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This paper aims to contribute to the theoretical discussion and empirical application of phenomenology in the sociology of sport by drawing on Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's theories. I propose that Sheets-Johnstone's movement-focused phenomenology can be complementary to Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body in the analyses of sporting moves and the learning of new moves. I mainly applied two concepts from Sheets-Johnstone, tactile-kinesthetic/kinetic dynamics and emotion-motion dynamics, to explore the moving body in waka ama (outrigger canoe) paddling, based on my beginner's and other competent paddlers' experiences. Findings demonstrate that a moving/paddling body is spontaneously a tactile-kinesthetic/kinetic, emotion-motion and intercorporeal body. These bodily dimensions enrich our understandings of the ways of learning new movements, doing sport and doing sport together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper components of Bourdieu’s sociological theory will be utilized to systematically outline key constituents, and the interrelated power struggles, which shape Paralympic sport. The premier Paralympic sport competition is arguably the summer Paralympic Games, a quadrennial multi-sport competition for elite athletes with specific impairments, governed by the International Paralympic Committee. This paper argues that Paralympic sport is significantly influenced, shaped and developed according to the differential resources and contestation for power between individuals and organizations that possess an interest in deriving benefit from the Paralympic Games. Firstly, this article outlines the historical development of Paralympic sport. Relevant aspects of Bourdieu’s sociological theory are then identified and utilized to generate a fresh sociologically infused interpretation of the current key constituents who together form a Paralympic field. The intention is to provide a more systematic overview of Paralympic relations, while also highlighting potential avenues for future social research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intention of this paper is to analyse the role that networks play in enabling the recruitment of a group of male migrant professional footballers employed by clubs based in Norway’s top professional football league – the Tippeligaen. Based upon a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with migrants and recruiters, and synthesising concepts derived from the sociology of sport and the broader study of migration, the analysis identifies that the recruitment of migrant workers to Tippeligaen clubs reflects a mix of both formal and informal processes. Whilst agents operate as key actors in the mobilisation of foreign labour, the analysis shows how recruitments in this particular athletic context are also dependent on processes of human mediation facilitated by a series of informal interdependent networks of relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a historical sociological analysis of the sociology of sport. It draws on theoretical insights from the sociology of professions to examine ‘state-of-the-field’ reviews written by sociologists of sport. The paper argues that in establishing why the sociology of sport emerged, how people identified its earliest manifestations, and how the subdiscipline’s boundaries were drawn, the political dynamics and consequences of the social construction of the field become apparent. This social construction is conceived of as a ‘professional project’ through which a knowledge domain, and this group’s authoritative status, was established. Sociologists of sport sought to validate their professional project through appeals to the sociological ‘mainstream’ and the correlative distancing from physical education. These reviews consistently obscure this professional project and portray a lineage that is logical, inevitable and consensual. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper seeks to clarify the relationship between explanations of the role of the state in Britain. and theoretical traditions in the analysis of sport. It characterises the role of the state as dominated by four chronologically ordered rationales, traditional pluralism, welfare reformism, anti-managerialism, and neo-liberalism. The paper traces the material conditions which have mediated state-sport relations and which have also provided the context for theoretical accounts of the nature of sport. British sociology of sport is characterised as falling predominantly into four major traditions, British empiricism, cultural studies, feminist studies, and figurational sociologies. Although these form no oneto-one relationship with changing state rationales, each of the traditions has contributed to a critical reflection on the role of the state, and state policies invariably reflect some of the implicit premises of these sociological critiques. The paper seeks to identify some of these snarea premises anti to nighlignt the strengths and weaknesses of the theoretical traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first part of the article describes men's experiences from the perspective of women and the second part presents an interpretation of the sport experience from a male's perspective. The relationship between the two parts, which are critical of masculinity yet simultaneously sympathetic to men, are complementary rather than contradictory. As such, the paper represents a contribution to the emergence of a new conception of women's and men's studies. The article's methodological framework is drawn from the field of women's studies and centres on the recollection and interpretation of one's own life history. The first part of the article is about how masculinity in boys is constructed with the help of sport. It presents selected recollections by male university students about how the cultural processes which reproduce masculinity in men is realized in the case of sport. The methodological basis for the second part of the paper is drawn from the tradition of textual analysis which has become increasingly influential in Finland in the areas of sociology, literature and politics. The article's second part deals with the deconstruction of masculinity in relation to the sportsman. It is a story of a man who has himself unfolded the power relations of sport in the context of his life history, his society and a theoretical frame of reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those organizations which make up the Canadian Sport delivery system have been somewhat neglected as a focus for researchers in the sociology of sport. This paper suggests a number of reasons as to why this situation has arisen. It also suggests that in Canada there are a number of issues about organizations that are implicit, if not explicit, within the sport literature. Focusing specifically on the issues of bureaucratization, gender, leadership, professionalization, dependence on government and organizational change, this paper highlights completed work and suggests how approaches found in organizational sociology and organizational theory could help inform further studies on these topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the amateur ideal to assess whether it is possible in today's sportsworld. The first section presents the defining characteristics of the amateur. The second reviews the dominant themes in the sport literature regarding the amateur ideal: (1)amateurism as a mechanism of class hegemony; (2) amateurism as exploitive ideology; (3) amateurism as an anachronism; and (4) amateurism as a citadel of purity. The final section of the paper examines amateurism in the contemporary context. The argument is that elite amateur sport has moved beyond the amateur ideal to become corporate sport. At another level, however, amateur sport thrives. Questions are raised that should guide future research on these true amateurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper updates and extends previous analyses of the sociology of sport in the United States. It provides a chronology of major events in the history of the field as well as a description of the social context in which the field emerged and grew. Then a review of data from both sociology and physical education leads to the conclusion that the sociology of sport in the United States continues to lack full legitimacy and a critical mass of members in both disciplines. In fact, there are reasons to conclude that the continued numerical growth of those calling themeselves sport sociologists has peaked and will not change significantly in the immediate future. Finally, a content summary of papers published in the first 14 issues of the Sociology of Sport Journal reveals the priorities given to research topics and research methodologies among those Americans doing some of more significant work in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a theoretical framework for research on three meaningful sports experiences (track and field, volleyball and military sport) in post war Rome. The main key concepts, such as the one of political arena, considered as a historically defined place of conflict among the elites, are borrowed from political sociology. This approach, inspired by the neo-institutionalistic viewpoint, is considered to be the opposite to both an improperly extended use of the historians' categories, and the suggestions of micro-organizational theories. A sports association is described rather as the product of manifold organizational logics, which concur in defining its structural, organizational and cognitive outline. In the final section, a hypothesis is provided, which describes a division of the organizational history of the Roman sports movement in different periods, in connection with the national and local political cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I address the current debates around ethnography and propose a critical-feminist ethnography which depends on the alternative narrative strategies suggested by experimental ethnography and the conceptual achievements offered by feminist standpoint epistemology and minor discourse theory. I argue, as have others, that the traditional scientistic-narrative techniques associated with ethnography actively constrain theoretical knowledges, mystify power relations embedded in the text, while construction Authorities with totalizing and omniscient vision. Experimental ethnography offers important textual interventions and revisions which challenges the orderliness and constructed Authorities imposed by realist narratives useful for those feminist projects which attempt to deal with the multiplicity of differences/domination. Postmodern feminist standpoint epistemology and minor discourse theory are concerned with recovering and representing historically repressed local knowledges and visions in ways that do not simply translate them into or through dominant critical/feminist theories. Such projects require ongoing critical dialogue among local voices, theory, and the ethnographer in which what counts as knowledge remains contestable and is contested. I argue that textual constructions of such projects must remain heteroglossic (representing multiple visions to readers) in order to potentially revise critical/feminist theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standard of the intellectual antecedents of Hungarian sport sociology and their importance seem to correspond to those of other nations. However, for political reasons the period in which sport sociology developed into an autonomous discipline in the Western world did not favour the rising of sociology in the socialist states of Eastern Europe. This paper attempts to show when and in what way sport sociology evolved in Hungary, as well as what social and theoretical factors influenced, promoted or impeded its development. Furthermore, the present situation of sport sociology in Hungary is outlined: its main fields of research, its major publications as well as its institutions, organizations, and international connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores in particular the source of the feelings expressed in sport contexts and the processes of their amplification. Sport activities acquire their significance as collective representations through which people represent to themselves in symbolic form the power of the social groups in which they live, their structures and their moral codes. In so doing, they help to create and sustain and, at the same time, become subject to the influence of the social arrangements to which such symbolic structures relate. The emotions engendered may be amplified through processes of ritual and taboo and the excitement generated by sport encounters, thus leading to an experience of sport as sacred and radically separate from the flow of profane or 'normal' life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the process of adolescent socialization into sport in Japan and Canada, focussing on the structural and cultural differences and similarities. Results from national survey data indicate that the school is a strong socializing agent in Japan, while the sport system within the community has more influence on sport involvement in Canada. It is suggested that sport socialization in Japan is unique in that it arises from a closed structure, as compared to the open structure in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]