Showing titles in Sociology of Sports

At first glance, sports may appear as simple games of athleticism and skill. However, nestled within every cheer, every match, and each strategy is a reflection of the world's deeper political, societal, and economic narratives. "Ballgames & Boardrooms" delves into this intricate dance between sports and the inherent global structures it both represents and influences. From the gladiatorial arenas of Ancient Rome to the modern football stadiums, this essay dissects how sports have been employed as tools by elites to not only entertain but to dictate, control, and pacify the masses.

From the tennis court to the boxing ring, the athletics track to the football pitch, the visibility of women in sport has been gathering pace. Women's competitions are increasingly popular. In Roar Sam takes a deep dive into the experiences of some of sport's most high-profile female athletes—some have overcome heartbreaking adversity to reach the top of their game; others have succeeded in the face of prejudice. Featuring a series of candid interviews from some of sport's most successful women, Sam lifts the lid on what it takes to reach those heights

The National Basketball Association is a place where white fans and Black players enact virtually every racial issue and tension in US culture. Following the Seattle SuperSonics for an entire season, David Shields explores how, in a predominantly Black sport, White fans - including especially himself - think about and talk about Black heroes, Black scapegoats, and Black bodies. Critically acclaimed and highly controversial, Black Planet was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN USA Award, and was named one of the Top Ten Nonfiction Books of 1999.

In Soccer in American Culture: The Beautiful Game’s Struggle for Status, G. Edward White seeks to answer two questions. The first is why the sport of soccer failed to take root in the United States when it spread from England around much of the rest of the world in the late 19th and 20th centuries. The second is why the sport has had a significant renaissance in America since the last decade of the 20th century, to the point where it is now the fourth largest participatory sport in the United States and is thriving at the high school, college, and professional levels. 

Parkour, the art of displacement, or freerunning—whatever the name, this new discipline born in the Paris suburbs is rapidly being adopted by people throughout the world. Not satisfied to suffer through urban life, these athletic artists or artistic athletes want to thrive in it, all the while earning dignity by daringly reappropriating three motor skills: running, jumping, and climbing. Vincent Thibault explores the philosophical and spiritual aspects of the art of movement and offers ideas on health, sports, urban living, and the relationship between the body and the environment.

Some of baseball's rebels are widely recognized, but most of them are either little known or known primarily for their baseball achievements—not their political views and activism. Many players, owners, reporters, and other activists challenged both the baseball establishment and society's status quo. Baseball Rebels tells stories of baseball's reformers and radicals who were influenced by, and in turn influenced, America's broader political and social protest movements, making the game—and society—better along the way.

Il tifo calcistico è qualcosa di più di una storia d'amore o di una fede religiosa, è una condizione dell'essere. Si è di una squadra fin da bambini e la si ama seguendo dinamiche personalissime, fatte di consuetudini e liturgie ben precise, che rispondono a una grammatica che il non tifoso non può che ignorare. Tommaso Labate prende le mosse dalla recente vittoria dello scudetto del 2021 da parte della sua Inter per accompagnare il lettore alla scoperta di questa grammatica, attraverso un vero e proprio viaggio nell'"interismo".

Randall Balmer was a late convert to sports talk radio, but he quickly became addicted, just like millions of other devoted American sports fans. As a historian of religion, the more he listened, Balmer couldn't help but wonder how the fervor he heard related to religious practice. From baseball to basketball and football to ice hockey, Balmer explores the origins and histories of big-time sports from the late nineteenth century to the present, with entertaining anecdotes and fresh insights into their ties to religious life.

During the 1980s, Black athletes and other athletes of color broadened the popularity and profitability of major college televised sports by infusing games with a "Black style" of play. At a moment ripe for a revolution in men's college basketball and football, clashes between "good guy" white protagonists and bombastic "bad boy" Black antagonists attracted new fans and spectators. And no two teams in the 1980s welcomed the enemy's role more than Georgetown Hoya basketball and Miami Hurricane football. The Hoyas and the 'Canes made the bad-boy image look good. Pop culture took notice.

Danielle Williams, skydiver and founder of the online community Melanin Base Camp, profiles dozens of adventurers pushing the boundaries of inclusion and equity in the outdoors. These compelling narratives include a mother whose love of hiking led her to found a nonprofit to expose BIPOC children to the wonders of the outdoors and a mountain biker who, despite at first dealing with unwelcome glances and hostility on trails, went on to become a blogger who writes about justice and diversity in natural spaces.

50 Things to Know About Being a Travel Athlete offers a different approach to travel sports. Most books on travel sports tell you to jump into the traveling world. Although there’s nothing wrong with that, you should know the ins and outs of traveling before dedicating yourself to becoming a travel athlete. Based on knowledge from the world’s leading experts, travel athletes have to juggle more than just their sport; they have to juggle the physical and mental barriers of traveling, too.

Cuando el trofeo se olvida y la violencia se impone, cuando la obsesión supera la estrategia, cuanto el juego se vuelve peligroso...

In Mallparks, Michael Friedman observes that just as cathedrals represented power relations in medieval towns, and skyscrapers epitomized those within industrial cities, sports stadiums exemplify urban America at the turn of the twenty-first century.

The New York Times and Washington Post bestselling author turns his expertise to a subject that has never been fully explored, delivering a highly entertaining game changer that uses brand-new research to show us why being a sports fan is good for us individually and is a force for positive change in society. Fans is a passionate reminder of how games, teams, and the communities dedicated to them are vital to our lives.

“The virus exposed how we live and work. It also revealed how we play, and what we lose when we have to stop.” For every kid who makes it to the NBA, thousands more seek out the pleasure and camaraderie of pick-up basketball in their local community centre or neighbourhood park. It’s a story that plays out in sport after sport–team and individual, youth and adult, men's and women's.

Author Harry Pearson takes a warm and witty journey around Britain in pursuit of the lost folk sports that somehow still linger on in the glitzy era of the Premier League and Sky Sports to find out how and why they have survived and to meet the characters who keep them going. No Pie, No Priest! combines sports reporting, travelogue and history, and features a cast of bucolic eccentrics and many deeply impenetrable regional accents.

Sports is religion. Nobody knows this better than the preeminent sports documentarian Gotham Chopra, who just so happens to be the son of world-renowned spiritualist Deepak Chopra. While his father taught him to find faith through prayer, Gotham felt pulled towards the Boston Garden and Larry Bird instead. Tracing his unique path from being a diehard fan to witnessing miracles alongside the gods of sport, Gotham makes a compelling case for sports as a modern-day faith.

Ein Hörbuch nicht nur für Fußballfans, sondern für alle, die erfolgreich im Team sein wollen. Warum wird der FC Bayern jedes Jahr Meister? Wie hat es der FC Liverpool wieder an die Spitze der Liga geschafft? Und warum schafft der HSV es trotz guter Spieler nicht, wieder aufzusteigen? Tobias Escher begibt sich auf die Suche nach Erfolgsfaktoren für Fußballteams. Er spricht mit Trainern, Spielern und Verantwortlichen und analysiert die vielen Aspekte, die zusammengenommen stimmen müssen, damit Teams Meisterschaften gewinnen.