiences. It is concluded that future research should explore in greater depth the sexist, racist, and classist incidences of African American female athletes’ experiences at all levels of sport participation.
For a Sociology of Sport
Authors: Bairner Alan
Published: August 2016

This essay focuses on some of the main challenges that currently face the sociology of sport, the challenge from the natural sciences, the challenge from mainstream sociology and the challenge which we have set ourselves and which, requires new intellectual innovations of the type discussed in the final sections of this essay. It is vital that the sociology of sport be defended against the tyranny of the natural sciences. This project, however, must not be disaggregated from the requirements to fight for greater acceptance from mainstream sociology and to address our own shortcomings by extending the sociology of sport in potentially exciting ways. In this respect, both memory and space present interesting possibilities. They are highlighted in this essay, from among numerous possible alternatives, for largely personal reasons. The general point, however, is that if we are to defend the sociology of sport successfully, we need to be more creative, both methodologically and theoretically.
Gender Regimes and Habitus: An Avenue for Analyzing Gender Building in Sports Contexts
Authors: Mennesson Christine
Published: August 2016

In this paper, I illustrate how gender dispositions vary in women’s soccer and women’s boxing in France based on Connell’s (1987) concept of gender régime and Bourdieu’s theory of habitus. Data were obtained through ethnographic observations and biographical interviews with fifty female athletes. The main results showed that the gender dispositions of the interviewed athletes were formed between specific gender regimes and dispositional systems that differed depending on their sport. In addition, gender dispositions constructed during childhood could be reinforced and/or transformed by sport participation. Both in boxing and in football, the gendered behaviors were also dependent upon the forms of capital each athlete was able to mobilize.
“Just Watching It Again Now Still Gives Me Goose Bumps!”: Examining the Mental Postcards of Sport Spectators
Authors: Griggs Gerald , Leflay Kathryn , Groves Mark
Published: August 2016

In a highly mediated world, iconic sporting moments are repeatedly relived, with their significance reinforced by a series of media montages. These narratives form the basis of a series of collective, shared memories within a society. Despite the power that collective memories may have, iconic sporting moments may also have private significance for an individual. In this paper, we examine these, what might be termed “mental postcards.” The study was conducted within the West Midlands of the UK, with participants asked to identify their most memorable moment as a spectator of sport. Though respondents’ accounts were idiosyncratic, highly individualized, and covered a range of sports, thematic coding revealed four specific themes: “What a Hero,” “Never Say Die,” “Being There,” and “We Won.”
Transgender Netballers: Ethical Issues and Lived Realities
Authors: Tagg Brendon
Published: August 2016

Transgender people are increasingly tolerated, and sometimes even actively celebrated, within contemporary Western popular culture. However, despite the broader political movement against gender-based discrimination, transgender people’s participation in élite sport remains contentious. Although American transgender professional tennis player Renee Richards drew attention to transgender athletes as early as the mid-1970s, even major sports organizations such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) struggle to formulate fair and consistent gender policies. This article discusses the specific case of transgender players in men’s netball in New Zealand, a somewhat uniquely gendered sport, as a means of understanding emerging issues surrounding transgender athletes’ participation in sport more broadly.
Glocalization and Sport in Asia: Diverse Perspectives and Future Possibilities
Authors: Giulianotti Richard , Robertson Roland
Published: August 2016

This paper develops our prior work to examine how glocalization may be applied to examine Asian sport. We begin by discussing the different usages of glocalization in social science, and the role of Asian scholars in developing and applying the term. We set out our sociocultural understanding of glocalization, notably drawing on Robertson’s work and our subsequent conception of the “duality of glocality”. We examine critically the arguments of Ritzer and Connell on glocalization and globalization more generally. We consider in detail how the study of glocalization processes in Asia may be most fruitfully developed with reference to four fields of research inquiry. We conclude by discussing the connection of glocalization theory to debates on localism and localization, civilizations, and multiple modernities.
Sport and Physical Culture in North Korea: Resisting, Recognizing and Relishing Globalization
Authors: Merkel Udo
Published: August 2016

There is little doubt that the globalization process has developed unevenly across time and space. This is most pronounced in the context of North Korea, one of the very few remaining communist societies, which has been isolated from the rest of the world since the end of the Korean War in 1953. This paper explores the impact of globalization on sport and physical culture in North Korea. Although North Korea categorically rejects globalization, justified by its Juche policy, its response to the globalization of sport is more differentiated, multifaceted, state controlled, and ranges from stubborn resistance to wholehearted embracement. The paper argues that North Korea’s historical trajectory, national needs and interests, and the ethnic nationalism prevalent in that society shape this reaction to globalization.
The Sport Participation–Social Class Relationship: Some Recent Youth Sport Participation Data
Authors: Hasbrook Cynthia A.
Published: August 2016

While there appears to be valid evidence to support the notion that sport participation is related to social class, such a relationship has not been clearly and directly demonstrated to exist among youth. Consequently, data from two studies that specifically investigated the potential relationship between formal youth sport participation and social class background are reported. The findings indicate that regardless of social class background, male youth participate in sport to an equal extent whereas female youth from lower social class backgrounds tend to participate in sport to a lesser degree than do their upper-class counterparts. Several explanations for these somewhat unexpected findings are offered, including the possibility of a diminishing relationship between sport participation and social class background. The multiple hierarchy notion of stratification is offered as a theoretical model in which to couch the major finding that sport participation appears to be stratified along social class lines among female youth but not among male youth.
Methods that Move: A Physical Performative Pedagogy of Subjectivity
Authors: Francombe Jessica
Published: August 2016

Driven by a desire to interrogate and articulate the role and place of the body in the study of sport, this paper encourages those who are incited by a richer understanding of the physical to expand and elaborate upon the fleshy figuration that guides the research projects and practices/strategies of the present. This call for papers is an opportunity to unpack the methodological impetus of “body work” (Giardina & Newman, 2011a) and to locate it within the nexus of dialogues that expressly seek to reengage an eclectic body politic at precisely the time when the body is a site of continuous scrutinizing and scientific confession. As researchers we grapple with and problematize method(ologies) in light of the conjunctural demands placed upon our scholarship and so I reflect on a recently conducted project and the methodological moments that it brought to light. Conceptualized in terms of a physical performative pedagogy of subjectivity, I tentatively forward a discussion of what moving methods might look and feel like and thus I question why, when we research into physical, sporting, (in)active experiences, do we refrain from putting the body to work? Why do we not theorize the body through the moving body?
Sticking Out in the Field: No, Ma’am, I Do Not Work for the Governor
Authors: Bernstein Samuel B. , Friedman Michael T.
Published: August 2016

The purpose of this paper is to further existing research on fieldwork practices and experiences by focusing on issues of reflexivity (Pillow, 2003) and research ethics (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004) within “openly ideological research” (Lather, 1986) that actively renounces the objective observer in favor of the praxis-driven embodied research actor (Giardina & Newman, 2011a). This paper examines incidents from our fieldwork on the Baltimore Grand Prix and the city’s 2011 mayoral election as, at a public forum, we were accused, not only of malicious intent but also of nefarious origin. As a result, this paper focuses upon the many dilemmas—moral, ethical, personal—inherent in ethnographic research (Springwood & King, 2001), with a deliberate focus upon the researcher’s (in)ability to “blend in” to a research setting (Woodward, 2008). More specifically this paper examines research in public spaces conducted with the aim of stimulating potentially divisive discourse. Through our experiences, we attempt to reveal the complex layers of power and space, created by and through our presence as academic researchers.
Arousing a [Post-] Enlightenment Active Body Praxis
Authors: Newman Joshua I.
Published: August 2016

In this coda, I consider the oncoming and already-present “crises” (see Giardina & Laurendeau, this issue) which threaten to unsettle the Enlightenment (and its hermeneutic legacies) substrata scholars of sport and the active body rest their work upon. In so doing, I aim to take up a number of the questions posited by the guest editors in their call for papers for this edition. I look back on the research and research acts that have come to hold sway in our field to reflect upon what the contents of this special issue might tell us about the politics of evidence, knowledge, and research action within such a state of metaphysical disorientation. I do so with this question in mind: what if these epistemological and ontological bases—the very axioms of intellectual reason and the pursuit of knowledge—no longer carried (much) value? What if the institutions which house our work no longer privileged the very foundational metaphysics—Enlightenment axioms of inquiry and reason—upon which our endeavors are hoisted? In short, what would sociocultural inquiries of the sporting and active body beyond Enlightenment look like?
Professional Sports Team Ownership and Entrepreneurial Capitalism
Authors: Flint William C. , Eitzen D. Stanley
Published: August 2016

Three arguments concerning the ownership of professional sports are advanced in this paper. First, sports team owners do not maintain the social and corporate linkages found among capitalists in other industries. Second, these owners participate in the sports industry because it is both profitable and secure (a) through tax incentives and (b) because it is a self-regulating monopoly. Finally, the workings of a self-regulating monopoly and the popularity of sport enhance the reproduction of capitalist social relations and ideology. Sport is seen to represent the mythical ideal of meritocracy where hard work can lead to ownership and participation in America’s games. This ideal ignores the reality that sports team ownership is based on enormous wealth, not merit.
Analysis of Free Communications Presented at the First Seven NASSS Annual Meetings: Some Patterns and Trends
Authors: Melnick Merrill J. , Sabo Donald F.
Published: August 2016

An analysis of the 434 free communications by the 575 presenters at the first seven annual meetings of NASSS (1980–1986) reveals several important patterns and trends with respect to (a) number of free communications, (b) number of presenters, (c) presenter’s sex, (d) presenter’s institutional affiliation, and (e) dual and multiple authorships. A classification of the free communications by subject matter reveals which research topics are of current interest to sport sociologists. Implications of these data for understanding the current stage of development of the subfield are discussed in relation to Mullins’ four-stage developmental model for scientific specialties.
Soviet Muscular Socialism: A Durkheimian Analysis
Authors: Riordan Jim
Published: August 2016

As in the West, a sports ideology has developed in the USSR that cultivates irrational loyalties and ascribes similar prominence to the winning of victories, the setting of records, and the collection of trophies, and surrounds these created events with an aura characterized by what can only be termed ballyhoo. All this constitutes a deliberate fetishism of sport. The reasons are complex. One compelling reason, however, would seem to be that sport has undoubtedly been seen as an eminently appropriate device to achieve certain key aims associated with the establishment and maintenance of a new social order. By its inherent qualities, sport has come closest to religious ritual in serving to provide what Emile Durkheim saw as cohesion, solidarity, integration, discipline, and emotional euphoria.
Experience and Career Length in Professional Football: The Effect of Positional Segregation
Authors: Best Clayton
Published: August 2016

This study examines positional segregation in light of recent data documenting the increased participation by black players in professional football and describes the relationships between positional segregation and experience and positional segregation and career length. The primary sample was composed of 1,508 professional football players from the 1982 season. A secondary sample of 1,371 professional football players was used to study career length. The results indicate that positional segregation is still prevalent in professional football. The recent increase in participation by black players has occurred in positions that have been primarily black in the past and at linebacker. Whites are likely to have more experience in professional football than blacks, which is explained in part by the positions in which blacks and whites are most likely to play.
The Odds of Attaining Professional Athlete Status: Refining the Computations
Authors: Leonard Wilbert M. , Reyman Jonathan E.
Published: August 2016

The present study contributes to and extends the literature on sport and social mobility by refining the computations for the odds of attaining professional athlete status in the U.S. Using 1980 U.S. census data, 1986 and 1987 team rosters, and 1986 lists of money winners, rates for achieving “entry level” professional sport careers were computed for males and females, whites, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asian/Pacific Islanders in the sports of football, baseball, basketball, hockey, men’s and women’s golf, men’s and women’s tennis, and auto racing. The methodological contribution of this research is that refined norming variables are employed in the statistical calculations; that is, they are age, race/ethnicity, sport, and sex specific. This inquiry contains the most systematic, extensive, and precise measures for assessing the likelihood of achieving the ultimate in sport upward social mobility—professional athlete status.
Sports and Male Domination: The Female Athlete as Contested Ideological Terrain
Authors: Messner Michael A.
Published: August 2016

This paper explores the historical and ideological meanings of organized sports for the politics of gender relations. After outlining a theory for building a historically grounded understanding of sport, culture, and ideology, the paper argues that organized sports have come to serve as a primary institutional means for bolstering a challenged and faltering ideology of male superiority in the 20th century. Increasing female athleticism represents a genuine quest by women for equality, control of their own bodies, and self-definition, and as such represents a challenge to the ideological basis of male domination. Yet this quest for equality is not without contradictions and ambiguities. The socially constructed meanings surrounding physiological differences between the sexes, the present “male” structure of organized sports, and the media framing of the female athlete all threaten to subvert any counter-hegemonic potential posed by female athletes. In short, the female athlete—and her body—has become a contested ideological terrain.
Race and Position Assignment in English Soccer: A Preliminary Analysis of Ethnicity and Sport in Britain
Authors: Maguire Joe A.
Published: August 2016

The belief that soccer offers black Britons an avenue of social mobility is challenged in this study. Examination of their involvement reveals that blacks have suffered both overt and tacit discrimination. Subject to racial abuse from spectators, black Britons also appear to experience a process of “stacking” apparently related to the concept of centrality. In conducting this study, research data and methodologies from North America and Britain were combined, and the concept of centrality was refined in order to apply it to soccer. The evidence supports the contention that blacks are assigned to positions by white managers on the basis of racial stereotypes of abilities. Future research needs to examine this dimension more closely.
Salaries and Race in Professional Baseball: The Hispanic Component
Authors: Leonard Wilbert M.
Published: August 2016

This study replicated Christiano’s inquiry on race and salaries in major league baseball in 1987. However, instead of merely dichotomizing the independent variable into black and white, the data were trichotomized into white, black, and Hispanic categories. Unstandardized regression coefficients (after disaggregating the observations by race / ethnicity, position, and free agency status) revealed several instances of salary inequities but no systematic patterning. The conclusion: The salaries of baseball players varying in race / ethnicity were not consistently different even while holding other theoretically relevant variables constant.
Types and Sources of Spectating Pleasure in Televised Sports
Authors: Duncan Margaret Carlisle , Brummett Barry
Published: August 2016

Although scholars have increasingly turned their attention to sport spectatorship, few have examined the particular appeals of television sports spectatorship. This study explains the pleasures of televised sports viewing by building on the work of media theorists. In particular, it argues that three types of specular pleasure (fetishism, voyeurism, narcissism) are found in televised sports. Further, it identifies discursive, technological, and social dimensions of televised sport spectating as the sources of those visual pleasures. The voyeurism, fetishism, and narcissism of televised sport are illustrated with examples drawn from videotapes of the 1988 Winter Olympic Games.
Mobilizing Fun: Provisioning Resources in Leisure Worlds
Authors: Fine Gary Alan
Published: August 2016

Despite the tendency to think of leisure activity in terms of personal preferences, leisure can also be understood in terms of the ability of organizations to provide resources for participants. Drawing on the resource mobilization approach to social movements, I outline a theoretical approach, labeled Provisioning Theory, which attempts to explain how leisure organizations use resources to attract and retain participants. Organizations must mobilize “fun” for members if they are to continue over time and the leisure activity is to increase in popularity. After describing how Provisioning Theory applies to a voluntary leisure subculture (mushroom collecting), I examine two special cases of the provisioning of resources: games that are “owned” or controlled by a corporation (Dungeons & Dragons) and voluntary sports activities organized with multiple levels of authority (Little League baseball).
Suited up and Stripped Down: Perspectives for Sociocultural Sport Studies
Authors: Harris Janet C.
Published: August 2016

It is clear that sports are cultural performances, and as such they should be studied simultaneously at two levels. On the one hand we must examine the dramatic, expressive meanings that sports have for people who encounter them—the suited up level. At the same time, we need analyses that go below this to examine social structures within and beyond sports—the stripped down level. Our energies should be directed toward work that interrelates the two. Scholarship of this nature will force us to be more eclectic in our theoretical orientations, drawing on a broad array of social science and humanities frameworks. The broader and deeper our understanding of these frameworks, the more sophisticated and insightM will be our work, making it more likely to contribute in important ways to mainline social science theory. The term “sport sociology” seems too narrow in light of the need for simultaneous suited up and stripped down analyses of sports that embrace numerous disciplinary perspectives. A more apt term for this enterprise, combining reference to culture and to social structure in one stroke, is “sociocultural sport studies.”
Sports Photographs and Sexual Difference: Images of Women and Men in the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games
Authors: Duncan Margaret Carlisle
Published: August 2016

This paper develops a theoretical framework for understanding how and what sports photographs mean. In particular, it identifies two categories of photographic features as conveyors of meanings. The first category is the content or discourse within the photograph, which includes physical appearances, poses and body positions, facial expressions, emotional displays, and camera angles. The second category is the context, which contributes to the discursive text of the photograph. The context includes the visual space in which the photograph appears, its caption, the surrounding written text, and the title and the substantive nature of the article in which the photograph appears. Using 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games photographs appearing in popular North American magazines, I show how these various features of photographs may enable patriarchal readings that emphasize sexual difference.
Rethinking the Applied Social Sciences of Sport: Observations on the Emerging Debate
Authors: Chalip Laurence
Published: August 2016

The emerging debate about the applied sociology of sport is analyzed. It is noted that vigorous pursuit of application is likely to further theoretical, substantive, and methodological advance in sport sociology. It is shown that practical applications of social scientific data and theories require researchers to elucidate social scientific interpretations while simultaneously specifying the naive understandings of stakeholders. The resulting work will be self-reflexive and will require ongoing collaboration with the individuals, groups, and communities under study. It is concluded that the applied sociology of sport must necessarily become a sociology that empowers.
The Early Careers of International Athletes
Authors: Stevenson Christopher L.
Published: August 2016

From an interactionist perspective which sees socialization as identity formation and recognizes the importance of both the creation and confirmation of role-identities, the present research examined the early stages of the careers of international athletes (N=29). The athletes’ introductions to the sports in which they would eventually gain international status were “sponsored” by a variety of individuals: parents, siblings, peers, and others. Such introductions did not automatically create an immediate commitment on the part of the athlete to his or her sport. For 18 of the athletes, other contingencies had to occur before they became committed to their sports, and their commitment was based on the two considerations of (a) potential for success and (b) the people involved in the sport. The eventual commitments of the athletes were developed and deepened by the processes of entanglements, commitments, and reputations and identities. All of these developments in the athlete’s career were understood from the point of view of the athlete striving to appropriate desirable and valued role-identities from the options available and obtaining confirmation of these identities from significant others.
Pools, Parlays, and Point Spreads: A Sociological Consideration of the Legalization of Sports Gambling
Authors: Smith Garry J.
Published: August 2016

The legalization of sports gambling has recently become a major social policy issue in some North American jurisdictions. Unfortunately, there are few guiding principles to help policymakers in their deliberations. This paper presents a synopsis of the main practical and moral arguments for and against sports gambling. The discussion of the consequences of legalizing sports gambling follows a sociological overview that emphasizes the scope, growth, and appeal of the activity. The concluding section examines the future of sports gambling: why legalization appears inevitable, the formats legalized sports gambling may take, and where in North America the enabling legislation is most likely to surface.
Salaries, Race/Ethnicity, and Pitchers in Major League Baseball: A Correction and Comment
Authors: Lavoie Marc , Leonard Wilbert M.
Published: August 2016

The distinction between starting and relief pitchers is crucial for a correct assessment of pay determination. Nevertheless, making this distinction does not alter the trend of empirical findings, namely that there is no salary discrimination against blacks in baseball.
Sport in Asia and Africa: Americanization or Mundialization?
Authors: Wagner Eric A.
Published: August 2016

Rather than an Americanization, it is argued that there is a mundialization of sports over time. Similarities in sports activities in various countries are becoming greater than the differences. Cultural diffusion is leading to a trading of sports interests in all directions, and is likely to lead to a global sports culture—modified in varying and often substantial ways by diverse colonial legacies, historical backgrounds, and value contexts. Thus the longterm trend is toward greater homogenization in world sports culture.
Fraternal Bonding in the Locker Room: A Profeminist Analysis of Talk about Competition and Women
Authors: Curry Timothy Jon
Published: August 2016

A profeminist perspective was employed to study male bonding in the locker rooms of two “big time” college sport teams. Locker room talk fragments were collected over the course of several months by a participant observer, a senior varsity athlete, and by a nonparticipant observer, a sport sociologist. Additional data were collected by means of field observations, intensive interviews, and life histories and were combined to interpret locker room interaction. The analysis indicated that fraternal bonding was strongly affected by competition. While competition provided an activity bond to other men that was rewarding and status enhancing, it also generated anxiety and other strong emotions that the athletes sought to control or channel. Moreover, peer group dynamics encouraged antisocial talk and behavior, much of which was directed at the athletes themselves. To avoid being targeted for jibes and put-downs, the men engaged in conversations that affirmed a traditional masculinity. As a result their locker room talk generally treated women as objects, encouraged sexist attitudes toward women and, in its extreme, promoted rape culture.
Riding a Line: Competition and Cooperation in the Sport of Bicycle Racing
Authors: Albert Edward
Published: August 2016

The subculture of bicycle racing provides a situation in which the relationship between formal rules and dominant sport ideologies, and the taken-for-granted informal structures produced by athletes during competition, may be observed. Ethnographic and interview data suggest that such structures as pelotons and pacelines create both the opportunity for and the requirement of cooperative efforts between opponents, standing in stark contrast to more conventional conceptions of sport in which only unambiguous conflict between competitors is seen as legitimate. Here the informal norms of cooperation are central to insider definitions of the social order and are accompanied by strong sanctions for noncompliance. This cooperative informal order is seen as especially problematic for novices, as it diverges from widely held beliefs in the independence of competing units and the importance of overcoming opponents through maximum individual effort. Media coverage of the sport, in disregarding cooperative efforts, both creates and perpetuates erroneous stereotypes, making socialization into the sport more difficult.