Sport has gained increasing importance for welfare society. In this process, however, the term of ?sport? has become less and less clear. Larger parts of what nowadays is called ?sport for all? are non-competitive and derived from traditions of gymnastics, dance, festivity, games, outdoor activities, and physical training rather than from classical modern elite sports. This requires new philosophical approaches, as the philosophy of sport, so far, has been dominated by topics of elite sports.

Based on Scandinavian experiences, the book presents studies about festivities of sport, outdoor activities, song and movement, and play and game. The engagement of elderly people challenges sports. Games get political significance in international cooperation, for peace culture and as means against poverty (in Africa). The empirical studies result in philosophical analyses on the recognition of folk practice in education and on relations between identity and recognition.

The study of ?sport for all? opens up for new ways of phenomenological knowledge, moving bottom-up from sport to the philosophy of "the individual," of event, of nature, and of human energy. Popular sports give inspiration to a philosophy of practice as well as to a phenomenological understanding of ?the people?, of civil society and the ?demos? of democracy ? as folk in movement.

This book was published as a special issue in Sport, Ethics and Philosophy.

The Making of Sporting Cultures presents an analysis of western sport by examining how the collective passions and feelings of people have contributed to the making of sport as a ?way of life?. The popularity of sport is so pronounced in some cases that we speak of certain sports as ?national pastimes?. Baseball in the United States, soccer in Britain and cricket in the Caribbean are among the relevant examples discussed.

Rather than regarding the historical development of sport as the outcome of passive spectator reception, this work is interested in how sporting cultures have been made and developed over time through the active engagement of its enthusiasts. This is to study the history of sport not only ?from below?, but also ?from within?, as a means to understanding the ?deep relationship? between sport and people within class contexts ? the middle class as well as the working class. Contestation over the making of sport along axes of race, gender and class are discussed where relevant. A range of cultural writers and theorists are examined in regard to both how their writing can help us understand the making of sport and as to how sport might be located within an overall cultural context ? in different places and times.

The book will appeal to students and academics within humanities disciplines such as cultural studies, history and sociology and to those in sport studies programmes interested in the historical, cultural and social aspects of sport.

This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

For more than a century, the Olympics have been the modern world's most significant sporting event. Indeed, they deserve much credit for globalizing sport beyond the boundaries of the Anglo-American universe, where it originated, into broader global realms. By the 1930s, the Olympics had become a global mega-event that occupied the attention of the media, the interest of the public and the energies of nation-states. Since then, projected by television, funded by global capital and fattened by the desires of nations to garner international prestige, the Olympics have grown to gargantuan dimensions.

In the course of its epic history, the Olympics have left numerous legacies, from unforgettable feats to monumental stadiums, from shining triumphs to searing tragedies, from the dazzling debuts on the world's stage of new cities and nations to notorious campaigns of national propaganda. The Olympics represent an essential component of modern global history. The Olympic movement itself has, since the 1990s, recognized and sought to shape its numerous legacies with mixed success as this book makes clear. It offers ground-breaking analyses of the power of Olympic legacies, positive and negative, and surveys the subject from Athens in 1896 to Beijing in 2008, and indeed beyond.

This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Since the nineteenth century the USA has served as an international model for business, lifestyle and sporting success. Yet whilst the language of sport seems to be universal, American sports culture remains highly distinctive. Why is this so? How should we understand American sport? What can we learn about America by analyzing its sports culture?

Understanding American Sports offers discussion and critical analysis of the everyday sporting and leisure activities of ?ordinary? Americans as well as the ?big three? (football, baseball, basketball), and elite sports heroes. Throughout the book, the development of American sport is linked to political, social, gender and economic issues, as well as the orientations and cultures of the multilayered American society with its manifold regional, ethnic, social, and gendered diversities.

Topics covered include:

• American college sports
• the influence of immigrant populations
• the unique status of American football
• the emergence of women's sport in the USA

With co-authors from either side of the Atlantic, Understanding American Sports uses both the outsider's perspective and that of the insider to explain American sports culture. With its extensive use of examples and illustrations, this is an engrossing and informative resource for all students of sports studies and American culture.

This book examines the local, regional and transnational contexts of video games through a focused analysis on gaming communities, the ways game design regulates gender and class relations, and the impacts of colonization on game design. The critical interest in games as a cultural artifact is covered by a wide range of interdisciplinary work. To highlight the social impacts of games the first section of the book covers the systems built around high score game competitions, the development of independent game design communities, and the formation of fan communities and cosplay. The second section of the book offers a deeper analysis of game structures, gender and masculinity, and the economic constraints of empire that are built into game design. The final section offers a macro perspective on transnational and colonial discourses built into the cultural structures of East Asian game play.

Fathering is a highly contested concept in popular, media, academic and policy discourses, yet in the areas of family studies and men 's studies the leisure component of family life is under-played. This book provides a long overdue and thorough investigation of the relationship between fatherhood, sport, and leisure.

Fathering Through Sport and Leisure investigates what fathers actually do in the time they spend with their children. Leading researchers from the fields of sport, leisure and family studies examine the tensions men encounter as they endeavour to meet the new expectations of fatherhood, and the central role that sport and leisure play in overcoming this. Analyzed in relation to social trends and current policy debates, this unique collection examines fathering in a wide range of contexts including:

• parental expectation and youth sports
• fathers and daughters
• leisure time and couple time in dual earner families
• divorce, fatherhood and leisure.

The book shows how contemporary fathers use sport and leisure to engage with their sons and daughters, achieve emotional closeness and fulfil their own expectations of what it means to be a good father . Drawing on research carried out in the UK, Australia, Canada and the United States, this is a crucial text for anybody with an interest in leisure studies, family studies or fatherhood.

Part of the Sport in the Global Society series, this innovative and creative text explores collective history, memory, and sport culture, tracking the passage of sports away from England. The author investigates why 'elite' English sports - such as rugby and cricket - became national sports in New Zealand and Australia, and asks why 'working class' English sports - such as football - have travelled less well to these areas. Focusing on these sports, the author tracks narratives and myths, tracing the passage of colonial truths, behaviours and practices. Clearly defined sections in the book focus on: * sport and tourism * sport and history * sport and memory. Using a refreshingly broad range of sources to analyze differences between popular culture and sporting memory, this book offers new perspectives on sport and makes an interesting reference for masters and postgraduate readers in sport and cultural studies.

Hoop Dreams on Wheels is a life-history study of wheelchair athletes associated with a premier collegiate wheelchair basketball program. The book, which grapples with the intersection of biography and history in society, situates the study in broader context with background on the history and sociology of disability and disability sports. It documents the development and evolution of the basketball program and tells the individual life stories of the athletes, highlighting the formative interpersonal and institutional experiences that influenced their agentive actions and that helped them achieve success in wheelchair sports. It also examines divisions within the disability community that reveal both empowering and disempowering aspects of competitive wheelchair athletics, and it explores some of the complexities and dilemmas of disability identity in contemporary society. The book is intended to be read by a general audience as well as by students in college courses on disability, sports, social problems, deviance, medical sociology and anthropology, and introductory sociology. It also will be of interest to scholars in the sociology of disability, sociology of sports, and medical humanities, as well as life-history researchers and professionals in the fields of physical education, therapeutic recreation, and rehabilitative counseling.

This collection interrogates sports in Latin America as a key terrain in which nation is defined and populations are interpellated through emotionally charged practices (state policy, media representations, and sports play itself by professionals, national teams and amateurs) of inclusion and exclusion.

Sport has the incredible power to positively influence the world, and it is with this in mind that the field of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) has seen tremendous growth over the years. Sport can strengthen social ties, advance human rights, aid economic development, promote inclusion, and more. In Sport for Development and Peace: Foundations and Applications, internationally-recognized SDP experts offer their insights, perspectives, and experiences on a range of topics within the field. The first part of the text focuses on the foundations of SDP, addressing its history, sociological aspects, specific goals-such as development, inclusion, sport participation, and conflict resolution-and political and economic implications. It closes with an evaluation and assessment of SDP programs. The second part examines the application of SDP by providing examples and insights into government involvement in SDP, not-for-profit organizations, and corporate and for-profit enterprises. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of current trends and future implications of SDP. Written for current and future SDP managers, developers, and administrators, from the student to the professional, Sport for Development and Peace offers a comprehensive look at the many substantive and interconnected SDP topics in order to positively impact this fast-growing field.

This book examines the formation of a globally oriented sports system in China, from the beginning of the reform process in 1978 to the present, focusing on the period after the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. It analyses how this system has shaped domestic social class identities and its role in international Chinese state politics. Despite advances in the marketization of the sports industry through previous eras, the Chinese state expanded investment in a set of global sports following the heavily government-directed drive towards national success at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. This would be a time when the government focused on policies set to service a growing domestic middle-class and an increasingly wide-ranging set of international interests, with sporting investments being at the heart of their strategic plan. However, reform has proven difficult. The book presents a well-rounded account of this effort with tennis and soccer providing important case studies of the internal and external dynamics of this time. As such, the book will be of interest to researchers and students of globalization of sport, those studying East Asian sports development, and those who are interested in understanding China more broadly.

Most sociological work on football fandom has focused on the experience of men, and it usually talks about alcohol, fighting and general hooliganism. This book shows that there are some unique facets of female experience and fascinating negotiations of identity within the male-dominated world of men's professional football.

A practical guide to qualitative research methods in the multidisciplinary field of physical culture. This innovative, unique and clearly-written book provides a complete one-stop manual to designing, researching and writing an effective research project. Key features of the book include * Boxed text * Guides to further reading * Chapter guides and summaries of key points * Figures and tables throughout * A unique table summarizing the '7 Ps' approach, providing a visual overview of the approach for teachers and researchers. 'It was daunting doing a dissertation for the first time and the 7P approach provided a clear step-by-step guide from start to finish of the project' - Sarah, Undergraduate Student, Bath University, UK

This insightful book offers a timely assessment of the complex relationship between women and leisure in England, drawing upon recent feminist theory. Departing from approaches which focus on particular activities or institutions, it places everyday experiences at its centre, presenting a wide-ranging and lively account of changing perceptions, representations and experiences of leisure across the period 1920-60. It addresses the nature of leisure within women's lives, examining shifting understandings of the concept and identifying areas of definitional ambiguity such as the 'family' holiday, shopping and handicrafts. Focusing upon experiences of leisure across the life cycle, it provides a detailed assessment of the particular forms of leisure enjoyed by women at distinct stages of their lives, including cinema-going, dancing, socialising and home-based pursuits. The book demonstrates that experiences and perceptions of leisure were fundamentally structured along life cycle lines: leisure in youth was often characterised by freedom and independence whilst leisure in adulthood became a vehicle for service and duty to others. -- .

This book uses the work of Jurgen Habermas to interrogate leisure as a meaningful, theoretical concept. Drawing on examples from sport, culture and tourism, and going beyond concerns about the grand project of leisure, Spracklen argues that leisure is central to understanding wider debates about identity, postmodernity and globalization.

As an international ecotourism destination, Yosemite National Park welcomes millions of climbers, sightseers, and other visitors from around the world annually, all of whom are afforded dramatic experiences of the natural world. This original and cross-disciplinary book offers an ethnographic and performative study of Yosemite visitors in order to understand human connection with and within natural landscapes. By grounding a novel "eco-semiotic" analysis in the lived reality of parkgoers, it forges surprising connections, assembling a collective account that will be of interest to disciplines ranging from performance studies to cultural geography.

Winner of the 2007 Alan Merriam Prize presented by the Society for Ethnomusicology

aThe Games Black Girls Play is beautifully and passionately written. This book presents an engaging reflexive narrative that ranges from childhood memories to involvement with ethnomusicological scholarship. Gaunt makes a convincing argument that the playsongs of African American girls is the foundation of African diasporic popular music-making. In a radical counter-history, she shows how African American girls-interlocutors who are triply minoritized through race, gender, and age-are producing music culture that has profound influences on popular music and the popular imagination. She calls for an engaged ethnomusicology and moves gracefully through an array of anti-essentialist perspectives on race and gender. She argues that akinetic oralitya is key to African American musicking and that the body is always a locus of memory and communality. From somatic historiography to serious cross-talk with girls, Gaunt offers new methodologies for ethnomusicological work. The reader is pulled into a world in which Black girls are masters of musical knowledge, and in emerging from the book, we can't see the world of American popular music in the same way. When we chant Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack is dressed in black, black, black, with silver buttons, buttons, buttons, all down her back, back, back, we suddenly see how musical play and embodied knowledge generates a world of raced and gendered sociality. Oo-lay oo-lay! Congratulations, Kyra!a
--President Elect Professor Deborah Wong, Society for Ethnomusicology (October 27, 2007)

aFusing academic prose with vividly rendered memories, Gauntas journey isrefreshing. . . . Gaunt successfully lifts ignored girls from obscurity to center stage. . . . With The Games Black Girls Play, Gaunt has created a necessary space for translating black girlsa joy in a society that typically overlooks it. Hopefully, others will take their turn and jump in to keep the games going.a
--"Bitch"

"In thoughtful and affectionate prose, Gaunt makes plain how the schoolyard syncopations of body and voice are both oral-kinetic play and improvised lessons in socializing girls into the unique social practices of black urban life. . . . The Games Black Girls Play is a smart, delightful and witty polemic of attributions; a cultural benchmark of the complex web of history, race and gender to suggest a agendered musical blacknessa and an aethnographic trutha linking the aintergenerational cultures of black musical expressiona as embodied in the infectious playfulness of black girls."
--"Black Issues Book Review"

"Very informative and insightful. . . . A valuable source to add to oneas collection."
--"AllHipHop.com"

"By placing black girls at the center of her analysis, Kyra Gaunt challenges us to be ever mindful of the importance of gender, the body, and the everyday in our discussions of black music. "The Games Black Girls Play" is an exciting and original work that should forever transform the way we think about the sources of black, indeed American, popular music. This is a bold, brilliant, and beautifully written book."
--Farah Jasmine Griffin, Columbia University

"The Games Black Girls Play not only makes the point that black girls matter, but that the games, thoughts, and passions of black girls matter in a world that regularly rendersblack girls invisible and silent. Gaunt brilliantly argues that the culture of black girls is a critical influence on contemporary black popular culture."
-- Mark Anthony Neal, author of" New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity"

"A particular strength of Gaunt's text is the ethnographic dimension of her discussions. The reader is privy to the personal musical and cultural experiences of African American females of varying ages (including Gaunt herself)."
--"New Black Man Book Review"

aIt is written in an accessible style and the inclusion of personal musical and cultural experiences and histories of a variety of women, including the author, adds to the appeal. The infectious playfulness of the topic and Gauntas own personal style and passion shine though.a
--"Journal of Folklore Research"

When we think of African American popular music, our first thought is probably not of double-dutch: girls bouncing between two twirling ropes, keeping time to the tick-tat under their toes. But this book argues that the games black girls play --handclapping songs, cheers, and double-dutch jump rope--both reflect and inspire the principles of black popular musicmaking.

The Games Black Girls Play illustrates how black musical styles are incorporated into the earliest games African American girls learn--how, in effect, these games contain the DNA of black music. Drawing on interviews, recordings of handclapping games and cheers, and her own observation and memories of gameplaying, Kyra D. Gaunt argues that black girls' games are connected to long traditions of African and African American musicmaking, and that they teach vital musical and social lessons that are carried intoadulthood. In this celebration of playground poetry and childhood choreography, she uncovers the surprisingly rich contributions of girls' play to black popular culture.

This book is an ethnographic study of the martial art of taijiquan (or 'tai chi') as it is practiced in China and the United States. Drawing on recent literature on ethnicity, critical race theory, the phenomenology of race, and globalization, the author discusses identity in terms of sensual experience and the transmission or receipt of knowledge. The book concludes with a discussion of how processes of individual experience, urban life, nationalism, and globalization inhabit the body, contribute to the sensual experience of identify, and, ultimately, raise fundamental questions about the relationship between 'doing' and 'being' .

Sport can be a vehicle for the expression of identity, and also a factor in the shaping of identity. This book explores the complex interrelationships between nations, regions and states in the landscape of contemporary international sport, with a particular focus on identity. Exploring important themes such as the geopolitics of sports events, contested identities, and ownership of sport and its impact on sporting cultures, the book presents contemporary and historical cases from around the world, including football in a divided Ireland; sport and the anti-Apartheid movement; Chinese sporting nationalism and soft power; and the role of sport media in the shaping of Catalan identity. This is an important resource for students and researchers working in Sports Studies, Sports Journalism, Sports Management Studies, Sports Marketing, Football Studies, Sport and Identity Studies, Sociology of Sport Studies, and Cultural Studies.

Game Studies is a rapidly growing area of contemporary scholarship, yet volumes in the area have tended to focus on more general issues. With Playing with the Past, game studies is taken to the next level by offering a specific and detailed analysis of one area of digital game play -- the representation of history. The collection focuses on the ways in which gamers engage with, play with, recreate, subvert, reverse and direct the historical past, and what effect this has on the ways in which we go about constructing the present or imagining a future. What can World War Two strategy games teach us about the reality of this complex and multifaceted period? Do the possibilities of playing with the past change the way we understand history? If we embody a colonialist's perspective to conquer 'primitive' tribes in Colonization, does this privilege a distinct way of viewing history as benevolent intervention over imperialist expansion? The fusion of these two fields allows the editors to pose new questions about the ways in which gamers interact with their game worlds. Drawing these threads together, the collection concludes by asking whether digital games - which represent history or historical change - alter the way we, today, understand history itself.

More girls are playing sports than ever before-which, on the surface, is great for girls because sports offer positive and empowering fun for young women. In reality, though, few young athletes report "fun" as a reason they play sports. The rates of concussions and repetitive-use injuries are on the rise, and kids are encouraged to specialize in a single sport at earlier and earlier ages, even at the expense of friends, other activities, and health. Through years of extensive research, Rick Eckstein discovered that college athletics have had an alarming impact on this trend in youth sports, particularly for girls. How College Athletics Are Hurting Girls' Sports looks closely at college sports and how they shape the athletic-and personal-landscape for girls and young women. Filled with powerful interview excerpts from women athletes of all ages, as well as coaches, league officials, and others, the book chronicles how college and youth sports have become more commercialized, to the detriment of participants. The book looks at a range of sports, with case studies including soccer, field hockey, ice hockey, figure skating, and Ultimate Frisbee. Featuring a new introduction to bring this evergreen topic up to the present, How College Athletics Are Hurting Girls' Sports is an important and timely reminder that even as we celebrate sports' potential to have a positive impact on a girl's life, changes need to be made in college and youth athletics to improve the experiences of young athletes so that sports become fun once again.

This book provides a holistic analysis of South Korea's strategic use of mega-events in its modern development. It examines the Summer Olympics (1988), the World Expo (1993), the FIFA World Cup (2002), and the Winter Olympics (2018) over the past 30 years of the country's rapid growth, and across varying stages of economic and political development. It explains how mega-events helped to secure South Korea's position on the international stage, boost nationalism, propel economic growth in export-oriented national companies, and build cities that accommodate - as well as represent - South Korea's progress. It thereby highlights the broader implications for today's global phenomenon of increasing reliance on mega-events as a catalyst for development, while the criticism that mega-events do more harm than good proliferates. The book is ideal for academics, policymakers, and those with an interest in mega-events and their role in the development of non-western countries.

Occupational welfare is a distinctive solution to contemporary social policy dilemmas. Though it plays a substantial role in many countries, especially in pension provision, occupational welfare and its subtle links to the welfare state have been largely neglected by social scientists. This book, a collaborative effort by a distinguished group of experts, offers in-depth studies of occupational welfare in the US and Scandinavia. These chapters are complemented by discussions of two partially contrasting cases (Canada and Japan), an introductory overview, and a concluding comparative analysis.

Volunteering and its nonprofit organizations have commonly been analyzed in economic terms, with volunteering being referred to as "unpaid (productive) work". This economic definition has been around far longer than that of volunteering conceived of as leisure, which is discussed as the volitional definition. By means of a lengthy literature review, this book sets out the theoretical and empirical contributions of the serious leisure perspective to understanding volunteer motivation. This second approach began more than 40 years ago. It answers the key motivational question of why people engage in unpaid productive work, laborious or not. Since in this conception payment in cash or in kind is not an incentive to perform such work, what encourages people to volunteer? The serious leisure perspective, unlike mainstream economics, can shed considerable light on this question.