This book explores and challenges the concept and experience of liminality as applied to critical perspectives in the study of events. It will be of interest to researchers in event studies, social and discursive psychology, cultural and political sociology, and social movement studies. In addition, it will provide interested general readers with new ways of thinking and reflecting on events. Contributing authors undertake a discussion of the borders, boundaries, and areas of contestation between the established social anthropological concept of liminality and the emerging field of critical event studies. By drawing these two perspectives closer together, the collection considers tensions and resonances between them, and uses those connections to enhance our understanding of both cultural and sporting events and offer fresh insight into events of activism, protest, and dissent.

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 book explores the formation and continuance of Nashville, Tennessee as a music place, the importance of the fans (tourists) in creating Nashville's multifaceted musical identity, and the music and city's influence on the formation and performance of the individual and collective identities of the country-music fan. More importantly, the author discusses the larger issue of country music as a signifier of tradition suggesting that for many visitors, the music serves as a soundtrack, while Nashville serves as a performative space that permits the creation, performance, and remembrance of not only the country-music tradition, but also various individual and collective traditions and an idealized American identity. Through the theatrics of tourism, Nashville and its connection to country music are performed daily, reinforced through the sound and landscape of country music. Performing Nashville will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including tourism studies, leisure studies, ethnomusicology, sociology, folklore and anthropology.

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.

Every year, thousands of women attempt to kick their smoking habit because it is an unhealthy, expensive addiction. And every year, thousands do not quit because of nicotine cravings and because smoking has an image which is almost as addictive as the cigarette itself. It is seductive and alluring - but where does this image come from, and has it always been so deadly? In "Smoke Signals," Tinkler charts women's changing relationship to tobacco from the 1880s to the 1980s during which smoking transformed from a male practice to one enjoyed by both sexes. Focusing on the feminization of cigarette smoking, the author unravels the role of visual culture and the impact of social, economic, medical and technological changes. Drawing on women's own photographs, alongside images from magazines, newspapers, television and film, this book provides a detailed and stimulating exploration of the role of visual culture in the history of women and smoking.

A chronological history of children's playtime over the last 200 years If you believe the experts, "child's play"; is serious business. From sociologists to psychologists and from anthropologists to social critics, writers have produced mountains of books about the meaning and importance of play. But what do we know about how children actually play, especially American children of the last two centuries? In this fascinating and enlightening book, Howard Chudacoff presents a history of children's play in the United States and ponders what it tells us about ourselves. Through expert investigation in primary sources-including dozens of children's diaries, hundreds of autobiographical recollections of adults, and a wealth of child-rearing manuals-along with wide-ranging reading of the work of educators, journalists, market researchers, and scholars-Chudacoff digs into the "underground" of play. He contrasts the activities that genuinely occupied children's time with what adults thought children should be doing. Filled with intriguing stories and revelatory insights, Children at Play provides a chronological history of play in the U.S. from the point of view of children themselves. Focusing on youngsters between the ages of about six and twelve, this is history "from the bottom up." It highlights the transformations of play that have occurred over the last 200 years, paying attention not only to the activities of the cultural elite but to those of working-class men and women, to slaves, and to Native Americans. In addition, the author considers the findings, observations, and theories of numerous social scientists along with those of fellow historians. Chudacoff concludes that children's ability to play independently has attenuated over time and that in our modern era this diminution has frequently had unfortunate consequences. By examining the activities of young people whom marketers today call "tweens," he provides fresh historical depth to current discussions about topics like childhood obesity, delinquency, learning disability, and the many ways that children spend their time when adults aren't looking.

This book explores, from a leisure studies perspective, the central role that leisure has to play in positive psychology, exploring themes such as flow, fulfilment, altruism, well-being, and interpersonal relationships.

This is still the only textbook to introduce the principles of diversity and inclusion in sport management Diversity and inclusion is an essential component of the sport management curriculum Strong focus on how to implement diversity and inclusion strategies in practice Includes a brand new chapter on researching diversity in sport Includes additional material on intersectionality Includes international cases and examples in every chapter Includes useful teaching and learning features in every chapter, and ancillaries include a full test bank and PowerPoint slides

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.

In the past few decades, Spanish football has undergone a significant transformation, both on and off the pitch. Llopis-Goig analyses these trends, questioning the role of football in contemporary Spanish society and examining the historical reasons for its social hegemony.

This book examines women's participation in the Olympic Games since they were allowed to be included in that global arena. Using a holistic, social scientific approach, and emphasizing the rhetoric of sport mediatization, Female Olympians reviews the literature relative to sexism, racism, and ageism before providing historical, political, economic, and socio-cultural perspectives such as the gendered language of Olympic reportage, religious considerations, women's bodies relative to their training for the Games, drugs and doping, and female Paralympians. With numerous critical case studies, never-before assembled data, and personal interviews with athletes, this volume offers insights that both investigate and celebrate female Olympians' successes.

The 21st century has seen a board game renaissance. At a time when streaming television finds millions of viewers, video games garner billions of dollars, and social media grows ever more intense, little has been written about the rising popularity of board games. And yet board games are one of our fastest growing hobbies, with sales increasing every year. Today's board games are more than just your average rainy-day mainstay. Once associated solely with geek subcultures, complex and strategic board games are increasingly dominating the playful media environment. The popularity of these complex board games mirrors the rise of more complex cult media products. In Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games, Paul Booth examines complex board games based on book, TV, and film franchises, including Doctor Who, The Walking Dead, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, The Hunger Games and the worlds of H.P. Lovecraft. How does a game represent a cult world? How can narratives cross media platforms? By investigating the relationship between these media products and their board game versions, Booth illustrates the connections between cult media, gameplay, and narrative in a digital media environment.

This study explores the relationship of an ethnic group of vital importance in America's history--the Irish--and a preeminently American art form and business--the movies. Curran maintains that movies reflected and influenced their viewers' perceptions of the Irish and that both the movies and the Irish who made them facilitated the assimilation of the Irish ethnic group into American society. The initial chapter traces the history of Irish immigration to America, concentrating on the experiences of Irish Catholic immigrants to the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century. Irish-American involvement in the movie industry dates from its beginnings in the "Nickelodeon Era" at the turn of the twentieth century. From that time until their replacement by sound movies around 1930, silent films helped to popularize the Irish ethnic group while simultaneously transmitting assimilationist values to its members and other ethnic minorities. Three chapters are devoted to the 1930-1960 period--Hollywood's heyday when American motion pictures attained technical maturity and enjoyed their greatest popular influence. During this period the Irish made their biggest gains both in the movies and the nation, as screen personae such as the Irish priest, antihero, and Irish All-American entered popular culture. James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, John Ford, Gene Kelly, and Grace Kelly are just a few of the Irish-American movie greats discussed. Irish success in the movies facilitated and mirrored their rise in America and helped to transform them from "outsiders" to a no-longer readily distinguishable ethnic minority. The culmination of this transformation and integration was the election ofthe first Irish Catholic President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. A final chapter discusses the post-1960 era. The volume is illustrated with stills from some of America's most popular and memorable movies, including such favorites and prototypically Irish films as "Angels with Dirty Faces" "Going My Way," "The Fighting 69th," "The Informer," "The Quiet Man," "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," and "On the Waterfront," among others. As well as having great nostalgic appeal for readers interested in the Irish or movies, Hibernian Green on the Silver Screen is an excellent text for courses in Irish Studies and American Ethnic or Film History.

This collection focuses on the multi-layered links between international events and identity discourses. With a unique line-up of international scholars, this book offers a diverse range of exciting case studies, including sports competitions, music festivals, exhibitions, fashion shows and royal celebrations.

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 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.

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.

Focusing on a number of contemporary research themes and placing them within the context of palpable changes that have occurred within football in recent years, this timely collection brings together essays about football, crime and fan behaviour from leading experts in the fields of criminology, law, sociology, psychology and cultural studies.

This book explores seriousness in practice in the unique sports context of contemporary women's flat track roller derby. The author presents a stimulating argument for a sociology of seriousness as a productive contribution to understandings of gender, organization and the mid-ranges of agency between dichotomies of voluntarism and determinism.

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.

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.

Spracklen explores the impact of the internet on leisure and leisure studies, examining the ways in which digital leisure spaces and activities have become part of everyday leisure. Covering a range of issues from social media and file-sharing to romance on the Internet, this book presents new theoretical directions for digital leisure.

This book explores how recent football fiction has negotiated the decisive political developments in English football after the 1989/90 publication of the 'Taylor Report'. A direct response to the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster and growing concerns of hooliganism, the 'Taylor Report' suggested a number of measures for stricter regulation of fan crowds. In consequence, stadiums in the top divisions were turned into all-seated venues and were put under CCTV surveillance. The implementation of these measures reduced violent incidents drastically, but it also led to an unparalleled increase in ticket prices, which in turn significantly altered the demographics of the crowd. This development, which also enabled football's entry into other mainstream cultural forms, changed the game decisively. Piskurek traces patterns across prose and film to detect how these fictions have responded to the changed circumstances of post-Taylor football. Lending a cultural lens to these political changes, this book is pioneering in its analysis of football fiction as a whole, offering a fresh perspective to a range of scholars and students interested in cultural studies, sociology, leisure and politics.

"Fame to Infamy: Race, Sport, and the Fall from Grace" follows the paths of sports figures who were embraced by the general populace but who, through a variety of circumstances, real or imagined, found themselves falling out of favor with the public. The contributors focus on the roles played by athletes, the media, and fans in describing how once-esteemed popular figures find themselves scorned by the same public that at one time viewed them as heroic, laudable, or otherwise respectable.

The book examines a wide range of sports and eras, and includes essays on Barry Bonds, Kirby Puckett, Mike Tyson, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, Branch Rickey, Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, and Jim Brown, as well as an afterword by noted scholar Jack Lule and an introduction by the editors. "Fame to Infamy" is an interdisciplinary volume encompassing numerous approaches in tracing the evolution of each subject's reputation and shifting public image.

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.