A Companion to Sport

A Companion to Sport brings together writing by leading sports theorists and social and cultural thinkers, to explore sport as a central element of contemporary culture.

• Positions sport as a crucial subject for critical analysis, as one of the most significant forms of popular culture
• Includes both well-known social and cultural theorists whose work lends itself to an interrogation of sport, and leading theorists of sport itself
• Offers a comprehensive examination of sport as a social and cultural practice and institution
• Explores sport in relation to modernity, postcolonial theory, gender, violence, race, disability and politics

Notes on Contributors ix

Introduction: Sport as Escape, Struggle, and Art 1
Ben Carrington and David L. Andrews

Part One: Sporting Structures and Historical Formations 17

1 Constructing Knowledge: Histories of Modern Sport 23
Douglas Booth

2 Sport and Globalization 41
Richard Giulianotti and Roland Robertson

3 The Sport/Media Complex: Formation, Flowering, and Future 61
David Rowe

4 Political Theories of Social Class, Sport, and the Body 78
Joshua I. Newman and Mark Falcous

5 Gender, Feminist Theory, and Sport 96
Sheila Scraton and Anne Flintoff

6 Sports Medicine, Health, and the Politics of Risk 112
Parissa Safai

7 Sport, Ecological Modernization, and the Environment 129
Brian Wilson and Brad Millington

Part Two: Bodies and Identities 143

8 Paradox of Privilege: Sport, Masculinities, and the Commodifi ed Body 149
Jeffrey Montez de Oca

9 Racism, Body Politics, and Football 164
Mark Q. Sawyer and Cory Charles Gooding

10 Physical Culture, Pedagogies of Health, and the Gendered Body 179
Emma Rich and John Evans

11 Gay Male Athletes and Shifting Masculine Identities 196
Eric Anderson

12 Sport, the Body, and the Technologies of Disability 210
P. David Howe

Part Three: Contested Space and Politics 223

13 US Imperialism, Sport, and “the Most Famous Soldier in the War” 229
Toby Miller

14 The Realities of Fantasy: Politics and Sports Fandom in the Twenty-fi rst Century 246
Michael Bérubé

15 Sport, Palestine, and Israel 257
Tamir Sorek

16 Cities and the Cultural Politics of Sterile Sporting Space 270
Michael L. Silk

17 Swimming Pools, Civic Life, and Social Capital 287
Jeff Wiltse

Part Four: Cultures, Subcultures, and (Post)Sport 305

18 Sports Fandom 311
Edwin Amenta and Natasha Miric

19 Sporting Violence and Deviant Bodies 327
Kevin Young and Michael Atkinson

20 Dissecting Action Sports Studies: Past, Present, and Beyond 341
Holly Thorpe and Belinda Wheaton

21 Heidegger, Parkour, Post-sport, and the Essence of Being 359
Michael Atkinson

22 Race-ing Men: Cars, Identity, and Performativity 375
Amy L. Best

23 Chess as Art, Science, and Sport 390
Antony Puddephatt and Gary Alan Fine

Part Five: Sport, Mega-events, and Spectacle 405

24 Sport Mega-events as Political Mega-projects: A Critical Analysis of the 2010 FIFA World Cup 411
Scarlett Cornelissen

25 Sporting Mega-events, Urban Modernity, and Architecture 427
John Horne

26 Sports, the Beijing Olympics, and Global Media Spectacles 445
Douglas Kellner and Hui Zhang

27 Always Already Excluded: The Gendered Facts of Anti-Blackness and Brazil’s Male Seleção 465
João H. Costa Vargas

28 To Be Like Everyone Else, Only Better: The US Men’s Football Team and the World Cup 481
Grant Farred

29 Sport, Spectacle, and the Political Economy of Mega-events: The Case of the Indian Premier League 493
Ian McDonald and Abilash Nalapat

Part Six: Sporting Celebrities/Cultural Icons 507

30 Global Sporting Icons: Consuming Signs of Economic and Cultural Transformation 513
Barry Smart

31 Embodying American Democracy: Performing the Female Sporting Icon 532
C.L. Cole and Michael D. Giardina

32 Monty Panesar and the New (Sporting) Asian Britishness 548
Daniel Burdsey

33 Earl’s Loins – Or, Inventing Tiger Woods 564
Davis W. Houck

34 Deleuze and the Disabled Sports Star 582
Pirkko Markula

Index 602

“No doubt, many students will be inspired by it to undertake further research and create yet new and deeper thoughts on the role sport can play in our society.” (Reference Reviews, 1 December 2014

David L. Andrews is Professor of Physical Cultural Studies in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. He is the author of Sport-Commerce-Culture: Essays on Sport in Late Capitalist America (2006) and coauthor of Sports Coaching Research: Context, Consequences, and Consciousness (with A. Bush, M. Silk, and H. Lauder, 2013).

Ben Carrington teaches sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, USA and is a Carnegie Research Fellow at Leeds Metropolitan University in England. His most recent book is Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora (2010).

“Combining accessible overviews of established fields of research in sport studies with lively discussions of emergent ideas, this landmark text is invaluable.”
Samantha King, Queen’s University

“An outstanding cast of authors has provided a veritable tour de force of critical inquiry and analysis into the roles of sport in contemporary society. Cutting edge scholarship.”
Daryl Adair, University of Technology, Sydney

“This collection offers an important resource documenting the ways in which sport matters culturally as a site of popular pleasure and identifications fraught with ideological and political significance.”
Mary McDonald, Miami University

From the paternal bonding ritual of a baseball thrown to a small gloved hand to the shared anxiety and elation of a football crowd, sport has long been a central element of cultures throughout the world. It brings together communities, nations and people with little else in common, whether as an activity or a spectacle, operating as a vital form of human expression.

Yet despite its importance as a means of understanding social formations and interpersonal relations, sport has often been viewed by social scientists as a marginal activity. This wide-ranging collection of essays aims to address this inconsistency, exploring the ways in which sport has been marked by the discourses of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation which inform the structure and experience of wider society.

Both theoretically ambitious and accessible, A Companion to Sport includes the thoughts of well-known social and cultural theorists whose work lends itself to an interrogation of sport. It is an invaluable extension to the field and is set to become a default text for anyone interested in contemporary cultural forms and their political significance.

“Combining accessible overviews of established fields of research in sport studies with lively discussions of emergent ideas, this landmark text is invaluable.”
Samantha King, Queen's University

“An outstanding cast of authors has provided a veritable tour de force of critical inquiry and analysis into the roles of sport in contemporary society. Cutting edge scholarship.”
Daryl Adair, University of Technology, Sydney

“This collection offers an important resource documenting the ways in which sport matters culturally as a site of popular pleasure and identifications fraught with ideological and political significance.”
Mary McDonald, Miami University