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Background: Over the past five decades, the number of people from refugee backgrounds in developed countries has been on the constant rise. Although the field of refugee and forced migration studies in relation to education and sport has grown considerably in recent years, very little is known about refugee-background students’ perceptions of Physical Education (PE).Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate refugee-background students’ perceptions of PE in Swedish high schools, using a salutogenic approach.Participants and settings: This qualitative study was conducted in two Swedish high schools and involved eleven students from refugee backgrounds aged 16–18 years (seven boys and four girls) who originated from a variety of countries including Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia and Albania.Data collection/analysis: A total of 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted, and the interviews were systematically coded and analyzed using the sense of coherence (SOC) components as analytical tools.Findings: Three themes were identified that captured the students’ perceptions and experiences: (1) PE was perceived as more meaningful in Sweden than in their country of origin due to short-term benefits (e.g. social interaction with friends, and improving personal health and wellbeing) and long-term benefits (e.g. learning for the future); (2) understanding the rules and purpose of the activities helped students to better comprehend the experiences acquired in PE and communicate with others; and (3) constructive social relationships with teachers and classmates were an essential resource in order to make PE manageable.Implications: We suggest that strengths-based approaches should be recognized and incorporated into PE in order to facilitate health promoting factors and wellbeing among students from refugee backgrounds.

If designed well, sport-based programmes may facilitate increased wellbeing, inclusion and feelings of belonging for refugee-background young people. An activist approach is a pedagogical way to co-create programmes with young people in order to better address their needs and aspirations. The aim of this study was to explore the process of co-creating a sport programme with refugee-background young women and what they, and the researcher, learned throughout this process. The project comprised a six-month participatory action research in a football programme in Australia. Participants included the first author and 13 African Australian refugee-background young women (including the second author). Data collection comprised: (a) observations; (b) collaborative meetings; (c) photovoice; and (d) generated artefacts. Data analysis involved both inductive and deductive processes drawing on critical pedagogy and feminist studies. The first eight weeks were designed with the intent of identifying what facilitated and hindered the young women’s engagement in sport. We identified the lack of female representation in the sport programme as their main concern. Given what we learned from them, we co-created and implemented a coaches’ workshop where the young women shared the data collected and brainstormed spaces for future change. The young women reported that they learned that ‘together we have power’, and the importance of ‘speaking up to those in charge’. We suggest that an activist approach can bring a much-needed strengths-based model to sport programmes and interventions with refugee-background young people, particularly young women who have historically been silenced and sidelined in sport-based interventions.

This study employs a spatial analysis to critically examine gender relations within an Australian football and netball community sports club that has sought to address gender inequity and promote the participation of women across the club. Notable changes included increased female representation in the club’s decision-making structures, growing numbers of female members, and the establishment of a women’s and girls’ football section. Using an in-depth case study that combined interviews and observations over a 6-month period, we investigated the impact these changes have had on transforming gender relations and in challenging perceptions of the club as a privileged space for its male members. The study utilized spatial and feminist theory to illustrate that, despite the club’s efforts to change gender relations, men who are able to embody dominant forms of masculinity (i.e., high ability and able-bodied) continue to be privileged within the club environment. The article highlights the importance of spatial analysis in illuminating the ways in which various micro-level practices preserve dominant gender relations within community sports. The findings reinforce that although a greater number of women and girls are participating in community sport, this alone is not significantly reshaping gender relations. Policies seeking to promote gender equity in sport need to enforce changes in club environments in addition to focusing on increasing women’s participation.

This paper explores how multiculturalism is enacted and negotiated among Brazilian and Portuguese migrants at a football (soccer) club in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The authors use the len...

Sports educators have long used coaching and teaching methods based on regimes of mechanical execution of movements. Without accounting for the social context in which sports education takes place, these methodologies consider exhaustive action replication the best way to master physical skills. The past decades have seen a surge in alternative pedagogies that acknowledge that sporting bodies are much more than a combination of techniques. Pedagogies such as Game Sense approach the sports teaching-learning process through a constructivist perspective in which the intellectual dimensions of games are highlighted. This paper empirically examines how dialogic pedagogies can be put to work in sports education in order for students’ bodies to become creative and a central part of their own development. Using autoethnographic data drawn from the authors’ international personal experiences as sports coaches, physical educators, researchers and evaluators in two sports education contexts – school sports education and sport for development (SfD) – the paper aims to reveal pedagogies that foster creative participants who can enjoy, read and write their own games. The authors conclude that while dialogic sports education is not without conflict, it enables sports educators to create spaces in which continuous dialogue can occur. These pedagogies are not simply a tool for inquiry-based educational possibilities; they are the actual dialogic education.

Research question: This paper aims to provide new insights into why community sports volunteers engage with intellectual disability as a form of diversity, and how these drivers impact on the opportunities and activities provided for athletes with intellectual disabilities.Research methods: The authors use a critical diversity management framework, combined with theoretical tenets of ableism, to explore volunteers’ engagement with disability. The paper draws on a ten-month ethnographic study undertaken in a community sports club in Melbourne, Australia, that had recently introduced two specialist teams for individuals with intellectual disabilities.Results and findings: The findings indicate the business case for diversity as a driver for the club to engage with sport for people with intellectual disabilities; this, in turn, created tension and conflict amongst volunteers, resulting in a separation of the disability team from the main club activity.Implications: Ableist discourses underpinned the business case for diversity held by some club volunteers, resulting in the disability team not being integrated into the club as part of its core business. Policy makers and advocates of diversity must critically consider the drivers of clubs for engaging in the different areas of diversity, and how this might impact on provision.

Playing sports has long been a taboo for women in Colombia, yet new spaces for female participation have emerged in recent decades. This article explores the gendered nature of sport in Colombia through the lived experiences of female participants involved in a local Sport for Development and Peace organization. Building on ethnographic fieldwork and a decolonial feminist perspective, the authors examine how cultural experiences of physicality are gendered but are potentially changing in the context of leisure practices and how this may shape power relations. Although more girls and women are participating in masculine leisure pursuits, there are critical limitations to social change and female participants demonstrate the coloniality of gender in action.

Este artigo analisou os jovens membros das torcidas organizadas de futebol e sua relação com o álcool. Essa relação foi investigada com base em um survey por meio do qual foram entrevistados 804 torcedores do estado de São Paulo, Brasil. Os resultados do survey indicaram que o percentual de jovens que se envolve com o uso abusivo de álcool é consideravelmente mais alto que a média da faixa etária no Brasil. Comparando com jovens de outros países, argumentamos que essa taxa alta é relacionada às práticas culturais que envolvem os jovens torcedores, nas quais beber “perigosamente” é um elemento constituinte da masculinidade no contexto do futebol. This article examines young members of football fan formations known as torcidas organizadas and their relationship with alcohol. This relationship is investigated drawing on a survey undertaken with 804 young football fans in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The survey results indicate that the percentage of young fans who engage in heavy drinking is considerably higher than that for young Brazilians of the same age in general. Through comparison with young football fans from other countries, it is argued that this high rate is related to the cultural practices of young torcedores, in which drinking ‘dangerously’ is a constitutive element in their construction of masculinity in the football context.

While the female activewear market is growing rapidly, research on activewear consumption and female consumers is lagging. Existing researchers have failed to produce an in-depth understanding of female consumers’ perceptions of activewear, thereby providing limited insights for the activewear industry. Drawing upon brand association theory and the functional, expressive, and aesthetic model, the authors identify important attributes of activewear brands and how attributes lead to benefits pursued by female activewear consumers. Focus groups were conducted with 72 female activewear consumers in Australia. Findings reveal three product-related attributes (functional design, colour, and size and fit) and two non-product-related attributes (price and model imagery) influence the fulfillment of four benefits (mood enhancement, exercise facilitation, healthy and active lifestyle, and physical fit body image). This research contributes theoretical and empirical knowledge about activewear consumption and the vertical structure of brand associations. Findings of this research can help activewear brands deliver benefits to female consumers through improved product designs and marketing strategies.

Diversity is a key term used in a range of public and private organizations to describe institutional goals, values and practices. Sport is a prominent social institution where the language of diversity is frequently and positively used; yet, this rhetoric does not necessarily translate into actual practice within sport organizations. This paper critically examines diversity work in community sports clubs. Drawing upon qualitative research at 31 amateur sports clubs in Australia, the findings show that diversity work in community sport organizations is often haphazard and accidental, rather than a strategic response or adaptation to policy. This paper concludes that while individual champions are critical to the promotion of diversity, persistent tensions and resistance arise when they seek to translate the language of diversity into institutional practice and culture change.

Sport participation has been shown to be associated with health and social benefits. However, there are persisting inequities and barriers to sport participation that can prevent children and young people with diverse backgrounds and abilities from accessing these benefits. This mixed methods study investigated how diversity is understood, experienced and managed in junior sport. The study combined in-depth interviews (n = 101), surveys (n = 450) and observations over a three-year period. The results revealed that a focus on performance and competitiveness negatively affected junior sports clubs' commitment to diversity and inclusive participation. Gender and a range of attitudes about diversity were also strongly related. On average, we found that those who identified as men were more likely to support a pro-performance stance, be homophobic, endorse stricter gender roles, and endorse violence as a natural masculine trait. In addition, those who identified as men were less likely to hold pro-disability attitudes. These findings suggest that the participation-performance tension and gender affect to what extent, and how, sports clubs engage children and young people with diverse backgrounds and abilities.

The value of sport as a vehicle for social development and progressive social change has been much debated, yet what tends to get missed in this debate is the way education may foster, enable or impede the transformative action that underpins the social outcomes to which the ‘sport for development and peace’ (SDP) sector aspires. This article draws on the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire and his contemporaries to examine the nature of transformative action and how it may be fostered within SDP programs. Insights from critical pedagogy are applied to, and illustrated through, qualitative research undertaken with SDP programs located in Cameroon and Kenya. The findings show the complexities of designing and implementing critical pedagogy in a SDP context and, in particular, the challenges of creating and mobilizing for transformative action. Opportunities and lessons for embedding critical pedagogy within SDP programs are also presented.

This article builds on recent contributions to the academic literature on lone wolf terrorism to critically examine key issues that are germane to the current state of play in this field of study. It finds that, overall, the recent academic literature still suffers from considerable problems regarding quality and rigor, including definitional, conceptual, methodological, and inference issues. By providing a critique of these issues, the article attempts to advance the scholarly debate on lone wolf terrorism and inspire greater dialogue and collaboration between scholars. Directions for future research are also outlined.

Mediated football is one of the most popular global cultural practices. Within this cultural practice, meanings given to race/ethnicity, gender and nation are naturalized often in an implicit and unacknowledged manner. In this article, we build on existing literature to critically examine the often implicit discourses surrounding race/ethnicity, gender and nation in mediated football and to interrogate how these discourses are embedded in wider relations of power. We focus not only on football media content and representations but also on audience receptions and negotiations of media content. We argue that while football in the media provides a shared topical resource for many people worldwide, the ways in which football is received and used by active media audiences have attracted insufficient academic attention. This article challenges this neglect and, in so doing, constitutes the starting point for the rich, cross-cultural and multidisciplinary mixture of articles that feature in this special issue. We conclude that a focus on the dynamic interplay between media representations and audience receptions across different cultural contexts and social dimensions can advance contemporary academic and societal debate on the role of mediated football in shaping social relations.

Diversity and equality are key issues confronting sport. This article draws on findings from qualitative research carried out in Australia to critically examine how diversity is understood and valued in community sport. The findings suggest that there is a discrepancy between the policy objectives of government and sport organizations and the way in which diversity is understood and responded to in practice. Diversity management is not being adopted widely among local sports clubs. The idea of a moral imperative to cater to people with diverse backgrounds and abilities is largely absent; rather, the dominant discourse is underpinned by a business rationale which interprets diversity in terms of benefits and costs to the organization. This business-driven approach is often detrimental to the social policy objective of ensuring equitable outcomes in sport. A fundamental reconsideration of the rationale and practice of managing diversity in sport is therefore necessary.

Stillness and speed: my story, by Dennis Bergkamp with David Winner, London, Simon & Schuster, 2013, 272 pp., £20.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-47112-951-3 // 9781471129513

Purpose The activewear industry would benefit from an evidence-based understanding of how activewear is incorporated into women’s lives and their changing participation in physical activity. Activewear brands may be missing the trend of women moving from organised sport to non-organised and individualised sport and recreation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the degree to which academic and industry research understood patterns and influences on female’s activewear consumption and identified what significant gaps are evident in understanding the drivers and industry trends that pertain to female consumers of activewear. Design/methodology/approach The systematic literature review sought academic and industry research papers. Articles were selected if they included female participants; and/or addressed consumer related information; and focussed on active wear. Article findings were thematically analysed. Findings Most literature exploring activewear consumption fails to take gender into consideration or explore unique female consumer profiles. Females are bringing activewear into other parts of their wardrobe and place more value on fashion, even for sports attire. Research identified the need for activewear brands to consider lifestyle, emotional and personality elements of consumer behaviour. However a specific focus on women’s branding was absent. Women’s age and generation influenced their activewear consumption. Although some industry reports discussed the shift in use of activewear, no studies explored the impact of the critical shift in women’s physical activity patterns on the activewear industry. Originality/value This review identifies the gap in knowledge regarding women’s activewear consumption patterns and needs, and the importance of reflecting the changes in female physical activity participation. It also links marketing and design of women’s activewear to the needs of female consumers based on their actual patterns and trends in physical activity. The findings are relevant to activewear researchers, brands, marketers and producers.

Australian policy makers and funding organisations have relied heavily on sport as a vehicle for achieving the goals of social cohesion and social inclusion. The generally accepted premise that sport includes individuals in larger social contexts, and in doing so creates positive social outcomes, remains largely untested and uncontested. This article considers the ways in which playing in an asylum seeker football team, located in Melbourne, Australia, facilitates both inclusive and exclusive experiences for its participants. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, life histories, and policy analysis, this article identifies the often-ignored importance of a sporting habitus and physical capital in individuals’ experiences of playing. The success or failure of the asylum seeker team to foster social inclusion is somewhat tenuous as the logic of competition can create conditions counter to those that would be recognised as inclusive. Further, such programmes are faced with sustainability problems, as they are heavily reliant on individuals within the organisation and community to “make things happen”. However, we suggest that for many men, the asylum seeker team provides an important site for the development and appreciation of ‘poly-cultural’ capital that contributes to forms of resilience and the achievement of other indicators of social inclusion.

This study examines how left-wing ideology is articulated, displayed and enacted among organized groups of football fans in Spain. The left-wing political space in Spanish football fan culture is occupied by multiple autonomous but often interconnected points of organizational and activist activity characterized by ideological flexibility, heterogeneous identities and interests, and a diffuse message, and whose solidarity is based on a sense of shared struggle. Solidarity and identification among left-wing fan groups is built through the contestation of three issues: neo-fascism, racism and the increasing commercialization of football. The political beliefs and actions of left-wing fan groups in Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia are further informed by peripheral nationalisms and the struggle for the revival of the historic communities. It is illustrated how left-wing fans promote and engage in collective social action at the local, national and transnational levels.

Sport organisations aim to grow the participation of culturally and linguistically diverse communities, including newly arrived people from refugee backgrounds. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic research conducted by the author at community sport organisations in the multicultural city of Melbourne, this paper examines the key factors that affect the sport participation experiences of Somali Australians. It is shown that interpersonal and structural barriers to sport participation predominate, and that the significance of these barriers varies according to age, gender and time in Australia. The paper concludes that in order to foster inclusive sporting environments in which people from refugee backgrounds can participate in a safe, comfortable and culturally appropriate way, refugee settlement needs to be understood as a two-way process of mutual accommodation requiring adaptation on the part of both the migrant and the host society.

This article reports on a mixed-methods study of social exclusion experiences among 233 resettled refugees living in urban and regional Queensland, Australia. The findings reported here are drawn from the SettleMEN project, a longitudinal investigation of health and settlement experiences among recently arrived adult men from refugee backgrounds conducted between 2008 and 2010. Using questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews, we examine four key dimensions of social exclusion: production, consumption, social relations, and services. We show that, overall, participants experienced high levels of social exclusion across all four dimensions. Participants living in regional areas were significantly more likely to be excluded from production, social relations, and services. We argue that there is a pressing need to tackle barriers to economic participation and discrimination in order to promote the social inclusion of men from refugee backgrounds.

This article examines the historical and contemporary links between Olympism and peacemaking. It traces the development of thought and praxis in relation to the Olympic movement's aim and capacity to promote peaceful coexistence and intercultural understanding from the ancient Olympic Truce to the revival of the modern Olympic Games by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, to the current relationship between the Olympic movement and the United Nations peace agenda. The article highlights the perceived discrepancy between rhetoric and reality, and between theory and practice, as well as the persistent criticisms that have been levelled at the Olympic movement with regard to its peacemaking achievements. In so doing, it draws together the key issues and debates addressed in this collection of papers.

The 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games have reinvigorated the debate on Olympic legacies for peace and development. Addressing this debate and building on the articles in this collection, this epilogue argues that the theoretical–conceptual understanding of peace and peacemaking remains poorly developed within the peacemaking discourse espoused by the Olympic movement. The authors draw upon insights from mainstream peace research to identify a series of key themes and questions across six dimensions of peacemaking – aim, means, time, actors, process/action and organization. These themes and questions can guide future research, policy and practice in peacemaking through sport.

Twenty years have passed since the Hillsborough tragedy, which eventually resulted in the deaths of 96 supporters of Liverpool Football Club. This article draws upon the cultural trauma theory developed by Piotr Sztompka to provide a sociological understanding of the localized experience of public grief that has followed the tragic occurrence. The authors analyse the different stages of cultural traumatization, with a particular focus on the conflicting emic and etic representations of the Hillsborough tragedy with regard to opposite constructions of ‘truth’ and the attribution of blame. It is shown that while Hillsborough may be a matter of recollection and regret for the wider, (inter)national, public, the cultural trauma of Hillsborough for the people of ‘Liverpool’ is far from over.

Sport's potential for the creation and maintenance of social capital is well established. The role that sport business organizations (can) play in social capital formation nevertheless remains unclear and underspecified. This article seeks to establish a link between the activities executed by sport business organizations and the different species of social capital that these activities may generate. It is first argued that sport business organizations, like any other organizations, engage to varying extents in activities that are related to their social responsibilities. These activities can lead to the production of bonding, bridging and linking social capital. We extend this discussion by arguing that, dependent on the orientation of the sport business organization (profit seeking or surplus seeking), they will try to exploit opportunities in different markets for social capital that, in one way or another, will advance their business objectives. A differentiated approach to the relationship between sport business and social capital is therefore necessary.

Football (or soccer) hooliganism is a complex, heterogeneous, and dynamic phenomenon that should be studied in its different social and historical contexts. Despite the vital importance of cultural, social, and historical specificity for fully grasping the nature and dynamics of spectator violence at football matches, some striking cross-national and cross-local similarities can be identified. Six fundamental features seem universal to the construction of “hooligan” identities: excitement and pleasurable emotional arousal, hard masculinity, territorial identifications, individual and collective management of reputation, a sense of solidarity and belonging, and representations of sovereignty and autonomy. The search for such commonalities allows researchers to develop an approach that transcends the isolated view of single manifestations of football hooliganism and identifies the features and mechanisms that are central to expressions of football-related violence.

This article critically examines the settlement experiences of SouthSudanese people from refugee backgrounds living in Melbourne, Australia,with a particular focus on unemployment and barriers to employment.Drawing on extensive primary data collected through semi-structuredinterviews with 20 South Sudanese Australians, the article demonstrateshow unemployment features centrally in participants’ narratives andappreciation of their settlement in Australia. Participants relateunemployment to issues such as social isolation, family breakdown, andintergenerational conflict, and foreground discrimination as a key barrier toemployment. We reflect on these findings by discussing suggestions forfuture policy and practice in the area of refugee settlement andemployment.

A consistent feature across sport for development and peace (SDP) programs is the use of education to facilitate and support individual transformation and wider social change. The content of education within SDP programs is broad ranging. It may focus on developing health literacy on issues such as HIV/AIDS or malaria, comprise rights-based education aimed at developing awareness of social issues such as gender inequality, or involve skills-focused education that supports participants to develop skills and competencies such as leadership and negotiation, which can help them navigate challenges they face in their communities more effectively (Nicholls, 2009). The types of educators working across programs are also highly diverse. Educators can range from international volunteers, paid teachers/coaches and NGO staff to peers and community elders. Inevitably, these individuals bring different forms of knowledge, educational and cultural experience to the programs. This brief description illustrates the diversity that exists within SDP programs seeking to ‘educate through sport’. Education is an integral part of SDP practice but is interpreted and delivered very differently across different programs and contexts. However, while other dimensions of SDP have attracted growing academic attention, critical analysis of education within the SDP sector has been largely absent (Spaaij and Jeanes, 2013). Recent research largely focuses on assessing program impacts and outcomes (e.g. Coalter, 2013); yet, the educational processes through which these impacts and outcomes may be achieved are still under-explored. Considering the centrality of education in achieving potential SDP outcomes, it is important to address this lacuna. Further, given the complexity of how education occurs, we would argue that there are numerous potential avenues of exploration. This chapter focuses on one specific aspect of education through sport, namely the role of the educator in SDP programs. Who educates is an important decision in any educational setting; where they come from, their beliefs and values, how they are positioned and position themselves and their relationship with students will greatly influence learning and the potential for social change. Building on theoretical work which advocates using the lens of critical pedagogy as developed by the late Brazilian educator Paulo Freire to analyse and enhance educational practice in SDP (Spaaij and Jeanes, 2013), this chapter specifically considers how the educator is positioned within critical pedagogy and how this translates to SDP practice. We not only analyse current practice but also highlight the tensions experienced by educators of turning Freire’s theoretical lens into praxis at a community level. These issues are examined with specific reference to two different SDP contexts where we have conducted intensive fieldwork: HIV/AIDS education in Zambia and employability education in Brazil (Spaaij 2011, 2012; Jeanes, 2013).

Crowd violence is a regular feature of spectator sports around the world. Contemporary research recognizes the diversity and complexity of this violence, but serious interdisciplinary work on the topic remains sparse. This article suggests that there is a need for increased dialogue across academic disciplines. I examine how themes and issues emanating from different disciplines may be brought together to produce a fuller, multi-level analysis that integrates distal and proximate causes of sports crowd violence. Using a socio-ecological model, it is shown that fan violence arises from the dynamic interplay between individual, interpersonal, situational, social environmental, and social structural factors. I also review key continua of sports crowd violence pertaining to its scale, coordination, purpose, sources, and relation to social norms. The article concludes by presenting directions for future research on sports crowd violence.

How and why do individuals become lone wolf terrorists? What are the factors that affect a person’s attitudes and behaviour to the extent that violent radicalization and, ultimately, lone wolf terrorism is the outcome? Although the motivational patterns and ideological sources discussed in the previous chapter go some way to answering these questions, in order to attain a deeper understanding of lone wolf terrorism, radicalization should be understood in a broader sense, that is, as a complex, dynamic, multidimensional and phased process.

In the previous chapter it was argued that although historically the lone wolf strategy has been particularly advocated within radicalized sections of America’s far right, it is not restricted to that milieu as lone wolf terrorists come from a variety of political, ideological and religious backgrounds. The database of lone wolf terrorism (see Appendix) provides further insight into the ideological sources of lone wolf terrorist attacks, and enables the identification of different categories of lone wolf terrorists based on their ideologies. Figure 5.1 indicates that among those identified, the main ideological sources of lone wolf terrorism in the 15 countries in the research sample are right-wing extremism/White supremacy (17%), Islamism (15%), anti-abortion (8%) and nationalism/separatism (7%), respectively.

Previous research on football (soccer) fan cultures has documented the lived experiences of devoted football supporters. Few studies, however, have used participant observation and intensive interviewing to examine the deep-rooted inter-group oppositions that characterize avid football rivalries. Even fewer have done this involving both sides of a rivalry and in countries and cultures unknown or unfamiliar to the researcher. This essay examines the process of doing qualitative research in such settings. Fieldwork experiences in Italy, Spain, England and the Netherlands are used to report and reflect on the ethical and methodological challenges associated with comparative research into inter-group conflicts in the football context. There are specific dilemmas that relate directly to the task of studying multiple sides of a football rivalry. Accusations of partiality and ethical criticisms of the researcher’s betrayal of one side against the other are rife, particularly in situations where intra-group cleavages and a strong distrust of the police exist.

Building on Braun and Vliegenthart’s recent study of soccer hooliganism, this article develops an explanatory model of soccer fan violence and collective violence more generally. The fabric of soccer fan violence becomes a richer tapestry if the diversity of the phenomenon is recognized and the focus is moved towards a more holistic approach to explaining crowd behaviour and collective conflict. The proposed approach incorporates macro-level influences and mediating and moderating influences as they affect fan violence. The model recognizes the critical importance of the collective mind and dispositions which can be investigated and understood through the lens of social identification and habitus. The model proposed in the article provides a solid foundation for testing its merits.

Lone wolf terrorism remains an ambiguous and enigmatic phenomenon. The boundaries of lone wolf terrorism are fuzzy and arbitrary. This article aims to define and analyze the main features and patterns of lone wolf terrorism in fifteen countries. Lone wolf terrorism is shown to be more prevalent in the United States than in the other countries under study. The cross-national analysis suggests that in the United States lone wolf terrorism has increased markedly during the past three decades; a similar increase does not appear to have occurred in the other countries under study. The numbers of casualties resulting from lone wolf terrorism have been relatively limited, and there is no evidence that the lethality of lone wolf terrorism is on the increase. The rates of psychological disturbance and social ineptitude are found to be relatively high among lone wolf terrorists. Lone wolf terrorists tend to create their own ideologies that combine personal frustrations and aversion with broader political, social, or religious aims. In this process, many lone wolf terrorists draw on the communities of belief and ideologies of validation generated and transmitted by extremist movements.

There is a widespread belief that sport (broadly defined) has the power to make ‘society’ more equal, socially cohesive and peaceful. The potential of sport as a tool for development and peace is being harnessed by an ever-expanding range of organizations at local, national and international levels, engaging in ever-evolving public-private partnerships. Whether a transnational corporation committed to corporate social responsibility, an international aid organization pursuing the Millennium Development Goals or a grassroots non-governmental organization (NGO) seeking to meet the everyday needs of disadvantaged communities in the Global South, it is increasingly common to herald sport as ‘a new engine of development’ 1 and social development through sport as a ‘new social movement’. 2 A typical statement representing the aspirations of this movement stresses how: Through sport and physical education, individuals can experience equality, freedom and a dignifying means for empowerment, particularly for girls and women, for people with a disability, for those living in conflict areas and for people recovering from trauma. 3 This heralding of sport as an agent of personal and social change has, of course, not gone unchallenged. It is by now commonplace to point to the absence of ‘hard’ evidence needed to ‘test’ whether and how sport programmes actually work, to criticize the shortcomings of ‘anecdotal evidence’, and to stress the need for better monitoring and evaluation of ‘sportfor-development’ programmes. 4 Aside from methodological considerations, there is a danger that social development through sport is imposed on disadvantaged communities in a top-down manner, lacking community engagement and shared ownership. 5 Instead, sport-for-development programmes should be participatory, promote self-reliance and empowerment, use indigenous understandings and knowledge, take an interest in both the means and ends of development, and be concerned with ethical and moral issues as well as practicalities. One of the cornerstones of alternative development in the Global South, in which local NGOs play a critical role, is the belief that the state is often part of the problem and that alternative development should occur outside, and perhaps even against, the state. 6 This alternative perspective is directly at odds with mainstream approaches to development through sport which promote ‘linked-up’ partnerships between states, international NGOs, transnational corporations and international organizations such as the United Nations, UNICEF or FIFA. For example, the Sport for Development and Peace International Working Group posits that the future of sport as an instrument for development and