Sports and Society

Even before the dawn of written history, it is likely that sports were culturally conditioned institutions that, along with material artifacts, social customs, and ideologies, were transported across cultural lines. Anthropology, Sport, and Culture brings together important articles written about sport by social scientists, humanists, and athletes themselves.

Body Cultures explores the relationship between the body, sport and landscape. This book presents the first critically edited collection of Henning Eichberg's seven provocative essays in "body culture". Eichberg, a well-known scholar in Europe who draws upon the ideas of Elias, Focault, Habermas and others, is now attracting considerable interest from sociologists, historians and geographers. This collection has been extensively edited to highlight Eichberg's most important arguments and themes.

Considers racism experienced by athletes in South Africa, the Caribbean, Canada and the USA as well as in Britain. The contributors examine topics such as how cricket in the Caribbean has stimulated national and racial self-consciousness and to what extent women are accommodated in sport in Canada.

This text, intended for undergraduates on various education and sport related degree courses, covers the key, current issues in the field of sociology of sport and physical education. The first section of the text covers the importance of sport in culture, its theoretical background, and methodological issues in research. The main body of the text then discusses issues including the sporting body, participation and socialisation into sport, the hidden curriculum, critical pedagogy, and sport and the media. Laker discusses in depth gender, race and ethnicity, class, and equality, and he looks at sport and the media, and the involvement of politics. The chapters are each rounded off with challenging 'reflection' questions, activities and tasks for the reader to fulfil.

This much needed book examines all of the major traditions of social thought to clearly show their influence in our understanding of sport and leisure.

The editors use the unique lens of the history of sports to examine ethnic experiences in North America since 1840. Comprised of 12 original essays and an Introduction, it chronicles sport as a social institution through which various ethnic and racial groups attempted to find the way to social and psychological acceptance and cultural integration. Included are chapters on Native Americans, Irish-Americans, German-Americans, Canadians, African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Hispanics, and several more, showing how their sports participation also provided these communities with some measure of social mobility, self-esteem, and a shared pride.

Vinokur contends that sport has become an increasingly pervasive and visible central element in Western culture and that its function as a political tool is likely to grow still more in the 1990s, as governments realize the full value of sports to the political socialization process. He shows how the German Democratic Republic and Romania in particular have used sports to help achieve their political goals. This national emphasis on sports is then contrasted to the Western governments' approach. Finally, Vinokur focuses on the 1980 and 1984 Olympic boycotts and the 1988 summer games in Seoul.

Contemporary life in the United States would be difficult to understand without examining the pivotal role sports have played in it. Controversies of the Sports World is designed to take readers of all ages into the heart of the tensions and conflicts that arise from the wide-ranging enterprise that now dominates the lives of millions of people. The controversies explored include such issues in sports as recruitment procedures, steroid and other drug use, discrimination against women, discrimination against African Americans, and violence. "References and Resources" sections at the end of each chapter provide readers with annotated cites that will lead them to the sources they need to further explore particular aspects of each topic. The detailed index includes names, places, teams, and concepts which students, teachers, and interested readers can use to explore the controversies that have arisen in this wide-ranging enterprise.

In Patriotic Games, historian Stephen Pope explores the ways sport was transformed from a mere amusement into a metaphor for American life. Between the 1890s and the 1920s, sport became the most pervasive popular cultural activity in American society. During these years, basketball was invented, football became a mass spectator event, and baseball soared to its status as the "national pasttime." Pope demonstrates how America's sporting tradition emerged from a society fractured along class, race, ethnic, and gender lines. Institutionalized sport became a trans- class mechanism for packaging power and society in preferred ways--it popularized an interlocking set of cultural ideas about America's quest for national greatness. Nowhere was this more evident than the intimate connection established between sport and national holiday celebrations. As Pope reveals, Thanksgiving sports influenced the holiday's evolution from a religious occasion to a secular one. On the Fourth of July, sporting events infused patriotic rituals with sentiments that emphasized class conciliation and ethnic assimilation. In a time of social tensions, economic downturns, and unprecedented immigration, the rituals and enthusiasms of sport, Pope argues, became a central component in the shaping of America's national identity.

Prebish offers a thoughtful look at sport as a religious experience and argues that sport has become an American religion. The first part of the book contains three essays that consider the meaning of sport and religion and the relationship between the two. An anthology of five chapters follows. These chapters, written by leading authorities in the field, represent a significant work on the religious dimension of sport. The chapters fully analyze the interplay of sport and religion from sociological, historical, theological, philosophical, and psychological perspectives. A final chapter by Prebish offers some closing thoughts, and a bibliography lists works for further reading.

John R. Gerdy knows sports inside-out. He has been an All-American Basketball Player whose college jersey was retired. He was briefly a professional player. Later he served as an associate commissioner in the NCAA's Southeastern Conference, and as a legislative and ethical advisor to the NCAA and the Knight Commission. Currently he teaches courses on sports administration.

Now, in Sports: The All-American Addiction, he brings his insights and observations together in a radical, critical evaluation of the impact of sports on American life.

This book argues that our society's huge investment in organized sports is unjustified. Ardent boosters say that sports embody the "American Way, " developing winners by teaching lessons in sportsmanship, teamwork, and discipline. In fact, Gerdy writes, modern sports are eroding American life and undermining traditional American values essential to the well-being of the nation and its people. Like a drug, this obsession allows Americans to escape problems and ignore issues.

Gerdy asks tough questions. Have sports lost their relevance? Is it just mindless entertainment? Is our enormous investment in sports as educational tools appropriate for a nation that needs graduates to compete in the information-based, global economy of the twenty-first century? Do organized sports continue to promote positive ideals? Or, do sports, in the age of television, corporate sky boxes, and sneaker deals, represent something far different?

Boldly making his case, Gerdy detects five causes for alarm. A violent, win-at-all-cost mentality exists. A greater number of spectators are idly watching the few elite athletes. An athletic culture that is anti-intellectualsystematically creates "dumb jocks." While bridges, inner-cities, and schools are crumbling, tremendous sums of tax dollars vanish to wealthy owners, millionaire players, and to college athletic programs. Studies show that spor