Sociology: sport and leisure Books

Anthropologist John Fox sets off on a worldwide adventure to thefarthest reaches of the globe and the deepest recesses of our ancientpast to answer a question inspired by his sports-loving son: "Why do we play ball?"From Mexican jungles to the small-town...

The social, cultural and economic significance of sport has never been more evident than it is today. Adopting a critical management perspective, this book examines the most important themes and challenges in global sport management. From match-fixing,...

Fantasy sport has become big business. Recent estimates suggest that there as many as 27 million fantasy sport participants in the US alone, spending $1.5bn annually, with many millions more around the world. This is the first in-depth study of fantasy...

Cases of sport-related child sexual abuse have received increasing news coverage in recent years. This book documents and evaluates this important issue through a critical investigation of the research and theory on sexual violence and child sex...

Advances in technology have always had a significant impact on sport. This book surveys the next generation of emerging technologies and considers how sport managers, governing bodies and officials can meet the challenges that they pose for sport...

Consuming Football in Late Modern Life explores the phenomenon of football (soccer) fandom as consumption in the age of late modernity. By centralising fandom within the sociology of consumption, the book examines how this phenomenon equates to a fluid...

In recent years, scholars have understood the increasing use of the St George's Cross by football fans to be evidence of a rise in a specifically 'English' identity. This has emerged as part of a wider 'national' response to broader political processes...

With close attention to the spheres of sport and religion as important sites of moral currency, this book draws on media coverage of major cases of hypocrisy, attending to differing meanings and consequences of hypocrisy within the US, France and Iceland...

Women worldwide are making their presence felt as sport fans in rapidly increasing numbers. This book makes a distinctive and innovative contribution to the study of sport fandom by exploring the growing visibility and interest in women who follow sport...

Korea has become a powerful force in global sport, with South Korea finishing fifth in the medals table at London 2012 and hosting the Winter Olympics in 2018. This book brings together scholars from disciplines including sport history, sociology,...

The English Premier League (EPL) is one of the world's most valuable and high-profile sports leagues, with millions of fans around the globe. The 2016/17 season marked the 25th anniversary of the EPL, providing a unique opportunity to reflect on how it...

Women fans have entered the traditionally male domain of the sports stadium in growing numbers in recent years. Watching professional sport is important for women for so many reasons, but their expectations and experiences have been largely ignored by...

Sport volunteering is becoming an increasingly popular motive for international travel. Many tourism organisations now advertise sport volunteering projects, with colleges and universities also offering students the opportunity to participate in similar...

Football is undoubtedly the sport with the largest following in the world, attracting billions of fans across the globe. These fans play an integral part in determining the identity of the football club they support. Many studies have focused on the...

Muscle Boys: Gay Gym Culture is an inside look at the secret world of exercise and fitness that's become one of the country's fastest growing and most influential gay subcultures. The author, a personal trainer on the San Francisco gym scene for more...

This is the first book to focus on race, sport, protest, and the Black Atlantic. It brings together innovative scholarship on African, African-American, Afro-European, Afro-Brazilian, and Afro-Caribbean sports in a manner that speaks effectively to the...

This book documents the early impressions and initial responses of various stakeholders of the soccer world to the challenges of COVID-19 in 2020.

The Routledge Handbook of Sport and Sustainable Development is a comprehensive and powerful survey of the ways in which sport engages with its social, environmental, and ethical responsibilities.

This book looks at how sport, and sports organisations, have had to innovate during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This book considers the ability of individuals and communities to maintain healthy relationships with their surroundings - before, during and after catastrophic events - through physical activity and sporting practices.

This is the first book in English to offer an overview of the development of the sport industry in Spain and Portugal, examining the social, economic, cultural, and political impact sport has had in this region and on world sport more broadly.

Bringing together leading match-fixing researchers from different fields, this book offers new theoretical and applied perspectives on this persistent problem in sport and wider society.

Although sport participation decreases on average for women once they become mothers, athletes have demonstrated that motherhood does not signal the end of sport engagement and athletic identities, or career roles. This is the first book to offer an...

A recent Purdue University study showed that, in 2019, 95% of TV coverage, including highlights on sports networks, focused on men's sports. That doesn't leave much room for women, and female athletes are more than fed up with this inequality. One of...

This practical textbook explains the sport development process from a practitioner's viewpoint, showing what actually works, how, and why. Focusing on the development of sport, the book considers the efforts of sport organisations to revitalise their...

This book is an historical survey of women's sport from 1850-1960. It looks at some of the more recent methodological approaches to writing sports history and raises questions about how the history of women's sport has so far been shaped by...

Football is unquestionably the world's most popular and influential sport. There is no corner of the globe in which the game is not played or followed. More countries are affiliated to FIFA, football's governing body, than to the United Nations. The...

Association football is now the global sport, consumed in various ways by millions of people across the world. Throughout its history, football has been a catalyst as much for social cohesion, unity, excitement and integration as it can be for division,...

This book examines the life and career of Michael Jordan, one of the greatest athletes in the history of sports, asking how he transcended his sport to become a canonical myth in popular culture.

An activity that originated in Western societies, backpacking has gained increasing popularity among Chinese millennials. In a spirit of the 'search for self', young Chinese backpackers have sought to display their pursuit of freedom, independence and...

This is the first book to explore fully the connections between sport studies and criminology, opening up critical new frontiers in the study of sport and crime.Rooted firmly in established critical criminological traditions, the book also employs...

This book analyses the increasing use of sport in European and Western welfare states as a tool of social policy and its promotion as a solution to social problems.Midnight Football is a sports-based intervention targeting social inclusion and crime...

This is the first book in English to closely examine the life of Diego Maradona from socio-cultural perspectives, exploring how his status as an icon, a popular sporting hero, and a political figurehead has been culturally constructed, reproduced, and...

Curling is a fascinating sport, full of contradictions, where heavy granite stones are slid great distances on ice but with such great precision that sweeping a broom across the path can make the difference between a well-made shot and a complete miss...

The internet and digital technologies have transformed sport and the way that we research sport, opening up new ways to analyse sport organisations, fan communities, networks, athletes, the media, and other key stakeholders in the field. This engaging...

Intercollegiate Athletics, Inc. examines the corrupting influence and damaging financial effects of big-time intercollegiate athletics, especially football and to a lesser extent basketball, on American higher education.Including historical and...

Although everyone loves to watch a fair, evenly matched sports contest, there is no such thing as "pure sport". The Sport and Society Reader is a collection of key scholarly and journalistic articles that demonstrate the ways that the sports we love to...

In the decade or more since publication of the first edition of Understanding Sport, both sport and wider global society have undergone profound change. In this fully updated, revised and expanded edition of their classic textbook, John Horne, Alan...

For many Australians, there are two great passions: sport and 'taking the piss'. This book is about national identity - and especially about Australia's image as a sporting country. Whether reverent or not, any successful national image has to reflect...

Going as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, to the early days of Cuban baseball, Wendel traces the spread of American baseball fever in the Caribbean and Mexico; discusses lesser-known historical standouts, including Adolfo Luque and Martin Dihigo;...

Although prison can present a critical opportunity to engage with offenders through interventions and programming, reoffending rates among those released from prison remain stubbornly high. Sport can be a means through which to engage with even the most...

This book examines contemporary issues of security at sports mega-events (SMEs). It focuses on the 2020 UEFA European Football Championship (Euro 2020) - subsequently postponed to 2021 - the third biggest SME in the global sporting calendar and a unique...

Research shapes our understanding of practice in powerful and important ways, in sports coaching as in any other discipline. This innovative study explores the philosophical foundations of sport coaching research, examining the often implicit links...