This book contributes to recent debates in transnationalism, mobilities and migration studies by offering the first in-depth sociological examination of the global phenomenon of action sports and the transnational networks and connections being established within and across local contexts around the world.

Tourism Discourse offers new insights into the role of spoken, written and visual discourse in representating and producing tourism as a global cultural industry. With a view to the interplay between the symbolic and economic orders of global mobility, the book is grounded in empirically-based studies of key tourism genres.

Using the concept of fulfilment and the framework of the serious leisure perspective, this book examines the signposts marking the fulfilment career. This career begins with an interest in a serious pursuit, leading to an efflorescence many years later in amateurism, hobbyism, volunteering, or devotee work - and ultimately deeper fulfilment.

Based on original Stasi and Communist Party archival sources, this text uncovers why East Germany was for two decades running one of the most successful nations in the Summer and Winter Olympics, and explores how the central elite sports system was beset by internal tensions and disputes.

This exciting account of the 1921 heavyweight boxing title fight between champion Jack Dempsey and Frenchman Georges Carpentier relates how it originated and how it became a template for modern sports promotion. Immortalized as the battle of the century by Ring Lardner, the Dempsey-Carpentier heavyweight title bout marked America's first experience with the intersection of show business, high society, politics, and the underworld at a single sporting event. The Battle of the Century: Dempsey, Carpentier, and the Birth of Modern Promotion offers the definitive history of this landmark event's genesis and impact. To explain why the fight had such a far-reaching influence on mass entertainment and modern culture, newspaperman Jim Waltzer invites readers to travel the path to the 1921 heavyweight championship. Along the way, they will meet a cast of outsize characters, including the savage defending champion (and alleged World War I slacker) Jack Dempsey, French pretty-boy war hero Georges Carpentier, promoter Tex Rickard, Dempsey's slippery manager Doc Kearns, and Jersey City boss Frank Hague. As the tale unfolds, so does an understanding of the forces that shaped the Roaring Twenties and established promotional hype as the MO of business. Photographs A bibliography

Representing a detailed analysis of footballers' wives and their role in contemporary British culture, this books explores how the generic and stereotypical 'Wag' has been created by newspaper and magazine coverage, auto/biographies and influential television programmes.

This collection of essays highlights the controversies surrounding racism in sports and African American athletes, examining the racial discrimination that exists in one of the most public arenas in the 21st century. Despite increasing diversity in the American population, race and racial bias continue to be significant issues in the United States. Sports-one of the most visible and important subsets of American culture-directly reflect our society's beliefs about race. This book examines racial controversy and conflict in various sports in the United States in both previous eras as well as the current "Age of Obama." The essays in the work explain how racial ideologies are created and recreated in all areas of public life, including the world of sports. The authors address a wide range of sports, including ones where racial minorities are in the numerical minority, such as hockey. Specific topics covered include the devaluation of black athletes, racism in Major League Baseball, and the treatment of black female athletes. Enables readers to comprehend how sports influence-and are influenced by-society, and grasp that both race and sports are powerful social constructions Contains contributions from sociologist and social theorist Joe Feagin, a highly respected authority on the subject of race Identifies and discusses the institutional barriers and personal practices regarding African Americans that perpetuate racism in sports and our society at large

In cities around the world, in parks and roadways, people are taking part in sporting charity challenges. Corporate sponsorship has transformed these events into philanthropic endeavours that bring corporate marketing strategies together with medical research and social care agendas. Despite this growth in popularity, little academic attention has paid attention to the ways in which gendered labour shapes the nature of sports-charity events. Sports Charity and Gendered Labour explores a series of questions about the meaning and politics of physical activity, and notions of gender, labour and responsibility.Drawing upon auto-ethnography, studies of major events, in-depth interviews, and analysis of social media, Sports Charity and Gendered Labour provides examples for teaching and knowledge sharing across analyses of gender, sport, leisure, health and wellbeing in ways that will have broad relevance to a range of audiences.

Today Americans feel powerless in the face of problems on every front. Such feelings are acute in higher education, where educators are experiencing an avalanche of changes: cost cutting, new technologies, and demands that higher education be narrowly geared to the needs of today's workplace. College graduates face mounting debt and uncertain job prospects, and worry about a coarsening of the mass culture and the erosion of authentic human relationships. Higher education is increasingly seen, and often portrays itself, as a ticket to individual success--a private good, not a public one. Democracy's Education grows from the American Commonwealth Partnership, a year-long project to revitalize the democratic narrative of higher education that began with an invitation to Harry Boyte from the White House to put together a coalition aimed at strengthening higher education as a public good. The project was launched at the beginning of 2012 to mark the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Act, which created land grant colleges. Beginning with an essay by Harry C. Boyte, ""Reinventing Citizenship as Public Work,"" which challenges educators and their partners to claim their power to shape the story of higher education and the civic careers of students, the collection brings world-famous scholars, senior government officials, and university presidents together with faculty, students, staff, community organizers, and intellectuals from across the United States and South Africa and Japan. Contributors describe many constructive responses to change already taking place in different kinds of institutions, and present cutting-edge ideas like ""civic science,"" ""civic studies,"" ""citizen professionalism,"" and ""citizen alumni."" Authors detail practical approaches to making change, from new faculty and student roles to changes in curriculum and student life and strategies for everyday citizen empowerment. Overall, the work develops a democratic story of education urgently needed to address today's challenges, from climate change to growing inequality.

In a broad sweep from Central Europe to Ireland and from the Sixteenth to the early Nineteenth-century, this work puts the Jewish community and its rabbinic and 'lay' leaders at the centre of Jewish history. Of surpassing value is Kochan's treatment of the community not only as a religious but also as a political unit. It shows the community at grips with the Reformation and the introduction of the ghetto system in the Italian states. Thence to the great maritime centre of Venice, Amsterdam, Hamburg and London, under the dominance of the Sephardi exiles from Spain and Portugal; and also to the metropolitan centres of Prague, Vienna and Berlin and the liaison of their court-Jews with the Hapsburgs, Bourbons and Hohenzollerns. This was not achieved without severe tension inside the communities and, whilst eschewing the concept of class-struggle, Kochan's analysis of the clash of interests between the few wealthy and the multitude of poor Jews raises doubts about the whole notion of 'community'.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews with 15-22 year old straight and gay male athletes in both the United States and the United Kingdom, this book explores how jocks have redefined heterosexuality, and no longer fear being thought gay for behaviors that constrained men of the previous generation.

By participating in the everyday life of fitness professionals, gym-goers and bodybuilders, The Global Gym explores fitness centres as sites of learning. The authors consider how physical, psychological and cultural knowledge about health and the body is incorporated into people's identity in a local and global gym and fitness context.

In recent years, sport has been used as an instrument through which wider development objectives are pursued. This includes sport as a means to create awareness about the risks of HIV; sport as a vehicle to counter inter-group hostility; and sport as an environment where children can find respite in the wake of military conflict. The use of sport for the purposes of development is neither simple nor inherently successful. It is therefore regrettable that some of the agents and organisations involved in development programs provide idealistic accounts of their activities, thus suggesting that field work is unproblematic. By contrast, this book provides a critical approach to sport-for-development, acknowledging the potential of this growing field but emphasising challenges, problems and limitations - particularly if programs are not adequately planned, delivered or monitored. The book features both critical theory and reflective praxis, and will thus be useful to both academics and practitioners.

The Sociology of Sport has grown since its inception in the late 1950s and has become robust, and diverse. Many countries now boast strong scholars in the field and this volume reflects the fascinating research being done. This innovative volume is dedicated to a review of the state of the area by region, and country in some cases. For instance, Latin America is expanding widely in the field, and Korea and Japan have had vibrant Sociology of Sport communities for some time.

This volume offers both an insight into the current state of research on domestic animals in leisure and a lens through which to begin to chart the future of research in this field. All of the contributions to the collection are underpinned by ongoing debates about human-animal relationships and the rights and welfare of the latter.

All behaviours, indeed all forms of agency, are viewed as emotionally-driven. This book provides an approach to emotional experience and agency which drastically nuances the commonly held view that fear has predominantly irrational, morally, or ideologically suspect effects which thwart the exercise of autonomy.

Although we associate the Third Reich above all with suffering, pain and fear, pleasure played a central role in its social and cultural dynamics. This book explores the relationship between the rationing of pleasures as a means of political stabilization and the pressure on the Nazi regime to cater to popular cultural expectations.

This volume aims to map out the complex relationships leisure has with notions of place and space in contemporary life. Illustrating the transdisciplinarity of this key feature of leisure studies, it explores how leisure places and spaces affect personal, social and collective identities.

In this tenth and celebratory volume in the Research in the Sociology of Sport series, ten recognized and influential sport scholars from around the world reflect on their respective academic journeys. They each address ten salient questions summarizing their career and their view of the current and future status of the sociology of sport. Each chapter addresses four main themes: About the author: who are your mentors and influential figures? What is your research trajectory? About sport: why does sport matter? How should sport be studied? Is sport a panacea for social problems? About practising sociology of sport: is teaching sociology of sport easy? Do sociologists like sport? Is the sociologist of sport a 'public intellectual? About sociology of sport in the academy: does sociology of sport face institutional or industry barriers? What is the future of the sociology of sport? While the ten questions are salient for everyone in the academy irrespective of field of study, they seem particularly trenchant for sociologists of sport as the subfield reaches a chronological milestone and continues to undergo its own 'growing pains' and maturation. Following quickly on the heels of, and conceptually tied to, Volume 9 (Sociology of Sport: A Global Subdiscipline in Review), Volume 10 now completes the 'double celebration' of this book series as the sociology of sport subfield turns 50.

Click here to listen to Julia Ericksen's interview about Dance with Me on Philadelphia NPR's "Radio Times" Rumba music starts and a floor full of dancers alternate clinging to one another and turning away. Rumba is an erotic dance, and the mood is hot and heavy; the women bend and hyperextend their legs as they twist and turn around their partners. Amateur and professional ballroom dancers alike compete in a highly gendered display of intimacy, romance and sexual passion. In Dance With Me, Julia Ericksen, a competitive ballroom dancer herself, takes the reader onto the competition floor and into the lights and the glamour of a world of tanned bodies and glittering attire, exploring the allure of this hyper-competitive, difficult, and often expensive activity. In a vivid ethnography accompanied by beautiful photographs of all levels of dancers, from the world's top competitors to social dancers, Ericksen examines the ways emotional labor is used to create intimacy between professional partners and between professionals and their students, illustrating how dancers purchase intimacy. She shows that, while at first glance, ballroom presents a highly gendered face with men leading and women following, dancing also transgresses gender.

This book extends positive psychology by embedding leisure into the positive science field, following a new paradigm and aggregating various domains and fields. Positive science can be applied to the field of leisure and, in turn, leisure can serve as an arena to study some of the most important optimal functioning variables. The book presents knowledge on a diverse range of topics about optimizing socio-cognitive processes and behaviors, places and contexts, societies and cultures through leisure. These topics are unified by an underlying continuum that extends from individuals and subjective experiences to social worlds. The contributions highlight components of everyday life, showing that subjective experience and life trajectories are structured and social goals and life purposes are defined and achieved within interactions between individuals and their lived contexts and environments in daily life.

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This book examines the experiences of those dedicated drinkers at the forefront of the new night-time leisure industries that revolutionized the way we think about our city centres. Smith uses the night-time leisure economy as a lens through which to view the relationship between global consumer capital and the erosion of 'traditional' adulthood.

This text evaluates the moral project of Olympism, analzying the changing value positions adopted in relation to the ideology of Olympism across the period from the 1890s to the present day. The book also analyzes discourses of Olympism concerned with youth, governance, sport for development and international relations.