An Observer's View of Sport Sociology.

This article presents the author's view of sport sociology. He argues that American sociology of sport is in the most unsatisfying state, both intellectually and politically. He remarks that whether or not sport sociology wastes too much energy taking stock of itself, as some would argue, complete reviews of activity in the field cannot easily be written these days in any case. The impression one gets is of a larger number of North American academicians defining themselves, at least in part, as sociologists of sport. Busily at work in a large number of university courses where what is said is largely inaudible to outsiders, they direct graduate students in papers and theses, most of which will not be published, and are published themselves as frequently in out-of-the-way places as in the visible journals of the field. The foundational hypothesis of sport sociology, stated in its simplest form, is that sport is of capital importance in the social life of societies such that of U.S. Yet what is seen when one looks at the sociological landscape of sport today is not confusion, indeed one might well wish for more of it, but a certain unremitting intellectual sameness, a dead hand of competence.