Showing papers in "Sociology of Sport Journal in 2010"

Power, politics and "Sport for Development and Peace": investigating the utility of sport for international development.

Abstract: Sport is currently mobilized as a tool of international development within the �Sport for Development and Peace� (SDP) movement. Framed by Gramscian hegemony theory and sport and development studies respectively, this article offers an analysis of the conceptualization of sport�s social and political utility within SDP programs. Drawing on the perspectives of young Canadians (n = 27) who served as volunteer interns within Commonwealth Games Canada�s International Development through Sport program, the dominant ideologies of development and social change that underpin current SDP practices are investigated. The results suggest that while sport does offer a new and unique tool that successfully aligns with a development mandate, the logic of sport is also compatible with the hegemony of neo-liberal development philosophy. As a result, careful consideration of the social politics of sport and development within the SDP movement is called for.

It’s Not About the Game: Don Imus, Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Media

Abstract: Using intersectionality and hegemony theory, we critically analyze mainstream print news media’s response to Don Imus’ exchange on the 2007 NCAA women’s basketball championship game. Content and textual analysis reveals the following media frames: “invisibility and silence”; “controlling images versus women’s self-definitions”; and, “outside the frame: social issues in sport and society.” The paper situates these media frames within a broader societal context wherein 1) women’s sports are silenced, trivialized and sexualized, 2) media representations of African-American women in the U. S. have historically reproduced racism and sexism, and 3) race and class relations differentially shape dominant understandings of African-American women’s participation in sport. We conclude that news media reproduced monolithic understandings of social inequality, which lacked insight into the intersecting nature of oppression for women, both in sport and in the United States.

Foucault in Leotards: Corporeal Discipline in Women's Artistic Gymnastics

Abstract: Women’s artistic gymnastics is an Olympic sport that involves intricate acrobatic and rhythmic activities. This kinesthetic proficiency demands muscular strength and courage, which have been argued to serve its athletes as a source of empowerment. Various scholars question the positive effects of sport participation. This article builds on these doubts through a feminist Foucauldian study of WAG. An essayistic research story, compiled from data gained in an ethnographic study, serves as the basis for our analyses. The results demonstrate the complexity of WAG experiences and illustrate that gymnasts’ athletic proficiency is only possible through an extensive and elaborate process of corporeal discipline.

Feeling Second Best: Elite Women Coaches’ Experiences

Abstract: This study centers upon accounts of master women coaches in the UK, connecting the participants’ experiences of the structural practices within the coaching profession to their feelings of being undervalued and marginalized. By going beyond previous positivist and interpretive approaches to the issue of women coaches’ underrepresentation, I locate the participants’ narratives and their oppression within the wider sociocultural context of sport. The strength of patriarchy within sport and coaching is revealed in the private lives of the coaches. Consequently, the findings provoke methodological and theoretical implications for an alternative approach to understanding women’s long standing minority status within sports leadership. Cette etude est centree sur les recits d’entraineures britanniques et relie les experiences que font les participantes des pratiques structurelles au sein de la profession d’entraineur a leurs sentiments d’etre sous-evaluees et marginalisees. En allant au-dela des approches positivistes et interpretatives anterieurement utilisees pour etudier la sous representation des femmes en coaching, je situe les recits des participantes ainsi que l’oppression qu’elles ressentent au sein du contexte socioculturel plus large du sport. Dans le sport et le coaching, la force du patriarcat est revelee dans la vie privee des entraineures. En consequence, les resultats ont des implications methodologiques et theoriques pour l’approche alternative qui permet de comprendre le statut depuis longtemps minoritaire des femmes en leadership sportif. Women’s underrepresentation in coaching has received much attention in the research literature over the recent decades. In the UK approximately 75% of all coaches are men and approximately 94% of all coaches are White (Sports Coach UK, 2007). The recent US figures from the NCAA demonstrate that White men occupy 87% of head coaching positions and 52% of such positions in all women’s teams across Divisions I, II and III (Lapchick, 2009). Only 2% of head coaching roles for men’s teams were held by White women and only 0.7% by women of color. For women’s teams, 35% of women’s teams are coached by White women and 5% by women of color (Lapchick, 2009).

Negotiating Masculinities via the Moral Problematization of Sport

Abstract: Researchers have raised concerns about the construction of dangerous/problematic masculinities within sporting fratriarchies1. Yet little is known about how male sport enthusiasts—critical of hypermasculine performances—negotiate their involvement in sport. Our aim was to examine how males negotiated sporting tensions and how these negotiations shaped their (masculine) selves. We drew on Foucault (1992) to analyze how interviewees problematized their respective sport culture in relation to the sexualization of females, public drunkenness and excessive training demands. Results illustrated how the interviewees produced selves, via the moral problematization of sport, that rejected the values or moral codes of hypermasculinity in attempts to create ethical masculinities. We suggest that a proliferation of techniques of self that resist hypermasculine forms of subjection could be one form of ethical response to the documented problems surrounding masculinities and sport.

The Female Signifiant in All-Women’s Amateur Roller Derby

Abstract: I analyze women’s flat-track amateur roller derby by asking: how do derby skaters negotiate the requirements associated with emphasized femininity? By drawing on Hebdige’s (1979) analysis of punk, I develop the term female signifiant to argue that roller derby is an aggressive contact sport with a theatrical edge. It provides a rich, adventurous space to satirize athletic and feminine norms. Specifically, skaters’ sport participation is characterized by an interrogation of emphasized femininity without necessarily undermining the masculine/feminine gender binary. Dans cet article, j’analyse le roller derby amateur feminin en demandant : comment les patineuses de roller derby negocient-elles les exigences associees a l’hyperfeminite ? En empruntant aux analyses d’Hebdige (1979) sur le phenomene punk, je developpe le terme « signifiant feminin » pour avancer que le roller derby est un sport de contact agressif avec un aspect theâtral. Il constitue un espace riche qui permet une satire des normes feminines et sportives. Plus specifiquement, la participation des patineuses est caracterisee par une remise en question de l’hyperfeminite sans necessairement miner le binaire masculin/feminin. In Drew Barrymore’s Whip It! (2009), Bliss Cavendar evades her mother’s pressure to win the Miss Blue Bonnet beauty pageant by joining a local roller derby league. Cavendar found herself in a world of fast-paced skating, hard hits, tattoos, short skirts, and “bad” attitudes that sharply contrast with the beauty-pageant ideals of femininity she rejects in the film. In this article, I argue that real-life roller derby indeed provides an aggressive, high-contact environment in which to interrogate femininity. Played on indoor oval tracks, derby bouts (or games) draw anywhere from a few hundred to upwards of one thousand spectators and are designed to be fast-paced and hard-hitting. At the beginning of each jam (derby-speak for play), blockers from each team line up to form an eight-person pack; fifteen feet behind them, a jammer from each team lines up. Jammers speed-skate around the track; after their first pass through the pack, jammers gain points every time they pass a member of the opposing team. Blockers, who cannot earn points, assist their jammer through the pack and prevent the opposing jammer from passing. Although fist-fighting and elbowing incur penalties, skaters may move in front of other skaters (“body-” or

Islam, Hijab and Young Shia Muslim Canadian Women's Discursive Constructions of Physical Activity

Abstract: This article focuses on the results of a study exploring young Shia Muslim Canadian women’s discursive constructions of physical activity in relation to Islam and the Hijab. The aims of the study were primarily informed by feminist poststructuralist and postcolonial theories. Poststructuralist discourse analysis was used to analyze the transcripts of conversations with 10 young Hijab-wearing Shia Muslim Canadian women. The results show that the participants discursively constructed physical activity in terms of being physically active (involved in fitness activities rather than sport), feeling good about themselves (i.e., being physically and mentally healthy), and losing weight or remaining “not fat.” The participants mentioned that they would choose Islam over physical activity if they had to make a choice between the two. Participants strongly resisted the Islamophobic discourse present in Canada, and appropriated an intersectional discourse that legitimates their refusal to choose between their right ...

Racial Differences in Faculty Perceptions of Collegiate Student-Athletes Academic and Post-Undergraduate Achievements

Abstract: This study employed critical race theory (CRT) as an interpretive framework to explore faculty members’ perceptions about Black and White U.S. college student-athletes’ academic and post-undergraduate accomplishments. Using photo elicitation method, randomly assigned faculty participants responded to a photo and vignette of a student-athlete by race. Results indicated that some faculty held differential feelings toward Black and White student-athletes with respect to their academic and post-undergraduate accomplishments. Such feelings were less favorable for Black male and female student-athletes as compared with their White counterparts. The implications of these findings should be discussed among faculty, student affairs leaders, coaches, and others who frequently interact with student-athletes and are committed to creating more equitable educational environments for all students.

Beyond the Marathon: (De)Construction of Female Ultrarunning Bodies

Abstract: This article examines the ways in which high-performance female ultrarunning bodies are created by and understood through the discourses of the normative running body, the ideal female body and pain. Using a Foucauldian framework, this paper shows how the ultrarunning body becomes a desired body beyond the marathon and how these same desires produce multiple and complex subjectivities for female ultrarunners. In-depth interviews were conducted with 8 high performance female ultrarunners. Findings suggest that ultrarunning is a sporting space which gives rise to more diverse subjectivities than previously found in distance running literature. Simultaneously, this discourse produces disciplined bodies through the mode of desire and "unquestioned" social norms, paralleling the constructs of extreme sports and (re)producing middle-classness. Cet article examine comment, par le biais de discours sur la douleur, le corps feminin et le corps normatif du coureur, sont crees et compris les corps feminins de haute performance en marathon. En utilisant une approche foucaldienne, l�auteur demontre comment le corps de course ultra devient un corps desire audela du contexte du marathon et comment les desirs produisent des subjectivites complexes et multiples pour les coureuses. Des entrevues en profondeur ont ete realisees aupres de huit coureuses de haute performance. Les resultats suggerent que la course ultra constitue un espace sportif qui permet des subjectivites plus diversifiees que ne l�ont laisse entendre les ecrits sur la course a distance. Simultanement, le discours ci-haut mentionne produit des corps disciplines par le biais du desir et des normes sociales qui ne sont pas remises en question, ce qui fait echo aux construits sur les sports extremes et ce qui reproduit l�appartenance a la classes moyenne.

Complicating the Relationship Between Sport and National Identity: The Case of Post-Socialist Slovenia

Abstract: Sociology of sport knowledge on national identity is grounded in research that focuses primarily on long established nation-states with widely known histories. The relationship between sport and national identity in postsocialist/Soviet/colonial nations that have gained independence or sovereignty since 1990 has seldom been studied. This paper examines the role of sports in the formation of national identity in postsocialist Slovenia, a nation-state that gained independence in 1990. Our analysis focuses on the recent context in which the current but fluid relationship between sport and Slovenian national identity exists. Using Slovenia as a case study we identify seven factors that may moderate the effectiveness of sports as sites for establishing and maintaining national identity and making successful global identity claims in the twenty-first century. We conclude that these factors should be taken into account to more fully understand the sport-national identity relationship today, especially in new and...

Media consumption and the contexts of physical culture:Methodological reflections on a 'Third Generation' study of media audiences

Abstract: In this paper we argue that sport media research would be enhanced by: (a) engagement with the audience research tradition, including “third generation” audience studies that emphasize relationships between viewer interpretations of media and everyday social practices; and (b) the adoption of multimethod research approaches that are sensitive to contradictions and complexities that exist in media consumption To support this argument, we reflect on the benefits of a multimethod research design used in a recent audience study conducted by the authors on youth interpretations of media and performances of masculinity in physical education (Millington & Wilson, in press) These benefits include: enriching researcher understandings of social/cultural contexts; illuminating social hierarchies; and revealing lived contradictions We conclude with reflections on epistemological issues and suggestions for future audience projects

"Their bottoms are the wrong shape”. Female jockeys and the theory of established outsider relations

Abstract: This paper adopts Elias’ theory of established and outsider relations (Elias and Scotson, 1994) to argue that women riders are "outsiders" within the racing figuration. The paper draws on data collected from eight semi-structured inter­views with experienced female jockeys. It is suggested by the authors that female jockeys remain outsiders within the racing figuration in the UK. In particular, female jockeys are largely resigned to their inferior position as their views of male jockeys remain deeply ingrained in stereotypes about gender. The increasing organizational changes that have allowed women to be a part of the Jockey Club, be granted licenses, train and compete alongside males do not appear to have changed attitudes toward female jockeys, who are largely perceived as weaker and less capable than male jockeys.

Danny Almonte: Discursive Construction(s) of (Im)migrant Citizenship in Neoliberal America

Abstract: In this project I will trace former Little League Baseball star, Danny Almonte�s, celebrity identity and flexible citizenship with particular regard to the way that he has been used as both an exemplary Dominican immigrant and later a cautionary tale. As such this critical biography of Almonte�s rise and fall in American popular culture�informed by Henry Giroux�s extensive theorizing on youth culture, Ong�s concept of flexible citizenship, and Steven Jackson�s understanding of "twisting"�will critically interrogate the mediated discourses used to describe, define, and make Almonte into a symbol of a (stereo)typical Dominican male. In accordance with contemporaneous hyper-conservative and neoliberal rhetoric pervasive throughout the United States, I posit the notion that Almonte�s contested celebrity was formulated within the popular media as the embodiment of the minority "assault" on white privilege.

Uncivil attention and the public runner.

Abstract: While violence among the fans of competitive sports has received much scholarly attention (e.g., Elias & Dunning, 1986; Giulianotti, 2005), far less has been written about aggression targeted at community athletes like public runners. Yet accounts of such harassment figure prominently in runners’ own narratives. This article explores the phenomenon of runner harassment through these accounts and my own experiences as a long-time public runner, drawing first from the literature on fan aggression and second, from sociological work concerning behavior in public places more generally (e.g., Gardner, 1980, 1995; Goffman, 1963). It argues that jogger harassment can be understood in relation to the particular bodily form that running takes—that is, to the sweating, disheveled, panting body of public running—which both violates rules of public vs. private bodily display and signals an unacceptable degree of “involvement” (Goffman, 1963) in the activity and, ultimately, the self.

Theorizing Paula Radcliffe: representing a nation.

Abstract: In setting the world record at the London Marathon in 2003, Paula Radcliffe not only beat her female competitors but also her countrymen becoming the fastest British runner of the year, male or female, making her the nation’s best hope for the Olympic Games in 2004. From this position, she garnered a significant amount of media attention, becoming Britain’s most famous runner. Yet as a representative of her nation, both symbolically and on the national team, her place remains complicated. Radcliffe’s significant accomplishments, which were in part understood as British success, were also constructed as a foil for the lack of British men’s success in racialized and gendered ways. To explicate mediated articulations of national identity, I examined UK print media constructions of Radcliffe focusing on three major events of her running career: her world record, her failure to finish at the 2004 Games, and her World Championship marathon win in 2005. I found that Radcliffe achieved conditional status as a rep...

Living with War: Sport, Citizenship, and the Cultural Politics of Post-9/11 Canadian Identity

Abstract: If sport scholars are going to contribute to a critical (inter)national dialogue that challenges “official versions” of a post-9/11 geo-political reality, there is a need to continue to move beyond the borders of the US, and examine how nationalistic sporting spectacles work to promote local military initiatives that are aligned with the imperatives of neoliberal empire. In this article we provide a critical reading of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s nationally-televised broadcast of a National Hockey League game, colloquially known as Tickets for Troops. We reveal how interest groups emphasized three interrelated narratives that worked to: 1) personalize the Canadian Forces and understandings of neoliberal citizenship, 2) articulate warfare/military training with men’s ice hockey in relation to various promotional mandates, and 3) optimistically promote the war in Afghanistan and the Conservative Party of Canada via storied national traditions and mythologies.

Now’s When We Throw Him Under the Bus: Institutional and Occupational Identities and the Coverage of Doping in Sport

Abstract: This article explicates the processes by which sports news is constructed by analyzing the case of performance enhancing drug use coverage. An ethnographic study was conducted of a North American cycling news journal and website. Investigating fundamental tasks of the journalist profession illuminates the labor practices of sport media. Contextualized within institutional, economic and cultural conditions of production, these practices serve to frame not only what but how, texts are constructed. Results indicate that while performance enhancing drug use in sport is considered highly newsworthy, investigative costs, public fatigue, and lack of medical and legal knowledge account for the limited coverage. Cet article explique le processus de construction des nouvelles sportives en analysant le cas de la couverture mediatique des drogues en sport. Une approche ethnographique a ete utilisee pour analyser un site web et une revue portant sur le velo en Amerique du nord. L�investigation des tâches fondamentales de la profession journalistique illumine les pratiques de travail des medias sportifs. Mises dans le contexte des conditions institutionnelles, economiques et culturelles de production, ces pratiques servent a encadrer non seulement ce que nous savons mais aussi la facon dont les textes sont construits. Les resultats sont a l�effet que si l�utilisation des drogues en sport est consideree de haut interet journalistique, les couts d�investigation, la fatigue du public et le manque de connaissances medicales et legales expliquent la couverture mediatique limitee

Sport Sociology, NASSS, and Undergraduate Education in the United States: A Social Network Perspective for Developing the Field

Abstract: There has been no research about the prevalence of undergraduate sport sociology courses or about the links between NASSS and the institutions and faculty offering these courses. This article begins to fill this research gap. It uses a social network perspective to show how NASSS is connected to the “idea space” of undergraduate sport sociology courses in the U.S. and to the “social space” of institutions and instructors offering these courses. The data concern the prevalence, distribution, and content of undergraduate sport sociology courses in the U.S. and their connection to NASSS. A “call to action” for NASSS is proposed, especially in terms of how NASSS could expand its social network and its influence over the curricular idea space of sport sociology by reaching out to instructors of sport sociology courses. Suggestions for related future research are also proposed.

The Gaelic Athletic Association, Transnational Identities and Irish-America

Abstract: This article draws on the concept of transnationalism to examine the role and function of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) among Irish migrant communities in the United States. In particular, it examines the role of the GAA in the production and reproduction of shifting notions of Irish national identification in America. The analyses here are rooted in ethnographic research conducted in the US and Ireland and are informed, theoretically, by the work of Basch, Glick-Schiller and Szanton Blanc (1994) and Duany (2002) on transnational identities. The article argues that Irish nationalism, as constructed and articulated in and through the GAA in America, can be considered as a deterritorialized form of identity rather than one that is necessarily limited or constrained by national borders.

“The Transparency of Democracy”: The Production of Washington’s Nationals Park as a Late Capitalist Space

Abstract: Following the trend of cities throughout the United States subsidizing new baseball stadiums within their economic redevelopment strategies, in 2005, the city government of Washington, D.C. agreed to subsidize the construction of Nationals Park for the use of the Washington Nationals baseball team. In its design of the stadium, HOK Sport architects sought to represent the “transparency of democracy” as they were inspired by the democratic image and iconography of the US Capital city. Using a perspective based in Lefebvre’s (1991b) production of space, I explore the power relations produced and reproduced within spatial and cultural production. I argue that instead of creating an inclusive space, architects designed a space that exemplifies the late capitalist moment in its focus on consumption, social control, and aesthetic production. Nationals Park, thus, excludes people by class, privileges visitors over residents, and provides an unrealistic view of the city that marginalizes less powerful groups.

Multimedia Use in a Sport Setting: Communication Technologies at Off-Track Betting Facilities

Abstract: Although there is a growing body of research on public social practices related to the use of mobile phones, internet terminals, and laptops, there are few integrated analyses of the uses of multiple interactive technologies in public settings, and especially those involving sports. This article looks at one such space in which technology is embedded in a complicated network of social and economic relations: the screen dominated pari-mutuel horse race wagering facility. Specifically, the paper examines the relationship that built environments, public screen, and communication technologies have on social practices, and considers the juxtaposition of different places in the quotidian, and in a place of reflexive research practice.