An introduction to the sociology of sports mega‐events1

Sociological Review, 2006

Sociological Review, 2006

Frontiers in sports and active living, 2023

The relevance of a sociological view on the problems of society has never been as important as it is today. To quote the editors of the journal Nature in their editorial, Time for the Social Sciences, from 2015: if you want science to deliver for society, you need to support a capacity to understand that society. In other words, the technological and scientific disciplines cannot simply transfer their findings into everyday life without knowing how society works. But this realisation does not seem to have caught on everywhere. The sociology of sport is entering a critical period that will shape its development and potential transformation over the next decade. In this paper, we review key features and trends within the sociology of sport in recent times, and set out potential future challenges and ways forward for the subdiscipline. Accordingly, our discussion spans a wide range of issues concerning the sociology of sport, including theories and approaches, methods, and substantive research topics. We also discuss the potential contributions of the sociology of sport to addressing key societal challenges. To examine these issues, the paper is organized into three main parts. First, we identify three main concentric challenges, or types of peripheral status, that sociologists of sport must confront: as social scientists, as sociologists, and as sociologists of sport, respectively. Second, we consider various strengths within the positions of sociology and the sociology of sport. Third, in some detail, we set out several ways forward for the sociology of sport with respect to positioning within academe, scaling up research, embracing the glocal and cosmopolitan aspects of sociology, enhancing plurality in theory, improving transnational coordination, promoting horizontal collaborations, and building greater public engagement. The paper is underpinned by over 60 years (combined) of work within the sociology of sport, including extensive international research and teaching. KEYWORDS sociology, key societal challenges, sport, theory, methods, horizon, strengths and challenges of sociology, position of the sociology of sport TYPE

Sports events, society and culture , 2014

McCullough. Routledge, 2014.

RUDN Journal of Sociology, 2020

In recent years, the importance of sports in Russia has increased dramatically, which is determined primarily by the country's hosting international sport events, in particular, the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup 2018. The influence of sports on social processes has increased, sports began to strengthen its position in public opinion as a prestigious sphere of employment and an important social category [24. P. 60]. Thus, there is an obvious need to identify the relationship of physical culture with society as a whole and with all elements of the social structure and specific social institutions. The article examines the origins and prerequisites for the formation of sociology of sport as a relatively independent scientific discipline; presents the issues of sports sociology in the historical perspective-in the context of both their social genesis and contemporary sociological theories; considers the social role and social functions of sport education and sports. The authors believe that the differentiated social distribution of sports practices is determined by the interconnections of the space of possible practices (supply) and the space of demand for certain practices. In the article, the well-known foreign scientists are presented in the new perspective as sociologists who provided for both Russian and foreign authors the incentive and direction for theoretical studies of sports issues. The article also presents to Russian readers the original studies on sociology of sports conducted by famous scientists-Norbert Elias, Eric Dunning, Anna Ingram, Georges Hébert, etc.

On the 50th anniversary of the International Sociology of Sport Association (ISSA) and International Review for the Sociology of Sport (IRSS), a key international figure in the study of media and sport within the sociology of sport, David Rowe, reflects on the field as a whole and the role for studying media and power within it. Rowe considers how some development in the sociology of sport within the larger discipline of sociology may be seen as 'gestural and instrumental'. In considering the challenges of the field, Rowe notes how the media serves to situate and amplify sport's inherent powers of 'liveness', whether sport is manifest in mega-events or in 'extraordinary ordinariness'. The closing section of the essay focuses on questions of media and power, foremost those concerning spectacle and commodification and their intersection with politics and the transactions of nationalized identities with those of race, ethnicity and gender in a globalized media sports cultural complex. Reflections Meditative articles of this kind often display contrasting, perhaps incommensurate tones – the triumphant versus the elegiac. The former narrates stories of struggle, of barriers overcome and progress made, while the latter laments what has been lost and the regrets that accompany failure and thwarted ambition. The reflections here will be tinged with both analytical moods, taking on an inevitably autobiographical character that is intended to demonstrate that the field and its history looks rather different according to vantage point, and that omniscient claims to encapsulate it all should be treated with appropriate scepticism. In short, this is a commentary by a self-identified sociologist of sport who also identifies as much else besides, who came to the field through academic happenstance, and who is acutely aware of the particularity of his experience.

Book reviews 509 non-Western academics, in non-Western locations and also in less visible geographical places and sports.

Physical Education and Sport Through the Centuries, 2018

Summary In this paper we evaluated the basic viewpoints on the mutual relations between contemporary sport and society. Sport is a global social phenomenon which is determined by a variety of different processes, including: the fast development of the industrial society and capital, an increase in leisure time, the development of a liberal democracy and the media. A special feature in these relations is the overall globalization process in today’s world. The basic structure of this paper is made up of two functional parts. In the first part we indicate the dominant theoretical-methodological paradigms in studying sport in social sciences, especially sociology: functionalism, conflict theory in society, interpretive and postmodern theory. In the second part of the paper we analyze the dialectics of contemporary relations between sport and society, where special attention is dedicated to the distribution of social power between sport, capital and the media at the local and global leve...

European Journal for Sport and Society, 2018

What is and was the sociology of sports all about? Through the method of topic modelling, I will investigate the content of all articles (full text, N ¼ 1923) from what has historically been the three leading sociology of sport journals-Sociology of Sport Journal, International Review for the Sociology of Sport and Journal of Sport and Social Issuesfrom 1984 to 2014. The study extracts 20 dominant topics: from the vague but central topic of Culture via Organization & Politics, Gender, Race, and Body to the less central, but more specific, topic of Football, Nationalism and Globalization. Additionally, I look at how the three journals have their strongholds in these topics, and how the topics have fluctuated over time. The results are discussed against the background of previous reviews and studies in the sociology of sports.

Annual Review of Sociology, 2001