ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to understand the intersections between sport and class that is crucial because virtually every experience of sport and physical movement is infused with class. ‘Social class, both on its own and in combination with gender, race/ethnicity, and other social characteristics, is the most important determinant of participation in sport and physical activity’. International attention to organized sport reached rarefied heights during the early Cold War Olympic Games era. The partitioning of Germany after World War II led to the development of the German Democratic Republic’s state-run sport system, which in many ways was the most advanced sport system of modern times. The chapter summarizes the perspectives of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Pierre Bourdieu, because the work of these three theorists has been the most influential in terms of understanding class in the parent discipline of sociology.
