ABSTRACT
This chapter adopts a performance studies framework to discuss the study of sport as performance (both material and symbolic) by focusing on the performance aesthetics of sport (how sport is staged and performed) and the performativity of sport (what is performed through sport and how sport performs in society). This approach illuminates performances of nation, class, race, gender, sexuality, religion, politics, globalization, and community in and through sport, and shows that social norms and dominant paradigms can be reinscribed or challenged through performances of sport and their varying receptions.
