“Combining accessible overviews of established fields of research in sport studies with lively discussions of emergent ideas, this landmark text is invaluable.”
Samantha King, Queen’s University
“An outstanding cast of authors has provided a veritable tour de force of critical inquiry and analysis into the roles of sport in contemporary society. Cutting edge scholarship.”
Daryl Adair, University of Technology, Sydney
“This collection offers an important resource documenting the ways in which sport matters culturally as a site of popular pleasure and identifications fraught with ideological and political significance.”
Mary McDonald, Miami University
From the Inside Flap
From the paternal bonding ritual of a baseball thrown to a small gloved hand, to the shared anxiety and elation of a football crowd, sport has long been a central element of cultures throughout the world. It brings together communities, nations and people with little else in common, whether as an activity or a spectacle, operating as a vital form of human expression.
Yet despite its importance as a means of understanding social formations and interpersonal relations, sport has often been viewed by social scientists as a marginal activity. This wide-ranging collection of essays aims to address this inconsistency, exploring the ways in which sport has been marked by the discourses of race, class, gender, sexuality and nation which inform the structure and experience of wider society.
Both theoretically ambitious and accessible, A Companion to Sport includes the thoughts of well-known social and cultural theorists whose works lends itself to an interrogation of sport, as well as a number of leading theorists on the subject of sport itself. It is an invaluable extension to the field, and is set to become a default text for anyone interested in contemporary cultural forms and their political significance.
From the Back Cover
“Combining accessible overviews of established fields of research in sport studies with lively discussions of emergent ideas, this landmark text is invaluable.”
Samantha King, Queen’s University
“An outstanding cast of authors has provided a veritable tour de force of critical inquiry and analysis into the roles of sport in contemporary society. Cutting edge scholarship.”
Daryl Adair, University of Technology, Sydney
“This collection offers an important resource documenting the ways in which sport matters culturally as a site of popular pleasure and identifications fraught with ideological and political significance.”
Mary McDonald, Miami University
From the paternal bonding ritual of a baseball thrown to a small gloved hand to the shared anxiety and elation of a football crowd, sport has long been a central element of cultures throughout the world. It brings together communities, nations and people with little else in common, whether as an activity or a spectacle, operating as a vital form of human expression.
Yet despite its importance as a means of understanding social formations and interpersonal relations, sport has often been viewed by social scientists as a marginal activity. This wide-ranging collection of essays aims to address this inconsistency, exploring the ways in which sport has been marked by the discourses of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation which inform the structure and experience of wider society.
Both theoretically ambitious and accessible, A Companion to Sport includes the thoughts of well-known social and cultural theorists whose work lends itself to an interrogation of sport. It is an invaluable extension to the field and is set to become a default text for anyone interested in contemporary cultural forms and their political significance.
About the Author
David L. Andrews is Professor of Physical Cultural Studies in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. He is the author of Sport-Commerce-Culture: Essays on Sport in Late Capitalist America (2006) and coauthor of Sports Coaching Research: Context, Consequences, and Consciousness (with A. Bush, M. Silk, and H. Lauder, 2013).
Ben Carrington teaches sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, USA and is a Carnegie Research Fellow at Leeds Metropolitan University in England. His most recent book is Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora (2010).
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