ABSTRACT
A Marxian theory of sport has two major dimensions: a political economy in which one weighs the degree to which sport serves the accumulation problems of advanced monopoly capital and a cultural Marxist dimension in which one examines the ways in which sport solves the problems of legitimacy and helps produce alienated consciousness in self and society. This chapter provides insight to both uses to which commodity sport is put. The sociology of sport is increasingly disputed ideological territory in American social science. The solidarity function is central to a sociological understanding of sport, games, and play. The most significant structural change in modern sport is its gradual and continuing commodification. The usual approach to the study of sport sociology surgically isolates sport from the society in which it is found and form the content and outcomes of the cultural activities.
