aFast Cars, Cool Rides is empirically rich, full of arresting observations and revealing verbatim quotes.a
--"American Journal of Sociology"

"Best shines a fluorescent street light on young people in high octane motion, making meaning and community through their cars. . . . Best's subjects articulate an intricate interplay of class, race, gender, and identity formation; she's given a great American institution its props."
--Donna Gaines, author of "Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids"

"Best's insights and observations should help youth workers and other adults understand this often powerful symbol."
--"Youth Today"

"How pleasantly jarring to be invited to enter Santa Clara Street, to feel the heat of the summer, to smell the alcohol on the breaths of the youth, to hear the bottles breaking on the sidewalk and to, most importantly, be treated to a fine analysis of the experiences of some of these cruisers."
--Daniel Thomas Cook, author of "The Commodification of Childhood: The Children's Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer"

"Has the potential to expand our knowledge about young people's great social power, their contributions to changing culture, and their influence in marketplace decision-making. . . . A compelling and thought-provoking read."
--Debra Van Ausdale, author of "The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism"

aIn Fast Cars, Cool Rides, Amy Best takes the inside lane on how and why young people use their cars as a means of cultural expression. Whether the school parking lot, auto-shop class, or the San Jose cruising scene, and whether the goal is personal freedom, racial solidarity, masculine power, or femininerebelliousness, the car is the vehicle for the job, affording youth the symbolic and material means to solidify their identities within the context of global consumer culture. An intelligent, well-written book on kids and their cars; buckle up and take this ride."
--Laura Grindstaff, author of "The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows"

"Amy Best once again proves herself a most astute observer of youth cultures. This exciting study of diverse American car cultures brims with insight about identity formation, commodification, and the making of diverse modern selves."
--Janice M. Irvine, author of "Talk About Sex: The Battles Over Sex Education in the United States"

"Social observers from Tom Wolfe to George Lucas have seen Californians' car-cruising as emblematic of our larger society and social structure. Amy Best studied the scene in San Jose. In her eyes, young people's actions and attitudes toward cars reveal links among gender, ethnicity, material culture, and contemporary social structure."
--Joel Best, author of "Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists"

Bass booms from custom speakers, pick-up trucks boast lowered suspensions, chrome rims reflect stoplights, and bare arms dangle from open windows. Welcome to Santa Clara Street in San Jose, California, where every weekend kids come to cruise late at night, riding their cars slow and low. On the surrounding, less-traveled streets you can also find young men racing customized cars to see who has the "go," not just the "show." And, in the daylight hours, in a nearby suburb, you might find a brand new SUV parked in the driveway, a parents' Sweet 16present.

In Fast Cars, Cool Rides Amy Best provides a fascinating account of kids and car culture. Encompassing everything from learning to drive to getting one's license, from cruising to customizing, from racing to buying one's first car, Best shows that never before have cars played such an important role in the lives of America's youth as they do today. Drawing on interviews with over 100 young men and women, aged 15-24, and five years of research--cruising hot spots, sitting in on auto shop class, attending car shows--Best explores the fast-paced world of kids and their cars. She reveals a world where cars have incredible significance for kids today, as a means of transportation and thereby freedom to come and go, as status symbols and as a means to express their identities. But while having a fast car or a cool ride can carry tremendous importance for these kids, Best shows that the price, especially when it can cost $30,000, can be steep as working-class kids work jobs to make car payments and as college kids forgo moving out of Mom and Dad's house because they can't pay for rent, car payments, and car insurance.

Fast Cars, Cool Rides offers a rare and rich portrait of the complex and surprising roles cars can play in the lives of young Americans. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a cool ride.

Cases of sport-related child sexual abuse have received increasing news coverage in recent years. This book documents and evaluates this important issue through a critical investigation of the research and theory on sexual violence and child sex offending that has emerged over the past thirty years. Based on life-history interviews with male and female 'survivors' of child sexual abuse in sport, this text offers a deeper appreciation for the experiences of those who are sexually victimized within sports and school-sport settings. Drawing on a wide range of sources, it also provides a new theoretical framework through which child sexual abuse in sport may be explored. Offering a critique spanning psychology, sociology and criminology, this book challenges existing theories of sex offending while advocating an alternative epistemology to help better understand and address this social problem. Presenting an original sociological approach to this field of study, Sexual Abuse in Youth Sport is important reading for any researcher, policy-maker or practitioner working in youth sport, physical education, sports coaching, sport policy, child protection or social work.

This is the latest book on leisure from one of the leading figures in the field of leisure studies. It makes a major contribution in considering leisure as a primary aspect of cultural life. Rojek treats modern culture as performative. That is, there are strong pressures on us to keep busy, even if we are busy doing nothing. Leisure is analysed as a status-placing activity. The implications of the post-work thesis for leisure, the role of inequality in leisure practice, are explored in interesting and novel ways. Perhaps the most notable feature of the book is the discussion of the abnormal forms of leisure and the attack on the medicalized model of society. This book will be required reading for anyone interested in leisure studies and cultural studies.

From commercial retail environments to branded urban villages, brands are now a salient feature of contemporary cityscapes and are deeply entwined in people's everyday lives. Drawing on extensive empirical material and recent theoretical developments in the sociology of brands, this book explores the complex relationship between brands, consumption and urban life. Covering a range of brands and branding in the city, from themed retail stores to branded cultural quarters, it considers how brands provide new ways of mediating identities, lifestyles and social relations. At the same time, the book reveals how brands are bound up with forms of socio-spatial division and exclusion in the city, defining what kinds of practices, images or attitudes are acceptable in a particular place, constituting cultural boundaries that keep certain people and activities out. With attention throughout to the social and cultural implications of the presence of brands in urban space, Brands and the City examines how people engage with brands, and how brands shape urbanites' experiences and sense of self, society and space. An extensive exploration of the processes through which brands are integrated into cities, their effects on everyday experiences and their role in the policing and governance of urban space, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in urban studies, consumption and branding.

In this provocative new book, Tony Blackshaw argues that Leisure Studies is in a quiet but deep state of crisis. The twenty-first century has brought profound change to all aspects of society, including a plurality of new leisure worlds, and traditional concepts of Leisure Studies fail to capture this richness. This book aims to re-invigorate Leisure Studies by revealing and unpacking these leisure worlds, thereby changing the way we think about leisure and the way we do Leisure Studies. Both trivial and serious in its implications, it is precisely this paradox that makes leisure such a fascinating subject of study. Re-Imagining Leisure Studies presents a new and radical set of methodological rules for studying leisure trends and cultures in contemporary society. It discusses the critical issues that underpin recent developments in leisure theory and explores the key themes of social class, community, politics, freedom and globalization. Marking a turning point in the reception and understanding of Leisure Studies, this book is vital reading for all students and scholars with a social scientific interest in leisure.

How do the class and gender inequalities found in horseracing affect the working practices of women within the industry? Drawing on the work of Bourdieu and his concepts of field, capital and habitus, this book shows the inequalities that are prevalent within the world of racing, both historically and currently, by illustrating the classed and gendered nature of racing and how it has developed since the eighteenth century when it was the sport of the aristocracy. Using research obtained through her year-long ethnographic study of a racing yard, Deborah Butler demonstrates that the racing field is an arena of power conflicts, and that men and women who work in racing acquire a contradictorily gendered racing habitus. This is achieved by learning certain elements in a formal setting but mainly informally, by 'doing', developing practical skills and participating in a (gendered) community of practice. For female stable staff this means adapting their behaviour and working practices in order to be accepted as 'one of the lads'. This book will appeal to both scholars and students of the sociology of sport, the sociology of work and gender studies.

Physical activity, inactivity and their relationship to health are serious concerns for governments around the world. This is the first book to critically examine the policy and practice of physical activity from a multi-disciplinary, social-scientific perspective. Moving beyond the usual biophysical and epidemiological approaches, it defines and explores the key themes that are shaping the global physical activity debate. Unrivalled in its scale and scope, it presents the latest data on physical activity from around the world, including case studies from Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia. Drawing on social, economic and behavioural sciences, it covers contexts from the global to the local and introduces the dominant ideas which inform the study of physical activity. Its 41 chapters examine the use of different forms of evidence in policymaking, the role of organisations in advocating physical activity, and the practical realities of public health interventions. The Routledge Handbook of Physical Activity Policy and Practice is a landmark publication for all students, academics, policymakers and practitioners interested in the social-scientific study of sport, exercise, physical activity and public health.

Sport sociology has a responsibility to engage critically with the accepted wisdom of those who govern and promote sport. This challenging collection of international research is a clear call for enacting the transformation of sport. The contributing authors argue that it is not enough to merely advocate for change. Rather, they insist that scholars need to take an active political stance when conducting research with the explicit purpose of attempting to transform the practices, structures, and the ways in which knowledge is produced about sport. By exposing and challenging the power relations which perpetuate discrimination and inequality within sport, it becomes possible to catalyse wider societal changes. Drawing on a diversity of topics including sport for development and peace, transnational feminism, disability sport, refugees and football activism, FIFA, the Olympics, sports journalism and digital sports media, this book makes a case for sport sociology as an agent of positive change in the hierarchies and institutional structures of contemporary sport. Transforming Sport: Knowledges, Practices, Structures provides valuable insights for all students and scholars interested in the sociology of sport and its transformative potential.

As football clubs have become luxury investments, their decisions increasingly mirror those of any other business organisation. Football supporters have been encouraged to express their club loyalty by 'thinking business' - acting as consumers and generating money deemed necessary for their clubs to compete at the highest levels. In critical studies, supporters have been portrayed as passive or reluctant consumers who, imprisoned by enduring club loyalties, embody a fatalistic attitude to their own exploitation. As this book aims to show, however, such expressions of loyalty are far from hegemonic and often interface haphazardly with traditional ideas about what constitutes the 'loyal fan'. While there is little doubt that professional football is experiencing commodification, the reality is that football clubs are not simply businesses, nor can they ever aspire to be organisations driven solely by expanding or protecting economic value. Rather, clubs hover uncertainly between being businesses and community assets. Football Supporters and the Commercialisation of Football explores the implications of this uncertainty for understanding supporter resistance to, and compromise with, commodification. Every club and its supporters exist in their own unique national and local contexts. In this respect, this book offers a Euro-wide comparison of supporter reactions to commercialisation and provides unique insight into how football supporters actively mediate regional, local and national contexts, as they intersect with the universalistic presumptions of commerce. This book was previously published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.

Lifestyle Migration and Residential Tourism represent a major trend in individualized societies worldwide, which is attracting a rapidly growing interest from the academic community. This volume for the first time, critically analyses the spatial, social and political consequences of such leisure-oriented mobilities and migrations. The book approaches the topic from a multidisciplinary and international perspective, unifying different branches of research, such as lifestyle migration, amenity migration, retirement migration, and second home tourism. By covering a variety of regions and landscapes such as mountain and coastal areas, rural and inland communities this volume productively engages with the formal and analytical variations of the phenomenon resulting in an enriching debate at the intersection of different areas of research. Amongst others, topics like political contest and civic participation of lifestyle migrants, their impacts on local communities, social tensions and inequalities induced by the phenomenon, as well as modes of transnational living, home and belonging will be thoroughly explored. This thought provoking volume will provide deep analytical and conceptual insights into the contested geographies of lifestyle migration and further knowledge into the spatial, social and political consequences of leisure-oriented mobilities. It will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics from a plethora of academic disciplines.

With business seemingly everywhere on television, from the risks of the retail and restaurant trade to pitching for investment or competing to become the next 'apprentice', The Television Entrepreneurs draws upon popular business-oriented shows such as The Apprentice and Dragons' Den to explore the relationship between television and business. Based on extensive interviews with key industry and business figures and drawing on new empirical research into audience perceptions of business, this book examines our changing relationship with entrepreneurship and the role played by television in shaping our understanding of the world of business. The book identifies the key structural shifts in both the television industry and the wider economy that account for these changing representations, whilst examining the extent to which television's developing interest in business and entrepreneurial issues is simply a response to wider social and economic change in society. Does a more commercial and competitive television marketplace, for instance, mean that the medium itself, through a particular focus on drama, entertainment and performance, now plays a key role in re-defining how society frames its engagements with business, finance, entrepreneurship, risk and wealth creation? Mapping the narratives of entrepreneurship constructed by television and analysing the context that produces them, The Television Entrepreneurs investigates how the television audience engages with such programmes and the possible impact these may have on public understanding of the nature of business.

Despite the popularity of sport in contemporary China, the practice of physical education is not indigenous to its culture. Strenuous physical activity was traditionally linked to low class and status in the pre-modern Chinese society. The concept of modern PE was introduced to China by Western Christian missionaries and directors of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). It then grew from a tool for Christian evangelism to a strategic instrument in Chinese nation-building. This book examines the transformation of Chinese attitudes toward PE and sport, drawing on the concepts of cultural imperialism and nationalism to understand how an imported Western activity became a key aspect of modernization for the Chinese state. More specifically, it looks at the relationship between Christianity and the rise of Chinese nationalism between 1840 and 1937. Combining historical insight with original research, this book sheds new light on the evolution of PE and sport in modern China. It is fascinating reading for all those with an interest in sports history, Chinese culture and society, Christianity, physical education or the sociology of sport.

New Zealand's wine came to the world's attention in the late 1980's with its production of some of the best quality sauvignon blancs. Since then the industry has grown significantly and has increasingly gained an international reputation as a producer of quality, boutique wines. This volume provides an innovative, multi-disciplinary and critical review of wine production and consumption focusing specifically on the fascinating wine industry of New Zealand. It considers the history, production, aesthetics, consumption and role of place (identity) from multi-disciplinary perspectives to offer insight into the impacts of wine production and consumption. By linking the study of wine to broadly constructed social, cultural, historical and transnational processes the book contributes to contemporary debates on the "life of commodities", "social class" and "place and people". Throughout comparisons are made to other internationally recognized wine regions such as Bordeaux and Burgundy. This title furthers the understanding of the social/cultural context of wine production and consumption in this region and will be valuable reading to students, researchers and academics interested in gastronomy, wine studies, tourism and hospitality.

Ever since different communities began processes of global migration, sport has been an integral feature in how we conceptualise and experience the notion of being part of a diaspora. Sport provides diasporic communities with a powerful means for creating transnational ties, but also shapes ideas of their ethnic and racial identities. In spite of this, theories of diaspora have been applied sparingly to sporting discourses. Despite W.G. Grace's claim that cricket advances civilisation by promoting a common bond, binding together peoples of vastly different backgrounds, to this day cricket operates strict symbolic boundaries; defining those who do, and equally, do not belong. C.L.R. James' now famous metaphor of looking 'beyond the boundary' captures the belief that, to fully understand the significance of cricket, and the sport's roles in changing and shaping society, one must consider the wider social and political contexts within which the game is played. Contributions to this volume do just that. Cricket acts as their point of departure, but the way in which ideas of power, representation and inequality are 'played out' is unique in each. This book was published as a special issue of Identities.

The institutional relationship between sport and the military appears to be intensifying. In the US for example, which faced global criticism for its foreign policy during the "war on terror," militaristic images are commonplace at sporting events. The growing global phenomenon of conflating sport with war calls for closer analysis. This critical, interdisciplinary and international book seeks to identify intersections of sport and militarism as a means to interrogate, interrupt and intervene on behalf of democratic, peaceful politics. Viewing sport as a crucial site in which militarism is made visible and legitimate, the book explores the connections between sport, the military and the state, and their consequent impact on wider culture. Featuring case studies on sports such as association football, baseball and athletics from countries including the US, UK, Germany, Canada, South Africa, Brazil and Japan, each chapter sheds new light on the shifting significance of sport in our society. This book is fascinating reading for all those interested in sport and politics, the sociology of sport, communication studies, the ethics and philosophy of sport, or military sociology.

Olympic Games are sold to host city populations on the basis of legacy commitments that incorporate aid for the young and the poor. Yet little is known about the realities of marginalized young people living in host cities. Do they benefit from social housing and employment opportunities? Or do they fall victim to increased policing and evaporating social assistance? This book answers these questions through an original ethnographic study of young people living in the shadow of Vancouver 2010 and London 2012. Setting qualitative research alongside critical analysis of policy documents, bidding reports and media accounts, this study explores the tension between promises made and lived reality. Its eight chapters offer a rich and complex account of marginalized young people's experiences as they navigate the possibilities and contradictions of living in an Olympic host city. Their stories illustrate the limits to the promises made by Olympic bidding and organizing committees and raise important questions about the ethics of public funding for such mega-events. This book will be fascinating reading for anyone interested in the Olympics, sport and social exclusion, and sport and politics, as well as for those working in the fields of youth studies, social policy and urban studies.

What is, or what should be, the function of sport in a globalized, commercialized world? Why does sport matter in the 21st century? In Ethics and Governance in Sport: the future of sport imagined, an ensemble of leading international experts from across the fields of sport management and ethics calls for a new model of sport that goes beyond the traditional view that sport automatically encourages positive physical, psychological, social, moral and political values. Acknowledging that sport is beset by poor practice, corruption, and harmful behaviors, it explores current issues in sport ethics, governance and development, considering how good governance and the positive potentials of sport can be implemented in a globalized sporting landscape. Ethics and Governance in Sport suggests a future model of sport governance based on well substantiated projections, and argues that identifying the root causes of harmful behavior, those things that are characteristic of sport, and engaging sport managers, policy makers and leaders of sport organizations, is essential if sport is to thrive. The book's interdisciplinary examination of sport, encompassing philosophy, sociology, economics, management and sport development, and its forward-looking approach makes it important reading for advanced students, researchers and policy makers with an interest in the place and development of modern sport. Its clear messages invite self-reflection and discussion, especially within sports organizations.

The experiences of ethnic 'Other' females have - until recently - been widely overlooked in the study of sport. There continues to be a need to produce critical scholarship about ethnic 'Other' girls and women in sport and physical culture, in order to represent their complex, multifarious and dynamic lived realities. This international collection of critical essays provides compelling insight into the lived realities of ethnic 'Other' females in sport. Throughout the book, contributors either draw on the political consciousnesses of 'Other' feminisms, or privilege the voices of ethnic 'Other' girls and women so as to broaden, diversify and advance critical thinking pertaining to ethnic 'Other' females in sport and physical culture. The purpose of the collection is both to produce knowledge and privilege otherwise subjugated knowledges, which individually and collectively present counter-narratives that better speak to the lived realities of racially oppressed groups of women and girls. Race, Gender and Sport: The Politics of Ethnic 'Other' Girls and Women is important reading for all students and scholars with an interest in the sociology of sport, gender studies, or race and ethnicity studies.

This volume argues for a more quantitative, economic and theoretical approach to sports history. The author notes that sport can have peculiar economics as in no other industry do rival businesses have to cooperate to produce a sellable output. He also demonstrates, via a case study of early gate-money football in Scotland, that sports producers were not always seeking profits, and often put winning games and trophies ahead of making money. Another analysis examines how industrialisation affected sport, how sport became an industry in its own right and how the workplace became a major provider of sports facilities. A look at third sector economics highlights how the popularity of football provided an ideal vehicle for charity fundraising. The book observes that most sports participants are amateurs but at the elite level the paid player has a key role, and this is assessed through case studies of the jockey and the golf professional. Finally, the author discusses and evaluates various theories relating to the historical development of the sports club. This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics.

Bidding contests for sporting and cultural events are attracting increasing media and public attention. Yet, despite the cost, size and scale of these bidding contests, relatively little academic attention has been paid to the strategies and tactics used to develop successful bids. Event Bidding: Politics, Persuasion and Resistance develops a comprehensive, critical understanding of the bidding processes surrounding the award of major peripatetic events. This is achieved by drawing together existing knowledge on the subject of event bidding, combining this with historical and contemporary examples to enable a critical commentary on the bidding process itself and the struggle for power that it represents. The text draws on case studies of 'mega events' including the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games as well as a range of smaller peripatetic events from across the world to analyse the bidding process and some of the increasingly controversial issues which emerge during often lengthy and expensive bid campaigns. Finally, the text reflects on a range of critical issues of contemporary significance in bidding contests, including the growing ethical and governance issues surrounding the development and award of events as well as the impact of growing oppositional movements surrounding each contest. This timely volume brings theory and practice together in one place to produce a critical appraisal of a phenomenon with a relatively recent history and is particularly suitable for students, researchers and academics of sports, events, tourism and related subject fields focusing on the strategic and political dimensions of major events.

Running is a fundamental human activity and holds an important place in popular culture. In recent decades it has exploded in popularity as a leisure pursuit, with marathons and endurance challenges exerting a strong fascination. Endurance Running is the first collection of original qualitative research to examine distance running through a socio-cultural lens, with a general objective of understanding the concept and meaning of endurance historically and in contemporary times. Adopting diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to explore topics such as historical conceptualizations of endurance, lived experiences of endurance running, and the meaning of endurance in individual lives, the book reveals how the biological, historical, psychological, and sociological converge to form contextually specific ideas about endurance running and runners. Endurance Running is an essential book for anybody researching across the entire spectrum of endurance sports and fascinating reading for anybody working in the sociology of sport or the body, cultural studies or behavioural science.

Since the turn of the twenty first century, there has been a trend for urban "mega events" to be awarded to cities and nations in the East and Global South. Such events have been viewed as economic stimulant as well as opportunities to promote national identity, gain greater international recognition and exercise a form of 'soft power.' However, there has also been on-going controversy about the value, impact and legacy of global mega events in these cities and nations. This book provides a critical examination of the ambition for spectacle that has emerged across the East and Global South. The chapters explore the theoretical and conceptual issues associated with mega-events and new forms of globalization, from the critical political economy of mega-events in a changing world order to the contested social and economic legacies of mega-events and the widespread opposition that increasingly accompanies these events. The book also explores questions of urban development and governance, the role of new communications technologies in global economic expansion, the high security State, and the growing global influence of international non-governmental organizations. This book offers a rich collection of original theoretical contributions and global case studies from leading international scholars from the social sciences and humanities. It offers a fresh and unique interdisciplinary perspective that synthesizes cutting edge research on mega-events and urban spectacles while simultaneously contributing to a broader understanding of the dynamics of global capitalism and international political power in the early twenty first century.

This book explores the cultural, social, spatial, and political dynamics of skateboarding, drawing on contributions from leading international experts across a range of disciplines, such as sociology and philosophy of sport, architecture, anthropology, ecology, cultural studies, sociology, geography, and other fields. Part I critiques the ethos of skateboarding, its cultures and scenes, global trajectory, and the meanings it holds. Part II critically examines skateboarding in terms of space and sites, and Part III explores shifts that have occurred in skateboarding's history around mainstreaming, commercialization, professionalization, neoliberalization and creative cities.

Teaching the skills necessary to play sport depends partly on transmitting knowledge verbally, yet non-verbal or tacit knowledge also has an important role. A coach may tell a young athlete to 'move more dynamically', but it is undoubtedly easier to demonstrate with the body itself how this should be done. Skills such as developing a 'feel for the water' cannot simply be transmitted verbally; they are embodied in the tacit knowledge acquired from practice, repetition and experience. This is the first sociological study of the transmission of skills through tacit knowledge in sport. Drawing on philosophy, sociology and theories of embodiment, it presents original research gathered from qualitative empirical studies of young athletes. It discusses the concept of tacit knowledge in relation to motor skills transmission in a variety of sports, including athletics, swimming and judo, and examines the methodological possibilities of studying tacit knowledge, as well as its challenges and limitations. This is fascinating reading for all those with an interest in the sociology of sport, theories of embodiment, or skill acquisition and transmission.

Sport is often thought of as simply "games," but it can in fact be much more. Sport can be responsible for guiding social justice movements, igniting city-wide riots, uniting countries, permanently injuring youth, revolutionizing views about race, gender and class, and producing several of the most successful global industries. Reports of ethical crises in athletics are constant fodder for popular attention, whether performance enhancing drugs in baseball, corruption in college athletics, the epidemic of brain damage among NFL players, and others too numerous to mention. As a proxy for social concerns, we naturally think of sport in inherently moral terms. Yet we can hardly define the term "sport," or agree on acceptable levels of sporting risk, or determine clear roles and responsibilities for fans, players, coaches, owners, media and health care personnel. Bringing together 27 of the most essential recent articles from philosophy, history, sociology, medicine, and law, this collection explores intersections of sports and ethics and brings attention to the immense role of sports in shaping and reflecting social values.