Globally, we find ourselves in a novel set of circumstances where our individual and collective relationships with leisure have changed dramatically and are being dictated less by personal preferences or even affluence, but rather by health, legal, and societal factors. There is very little published work on changed practices in leisure due to the pandemic, especially focusing on activities that were previously considered ordinary and perhaps even mundane. Contribute to the compilation of a historic record of the way the pandemic has transformed various leisure behaviours in diverse cultural and national contexts at this unprecedented time.

Globally, we find ourselves in a novel set of circumstances where our individual and collective relationships with leisure have changed dramatically and are being dictated less by personal preferences or even affluence, but rather by health, legal, and societal factors. There is very little published work on changed practices in leisure due to the pandemic, especially focusing on activities that were previously considered ordinary and perhaps even mundane. Contribute to the compilation of a historic record of the way the pandemic has transformed various leisure behaviours in diverse cultural and national contexts at this unprecedented time.

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.

Scholars working in the academic field of sport studies have long debated the relationship between sport and gender. Modern sport forms, along with many related activities, have been shown to have historically supported ideals of male superiority, by largely excluding women and/or celebrating only men's athletic achievements. While the growth of women's sport throughout the 20th and 21st centuries has extinguished the notion of female frailty, revealing that women can embody athletic qualities previously thought exclusive to men, the continuation of sex segregation in many settings has left something of a discursive 'back door' through which ideals of male athletic superiority can escape unscathed, retaining their influence over wider cultural belief systems. However, sex-integrated sport potentially offers a radical departure from such beliefs, as it challenges us to reject assumptions of male superiority, entertaining very different visions of sex difference and gender relations to those typically constructed through traditional models of physical culture. This comprehensive collection offers a diverse range of international case studies that reaffirm the contemporary relevance of sex integration debates, and also articulate the possibility of sport acting as a legitimate space for political struggle, resistance and change. This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Multispecies Leisure: Human-Animal Interactions in Leisure Landscapes seeks to ‘bring the animal in’ to the leisure studies domain and contribute to greater understanding of leisure as a complex, interwoven multispecies phenomenon. The emerging multidisciplinary field of human-animal studies encourages researchers to move beyond narrow focus on human-centric practices and ways of being in the world, and to recognise that human and non-human beings are positioned within shared ecological, social, cultural and political spaces. With some exceptions, leisure studies has been slow to embrace the ‘animal turn’ and consider how leisure actions, experiences and landscapes are shaped through multispecies encounters between humans, other animals, birds and insects, plants and environment. This book begins to address this gap by presenting research that considers leisure as more-than-human experiences. The authors consider leisure with nonhuman others (e.g. dogs, horses), affecting those others (e.g. environmental concerns) and affected by the non-human (e.g. landscape, weather), by exploring the ‘contact zones’ between humans and other species. Thus, this work contributes to greater understanding of leisure as a complex, multispecies phenomenon. The chapters in this book were originally published as a Special Issue of the Leisure Studies.

Riding, training and caring for horses are visceral experiences that require the immersion of both body and mind. This book provides an in-depth understanding of human-horse relationships and interactions as embodied in equestrian sport and leisure. As a closely focused ethnographic study of the horse world, it explores the key themes of partnership and collaboration in human-horse communication, the formation of individual and collective identities performed through involvement in the horse world, and human-horse interaction as an embodied way of being. This book argues that encounters between humans and horses can reveal the ways that human society has been and continues to be structured through intersection with nonhuman others. Equestrian sport and leisure provides an apt context for considering how such concepts of interspecies communication and collaboration are negotiated, managed, (mis)understood and performed, resulting in a uniquely embodied way of knowing and being in the world. Human-Animal Relationships in Equestrian Sport and Leisure is fascinating reading for anyone interested in equestrianism, human-animal studies, theories of embodiment, the sociology of sport, or sport and social theory.

Scholars working in the academic field of sport studies have long debated the relationship between sport and gender. Modern sport forms, along with many related activities, have been shown to have historically supported ideals of male superiority, by largely excluding women and/or celebrating only men's athletic achievements. While the growth of women's sport throughout the 20th and 21st centuries has extinguished the notion of female frailty, revealing that women can embody athletic qualities previously thought exclusive to men, the continuation of sex segregation in many settings has left something of a discursive 'back door' through which ideals of male athletic superiority can escape unscathed, retaining their influence over wider cultural belief systems. However, sex-integrated sport potentially offers a radical departure from such beliefs, as it challenges us to reject assumptions of male superiority, entertaining very different visions of sex difference and gender relations to those typically constructed through traditional models of physical culture. This comprehensive collection offers a diverse range of international case studies that reaffirm the contemporary relevance of sex integration debates, and also articulate the possibility of sport acting as a legitimate space for political struggle, resistance and change. This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Multispecies Leisure: Human-Animal Interactions in Leisure Landscapes seeks to 'bring the animal in' to the leisure studies domain and contribute to greater understanding of leisure as a complex, interwoven multispecies phenomenon. The emerging multidisciplinary field of human-animal studies encourages researchers to move beyond narrow focus on human-centric practices and ways of being in the world, and to recognise that human and non-human beings are positioned within shared ecological, social, cultural and political spaces. With some exceptions, leisure studies has been slow to embrace the 'animal turn' and consider how leisure actions, experiences and landscapes are shaped through multispecies encounters between humans, other animals, birds and insects, plants and environment. This book begins to address this gap by presenting research that considers leisure as more-than-human experiences. The authors consider leisure with nonhuman others (e.g. dogs, horses), affecting those others (e.g. environmental concerns) and affected by the non-human (e.g. landscape, weather), by exploring the 'contact zones' between humans and other species. Thus, this work contributes to greater understanding of leisure as a complex, multispecies phenomenon. The chapters in this book were originally published as a Special Issue of the Leisure Studies.

This innovative and timely volume moves beyond existing operational and pragmatic approaches to events studies by exploring sports events as social, cultural, political and mediatised phenomena. As the study of this area is developing there is now a need for critical and theoretically informed debate regarding conceptualisation, significance and roles. This edited collection explores the core themes of consumption, media technologies, representation, identities and culture to offer new insight into how sports events contribute to generation of individual and shared meaning over personal, community and national identities as well as the associated issues of conflict, resistance and power. Chapters promote a critical (re)evaluation of emerging empirical research from a diverse range of sports events and locations from the international to local level. A multi-disciplinary approach is taken with contributions from areas including sports studies, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, communications, politics, tourism and gender studies. Written by leading academics in the area, this thorough exploration of the contested relationship between sports events, society and culture will be of interest to students, academics and researchers in Events, Sport, Tourism and Sociology.

Riding, training and caring for horses are visceral experiences that require the immersion of both body and mind. This book provides an in-depth understanding of human-horse relationships and interactions as embodied in equestrian sport and leisure. As a closely focused ethnographic study of the horse world, it explores the key themes of partnership and collaboration in human-horse communication, the formation of individual and collective identities performed through involvement in the horse world, and human-horse interaction as an embodied way of being. This book argues that encounters between humans and horses can reveal the ways that human society has been and continues to be structured through intersection with nonhuman others. Equestrian sport and leisure provides an apt context for considering how such concepts of interspecies communication and collaboration are negotiated, managed, (mis)understood and performed, resulting in a uniquely embodied way of knowing and being in the world. Human-Animal Relationships in Equestrian Sport and Leisure is fascinating reading for anyone interested in equestrianism, human-animal studies, theories of embodiment, the sociology of sport, or sport and social theory.

This innovative and timely volume moves beyond existing operational and pragmatic approaches to events studies by exploring sports events as social, cultural, political, and mediatised phenomena. As the study of this area is developing there is now a need for critical and theoretically informed debate regarding conceptualisation, significance and roles. This edited collection explores the core themes of consumption, media technologies, representation, identities and culture to offer new insight into how sports events contribute to generation of individual and shared meaning over personal, community and national identities as well as the associated issues of conflict, resistance and power. Chapters promote a critical (re)evaluation of emerging empirical research from a diverse range of sports events and locations from the international to local level. A multi-disciplinary approach is taken with contributions from areas including sports studies, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, communications, politics, tourism and gender studies.Written by leading academics in the area, this thorough exploration of the contested relationship between sports events, media technology, society and culture will be of interest to students, academics and researchers in Events, Sport, Tourism and Sociology.

Despite the mythology of sport bringing people together and encouraging everyone to work collectively to success, modern sport remains a site of exclusionary practices that operate on a number of levels. Although sports participation is, in some cases at least, becoming more open and meritocratic, at the management level it remains very homogenous; dominated by western, white, middle-aged, able-bodied men. This has implications both for how sport develops and how it is experienced by different participant groups, across all levels. Critical studies of sport have revealed that, rather than being a passive mechanism and merely reflecting inequality, sport, via social agents' interactions with sporting spaces, is actively involved in producing, reproducing, sustaining and indeed, resisting, various manifestations of inequality. The experiences of marginalised groups can act as a resource for explaining contemporary political struggles over what sport means, how it should be played (and by whom), and its place within wider society. Central to this collection is the argument that the dynamics of cultural identities are contextually contingent; influenced heavily by time and place and the extent to which they are embedded in the culture of their geographic location. They also come to function differently within certain sites and institutions; be it in one's everyday routine or leisure pursuits, such as sport. Among the themes and issues explored by the contributors to this volume are: social inclusion and exclusion in relation to class, 'race' and ethnicity, gender and sexuality; social identities and authenticity; social policy, deviance and fandom. This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.