This book offers a comprehensive theory and method for a critical sociology of sport. Part I of the book comprises a single overview chapter dealing with theoretical and methodological issues and debates. The contributions in part II (chapters 2-7) emphasize general theoretical re-evaluations and...

This chapter demonstrates the motives that have driven those who have been attracted to positions of power in the international development and administration of football, identifying a shift in the political economy on which international sport is based in a world of the media event and...

The analysis offered in this chapter is a case study that can be used to inform some central debates in contemporary social theory and to base a critically informed sociology of sport, including themes concerning cultural affiliation and identity, the nature of national identity as expressed in a...

The meanings, motivations, and aspirations underlying Asian football at the end of the 20th century were a world apart from those that stimulated the pioneers of the game on the continent. This chapter examines this transformation and identifies the major influences on the growth, spread, and...

This article engages Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht's notion of the aesthetic dimension of sports as constituting one of its principle elements of popular appeal. Drawing a distinction between individual and team sports and by focusing on the latter in the form of soccer, the author places less emphasis on...

This book presents the origins and political and economic dimensions of sport. The book consists of four parts. Part 1 focuses on the political use of sport within societies and international sporting encounters. Part 2 presents trivia on 22 sports. Part 3 examines the key driving force of money...

This book delves into the phenomenon of contemporary sport and reveals much about its impact on local, national and global culture. It includes 9 essays, ranging from an in-depth examination of sport culture in one working-class English community to a theoretical discussion of how national identity ...

This chapter analyses the recurrent rhetoric of Olympic ceremonies, showing how the universalistic idealism of such events blends with nationalist sentiment. Sydney's contribution to this tradition is reviewed. The material contexts of Olympic ceremonies as media sports events on the world stage...

The book takes a dispassionate look at one of the world's biggest sporting events, the soccer World Cup which, along with the Olympic Games, dominates the global sporting calendar of competing nations and of spectators. The book, comprising 15 chapters by a variety of authors, is divided into...

The place of male football cultures in an international and increasingly globalized sport culture is evaluated in terms of the politics of identity and social and cultural limitations on the influence of globalizing trends. Three examples from Northern Ireland, South Africa, and USA/France, are...