ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the nexus of sports history with the nascent Physical Cultural Studies (PCS). The question of the utility of PCS to historians imbricates longstanding debates between those who explore sport/physical culture from differing paradigmatic and disciplinary perspectives. The chapter describes the institutional, intellectual, and political contexts behind PCS. It also considers relevance for sports historians; explores what approaches to the sporting past PCS offers and considers its utility. The original impetus of PCS is worth consideration, and that is about the vitality and relevance of the academic field in the current intellectual and political climate. The chapter presents some of the controversies and criticisms that surround it in the context of debates about historical method, the place of theory, and politics/activism. Many historians of sport will find PCS writing to be abstruse, and some may dismiss the debates to be little more than academic status games.
