ABSTRACT

Sport sociology has a responsibility to engage critically with the accepted wisdom of those who govern and promote sport. This challenging collection of international research is a clear call for enacting the transformation of sport. The contributing authors argue that it is not enough to merely advocate for change. Rather, they insist that scholars need to take an active political stance when conducting research with the explicit purpose of attempting to transform the practices, structures, and the ways in which knowledge is produced about sport.

By exposing and challenging the power relations which perpetuate discrimination and inequality within sport, it becomes possible to catalyse wider societal changes. Drawing on a diversity of topics including sport for development and peace, transnational feminism, disability sport, refugees and football activism, FIFA, the Olympics, sports journalism and digital sports media, this book makes a case for sport sociology as an agent of positive change in the hierarchies and institutional structures of contemporary sport.

Transforming Sport: Knowledges, Practices, Structures provides valuable insights for all students and scholars interested in the sociology of sport and its transformative potential.

chapter 1|20 pages

‘Something has got to be done about this’

Transforming sport, selves, and scholarship

part I|84 pages

Knowledges

chapter 2|14 pages

Refugees united

The role of activism and football in supporting refugees

chapter 3|13 pages

Agency and intention without individualism

Some methodological pre-requisites?

chapter 4|15 pages

Coming out of containment

Feminist methodological considerations for researching women in sport

chapter 5|14 pages

‘The point, however, is to change it’

Critical social sciences and the Olympic Games

chapter 6|12 pages

Transforming methodological nationalism

The case of sports scholarship and policy towards migrants and descendants

chapter 7|14 pages

Love Fighting Hate Violence

An anti-violence programme for martial arts and combat sports

part II|60 pages

Structures

chapter 8|14 pages

In whose humanity?

chapter 9|15 pages

FIFA

Ethics, voice and organisational power plays

part III|95 pages

Practices

chapter 12|14 pages

Transforming informal communities through discourse intervention

RioOnWatch, favelas and the 2016 Olympic Games

chapter 13|14 pages

Putting the P in SDP

Sport and peace-building in divided societies – the origins and evolution of critical proactivism

chapter 14|12 pages

Earnest travellers

Bodies (that) matter in transnational feminist research

chapter 16|14 pages

Sport media texts and audiences

A critical overview of issues, interactions and interventions

chapter 17|14 pages

Through the lens of Hillsborough

The truth, archival remixes and critical sociology