ABSTRACT
As we saw in the previous chapter, theoretical considerations shaped the emergence of the sociology of sport. This was evident in the propensity of the subdiscipline's pioneers to identify citation of sport in the works of ‘classical’ sociologists as a stimulus to the field. Perhaps most significant, however, was the dominance ultimately achieved by those who sought to align the subdiscipline with the value-neutral positivism that formed the ‘standard canon of social science’, rather than establish a (semi-)autonomous ‘science of sport’ (Lüschen 1980: 324; Erbach 1966/1969: 30).
