ABSTRACT
‘Critical support’ or ‘critical partisanship’ is the commitment to the rigorous scrutiny of and intervention into the ideas, institutions and practices to which one is committed, advocates and carries out. It has been the stance I have taken during a lifetime in sport – as an athlete, coach, teacher, researcher, athletic director and dean. Inspired by the example of public intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s, it drew upon the Marxian traditions of praxis and the social science tradition of ‘critical pragmatism’ of C. Wright Mills and others. The papers in this special issue reflect that approach. This essay is half memoire, half manifesto. I grew up in sports and progressive politics, and became radicalized about both the shortcomings and possibilities of sports while coming of age in the 1960s as a track and field athlete, political science student and volunteer sports administrator. This introduction outlines the path to which those early experiences drew me.
