Showing papers in "The Sociological Review in 2006"

An introduction to the sociology of sports mega-events†

Abstract: Acknowledgements. 1. An introduction to the sociology of sports mega-events: John Horne (University of Edinburgh, UK) and Wolfram Manzenreiter (University of Vienna, Austria). Part 1: Sports mega-events, modernity and capitalist economies. 2. Mega-events and modernity revisited: Maurice Roche (University of Sheffield, UK). 3. The Economic Impact of Major Sport Events: Chris Gratton, Simon Shibli, and Richard Coleman (Sport Industry Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University, UK). 4. Urban entrepreneurship, corporate interests and sports mega-events: C. Michael Hall (University of Otago, New Zealand). Part 2: The Glocal Politics of Sports Mega-events. 5. Underestimated costs and overestimated benefits? Comparing the outcomes of sports mega-events in Canada and Japan: David Whitson (University of Alberta, at Edmonton, Canada) and John Horne (University of Edinburgh). 6. Modernizing China in the Olympic spotlight: China's national identity and the 2008 Beijing Olympiad: Xin Xu (Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan). 7. The 2010 Football World Cup as a political construct: the challenge of making good on an African promise: Scarlett Cornelissen (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa) and Kamilla Swart (Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa). Part 3: Power, spectacle and the city. 8. UEFA Euro 2004 Portugal: The social construction of a sports mega- event and spectacle: Salome Marivoet (University of Coimbra, Portugal). 9. Sports spectacles, uniformities and the search for identity in late modern Japan: Wolfram Manzenreiter (Vienna University). 10. Deep play: Sports mega-events and urban social conditions in the U.S.A: Kimberly Schimmel (Kent State University, U.S.A.). 11. Olympic Urbanism and Olympic Villages: Planning strategies in olympic host cities, London 1908 - London 2012: Francesc Munoz (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain). Notes on contributors. Index.

Urban entrepreneurship, corporate interests and sports mega‐events: the thin policies of competitiveness within the hard outcomes of neoliberalism

Abstract: Mega-events, otherwise referred to as hallmark or special events, are major fairs, festivals, expositions, cultural and sporting events which are held on either a regular or a one-off basis (Hall, 1992). Mega-events have assumed a key role in urban and regional tourism marketing and promotion as well as wider urban and regional development strategies. Nations, regions, cities and corporations have used mega-events to promote a favourable image in the international tourist, migration and business marketplace (Ritchie & Beliveau, 1974; Law, 1993, 2000; Malecki, 2004). Mega-events are therefore one of the means by which places seek to become ‘sticky’ (Markusen, 1996) – that is attract and retain mobile capital and people – through place enhancement and regeneration and the promotion of selective place information (Hall, C.M., 2005a, b). Mega-events are therefore an extremely significant component of place promotion because they may leave behind social, economic and physical legacies which will have an impact on the host community for a far greater period than that in which the event took place. For example, when asked as to the ‘most likely legacy’ of the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games in Canada a readers’ poll in Monday Magazine ranked debt, new pool, higher taxes, increased tourism, and higher real estate prices as being the Games’ legacies (McCaw, 1994). Such a lay assessment of the effects of hosting a mega-event may well be quite astute. Mega sports events such as the Olympic Games have been associated with large-scale public expenditure, the construction of facilities and infrastructure, and urban redevelopment and revitalization strategies which may have undesirable long-term consequences for public stakeholders although significant short-term gains for some corporate interests (Hall, 1992; Essex & Chalkley, 1998; Eisinger, 2000). Mega-events can be regarded as one of the hallmarks of modernity and have long managed to integrate industrial and corporate interests with those of government with respect to urban development and imaging. Arguably this is

Keeping up appearances: aesthetic labour in the fashion modelling industries of London and New York

Abstract: This paper addresses itself to literature on ‘aesthetic labour’ in order to extend understanding of embodied labour practices. Through a case study of fashion modelling in New York and London we argue for an extension of the concept to address what we see as problematic absences and limitations. Thus, we seek to extend its range, both in terms of occupations it can be applied to, not just interactive service work and organizational workers, and its conceptual scope, beyond the current concern with superficial appearances at work and within organizations. First, we attend to the ways in which these freelancers have to adapt to fluctuating aesthetic trends and different clients and commodify themselves in the absence of a corporate aesthetic. The successful models are usually the ones who take on the responsibility of managing their bodies, becoming ‘enterprising’ with respect to all aspects of their embodied self. Secondly, unlike Dean (2005) who similarly extends aesthetic labour to female actors, we see conceptual problems with the term that need addressing. We argue that the main proponents of aesthetic labour have a poorly conceived notion of embodiment and that current conceptualizations produce a reductive account of the aesthetic labourer as a ‘cardboard cut-out’, and aesthetic labour as superficial work on the body's surface. In contrast, drawing on phenomenology, we examine how aesthetic labour involves the entire embodied self, or ‘body/self’, and analyse how the effort to keep up appearances, while physical, has an emotional content to it. Besides the physical and emotional effort of body maintenance, the imperative to project ‘personality’ requires many of the skills in emotional labour described by Hochschild (1983). Thirdly, aesthetic labour entails on-going production of the body/self, not merely a superficial performance at work. The enduring nature of this labour is evidenced by the degree of body maintenance required to conform to the fashion model aesthetic (dieting, for example) and is heightened by the emphasis placed on social networking in freelancing labour, which demands workers who are ‘always on’. In this way, unlike corporate workers, we suggest that the freelance aesthetic labourer cannot walk away from their product, which is their entire embodied self. Thus, in these ways we see aesthetic labour adding to, or extending, rather than supplanting emotional labour, as Witz et al. (2003) would have it. The paper develops the concept of aesthetic labour in the following ways. It examines aesthetic labour within newly expanding forms of freelancing project-based work (Grabher 2002; Henson, 1996; McRobbie, 2002,2003, Ursell, 2000), considering how, in this case, fashion models, manage and maintain their bodies for work. The concept of aesthetic labour is extended to this group of workers in three ways. First, asking how do freelancers manage their bodies and sell themselves in absence of corporate code? Second, it argues that aesthetic labour is not just about surface appearance, but involves some degree of ‘emotional labour’ (managing rejection, appearing ‘happy’). Finally, it demonstrates how aesthetic labour involves body maintenance – dieting or exercise to maintain ideal working weight – not just a superficial performance at work.

Inhabiting the Car

Abstract: In this paper I consider just how neglected the car has been in contemporary social analyses. Yet it is the most important example of a global technology. I try to rectify this neglect by considering some of the ways in which we can think of people inhabiting the car and more generally inhabiting the system of automobility. The car combines exceptional flexibility and coercion. I consider the nature of time that automobility both presumes and generalises. I analyse just how people inhabit the car as a place of dwelling, suggesting that there have been three characteristic modes of dwelling within the car, from ‘inhabiting-the-road’, to ‘inhabiting-the-car’, to ‘inhabiting the intelligent car’. I consider whether there are some emerging convergent technologies that might enable a new kind of automobility to emerge that dispenses with the old-fashioned steel-and-petroleum Fordist car of the last century.

‘Don't you think you're missing out, living at home?’ Student experiences and residential transitions

Abstract: Recent policy shifts in higher education impact on the diversity of student experiences, one such trend is an increase in the number of students staying in their parental home for the duration of their studies. This has implications for students’ experiences of university life, particularly non-academic aspects. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of practice and habitus, this papers explores how young people go about fitting in to ‘being a student’, and how predispositions to university life influence these practices. Residential status emerges as a key demarcating factor in how successfully students feel they adapt to being at university. Though related to class, this cannot be explained solely by the socio-economic background of students living at home, but rather reflects both practical problems faced by these students as well as difficulties in incorporating a student habitus while living at home.

The 2010 Football World Cup as a political construct: the challenge of making good on an African promise

Abstract: It is today widely understood that sport mega-events are complex affairs which originate from specific sets of economic objectives but which have political and social corollaries that usually extend far beyond the event itself. Sport megaevents are generally initiated and driven by cadres of societal (ie, political and corporate) elites and are aimed at satisfying development goals or ambitions around projection, competitiveness or growth targets. In the planning, implementation and execution of events, however, cultural, social and other imprints are left that can have enduring impacts on the society. Further, the economy of sport mega-events has developed to such an extent internationally, that events have gained a self-perpetuating dynamic of their own, characterized by distinct coagulations of interests and the predominance of certain corporate actors. The gains that are widely thought to be made from participation in this mega-events ‘market’ prompt states continually to seek involvement: noticeably, once a country is able to break into the international arena of hosting mega-events, this stimulates the desire to attract more and often larger mega-events. Once on the mega-event circuit, there is an aspiration to host more of them (Hiller, 1998), often without proper attention to the economic and social counter-costs of events. These aspects are highly visible in post-apartheid South Africa’s engagement with sport mega-events. Slightly more than a decade into the new democratic dispensation, sport mega-events have seemingly come to play an important socio-political role. Prompted by the successful hosting and victory of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, a more or less sustained campaign has been undertaken by political and other elites to make bids, with varying degrees of success, for the hosting of some of the most important events on the world sports tournament calendar. Underpinning this, at least from the government’s perspective, is an attempt to utilize sport mega-events as key social and political instruments: on

The economic impact of major sports events : a review of ten events in the UK

Abstract: Over recent years there has been a marked contrast between the discussions around the economic impact of major sports events in North America on the one hand and most of the rest of the world on the other. In the USA the sports strategies of cities in the USA have largely been based on infrastructure (stadium) investment for professional team sports, in particular, American football, baseball, basketball, and ice hockey. Over the last decade cities have offered greater and greater incentives for these professional teams to move from their existing host cities by offering to build a new stadium to house them. The teams sit back and let the host and competing cities bid up the price. They either move to the city offering the best deal or they accept the counter offer invariably put to them by their existing hosts. This normally involves the host city building a brand new stadium to replace the existing one which may only be ten or fifteen years old. The result is that at the end of the 1990s there were thirty major stadium construction projects in progress, around one-third of the total professional sports infrastructure, but over half of all professional teams in the USA have expressed dissatisfaction with their current facilities.

Modernizing China in the Olympic spotlight: China's national identity and the 2008 Beijing Olympiad.

Abstract: The XXIX Olympiad is coming to Beijing at a critical juncture of the world history of globalization and the Chinese history of grand socioeconomic transformation. Following in the footsteps of its two East Asian neighbours, Japan and South Korea, who respectively hosted the Tokyo Olympiad in 1964 and the Seoul Olympiad in 1988, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is determined to turn this sporting mega-event into the celebration of a Chinese renaissance and the harmonization of world civilizations under the theme slogan ‘One World, One Dream’. In the making is a new history – as the low politics of sport is conspicuously connected with the high politics of national identities and international relations in the spotlight of the upcoming Beijing Olympics in 2008. The significance of sport for nation-states has been increasingly acknowledged in recent years (Brownell, 1995; Maguire, 1999; Roche, 2000). Yet, its specific socio-political meanings for countries at different stages of socioeconomic development and with different political and strategic objectives remain understudied in the social sciences (Roche, 2000). The core – periphery dichotomy in international sport (Horne and Manzenreiter, 2004) that coincides with the ‘West – Rest’ fault line in the world political-economic system has only recently gained sparse attention from international relations scholars (Huntington, 1996). A detailed analysis of the relationship between nation building and sport policy in terms of modernity (pre-modern, modernizing, and postmodern) may reveal different patterns of state-sport relations in the community of nations. By the same token, an examination of the political dynamics of international sport may also enrich our knowledge about contemporary international relations. To the extent that sporting mega-events such as the Olympic Games and the World Football Cup have become central stages on which elite athletes represent their nations to compete for physical excellence and primacy, they have provided nation-states with a universally legitimate way

‘When I’m in the garden I can create my own paradise’: Homes and gardens in later life

Abstract: This paper brings together recent work on later life and considers the effects of ageing in relation to participation and interest in gardening. Whilst there is considerable research and literature on issues such as health, housing, and social care, the significance of the garden in process of home-making is less well understood. Using qualitative data from the Mass Observation Data Archive, key physical, psycho-social processes that impact on the use of the garden and gardening activities are examined. It will be suggested that the garden can have major significance in the (re) creation of ‘home’ in later life.

The Sociological Construction of Gender and Sexuality

Abstract: This essay considers how we might come to understand social constructionism sociologically. It examines a number of related approaches to gender and sexuality that speak to sociological concerns and might be termed social constructionist: historicism, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology and materialist feminism. By recognising that social constructionism is multifarious rather than unified, we find that each social constructionist approach offers particular strengths for analysing the complexities of gender and sexuality. Through closely analysing these approaches and some of the criticisms of them we can reassert sociology's specific contribution, and embrace social constructionist analyses which address the multilayered characteristics of the social in general and gender and sexuality in particular.

Class and family

Abstract: This paper seeks to make a contribution to debates on ‘class analysis’, as well as exploring the role of the family in class reproduction. A broad distinction is drawn between primarily ‘economic’ ...

‘Estrogen-Filled Worlds’: Fathers as Primary Caregivers and Embodiment:

Abstract: Within the wide body of scholarship on gender work and caring, sub-strands of research have grown tremendously in the past decade, including largely separate studies on fatherhood and embodiment. D...

Family matters:: a discussion of the Bangladeshi and Pakistani extended family and community in supporting the children's education

Abstract: This paper looks beyond an individualised type of parental involvement and discusses the role of the extended family in relation to school. We draw on the different social capital theories to explain its implications and also to discuss its efficacy. Our focus is on the Bangladeshi community and the Pakistani community in two towns in the North East of England. British South Asian parents are variously accused of having too high educational expectations of their children or not being interested at all and that Pakistani and Bangladeshi parents in particular have no or limited relationships with their children's schools. In this paper we demonstrate that parental involvement in these two communities resides not simply in the hands of the parents but within the wider family. We challenge the deficit model of British South Asian families as indifferent to the education of their children and we identify the potential resource of the extended family.

On ethnomethodology, feminism, and the analysis of categorial reference to gender in talk-in-interaction

Abstract: This paper sets out an ethnomethodological approach to the study of gender and interaction, and demonstrates how the topic of ‘gender’ can be studied empirically via its categorial reference in talk-in-interaction. I begin by charting the history of ethnomethodological accounts and studies of gender, starting with Garfinkel's groundbreaking work and the subsequent ‘doing gender’ project, alongside a more general discussion of feminism's relationship to ethnomethodology. I then consider two related trajectories of research, one in conversation analysis and the other in membership categorization analysis, both of which deal with the explication of gender's relevance to interaction, but in somewhat different ways that raise different problems. Finally, drawing on data from different institutional settings, I show how ‘categorial’ phenomena such as ‘gender’ can be studied as phenomena of sequential organization using the machinery of membership categorization alongside conversation analysis. I suggest that th...

‘All my worldly goods I share with you’? Managing money at the transition to heterosexual marriage

Abstract: Studies in the 1980s and 1990s revealed that financial arrangements in marriage tended to disadvantage women, especially those with young children. However, much of that research focused upon relat...

The ambivalences of Angel's ‘arrangement’: a psychosocial lens on the contemporary condition of personal life

Abstract: The aim of this article is to explore the potential of a psychoanalytically informed psychosocial approach to extend understandings of the contemporary condition of personal life. It argues for the theorization of the intertwining of the social and the psychic, in order to take seriously the realm of the intra-psychic and the dynamic unconscious, without engaging in either psychological or sociological reductionism. The article offers a detailed case study of an interview with one individual (‘Angel’), highlighting three themes in his narrative which resonate with wider findings about changing patterns of intimacy and sociability: the experience of relationship break-up and psychological distress, the centrality of friendship, and de-centring and re-imagining the sexual relationship. Particular attention is paid to the story Angel tells of his unconventional partnership, and to the analysis of his self-presentation, in the light of the thematic analysis. The psychosocial approach attends both to sociological themes and unconscious psychodynamics, and presents an analysis of the particular character of the disappointments, loss, psychic conflicts and ambivalences which are part of the experience of contemporary personal life. The paper concludes with some critical reflections on conducting psychoanalytic psychosocial readings of interview data.

New ethnicities online: reflexive racialisation and the internet

Abstract: In this article we analyse the emergence of Internet activity addressing the experiences of young people in two British communities: South Asian and Chinese. We focus on two web sites: www.barficul...

The glass ceiling – where is it? Women's and men's career prospects in the private vs. the public sector in Sweden 1979–2000

Abstract: Previous research suggests that women have more limited career opportunities than men. Using Swedish longitudinal data, covering the period between 1979 and 2000, more light is shed on the association between hierarchical levels and differences between men's and women's career opportunities in terms of occupational transitions. The analyses indicate that women face the greatest hinderance to advancement at lower hierarchical levels and that these disadvantages attenuate with higher hierarchical levels. These results contradict the common idea of a glass ceiling, ie that problems for women accrue with increasing hierarchical levels. The findings point to the need for focusing more on gender inequalities at low hierarchical positions although the glass ceiling hypothesis cannot be dismissed altogether. Moreover, the results do not support the view that the gender penalty in careers is larger in the private sector as compared to the public sector.

Bicycle messengers and the road to freedom

Abstract: Despite its promise of freedom and autonomy, the ubiquity of the automobile has influenced unforeseen ecological, social, and political change. In Against Automobility, a panel of distinguished scholars take a critical look at the contradiction of the automobile.

Cultures of intergenerational transmission in four‐generation families

Abstract: Intergenerational transfers in families are increasingly a topic of interest in the context of reductions in the welfare state and increased longevity. This paper draws upon data from a study of fo...

Transport: Disciplining the Body that Travels:

Abstract: In this article, the author considers the proliferation of automobile usage within a broader study of how urban populations have been encouraged to think about and conduct their journeys. The author examines the proliferation of automobile usage in the Australian city of Adelaide, locating the motor car within a broader historical investigation of the objectification of the spaces, bodies, and conduct of urban travel. The author focuses on the period through the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when efficient movement was popularized as the principle by which to guide the arrangement of street space and the ordering of urban traffic. The author concludes that the logic of the economic journal provided the basis for designating street space for a new order of mobility. The second part of the article focuses on the objectification of the traveling body and the human capacities necessary to undertake fast, orderly movement.

Inquiries of every imaginable kind: ethnomethodology, practical action and the new socially situated learning theory

Abstract: This paper examines the increasing interest in practice-based theorising in the new social learning theory. It argues that this body of work does not pay sufficient attention to ethnomethodology's understanding of practical action. The paper then illustrates ethnomethodology's approach to understanding practical action, highlighting the concepts of ‘inquiry’ and ‘work’, and drawing upon examples from two phases in Garfinkel's work. Potential implications are then discussed for the new practice-based social learning theory and conclusions are drawn.

Children's Narratives of Post-Divorce Family Life: From Individual Experience to an Ethical Disposition

Abstract: This article draws on interviews with 60 children and young people to explore how they construct narrative accounts of post-divorce family life. Rather than seeking to describe children's experiences as if their accounts are simple factual recollections, the focus of the article is on how young people position themselves in their narratives and the ways in which they construct their past experiences. It is argued that these narratives are multi-layered, often revealing ambivalence and contradictions. The conclusion turns to the question of whether these individual accounts can give rise to what might be referred to as an ethical disposition in which children's experiences can inform a broader social ethos on how to divorce ‘in the proper manner'.

‘Absent fathers’ or ‘reorganized families’? Variations in father-child contact after parental break-up in Norway

Abstract: Two trends affect modern fatherhood simultaneously: on the one hand, there is an increased emphasis on paternal involvement in the lives of young children. On the other hand, rates of parental break-up have increased, and fathers often live apart from their children. Norway is a country in which both trends are very strong. This article looks at the patterns of contact between non-resident fathers in Norway and their children, focusing on the extreme ends of the distribution: fathers with weekly contact, and fathers who have not seen their children in three months or more. After a brief overview of recent developments in Norwegian family policies, some key dilemmas and tensions in modern family life are identified. One relate to commitment in cohabiting relationships, another to the tension between commitment to children from previous relationships and new partners. A third factor that is taken into consideration, is poverty. In the empirical analysis, we find no difference in the odds for having frequent/ very infrequent contact between formerly married and formerly cohabiting fathers, nor between fathers who live alone and fathers who have repartnered. Poverty is however a strong indicator of loss of contact.

Getting onboard: women, access and serious leisure

Abstract: This paper explores women's experiences of accessing serious leisure. It responds to a perceived tendency in contemporary feminist theories of leisure to celebrate women's ability to weave potentially empowering identities from discursive resources in leisure spaces and experiences. While this work creates much needed theoretical space for the exploration of women's agency and self determination within leisure, there is little critical attention given to how women may first negotiate the complexity of their gendered lives to gain access to these sites and experiences. By drawing on the accounts of forty women involved in the Sea Cadet Corps, a form of serious leisure, this paper argues that accessing leisure is still an important aspect of women's leisure experiences. Women cited here engage in active and conscious practices and performances to both justify their access to leisure and to enable their disengagement from demands associated with normative femininity. This paper concludes that to sideline questions of access serves to conceptually dislocate leisure from the wider patterns of women's everyday lives and limits our understanding of how women perceive, use and give meaning to their serious leisure participation.

Driving the social

Abstract: In this article, the authors discuss ways in which the experience of automobile driving comes to 'inhabit' other forms of relationships, including thought and conversation. The authors first argue for an approach to the automobile that uses a way of understanding the car as a cultural system of enhancement, rather than just accept in total Urry's 'conquering hybrid of automobility.' They draw attention to the car as system, thus opposing references to the car as culture. They propose both the partiality of any one cultural system of enhancement and its complicity with many of the other systems that are rampant in society today. They call for further research that would focus on the human engrossment with these systems, including the car, the house, the computer, and the mobile telephone, rather than on the systems themselves.