This book explores the ways in which religion is observed, performed, and organised in skateboard culture. Drawing on scholarship from the sociology of religion and the cultural politics of lifestyle sports, this work combines ethnographic research with media analysis to argue that the rituals of skateboarding provide participants with a rich cultural canvas for emotional and spiritual engagement. Paul O'Connor contends that religious identification in skateboarding is set to increase as participants pursue ways to both control and engage meaningfully with an activity that has become an increasingly mainstream and institutionalised sport. Religion is explored through the themes of myth, celebrity, iconography, pilgrimage, evangelism, cults, and self-help.

By turns tragic and hopeful, the history of Israel and Palestine through the lens of the world's most popular sport. Football has never been shy of politics. This is especially true for Israel and Palestine. A sport introduced by Victorian churchmen swiftly became a vehicle for nationalism and pride. Under British military rule, Jewish and Palestinian teams competed in the same leagues, not only on the pitch, but in smoky committee rooms and street corners, as the two communities fought for control of the sport. After the creation of Israel in 1948, Palestinian football survived among refugees, with Jordan's greatest side hailing from the poorest of the camps on the fringes of the capital. In recent years, Israel's dynamic Premier League has seen some of the country's best teams and players emerge from the Palestinian community - inspiring hope that football might help Arabs and Jews become friends and equals. Meanwhile, in the West Bank and Gaza, a series of shock wins by a new Palestinian national side saw Palestine climb the FIFA rankings, making football the one field where Palestinians could compete with pride on a world stage, as one nation among the others. This is a vibrant and often shocking story filled with driven, even ferocious people who are inspired by nationalism as much as a love of the game. There are many sacrifices, as brilliant teams are scattered by wars, side-lined through boycotts, and stories of players arrested, expelled, driven to hunger strikes, and beaten or shot. It is a story not simply of Jewish-Arab rivalry, but also of the deep fracture lines within each community. In this unusual history of the world's most intractable conflict, Nicholas Blincoe sets out to ask: is it hopelessly romantic to think of football as a level playing field, governed by sportsmanship and the love of the game? Or will it always be just another space to be fought over and polluted?

American football and postmodernist theory are both objects of popular and scholarly interest that reveal remarkable sociological insights. Analysis of media-driven commercial football documents how narratives of sportsmanship/brutality, heroism/antiheroism, athleticism/self-indulgence, honor/chicanery, and chivalry/sexism compete and thrive.

While the field of football studies has produced an abundance of literature on professional, top-league football, there is little research output to do with the non-top level football. This book explores the relationship between the top and lower leagues, laying open the drastic schisms that exist between the different levels. The study links the developments at the top level of English and German football in the past 30 years to transformational processes in lower league football. Illustrating how the hegemonic status of top football weighs hard on the spheres below, it depicts how it also serves as a blueprint for lower league football clubs' strategies in coping with a threefold dilemma of institutional legitimacy that shows itself in economic, cultural and social dimensions. Taking the different club structures in both national contexts as a starting point, it portrays both the efficacy of institutional frameworks and how these can be challenged from below. This research will be of interest to students and scholars across football studies, sports studies, the sociology of sport, and organisation studies.

This book captures the contested terrain of contemporary masculinity and explores a range of conceptualisations, with a specific focus on the role of the media and promotional culture within the context of sport. Asking whether sport is the final frontier of masculinity in society, the book focuses on how the production and representation of sport-related advertising and marketing contribute to the shifting and contested nature of masculinity and its alleged crisis. Drawing upon conceptual and empirical examples spanning across sport celebrity, professional sport leagues, beer advertising and indigenous cultures, the authors explore the links between sport, masculinity, promotional and consumer culture. Collectively, the chapters illustrate how advertising and promotional campaigns continue to circulate representations of particular forms of hegemonic masculinity while also accommodating new forms. Sport, Promotional Culture and the Crisis of Masculinity will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of sociology of sport, media studies, marketing, gender and masculinity studies.

This book offers a brief history of how autoethnography has been employed in studies of sport and physical (in)activity to date and makes an explicit call for anti-colonial approaches - challenging scholars of physical culture to interrogate and write against the colonial assumptions at work in so many physical cultural and academic spaces. It presents examples of autoethnographic work that interrogate physical cultural practices as both produced by, and generative of, settler colonial logics and structures, including research into outdoor recreation, youth sport experiences, and sport spectatorship. It situates this work in the context of key paradigmatic issues in social scientific research, including ontology, epistemology, axiology, ethics and praxis, and looks ahead at the shape that social relations might take beyond settler-colonialism. Drawing on cutting-edge research and presenting innovative theoretical perspectives, this book is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in physical cultural studies, sport studies, outdoor studies, sociology, cultural studies, or qualitative research methods in the social sciences.

This book explores the rise, size and shape of the European fitness industry by using harmonised data as well as in-depth analyses of national surveys in fifteen European countries. Following an introduction to the socio-historical and conceptual aspects of fitness, the collection presents the scope of fitness as a business and participatory activity. Furthermore, both policy and governance issues as well as community and supply angles are considered. Drawing on this unique material, the book will appeal to students and scholars of sport business, sport economics, sport management, and social sport sciences, but also to administrators, policymakers and entrepreneurs in the international and national sport and health community.

This is a book about boys' bodies, masculinities, and the ways in which boys navigate their lives from early childhood through to the beginning of adolescence. Drummond focuses on sport, health and physical activity, and adds context to the history of male bodies, the social construction of masculinity and the role of sport as a potential rite of passage for young males. Using rich descriptive interview data with 33 boys from the ages of 5 to 13, collected over an 8- year period, Boys' Bodies identifies important issues including the significance of muscularity and strength as signifiers of masculinity and the need for boys to be involved in "blood sports" as well as "beat girls" in sporting competitions. The meaning of health and the perception of boys' changing bodies over time are central to the discussion. The book will appeal to researchers, teachers, practitioners, policy makers and parents.

Drawing upon interviews with key people in the World Rally Championship as well as trans-local ethnographic research, this book explores questions of commerciality and sporting identity, tackling the sport's controversial handling of the shift into 'the commercial age'. It is essential reading on combining sporting heritage and commercial progress.

This book examines how sports journalists covered the historic coming out stories of National Basketball Association (NBA) veteran Jason Collins and football All-American Michael Sam in the context of sports' "toy department" reputation as a field whose standards are often criticized as lacking in rigor and depth compared to other forms of journalism. Employing a media sociology approach, reporting about Collins and Sam is addressed in the book via three content analysis studies and interviews with two prominent sports journalists. An overview of other pertinent research is provided along with a detailed account of both athletes' stories. This work should appeal to readers interested in sports journalism, the role of sport in society, and media coverage of gay professional athletes.

This handbook is the definitive reference text for the study of 'dark tourism', the contemporary commodification of death within international visitor economies. Shining a light on dark tourism and visitor sites of death or disaster allows us to better understand issues of global tourism mobilities, tourist experiences, the co-creation of touristic meaning, and 'difficult heritage' processes and practices. Adopting multidisciplinary perspectives from authors representing every continent, the book combines 'real-world' viewpoints from both industry and the media with conceptual underpinning, and offers comprehensive and grounded perspectives of 'heritage that hurts'. The handbook adopts a progressive and thematic approach, including critical accounts of dark tourism history, dark tourism philosophy and theory, dark tourism in society and culture, dark tourism and heritage landscapes, the 'dark tourist' experience, and the business of dark tourism. The Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies will appeal to students and scholars with an interest in aspects of memorialisation and morality in sociology, death studies, history, geography, cultural studies, philosophy, psychology, business management, museology and heritage tourism studies, politics, religious studies, and anthropology.

Sport mega-events are more than just large-scale gatherings and celebrations of human athletic achievement; they are also arenas through which groups and individuals perform, reinforce, challenge and disrupt identities, power and status. Understanding that sport is widely recognised as a practice through which normative ideas of gender are both reinforced and challenged, this book explores how this is magnified in the context of sport mega-events with their associated global media attention, elite performance, and social and cultural relevance. As sport mega-events become ever more prominent in popular culture, and are used by governments as tools to stimulate national and regional development, critical analysis of the gendered aspects of mega-events is increasingly important. Featuring a range of mega-event case studies and conceptual discussions, Sport, Gender and Mega-Events shows the significance of mega-events to wider sporting practices, and considers how these highly mediatised global phenomena both reflect and help shape broader ideas about gender, sex and identity in and beyond sport. Demonstrating how mega-events represent an important context through which to explore questions related to sex, gender and identity, Dashper's exquisitely collated chapters unpick mega-events as gendered entities and showcase how they both position athletes in relation to one of two binary sex positions - male or female - and also push the boundaries of what we see and accept as recognisably gendered male or female bodies and identities.

Augmentative play is a special activity that substantially aids the pursuit of a larger, encompassing leisure activity. This approach to the study of play is unique. It recognizes the hundreds of activities in which play and leisure come together.

This is the first book to survey the participation of women in sport and physical education across Asia, from the Middle East and South Asia through to the Asia-Pacific region. Covering sport and physical activity at all levels, from school-based PE and community sport to elite, high-performance sport, the book provides an important overview of developments in policy, theory and research across this complex and dynamic region. It has a strong focus on gender equity but is informed by important intersecting influences that affect the lives of girls and women and their participation in sport. Including contributions from leading scholars from across the region, the book draws on multi-disciplinary perspectives, including sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, and history, and makes an important contribution to global understanding of diversity, challenges, and achievements in the sporting lives of Asian Women. This book will be a fascinating read for any student, researcher, or policy-maker working in sport studies, gender studies, women's studies or Asian studies.

The Routledge Handbook of Sports Journalism is a comprehensive and in-depth survey of the fast-moving and multifaceted world of sports journalism. Encompassing historical and contemporary analysis, and case studies exploring best practice as well as cutting edge themes and issues, the book also represents an impassioned defence of the skill and art of the trained journalist in an era of unmediated digital commentary. With contributions from leading sports-media scholars and practising journalists, the book examines journalism across print, broadcast and digital media, exploring the everyday reality of working as a contemporary reporter, editor or sub-editor. It considers the organisations that shape output, from PR departments to press agencies, as well as the socio-political themes that influence both content and process, such as identity, race and gender. The book also includes interviews with, and biographies of, well-known journalists, as well as case studies looking at the way that some of the biggest names in world sport, from Lance Armstrong to Caster Semenya, have been reported. This is essential reading for all students, researchers and professionals working in sports journalism, sports broadcasting, sports marketing and management, or the sociology or history of sport.

This book takes a close look at discrimination in football in order to illuminate our understanding of the interaction between sport and wider society, politics and culture, particularly in terms of the (re)production of identity. It presents insightful and diverse international case studies, including the shadow of fascism in Italian football; fan activism against racism, sexism, and homophobia in US soccer; migrant football clubs in Germany, and the use of football club history in the teaching of antisemitism. Together they demonstrate the damaging societal consequences of unchecked resentment and discrimination in football fan cultures but also the potential for fan activism as a socio-positive force. This is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in football or fandom, the sociology of sport, cultural studies, or political science.

Using innovative interpretations of recent big budget films, Coronavirus Capitalism Goes to the Cinema interrogates the social, political and economic landscape during and prior to the COVID-19 crisis and provides lessons for advancing progressive politics in a post-pandemic age. By exploring numerous films including Avengers: Endgame, Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood, 1917, and Parasite, this short book provides a deep understanding about neoliberal society in a time of crisis. Facilitated by the ideas of Emma Goldman, Naomi Klein, Karl Marx, Noam Chomsky and many more, these movies are reinterpreted to point out our political blind spots, combat our non-COVID contagions and inoculate us into ideological herd immunity. From explorations of the supervillain-like decision-making of our political leaders to the inequalities in infection outcomes that sparked further Black Lives Matter protests, this book discusses the central social challenges we face today through the sights and sounds of some of the most beloved films of the very recent past. This entertaining and accessible book will reward readers who are interested in contemporary politics in the context of COVID-19, as well as cinephiles and movie-goers who want fresh interpretations of instant classics to help explain the world around them. More than just informative and amusing, this book is a call to action to those activists who want social change in the face of coronavirus capitalism.

Football is ubiquitous and a permanent fixture of modern life. More than a sport, it frequently manifests in broader popular culture. This book examines the significance of football for, and in, popular culture across a wide range of forms, including music, film, and social media. Football and Popular Culture plots a new path in Football Studies, drawing on original research in countries including England, Brazil, Germany, Canada, and Yugoslavia. The book includes both historical and contemporary perspectives, exploring some of the most important themes in the study of sport and culture, including identity, nationalism, fandom, and protest. It presents diverse case studies ranging from sonic violence among Brazilian torcidas organizadas to fanled commemoration of the Munich air disaster, which together help us to better understand the intersection of sport, society, and popular culture. This is fascinating reading for any student or researcher working in sport studies, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, or contemporary history.

This book offers a timely and critical exploration of leisure and forced migration from multiple disciplinary perspectives, spanning sociology, gender studies, migration studies and anthropology. It engages with perspectives and experiences that unsettle and oppose dehumanising and infantilising binaries surrounding forced migrants in contemporary society. The book presents cutting edge research addressing three inter-related themes: spaces and temporalities; displaced bodies and intersecting inequalities; voices, praxis and (self)representation. Drawing on and expanding critical leisure studies perspectives on class, gender, sexuality and race/ethnicity, the book spotlights leisure and how it can interrogate and challenge dominant narratives, practices and assumptions on forced migration and lives lived in asylum systems. Furthermore, it contributes to current debates on the scope, relevance and aims of leisure studies within the present, unfolding global scenario. This is an important resource for students and scholars across leisure, sport, gender, sociology, anthropology and migration studies. It is also a valuable read for practitioners, advocates and community organisers addressing issues of forced migration and sanctuary.

This book presents a cross-disciplinary examination of the lived experiences of girls and women football players using theoretical insights from sports studies, psychology, sociology and gender studies. It examines the concept of 'the football self' - your own, personal football identity that encapsulates the importance of football to our everyday lives - and what that can tell us about the complex relationships between sport, family, gender and identity. The book draws on in-depth ethnographic research involving players and family members, and offers important new insights into the everyday experiences of those girls and women who play. It breaks new ground in focusing on the significant relationships between player and family with a particular focus on parenting through football. The book brings to the fore key debates around gender identity, barriers to participation, cultural gaps and discrimination. The author also brings a personal perspective to bear, drawing on experience gained over 20 years as a player, adding an extra critical layer to her important empirical research. This is essential reading for all researchers and students with an interest in football, sport studies or issues around gender, inclusion or the family in sport, and fascinating reading for anybody generally curious about football.

Based on over 15 years of research, this text proposes a new definition of the martial arts to examine how such fighting systems are being re-imagined and reconstructed beyond the arenas of combat and sport in the 21st century Western context. Taking the viewpoint of the martial arts as art forms open to reinterpretation, this unique book considers the ways in which martial arts can be used for different purposes, such as within movement systems and for self-help and therapy. However, the martial arts industry is a highly unregulated space. The book, therefore, considers the ways in which the martial arts are being regulated by Western influencers on social media as well as more formal international organisations connected to UNESCO. The project then examines the lives of long-term martial arts instructors and practitioners of historical European martial arts (HEMA), Taijiquan (Tai Chi Chuan), Wing Chun Kung Fu and other internal martial arts such as Cheng Hsin. This book draws on a wide range of data sources including autoethnography, ethnography, life history interviews and social media and textual analysis to paint a vivid picture of the reinvention process in contemporary society. It shows how elements of the martial arts (often from East Asian societies) are being adapted, critiqued, managed and merged to suit the social needs of today's martial artists and the public. This monograph will appeal to all scholars and students interested in combat sports, martial arts and physical culture from a social scientific and qualitative perspective. "The author presents the situation of selected martial arts traditions of China and Europe in today's social contexts. At the same time, he shows both social sensitivity and broad erudition. His research on Mexican traditions brings a fresh perspective to the analysis of cultural influences and theoretical reflection on the heritage of martial arts. Also, the qualitative methodology used here is most appropriate for an in-depth description of the attitudes of martial artists. It includes, but is not limited to, autoethnography. I highly recommend this book to researchers and enthusiasts of martial arts / fighting arts." -Professor Dr Wojciech J. Cynarski, 10th dan of Idokan "Dr. Jennings' Reinventing Martial Arts in the 21st Century is a fresh, extremely current piece. Written in a clear, precise and simple language, it addresses many of the topics inspiring contemporary social research on martial arts-their hybridization with other movements systems, their consideration as self-help or therapy practices, or their protection, revival or reinvention as intangible cultural heritage, to name a few. It is solidly structured and developed, presenting findings on all these fields, based on the author's original research and knowledge as veteran martial artist. No doubt this book is a brilliant contribution to the field of study of martial arts and combat sports." -Carlos Gutierrez Garcia, Associate Professor, Department of Physical and Sport Education, Universidad de Leon, Spain; Editor-in-Chief of Revista de Artes Marciales Asiaticas "Most martial arts celebrate their long historical traditions, ancient roots and aim to inculcate their learners with respect for expert practitioners and their values. Those that originated in East and South East Asia spread across the rest of the world in the twentieth century, and now flourish in societies very different from those where they originated. Alongside the globalised martial arts an academic field of research-martial arts studies-has grown up. Its focus is not only on those Eastern and South-east Asian martial arts and combat sports, but also on those from Africa and the Americas (such as Capoeira and Xilam), and those claiming European origins such as Savate, HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) or Breton wrestling. Some of these are self-conscious recreations; others are evolved varieties of earlier activities. One important theme in martial arts studies is studying how different forms of combat change and develop; a second research area is focused on how practitioners can benefit physically and mentally from participation. George Jennings has, in this book, drawn together several of the key themes in martial arts studies which became highly visible during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on ethnographic work done before, during, and since the height of the pandemic in Europe, key themes in martial arts studies are explored. Jennings has worked intensively on three martial arts (Taijiquan, HEMA and Wing Chun), and also draws on the research about other activities such as Venezuelan Stick fighting, Savate and Xilam. The text addresses core themes in martial arts studies while blending the standpoints of the practitioner, the teacher, and the researcher." -Sara Delamont, Reader Emeritus, Cardiff University, United Kingdom "George Jennings tackles the western reinvention of traditional martial arts in terms of McDonaldization, heritage studies, and sport science to discuss emerging forms of virtual community, therapy and self-help. Through evocative auto-ethnography Jennings demonstrates the advantage of training in swords while taking notes. The result is a highly readable academic account of colorful vignettes and vivid insights shared from a lifetime in martial arts and scholarship." -DS Farrer, University of Exeter, United Kingdom "This book offers a fascinating exploration of multiple overlooked aspects of the living and breathing richness and diversity of martial arts as lived practices, often intertwined with different livelihoods, issues and aspects of health and wellbeing, and ways of growing. Jennings speaks fluently in a range of voices, allowing different levels and kinds of focus and attention, from large perspectives to attention to less obvious areas of life and practice. This work will be of particular value to ethnography, anthropology and social science students and researchers of martial arts, culture and society." -Professor Paul Bowman, Cardiff University, United Kingdom; Author of The Invention of Martial Arts (2021)

This volume presents a collection of essays that explore the relationship between sporting clothing and gender. Drawing on uniform and sports apparel as a means of exploring the socio-sexual politics of the contemporary world, the contributions analyse the historical, political-economic, socio-cultural and sport-specific dimensions of gendered clothing in sport. Part of a two-volume series (the other discussing this phenomenon in the USA), contributors cover topics such as the rise of athleisurewear, Olympics outfits, eSports, religious considerations, the saree, fitness attire on Instagram, Japanese bloomers, youth clothing, ForPlay's sexy sports costumes, and women's sportswear for rugby, tennis, throwing, biking, wrestling, and flat track roller derby. This global anthology will be of interest to practitioners and scholars of sports history, the sociology of sport, and gender/media studies.

1. This interdisciplinary volume brings together scholars from across the world who have raised pertinent issues regarding the role of stand-up comedy in contemporary times especially with increased presence of OTT platforms and internet penetration that allows for easy access to this art form. 2. It looks at the theoretical understanding of the different aspects of the humour, aesthetics and politics of stand up comedy, as well as case studies of various forms of stand up comedy such as Finnish, Persian, Indonesian, Indian, etc. 3. It will be of interest to departments of media, popular culture, digital culture, sociology, digital sociology/anthropology, and English literature across the US and UK. IT will also appeal to proplr interested in performance and performance studies as it looks at the genre of stand-up comedy in the global context with chapters on Finnish, Australian, Persian and Indian stand-up comedy, to name a few.

This pivot examines how the Theatre Olympics, born in 1995, have served to enrich each host country's culture, community, and foreign relations. Looking at the host country's political, social, and cultural circumstances, it considers how the festival expands the notion of Olympism beyond its application to the Olympic Games, expressing the spirit of Olympism and interculturalism in each country's distinct cultural language. It also emphasizes the festival's development over the twenty years of its existence and how each festival's staging has reflected the national identity, theatre tradition, and cultural interest of the hosting country at that time, as well as how each festival director's artistic principle has attempted to accomplish cultural exchange through their productions.

This innovative study examines the Olympic programme from a critical feminist perspective, to shed new light on the issues of gender and inclusion at the Olympic Games and in the Olympic Movement. Incorporating both quantitative and qualitative data, the book identifies and analyzes the changes - and remaining gender differences - made on the Olympic Programmes for London 2012, and each of the subsequent Summer and Winter Olympic Games (Sochi 2014, Rio 2016, and Pyeongchang 2018), as well as the Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 Games. The book draws on the IOC's own publications, information from International and National Sport Federations, and media sources to describe and explain the IOC's slow and uneven progress toward gender equality at the Olympic Games. This is important reading for any student, researcher, practitioner or policy maker with an interest in the Olympic Games, sport studies, gender studies, women's sport or major events.