This book provides a detailed ethnographic account of the lives and experiences of a group of male, university-based academy cricketers transitioning into (and away from) professional sport. Set in one of the six university centres of cricket excellence established by the England and Wales Cricket Board in 2000 as a pathway into professional cricket, the study examines the nature of the university cricket experience in relation to a process of occupational identity-exploration and development. Through a series of empirical insights, the author illustrates the tension between aspiration and reality players encountered in deciding whether cricket, as an occupation and future identity-commitment, was right for them. In so doing, the book reveals the questions of identity generated by players' interactions with their cricketing environment relating to their lives as student-cricketers and as young people. University Cricket and Emerging Adulthood will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, psychology, sport coaching, sport policy and leisure studies.

This book presents an ethnographic description and sociological interpretation of the 'football gatherings' that evolved out of central Romania in the late twentieth century. In the 1980's, Romanian public television did not broadcast football mega-events for economic and political reasons. In response, masses of people would leave their homes and travel into the mountains to pick-up the TV broadcast from neighbouring countries. The phenomenon grew into a social institution with a penetrating force: it produced an alternative social space and a dissident public that pointed to a form of resistance taking place through football. Forbidden Football in Ceausescu's Romania provides an insight into the everyday life under the pressure of dictatorship and, through the special patterns of sports consumption, it tells a social history through small individual stories related to football.

This book analyses the relationship between the Olympic Games, with its ethos of openness and collectivism, and the security concerns and surveillance technologies that are becoming increasingly prevalent in the organisation of public events.

Winner of the Lord Aberdare Literary Prize for 2018 Even before Tito's Communist Party established control over the war-ravaged territories which became socialist Yugoslavia, his partisan forces were using football as a revolutionary tool. In 1944 a team representing the incipient state was dispatched to play matches around the liberated Mediterranean. This consummated a deep relationship between football and communism that endured until this complex multi-ethnic polity tore itself apart in the 1990s. Starting with an exploration of the game in the short-lived interwar Kingdom, this book traces that liaison for the first time. Based on extensive archival research and interviews, it ventures across the former Yugoslavia to illustrate the myriad ways football was harnessed by an array of political forces. Communists purposefully re-engineered Yugoslavia's most popular sport in the tumult of the 1940s, using it to integrate diverse territories and populations. Subsequently, the game advanced Tito's distinct brand of communism, with its Cold War-era policy of non-alignment and experimentation with self-management. Yet, even under tight control, football was racked by corruption, match-fixing and violence. Alternative political and national visions were expressed in the stadiums of both Yugoslavias, and clubs, players and supporters ultimately became perpetrators and victims in the countries' violent demise. In Richard Mills' hands, the former Yugoslavia's stadiums become vehicles to explore the relationship between sport and the state, society, nationalism, state-building, inter-ethnic tensions and war. The book is the first in-depth study of the Yugoslav game and offers a revealing new way to approach the complex history of Yugoslavia.

Female Olympian and Paralympian Events is a groundbreaking book that examines women's sports in the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which have long been underappreciated and under-analyzed. The book begins with a brief background on women's participation in the Olympic Games and their role relative to the International Olympic Committee, then introduces the underlying Gendered Critical Discourse Analysis theory used throughout the book's analysis before delving into a literature review of female Olympians and Paralympians' events. It includes a listing of noteworthy "firsts" in the field, followed by individual discussions of twenty-eight Summer and seven Winter events, analyzed according to their historical, rhetorical, and popular cultural representations. Women's unique role(s) in the various events are discussed, particular athletes and Paralympic events are highlighted, and original tables are also included. At the end of each section, affiliated organizations and resources are included in this invaluable referential volume.

This book explores the meaning of leisure in the context of key social formations of our time. Chris Rojek brings together the insights of Marxism, feminism, Weber, Elias, Simmel, Nietzsche and Baudrillard to produce a survey - and rethinking - of leisure theory. At the same time he presents a radical critique of the traditional centring' of leisure, on escape', freedom' and choice'.

He describes the relations between capitalism and leisure, the meaning of free time for workers in a capitalist system, and the gendered nature of leisure. He then discusses the social construction of leisure under modernity and the main competing arguments. Finally he examines postmodernity. Revealing how leisure practices have responded t

By drawing attention to the wide range of gruesome, bloody, and confronting amusements patronized by ordinary Londoners, this book challenges our understanding of Victorian society and culture. From the turn of the nineteenth century, graphic, yet orderly, "re-enactments" of high level violence flourished in travelling entertainments, penny broadsides, popular theaters, cheap installment fiction, and Sunday newspapers. This book explores the ways in which these entertainments siphoned off much of the actual violence that had hitherto been expressed in all manner of social and political dealings, thus providing a crucial accompaniment to schemes for the reformation of manners and the taming of the streets, while also serving as a social safety valve and a check on the growing cultural hegemony of the middle class.

This book explores the significance of the international book town movement and its impact on contemporary society. It examines how book towns have emerged and how their culture and unique characteristics help to explain a steadily growing phenomenon that has enabled peripheral communities around the world to reclaim their economic futures and impact on the cultural sphere as increasingly powerful sites and sources of creativity. Regenerating Regional Culture assesses why, at a time when the book industry is experiencing a profound transformation, book towns are proliferating in Europe and across the globe. It acknowledges the role of the book as a catalyst for this significant cultural activity and development. The book is shown to be a unique and pivotal item of cultural consumption, a remarkable artefact and, more than ever before, a springboard for contemporary cultural debate. This work investigates how the reanimation of these 'down-on-their-luck' towns is attracting, through a combination of nostalgia, history and cultural heritage, a growing middle class cohort who seek both intellectual stimulation and opportunities for serious leisure and wellbeing. This book will prove to be a useful resource for understanding the impacts of book towns on art, culture and society while also offering insightful research for those involved in existing or future development of book towns and other community cultural projects.

This book explores the organisation and structure of sport in and beyond Europe. Drawing upon up-to-date data, the collection's main focus lies on the relationship between public sport policy structures and sport (con)federations. The authors present thirteen country-specific contexts wherein sport policy systems are embedded. This evidence provides in-depth descriptions and analyses within a solid academic and theoretical framework. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars of Sociology of Sport, Sport Management and Sport Policy.

This book examines the urban legacy of the 2014 football World Cup in Brazil across the seven cities that hosted matches. The authors, all experts and natives of South America, analyse the context and impacts of hosting the World Cup for each of the host cities. The chapters use a range of background data and local knowledge and understanding to critically assess what benefits or disadvantages came along with bidding for and hosting World Cup final games, and importantly considers who the beneficiaries where and are. It further provides detailed empirical evidence that highlights a growing trend in sporting mega events: the overestimation of benefits and an underestimation of costs involved in hosting. The book adds to the critical literature that provides a counterweight to governments' aspirations to use mega events for the purposes of development and/or globalization, irrespective of the views of their citizens.

This book studies how transnationalisation, Europeanisation and migration processes intersect with football fandom, through an analysis of the transnational narratives and practices of Fenerbahce and Galatasaray football fans in Vienna, Austria. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Austria, Turkey and Germany, the author analyses the ways in which narratives about football fandom are often linked to migrant experiences, including practices of (self-)culturalization in the diasporic context in Austria. The book shows how constructed ethnicities and also masculinities and femininities meet in football fan performances and in the construction of what makes a "proper" football fan. Turkish football fandom is a field where powerful prejudices and stereotypes amalgamate and interact. This study enables the reader to look into migration processes and discussions about related topics from a different angle: the love of a football club. Football Fandom and Migration will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, European studies, political sciences, gender studies, leisure studies, sport sociology and history.

This book is open access under a CC BY license. This interdisciplinary book contains 22 essays and interventions on rest and restlessness, silence and noise, relaxation and work. It draws together approaches from artists, literary scholars, psychologists, activists, historians, geographers and sociologists who challenge assumptions about how rest operates across mind, bodies, and practices. Rest's presence or absence affects everyone. Nevertheless, defining rest is problematic: both its meaning and what it feels like are affected by many socio-political, economic and cultural factors. The authors open up unexplored corners and experimental pathways into this complex topic, with contributions ranging from investigations of daydreaming and mindwandering, through histories of therapeutic relaxation and laziness, and creative-critical pieces on lullabies and the Sabbath, to experimental methods to measure aircraft noise and track somatic vigilance in urban space. The essays are grouped by scale of enquiry, into mind, body and practice, allowing readers to draw new connections across apparently distinct phenomena. The book will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines in the social sciences, life sciences, arts and humanities.

The essays in this volume use football to create a dialogue between history and other disciplines, including art criticism, philosophy, and political science. The study of football provides fertile ground for interdisciplinary initiatives and this volume explores the disciplinary boundaries that are shifting "beneath our feet." Traditional disciplines in the humanities and social sciences have come to embrace diverse research methodologies and the increased scholarly attention to football over the past decade reflects both the startling popularity of the sport and the trends in historical scholarship that have been termed the "cultural," "interpretive," or "linguistic" turns. This volume includes work on gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, which have challenged disciplinary fault-lines.

This book provides a comprehensive overview and economic analysis of US consumer demand for televised football (soccer). Accounting for transnational demand, research is focused on the US consumers demand for the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Italian Serie A, German Bundesliga, French Ligue 1 and the UEFA Champions League, which represent the most popular and marketable football competitions worldwide, and have recently sealed lucrative media rights contracts in many large markets, including the US. The study also takes account of North American Major League Soccer (MLS) in order to provide a more comprehensive overview of the country's football market and to allow for direct comparisons with the aforementioned European competitions. These findings offer valuable insights for US broadcasters, European league organizers and managers to adjust existing strategies and/or develop new strategies in conquering the US football market.

This is the loose-leaf version of Social Issues in Sport, Fourth Edition, which offers students a less expensive, printed version of the text. Social Issues in Sport, Fourth Edition With HKPropel Access, introduces students to the study of sport as a social phenomenon. It explores current trends in sport and examines complex connections between sport and politics, economics, religion, race, gender, youth, and more. Author Ronald Woods draws on his experience of more than 40 years as a professor, coach, and sport administrator to explore modern sport from historical and cultural perspectives. New coauthor B. Nalani Butler offers a fresh perspective to the study of sport from an emerging generation of Black female scholars. She draws on her background as an athlete and professor, and leverages her international experience from working with the Center for Sport, Peace and Society and the International Olympic Academy (IOA). The text's presentation style, full-color design, and ample learning tools are designed to keep students engaged. Social Issues in Sport, Fourth Edition, addresses the Common Professional Component topics outlined by the Commission on Sport Management Accreditation (COSMA). The text remains grounded in practical application and provides opportunities for students to examine real-world issues through the lens of social theory. The fourth edition also features the following enhancements: Online learning tools delivered through HKPropel: case studies on current events, video lectures, and essay and multiple-choice questions to support applied learning and encourage critical thinking Increased emphasis on emerging issues such as sport wagering, the use of social protest by athletes, sexual harassment of or by athletes, and sport safety Discussions on the rise in popularity of esports and on the exploding influence of social media on athletes, spectators, and fans Updated sidebars that address current topics such as the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on sport, offering a contemporary context to which students can apply the concepts in the text Social Issues in Sport, Fourth Edition, is streamlined into three parts, maintaining an accessible and student-friendly format that aligns with a 16-week semester. Part I sets the stage for studying sport from a sociological perspective by defining key terms and presenting crucial social theories. This section examines participation in sport, from spectators to performers, and explores sport economics through sport management, sport marketing, and sport media. Part II discusses sport institutions at all levels, from youth sport to Olympic competition. Part III is devoted to current issues and critically analyzes the effects of gender, race, economic status, religion, and government on sport. It also offers a detailed look at both ethics and deviance in sport. Social Issues in Sport, Fourth Edition, provides the foundations for critically examining the multifaceted roles of sport and physical activity in society. The information and activities offered by the text invite students to evaluate the sociocultural issues intertwined with sport and relate these themes to their own lives. Through this in-depth examination of sociocultural issues, students will be able to understand and appreciate the development of sport as a part and reflection of our society. Note: A code for accessing HKPropel is included with all new print books.

This edited volume considers the U.S.-Mexico soccer rivalry, which occurs against a complex geo-political, social, and economic backdrop. Multidisciplinary contributions explore how a long and complicated history between these countries has produced a unique rivalry-one in which loyalties split friends and family; fan turnout in many regions of the U.S. favors Mexico; and games are imbued with both national pride and politics. The themes of nationhood, geography, citizenship, acculturation, identity, globalization, narrative and mythology reverberate throughout this book, especially with regard to how they shape place, identity, and culture.

This book explores health and leisure as a holistic phenomenon with individual and social dimensions. Contributors to this edited volume explore the physical, mental, emotional, sexual and social aspects of health and leisure as well as the influence of moral and religious principles. The connections between the individual and the social structure, social integration, the social division of labor, and the natural environment are also analysed. The volume studies this relationship from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including sociology, psychology, psychiatry, medical sciences, sport sciences, education, policy making, and from both national and international perspectives. As such, the collection will be of interest to scholars and students across a range of disciplines, including Leisure Studies, Health Studies, Health Promotion, Psychology and Mental Health, Sociology and Sport Studies.

Sports in African History, Politics, and Identity Formation explores how sports can render a key to unlocking complex social, political, economic, and gendered relations across Africa and the Diaspora. Sports hold significant value and have an intricate relationship with many components of African societies throughout history. For many Africans, sports are a way of life, a site of cultural heroes, a way out of poverty and social mobility, and a site for leisurely play. This book focuses on the many ways in which sports uniquely reflect changing cultural trends at diverse levels of African societies. The contributors detail various sports, such as football, cricket, ping pong, and rugby, across the continent to show how sports lay at the heart of the discourse of nationalism, self-fashioning, gender and masculinity, leisure and play, challenges of underdevelopment, and ideas of progress. Bringing together the newest and most innovative scholarship on African sports, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary Africa, African history, culture and society, and sports history and politics.

The breadth of our moral experience is more extensive than has been believed over the past several millennia. There is more to morality than being honest and good, or aspiring to universal principles. In fact, in many ways the morality of our distant ancestors bears a remarkable resemblance to the moral experiences of modern athletes. In A Moral Theory of Sports, ethicist Richard J. Severson brings together stories from today's sports world and the moral practices of hunter-gatherers to shed new light on both sports and morality. Guided by anthropologists, biologists, neuroscientists, and others, Severson discuss what the moral life actually looked like for hunter-gatherer bands in the late Pleistocene epoch and argues that the championing of group success that was the epitome of their morality is the epitome of modern sports, as well. With fascinating analogies and anecdotes from football, basketball, tennis, cycling, and more, A Moral Theory of Sports offers a unique interpretation of human nature and our love affair with sports.

Bringing together boxing writers from different cultural and disciplinary perspectives, this book offers a vital and original contribution to the understanding of this enduringly fascinating and controversial sport. This collected volume investigates what is at stake in boxing in the modern world by exploring different aspects of boxing culture and problematic concepts attached to the sport such as masculinity and violence. This approach implies input from different academic and creative disciplines including aesthetics, cultural studies, creative writing, anthropology, history, literature and sociology. The points of view of participants in boxing as a sport, amateur and professional, will also be incorporated. In this way, themes as different as what it feels like to receive a punch on the nose or the role of fist-fighting in traditional Russian folk customs will be explored.

This edited collection explores the concept of social entrepreneurship in sport, examining how it has been used in Swedish society to date. It explores how this approach in sport could also be used to address wider socio-political issues, including economic, political, cultural and pedagogical in European society. Sport and Social Entrepreneurship in Sweden explores different social entrepreneurship projects which have created new forms of activity and reached groups of children and young people previously disengaged in sport. The authors also highlight the growing momentum of this kind of entrepreneurship in Sweden after a period of societal upheaval that has resulted in a blurring of social borders and the founding of new organisational forms. This book contributes to the formation of a new field of research, involving theoretical and empirical work on the characteristics and possibilities of social entrepreneurship in relation to sport.

Women fans have entered the traditionally male domain of the sports stadium in growing numbers in recent years. Watching professional sport is important for women for so many reasons, but their expectations and experiences have been largely ignored by academics. This book tackles these shortcomings in the literature and sheds new light on the many ways in which women become sports fans. This groundbreaking study is the first to focus on the phenomenon of the feminization of sports fandom. Including original research on football and rugby union in the UK, it looks at the increasing opportunities for women to become sports fans in contemporary society and critically examines the way this form of leisure is valued by women. Drawing upon feminist thinking and intersectionality, it shows how women from different social classes and age groups consume the spectacle of sport. This book is fascinating reading for any student or scholar interested in sport and leisure studies, sociology and gender or women's studies.

Winner of the British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2017 This book is a case study of an African-Caribbean-founded football club, Meadebrook Cavaliers, from the English East Midlands. Covering the years 1970 to 2010, it seeks to address the paucity of research on the British African-Caribbean male experience in leisure and sport as well as on the relationship between "race" and local-level football. The development of the club was intimately connected to wider changes in the social and sporting terrain. Based on a mix of archival and ethnographic research, the book examines the club's growth over four decades, exploring the attitudes, social realities and identity politics of its African-Caribbean membership and the varying demands and expectations of the wider black community. In doing so, it shows how studies of minority ethnic and local football clubs can shed light on the changing social identities and cultural dynamics of the communities that constitute them.

Despite campaigns to educate and increase awareness, discrimination continues to be a deep-rooted problem in sport. This book provides an international, interdisciplinary and critical discussion of various forms of discrimination in sport today, with contributions from world-leading academics and high-profile campaigners. Divided into five sections, the book explores racism, sexism, homophobia, disability, and the role of media in both perpetuating and tackling discrimination across a variety of sports and sporting events around the world. Drawing on examples from football, rugby, cricket, tennis, climbing, the Olympics and the Paralympics, it offers a critical review of current debates and discusses the latest empirical research on the changing nature of discrimination in sport. Taking into account the experiences of athletes and coaches across all performance levels, it presents recommendations for further action and directions for future research. A timely and challenging study, Sport and Discrimination is essential reading for all students and scholars of sports studies with an interest in the sociology of sport and the relationship between sport, society and the media.

This book deals broadly with tourism planning and development from the perspective of Croatia, a major Adriatic tourism destination which is fast becoming one of the most popular vacation spots in the European Union. With the recent accession of Croatia to the EU, Croatia is undergoing a rapid political and economic transition and generating scholarly interest in the country's primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. This book examines the country's long history and thriving success in the tourism industry through issues of destination image and identity, management challenges, economic impact, and how to attract tourists in the midst of extreme political changes. The book explores the implications of policy decisions on product development and takes a theoretically sound approach to destination planning and problem-solving in Croatia. Its timely view of Croatian national tourism policy and the broader Adriatic/Mediterranean region makes this book of interest to all scholars, students, and practitioners engaged in various aspects of destination development planning and management.