Conveners
Session 4: Sport, Environment & Sustainability
- Jay Coakley (University Of Colorado, Colorado Springs)
Session 4: Sport, Race & Ethnicity
- Jay Scherer (University Of Alberta)
Session 4: Sport and Gender
- Parissa Safai (York University)
Session 4: Sport & Governance
- Mike Sam (University Of Otago)
Session 4: Sport, Harassment & Abuse
- Tamas Doczi (Hungarian University Of Sports Science )
Session 4: Other Issues Related to the Sociology of Sport
- Catherine Palmer (Torrens University)
Session 4: Sport Media
- Tzu-hsuan Chen (National Taiwan Sport University)
To date, it has been assumed that the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has the control and influence to achieve a safe and ethically sound environment for all its athletes. However, little qualitative research has been done to confirm this to be the case. The prevalence of athlete maltreatment in Canada was recently brought to light in a study conducted by AthletesCAN which determined...
A significant body of knowledge has tried to explain a lack of significant change in gender ratios in sport leadership/ governance positions. Current research may have insufficient explanatory power to fully identify how sport leadership and governance remain a male domain. Yet, a review of the contributions and influence of social theory to understanding gender inclusion/exclusion in sport...
This presentation will focus on the most recent bidirectional influence links between sport, physical education (PE), physical activity (PA), and climate change (CC). The manuscript will consist of three complementary elements. The first part tries to establish links in between sport, PA and PE on the one side and the natural environment on the other side. We will provide a comprehensive...
The media sport cultural complex remains undocumented in Canada in the digital era. Drawing on research carried in other countries (Australia, UK, USA), our project focusses on the media sport content economy (Hutchins and Rowe 2012) and on the cultural dimension of the media sport complex (Rowe 2004) in Canada. In this presentation, we propose to map out the sport media field in Canada and to...
Jos Montferrand, legendary lumberjack whose death in 1864 was followed by an amplified biography 20 years later, offers an opportunity to analyze and understand how various communities may share common legends, in this case, strong men, and continue to evoke them to present themselves to the world and to understand their own distinctiveness. Almost 100 years after his death, Jos Montferrand...
Research has paid extensive attention to how contemporary societal demands shape ideas about appropriate practices in PE and its positive consequences for society´s citizens. It has also showed how PE teachers reproduce traditional practices. Largely overlooked, however, is the role and impact of school leaders, even though they are ultimately responsible for decision-making, division of...
This presentation explores how two refugee families adjusted to life through leisure in the City of Montréal, Québec, Canada. Between 2019 and 2022, we conducted an ethnography alongside two newcomer families from Chad, Africa. Our analysis yielded three prominent themes that we explore throughout this presentation: First, we explore how numerous social and cultural factors impeded newcomers’...
Recurrent abuse scandals and cases in sport have led (inter)national governments and sports organisations to develop Safe Sport policies and guidelines. However, the rate of spreading and settling of the safeguarding movement differs considerably because every national/regional context is unique and different. Drawing from a case study of South Korea’s elite sport pathway where tightened...
During the past decade or so, much hope has been placed in various instruments’ (e.g., reporting mechanisms) ability to prevent, detect, and discipline unethical conduct. Ethics instruments may fundamentally transform how behaviour is governed in sport due to their capacity to structure action according to their logic of appropriateness, for example by casting new institutional roles.
The...
Sports, and in turn, sporting events, shape us mentally, physically, and socially, as much as they bond us collectively. Thus, each society has its own definition of what constitutes an outstanding moment in sports history. In this context, our conference analyzes, with the concept of frames (Goffman, 1974), what it takes to "make history" in sport and how this concept has evolved: are we...
This paper presents final conclusions on perception of club football rivalries in Central-Eastern European countries of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary.
The subject of presented research results concerns the issue of importance of particular rivals for football fans in this region. Who do they consider crucial rivals? Which rivals are perceived as current and which as...
In a twenty-first century shaped in large part by impending global ecological catastrophe and the environmental harms caused by human overdevelopment, there is a continuing need to better understand the ways in which sport, recreation, and leisure practices buttress and complicate the creation of sustainable communities and spaces for healthy living. For instance, to what extent can sporting...
This ethnography explores the pedagogical forces of sport and physical culture that shape the Korean diaspora's everyday politics. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork of the racialization of Korean immigrants and Korean Americans in the Midwestern youth ice hockey community, I hold that sport not only reflects society but also shapes and influences the Korean diaspora’s everyday lives. This...
In this presentation, I will report about a gender audit I conducted of Biathlon Canada, the national governing body of biathlon. Biathlon Canada contracted the gender audit because of its commitment to improving gender equity in all aspects of its organization and operation. Research was conducted about how gender is taken into consideration (or not) in all aspects of the organization, and to...
What happens to our sporting goods when we are done with them? Even though Sustainable Development Goal 12 focuses on responsible consumption and production, very few in the sports industry (and academy) have asked this question. With environmental degradation now a daily concern around the world, we can no longer produce and consume sporting goods without con- sidering the end-of-use stage...
It has been over 20 years since Brian Pronger published the highly provocative and insightful article ‘Outta my Endzone’, arguing that competitive sport encapsulated a brutal libidinal economy, in which athletes derive pleasure from “adding to oneself by subtracting from another.” That this is also the “pleasure of rape” was not lost on Pronger. Indeed, he argued that rape and athletic victory...
A disappointing result was presented in the Census 2021 around the number of Welsh speakers, where the lowest ever overall percentage of people aged three or over able to speak Welsh was recorded. This research aimed to understand how we might be able to promote the use of the heritage, yet minority language within community sport settings. This presentation explores the key influences and...
In postcolonial states, the history and development of contemporary sports are intertwined with colonialism, imperialism, and, more recently, globalization. During the colonial period, colonizers used colonial sports in their ‘civilizing mission,’ which is now relevant to the current context of increased migration from the global south to the north, where the global north is using sport to...
Against the background of an increasingly digital society, we see the recent circumstances of change in the Canadian Sport landscape being driven by decision makers forced to act in the face of media attention on allegations made public, including athletes’ open letters detailing toxic cultures underlying maltreatment. Importantly, and similarly to athletes, those who to choose to amplify...
Over the past half-century, critical sport sociologists have demanded better of existing sport governing bodies, yet by and large, these demands have resulted in reforms within the existing structures rather than significant organizational or policy-based change. At NASSS Montreal in 2022, we introduced the possibility of a new supranational organization committed to anti-corruption, athlete...
The climbing community is vibrant and diverse, yet the historic archives do not reflect this. Previously, sociologists have scrutinised historians over a lack of criticality and theoretical framing in their research, and historians have shown disdain for the restrictive nature of social theory. This paper argues that the practice of building an on-the-record, publicly accessible oral history...
In this paper I present data on surfers’ environmental attitudes and actions. The paper is based on a questionnaire (n = 251) and six qualitative interviews. The results show that most surfers see themselves as “green”. On the other hand, the data also show that surfers through their consumption and travel behavior have negative impact on the environment. In this presentation I start out by...
Civil war in Sri Lanka precipitated the mass emigration of Tamils from Sri Lanka, many of whom settled in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). This community has established significant social support networks and cultural infrastructure since, including a growing number of Tamil grassroots sports organizations. My doctoral research examines the lived experiences of sport leaders within this GTA...
