The Role Of Sports In The Formation Of Personal Identities

Presents a study that offers an inter-disciplinary explanation on how sports shape personal and national identities

This book examines how different stages of adult life affect participation in lifestyle sports and in the construction of identity. Drawing on multi-disciplinary perspectives, it explores how gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and location, in conjunction with age and stage in career, affect lifestyle sport practices and meanings. Tracing engagement with lifestyle sport across the lifecourse, from young adult to older age, the book examines the concepts of authenticity and identity in subcultural and alternative sports, exploring how individuals develop lifestyle sport identities, maintain authentic identities, and how they manage those identities as older adults. It presents a range of fascinating, cutting-edge case studies from around the world, covering sports as diverse as climbing, surfing, mountain biking, skateboarding and roller derby, and considers key contemporary issues such as professionalisation, sports labor, and digital technology. It also highlights political tensions and shifts that shape the identities of lifestyle sport communities. This is essential reading for anybody with a serious interest in alternative or lifestyle sports, the relationships between sport and wider society, or the development of subcultures and cultural identity.

Sports Coaching: The Basics is an engaging and provocative introduction to sports coaching which combines coaches’ views and experiences of their work with discussions and topical issues that feature in this fast-growing field. In doing so, coaches are placed at the centre of the discussions relating to philosophical, historical, sociological, psychological and pedagogical interpretations of contemporary practice. Consequently, the book prompts questions such as: What is coaching? What does it mean to be a coach? How do coaches influence athletes/players? How do coaches learn? What is it like to be a coach? In considering these questions, readers are encouraged to reflect upon their experiences of coaching and to start conversations with others about coaches’ work. Therefore, the book is of use for coaches, those interested in studying sports coaching, and coach educators or facilitators of coach learning initiatives.

Ethnography has become an important method for researching and interpreting the social world, not least in the field of sport and exercise studies. Ethnographies in Sport and Exercise Research is the first book to provide a contemporary overview of the current state of ethnographic research and its application within sport and exercise, introducing and explaining a range of well-established and emerging ethnographic approaches. Featuring a heavyweight line-up of sport and exercise researchers, the book is divided into three parts. The first considers the methodological and theoretical aspects of ethnographic research, including: a history of ethnography in sport and exercise research the definition of the ethnographic field methods of gathering ethnographic data methods of representing ethnographic research. In the second part of the book, a series of chapter-length case studies, spanning sports from boxing to fell running and themes from gender to fandom, demonstrate the challenges and rewards of ethnographic research in the context of sport and exercise, helping students and researchers to develop a solid understanding of qualitative research at both a theoretical and a practical level. The final part of the book considers future directions for ethnographic research, including an evaluation of its place in the expanding field of study in sport management. A comprehensive assessment of the statement of ethnographic research in sport, Ethnographies in Sport and Exercise Research is invaluable reading for any research methods course taken as part of a degree programme in sport and exercise, and a useful reference for all active researchers.

In the edited collection Restart: Sport After the Covid-19 Time Out, practitioners and international scholars explore the “restart” of sport and fitness following the initial period of lockdowns during spring 2020. The chapters provide insight into the sport and fitness landscape following the initial wave of the pandemic. The book focuses on challenges for sport providers, consequences for sporting participants, and opportunities for new ways of practicing sports. It contributes contemporaneous data, analyses, and insights into the global sport landscape that has been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. This book presents a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives in a total of nineteen individual chapters, organized around five main themes. The first four chapters deal with the restart of sporting events in four countries. This section is followed by an assessment of the Olympic Movement’s challenges after its postponement of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games to 2021. Chapters in the next theme provide analyses of how national governments handled restarting sport and fitness in different geographical locations. Finally, the last three chapters look at the role of the media during the restart phase, both in reporting sport and with regards to innovations and the implementation of new technology in staging and broadcasting elite sport.

The book focuses on the distinctive contribution that Joseph Maguire has made to process sociology and the study of sport. Maguire’s work over the past three decades highlights how process sociology has a unique perspective on the relationship between sport, culture and society, and to the body, globalisation and civilisational analysis. Reflecting on this body of work and the use of process sociology, Maguire captures the research dynamic of ‘walking the line' between involvement and detachment, theory and observation, and engagement and critique. The book is structured around four broad sections: Theory, Sport and Society; The Meaning of Sport, Body and Society; Case Studies in Sport and Process Sociology; Globalisation, Sport and Civilisational Analysis. Providing an introduction to, and key examples of, a process sociology approach to the study of sport, the body, civilising processes and globalisation, this book will appeal to undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in sport studies / sports science degrees, sociology, cultural studies and to those studying migration, globalisation and cross cultural civilisation relations. This book was previously published as a Special Issue of Sport in Society.

Sport has changed. Traditions and territorial distinctions are dissolving as a result of new global, political, economic and cultural conditions. The team of authors examine these changes, investigating the power relations that govern the new global sport and assessing the consequences for the future of sport. The book is founded on a series of case studies, linked by a common process-sociological approach, and is divided into four sections - each dealing with an important aspect of sport and globalization: * the local-global nexus - how global sports processes are played out at the level of local communities * lived experiences - the reality of global sport for players and supporters * identity politics - the impact of global sport on national consciousness * sporting futures - the emergent political, economic and cultural forces that are shaping global sport, and their implications for its development. The text introduces new approaches to the study of sport and globalization, updating and extending Maguire's previous work, and is therefore an essential resource for all those working in this fast-changing area.

Sport: Social Problems and Issues provides a detailed analysis and critique of contemporary social problems and issues for the coach, organizer, teacher or student of sport. Drawing upon perspectives from social science, it examines change and development of modern sport, both nationally and internationally, enabling students and practitioners to address those problems and issues which threaten the integrity of sport. Frank Kew is the course tutor for the B.A. in Leisure, Recreation and Community at Bradford and Ilkley College and has been an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds.