ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses how the ‘knowledge market’ positions certain ways of knowing over others, and suggests that this questions the very worth and perceived value of the social sciences of sport and discusses the contemporary relevance, quality, position and potential impact of the field. As such, and as handmaiden to the ‘logics of the market’, higher education mimics the inequalities and hierarchies of power and ties public life and civic education to market-driven policies, social relations, values and modes of understanding. The chapter argues that failure to fully acknowledge and support the contribution of socially, culturally, philosophically and historically focused research and understanding precludes the actualization of the expansive intellectual promise, impact, relevance and potential of the academic study of sport. A critical self-reflexive sports studies is one that can free itself from the shackles of academic Darwinism, and challenge hegemonic orthodoxies in facilitating an expansion of knowledge and the democratic sphere.
