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In January 2022, five months after the fall of Kabul, a group of 172 primarily Hazara refugees arrived in Edmonton, Alberta, having earlier travelled across the border to Pakistan amidst one of the largest and most protracted displacement crises in the history of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The Afghan newcomers and their children have been supported throughout a difficult resettlement period--one made even more challenging by Covid-19 quarantine regulations--by Free Play for Kids (FPFK), a non-profit, Sport for Development organization. FPFK staff, many of whom are immigrants and refugees themselves, have been actively involved in co-producing sports and recreational programming with the children of Afghan newcomers, and with many adults who aspired to be physically active in Edmonton. For several of the men and women under 40--part of a generation of urban, middle class, educated Afghans who came of age during the US-led invasion of their country--these aspirations included continuing to play futsol and soccer, as they had done in Afghanistan and while perilously living without documentation in Pakistan. In partnership with FPFK, Kabul-Edmonton, a co-ed team comprised exclusively of Afghan newcomers, was subsequently formed and participated in an adult recreational soccer league throughout the spring and summer of 2022. In this presentation, we explore the results of a photo-voice project developed in creative collaboration with Kabul-Edmonton team members to explore the role(s) of sport as they rebuilt their lives and communities in exile in meaningful and different ways, often transcending hegemonic ideals of development and integration.
Menopausal bodies have gained in visibility recently. Greater attention has been given to women’s experiences of their changing bodies in a range of public settings, in large part attributed to a partial reversal of medical orthodoxy about HRT and the campaigning efforts of public figures. This has led to the abandonment of taboos and stereotypes about the bodies of maturing women around the end of their reproductive years.
Hyde et al (2010) found that the medical discourse of menopause continues to hold sway. It shapes women’s experiences of their changing bodies. Women seek recognition and validation about their symptoms within the medical model. There is now some evidence that physical activity can contribute to the mitigation of menopausal symptoms.
This paper is concerned with women’s physical activity experiences during the perimenopause years. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 6 women aged 42-49 who selfidentified as perimenopausal. The interviews were designed to elicit stories of physical literacy as perimenopause was experienced.
Findings suggest that in a bid to seek recognition women search for the elimination of their symptoms within a medicalised or quasi medicalised narrative. Their orientation to physical activity is complex. Using the language of fatigue and anxiety they find physical activity a challenge in a (peri)menopausal body and eschew or abandon it. Nor has physical activity been ‘prescribed’ and they are receiving little support for physical activity. This raises questions about the continued enfeeblement of women’s bodies as they age.
Self-tracking tools have become so commonplace in our daily lives that interaction with them has become almost invisible. Therefore, documenting the appropriation of these tools in daily routines is complex. In order to study the subconscious affective and sensory experiences of interactions between humans and their self-tracking tools we asked long-time self-tracking runners to perform a run with their usual connected watch and a run without it. During these sessions, the athletes had to describe in real time their emotions, sensations, concerns and thoughts. We then conducted a semi-structured post-race interview to review the experiential "disruptions" that may have been caused by defamiliarization. This "withdrawal" approach aims to "experimentally" destabilize the lived experience in order to analyze affective and sensory experiences that have become routine or even incorporated behaviour. Results show that 1) the connected watch catalyzes a performative relationship with the body by constituting an injunction to surpass oneself, which can be experienced positively or negatively; 2) that its withdrawal induces some type of lack (of reference points for gait and motivational levers in particular) that the subjects seek to fill by various means; 3) that its absence is likely to destabilize certain subjects on the affective and perceptual levels. Results are discussed with regard to a) the agentive power of tools on people; b) the embodied and lasting effects of repeated interactions with the connected watch.
This study aims to elucidate the relationship among the context, identity, and life experiences of Chinese student athletes of Tsinghua University, in which a number of Olympic gold medallists were developed in a way that is distinct from the talent development of the traditional Chinese elite sport system. Drawing on the Constructivist Grounded Theory, qualitative data, collected through 20 semi-structured interviews with different student athletes and administrators of the Tsinghua varsity team, is analysed via a two-phase process, embracing initial coding and focused coding. There emerges a substantive theory consisting of two paths that elaborate the relationship among three core categories, namely ‘Tsinghua context’, ‘the self-construction of student-athletes’ identities’ and ‘the campus life experiences’. More specifically, the first path reveals the recruitment approach and administration mode, which are identified as two contextual factors, significantly influence the identity construction and life experiences of student athletes. And the second clarifies how student athletes construe, maintain, and enhance their own identity through interpreting campus life in Tsinghua. Enlightened by the Bourdieusian framework of the field and habitus, it is further discussed the two-fold role of the Tsinghua context, which both constrains and facilitates the interplay between the self-construction of student-athletes’ identity and their perception of campus life. The study not only provides a heuristic for understanding the identity construction of Chinese student athletes, but also sparks a brief interrogation of the essence of their powerless position in both Chinese sport and education system.
In the last two decades the recent research has indicated the need to analyze students in order to create PE curricula that are accepted and considered important by the interested parties themselves. So far in Poland, the voice of students regarding the PE curriculum has been marginalized, therefore, the aim of the study was to explore the meanings that students give to PE and physical activity in general.
Using 18 focus group interviews and 4 individual in-depth interviews, 60 first year students of a comprehensive school (33 girls and 27 boys, aged 15) were examined. The research was conducted in 2022.
The results showed that for students PE is an irrelevant subject and occupies a low place in the school hierarchy of subjects. Most of the respondents perceived PE as a break from other, more important subjects which they will take their final exams in. Moreover, PE does not affect the way the respondents feel about their body. Such an opinion about PE was strengthened by parents of the respondents, who in the students' opinion are not interested in what is happening at PE, as opposed to the interest they have in other school subjects and often are excusing students from participating in PE classes. Thus, the research indicates a further need to analyze the discourses about physical activity and PE used by the parents of students. The inferior position of PE in the respondents' opinions will also be discussed in relation to the deepening crisis in Polish education.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have declared that physical inactivity is a problem that affects all the countries of the world and the strategic place to solve this problem are schools. The aim of this study was to understand how the school playground can become a space to develop body practices that can reduce physical inactivity. A qualitative study was made following a quasi-ethnographic study on one public, one subsidized and one private school in Chile. The results indicate that school recess, Physical Education class and extracurricular activities are relevant moments which express similarities and differences between schools. The discussions propose that there are barriers and opportunities to inhabit the schoolyard. The conclusion express that the school playground is habited culturally and both management teams and professionals have an important role to collaborate in reducing physical inactivity at school.
The state of current educational systems cannot be understood outside of the rise of neoliberalism, which is the defining context of the privatization of education and policies designed to meet parental expectations for more diverse and expanded school curricula for their children. In Quebec, this trend has been identified as the "double fragmentation of the school system" (Lessard, 2019), a process resulting from the growth of the private school system and the rise of selective educational profiles within public schools. This structuring of the school system is commonly referred to as the three-tier school system : private, selective-public and regular-public. The 700 Sport-Studies Programs constitute formal structures par excellence of the incursion of privatization (entry fees, selective process, accelerated curricula) into the public school system while fostering a competitive landscape between the various actors in both private and public schools. How are these programs positioning themselves to integrate public education? This paper investigates two types of strategies used by these programs: (a) strategies of legitimization towards public schools, parents and competitive sports environments; and (b) strategies of organizational sustainability. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, our data consists of questionnaires and interviews within the Sport-Studies Programs ecosystem (school/program administrators, coaches and parents of student-athletes). By playing on both the academic and the athletic fields, it is unclear if and in which context these organizations act as educators, coaches and/or businesspeople.
The objective of this paper is to examine the role of sport within the global deradicalization and countering violent extremism (CVE) industry. Deradicalization is a social and psychological intervention that reduces an individual’s commitment to, and involvement in, radicalization such that they are no longer at risk of involvement in terrorism (Horgan, 2009). Sport has recently become salient to the pursuit of such efforts, illustrated by the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC’s) Line Up, Live Up! program and the Technical Guide on Preventing Violent Extremism through Sport. While there may be positive elements to such programs, such as the provision of sporting opportunities to underserved youth, their growth has taken place within a context of intensified hostility and violence towards Muslim, migrant, and newcomer communities that inescapably shapes their design and impact. While previous research (Ali & King, 2021; Ali, 2019) provides preliminary assessments of this relationship, sport for deradicalization and CVE is yet to receive robust scholarly attention. As such, this paper aims to construct a genealogy of sport for CVE within the UN, and identify the social, political, and ideological processes and mechanisms by which sport has come to be understood as an effective tool for deradicalization. Specifically, findings stemming from (1) an archival analysis of the UNODC’s policies and initiatives on sport for CVE, and (2) a critical examination of the Line Up, Live Up! program will be presented, as will the implications of these findings for racialized communities considered especially “vulnerable” to violent extremism.
I have previously presented arguments for understanding skateboarding as a queer act. Queerness has been defined as ‘being’ and ‘doing’ that challenges and defies normative scripts in order to create new possibilities. Skateboarding is a practice that reimagines and repurposes the urban landscape by manipulating its designs for unintended purposes and creating new relationships with space. In this way, skateboarding may challenge the neoliberal symbolism and function of Western architecture and urban planning into a site of play and hedonism. Extending this line of thought, I am interested in exploring the queer potential of skateboarding as a decolonizing/indigenizing act that can reclaim and reform relationships with colonized spaces. Though most often associated with blonde southern California youth, skateboarding is derived from the indigenous Polynesian practice of surfing (a practice with its own history of whitewashing and commodification). Drawing from indigenous surf studies work dealing with issues of sovereignty, identity, and (dis)possession, as well as scholarship on indigenizing urban spaces, this presentation explores the indigenizing/decolonizing potential of skateboarding. I examine this potential as demonstrated by indigenous skateboarding groups, collaborations, and initiatives including Apache Skateboards in the United States, Nations Skate Youth in Canada, Songline Skateboarding in Australia, and Postal Skateboards in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Fighting between 1988 and 2001, Palestinian boxer Johar Abu Lashin wanted to use his sport to pursue “peaceful co-existence” between Palestinians living in Occupied Israel and Israeli citizens. His victories, he hoped, could be used as inspiring and harmonizing moments for “all the people of Israel, both Jews and Arabs” to promote a sense of togetherness and unity. Boxing in America, however, meant navigating the pervasive force of the nation’s Orientalism. As Edward Said explains, Orientalism represents a “Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” In America, Abu Lashin would labour under the weight of prevailing, deeply entrenched, anti-Arab discrimination.
One night, quite by accident, Abu Lashin entered the ring with the Israeli flag. His entourage had carried it in. As long as American fans thought Abu Lashin was Jewish, the opportunities seemed endless. He was nicknamed the “Israeli Kid,” which he embraced. He wore the Star of David on his trunks and sang the Israeli national anthem before fights. Abu Lashin never claimed he was Jewish, Americans – including fans and promoters – just made the leap, guided by an Orientalism deeply entrenched in their culture. When Abu Lashin explained he was Arab, the fights disappeared. Potential television contracts evaporated. Back home, his efforts toward “peaceful co-existence” were almost universally viewed with suspicion. This paper uses the work of Said to examine Abu Lashin’s ambitious political objectives and their ultimate failure.
Le sport, l’activité physique ou le plein air sont utilisés dans des contextes variés pour soutenir des objectifs de développement durable et humain en lien avec la santé, l’éducation, la cohésion sociale ou encore la formation et l’employabilité des personnes. Dans ce projet nommé « Niska » par les participants, le sport a servi d’intermédiaire pour favoriser un enrichissement mutuel, sur le plan humain et culturel, entre un praticien-chercheur allochtone et les membres d’une communauté autochtone. Ce projet a été réalisé de manière partenariale au Québec entre l’institut DesÉquilibres et la communauté autochtone d’Opiticiwan appartenant à la Nation Atikamekw. Les objectifs de cette recherche étaient de documenter les expériences du projet pour les participants d’une part aux implications et aux apprentissages du praticien-chercheur lors de l’implantation d’un programme sportif à caractère psychosocial adapté au contexte autochtone. Et d’autre part aux implications et aux apprentissages réalisées par les membres de la communauté. Des entrevues semi-directives individuelles (n=7) ont été conduites et enregistrées avec le praticien-chercheur allochtone, deux intervenants (coachs en formation) Atikamekw et avec six jeunes de la communauté qui ont pris part au projet. Les résultats présentent les mécanismes d’actions, le changement de postures, une ouverture de conscience et les apprentissages réalisés par le praticien-chercheur pour favoriser l’implantation d’un programme sportif à caractère psychosocial adapté au contexte autochtone. Ils montrent aussi l’importance du travail collaboratif dans la création et la mise en place du projet pour parvenir à un succès et à des impacts auprès des intervenants comme des jeunes.
Few studies have focused on people with hearing loss and intellectual disabilities engaging in gambling activities. Less is known about people with visual impairments and their sports betting activities in the non-Western context. This study employs a sociological approach to analyse sports betting among students with visual impairments to understand how social structures and institutions may have failed them resulting in their active engagement in gambling as an alternative to their survival. Seven male adults aged between 27-34 years participated using semi-structured interviews, which were conducted face-to-face, recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed with the Braun and Clarke model. Findings show that sports betting prevails in communities, peer persuasion and family relations serve as an inducer for students with visual impairments due to it becoming an institutionalized norm among university students. While some are attracted by wins, others bet to demonstrate their passion for football and leagues by experimenting with their entrepreneurial skills. The study recommends stakeholders' education, providing better policy and constantly reminding them to bet responsibly or desist from gambling.
Powerchair Hockey (PCH) is a sport for electric wheelchair users. The majority of players are living with degenerative diseases. Their life expectancy is usually around 30 years, and most players keep on playing until they die. Thus, death is inherent to PCH.
I conducted an ethnography of PCH in Switzerland. Participants co-contributed to defining the research questions. The legitimacy of their existence in our postmodern societies was defined as a research issue. In this presentation, I investigate the social organization of death in PCH. What does the players' deaths reveal about the value of their sports commitment, and the value of their life?
PCH is one of the few arenas where players can talk about death. PCH actors’ management of death has two main outcomes: the celebration of the accomplishments of the player who died, and the preparation of other players to their own death. For PCH players, playing until the very end of their lives shapes their “transition to death”. Being part of an institution that outlasts them and being memorialized, they become part of the history of a community. This contrasts with the fact that, in other areas, their lives may be considered to have little value. The mortuary rituals and the players’ legacy are performative of the value of their lives. This contributes to the recognition of the worthiness of their lives. Moreover, the process of researching this issue is also performative of the social value of the players' lives, establishing them as legitimate subjects of research.
Ghana became the 119th country in the world to ratify United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Through this ratification, Ghana accepted to ensure that Ghanaians experiencing disability will be treated as equal citizens with equal rights to enable them to flourish. Specifically, Article 30.5 of the UNCRPD discusses rights of persons with disability and the requirement of access to sports and physical activity. To date there has been limited research on disability sport and physical activity rights in Africa as a whole and Ghana specifically. Barriers facing persons who experience disability (PWED) to participate in physical activity are numerous. One of the difficulties is that sport and physical activity are globally perceived as superfluous to basic wellbeing particularly when the population of PWED face fundamental barriers to good sanitation and transportation. If these basic needs are present the barriers still include lack of awareness on the part of the larger society as to how to involve PWED in teams adequately; lack of opportunities and programmes for training and competition; few accessible facilities due to physical barriers; and limited information on and access to resources. As a result, this paper aims to explore rights of PWED in the Ghanian context to physical activity and sports by utilising Bourdieuian practice theory and focusing on policy adaptation and implementation addressing the rights of this marginalised population.
This paper aims to provide an account of the evolution of Korean para sport athletes’ development strategy, which was created based on the benchmarking of non-para athletes’ development policy. The first year of the research was devoted to the collection of practices from other counties, such as Canada, Japan, USA, UK and Australia; that is, mainly the countries the KPC considered developed and well organized with regards to para sports, and particularly in terms of Para Sport Science. The second year of the research moved on to explore what policy agendas local para sport committees and national federations requested, and discuss how to plan them. The method for this research was mainly interviews with local directors and managers of para sport committees and the observation of the official meetings of KPC Task Force who are actual stakeholders in this whole policy planning and implementation process. In the third year, the activities mainly involved research consultation for the planning of the actual policy project, based on the outcomes of the three-year research.
The paper draws on a constructivist theoretical frame to analyse the decision-making process leading to the National Para Athletes’ Development Policy and the inter-communication of the policy to the local governments local Para Sport Committees and NFs. One of the key findings of the research is that the dominant tendency of benchmarking non-para elite athletes' policy is hard to change, due to the existing power structure, even though most of the stakeholders involved agreed on the rationales.
National Sport Governing Bodies (NSGBs) have emphasized sport integrity which can be defined as “manifestations of the ethics and values which promote community confidence in sports” (Australian Government, 2016). Globally, NSGBs struggle to prevent and address integrity issues and rethink how they promote integrity and minimise integrity risks and violations by way of good governance and independent policy reforms. Despite such global interest on sport integrity, there has been little empirical research on sport integrity in South Korea. Thus, this study aims to explore the risks and violations that affect sport integrity within South Korea’s elite sports context. Drawing upon interviews with five athletes, three coaches, three parents and three administrators, the analysis reveals three risks: 1) match-fixing as a means to enter a socially prestigious high schools, universities or/and professional teams with good competition results rather than as to fix matches to earn millions of dollars for some athletes, 2) bullying and harassment from coaches and peers who want to achieve better results in South Korea’s elite sport system, and, 3) Corruption in sports that emerged as power is concentrated in a group formed by hyul-yon (blood connection), hak-yon (academic connection) and ji-yon (regional connection). Overall, the results confirm that match-fixing, bullying and harassment and corruption in sports can serve as key risks which influence sport integrity in South Korea’s elite sports context.
Integrity is both an expanding concept and an intensifying agenda in sport policy and governance. To prevent, detect and discipline unethical conduct, governments (and umbrella sport organisations) have advanced new legislation, ombudsmen, dedicated policy units, whistleblower hotlines, databases, integrity officers, education campaigns, and mediation services. Importantly, the targets and intermediaries for these regimes are extensive: paid (and volunteer) administrators, managers, coaches, and support personnel in public, private and non-profit organisations.
Owing to this array of agents and reform measures, we ask whether the integrity agenda might shape a new ‘public service bargain’ (PSB)(Hood & Lodge, 2006) between actors and those they serve (e.g., athletes, club members, politicians, citizens). Particularly, we seek to understand whether integrity regimes are transforming the implicit/explicit agreements, conventions or compacts for sport actors in relation to their roles, rights and responsibilities. The significance of a new PSB lies in signalling system-wide changes and their potential dilemmas with respect to issues of compliance, accountability, autonomy, volunteerism and risk. This presentation will report on pilot work critically assessing the integrity reform agenda and the experiences/responses of actors subject to its reach.
In recent years there has been an increasing interest in the global north around the practice of mixed abilities sport (MAS). At the heart of this movement’s philosophy is the removal of barriers (e.g., age, disability, gender, and socio-economic status) that hinder involvement in more traditional sporting cultures. However, we seem to have been here before. In this paper we explore how the MAS movement is distinct or simply a re-invigoration of the United Nations 1978 initiative Sport for All (S4A). We start by surveying the historical development of the Sport for All project, presenting its key goals, and problematizing the meaning of All. From here, we examine how the concept of human rights is foundational within the Sport for All project, questioning its practical usefulness. Next, we explore the MAS manifesto to show how the ethos of this organisation is distinct from S4A. We suggest that neither approach to inclusive sport is ideal because they are not ethically centred around the individual, rather, we see a human development and capabilities approach as a better tool to guide and evaluate efforts to create sporting opportunities for every single individual. Furthermore, we suggest that before such an ideal can be achieved, systemic isms (e.g., ableism, ageism, racism, and sexism) must be confronted and challenged, inside and out of the world of sport, because they are the root of oppression for marginalised populations. In this sense, the project of inclusive sport is essentially ethical and political.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) officially recognized esports as a sport in 2017 during the 6th Olympic Summit. Furthermore, for the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, eSports was declared as an official medal sport. The IOC also confirmed that its inaugural Olympic Esports Week will take place in Singapore between in June 2023. A major player in e-sports consumption, China's actual e-sports sales revenues reached 83.44 billion yuan in 2018, surpassing Western Europe for the first time in 2019. China has now become the largest e-sports market in the world. Historically, globalization discussions have focused on traditional Olympic competitions, and research into the booming e-sports industry seems to be in its infancy. Consequently, the focus of this study is primarily globalization and Chinese e-sports policy, as well as its analysis from a national perspective. A majority of the discussion topics are centered on government agencies, for-profit companies, and non-profit organizations related to e-sports. Research methods used in this study included content analysis and semi-structured interviews. The purpose of this study is to examine the development of Chinese e-sports by applying the theoretical framework of globalization as a lens through which to examine the three responses of participation, passivity, and conflict in e-sports. As well as providing academic and theoretical contributions to the field of e-sports, the findings of this study will provide Asian governments with a reference to help them formulate relevant policies and strategies to cope with the challenges and opportunities presented by globalization of e-sports.
Sports makeup has become a trend in media culture. Many researchers indicated that sportswomen who chosen to wear make-up on the field have been viewed as a way to perform societal gender expectation (Bruce, 2016; Daniels, 2012; Jones & Greer, 2011; Krane, 2001). Moreover, the function of hashtags in sports social media has been connected with social expectations as well as keyword trends. The purpose of this study was to discover the trend of sports makeup in social media as well as to portray the representation of image in sportswomen in the use of hashtags. A qualitative content analysis was conducted in the study. Such hashtags as #sportsmakeup, #sportmakeup, #makeupsport, and #sportscosmetics were used, and a total of 7500+ posts were collected on Instagram (IG). Three major trends were emerged: 1) the idea of “makeup/cosmetics” as a symbolic representation of women while the term of “sport/sports” was seem to be functioned as adjective to provide more detail about women; 2) most of posts were related to new social media marketing as influencer marketing to advertise the cosmetics and care products in daily sports life; and 3) the sports characteristics, such as “sporty”, “fitness”, “muscle”, and “fitty”, were created instead of using “beauty”, “healthy”, “cutie” and “pretty” in the sports media culture. Therefore, sports makeup through hashtags on IG has played not only as a marketing tool linking to daily matter of living but also as a creation of new formulation of gender expectation in pop culture.
Researchers' focus on the gender issues in esports has mostly been about online harassment, bullying, etc. However, there are few discussions about how the structure of the industry influences gender issue in it. In traditional sports, such as baseball, football, basketball, we can easily see the gender inequity phenomenon, so what about in esports? In this article, I want to explain the reasons and conditions of gender inequity in esports industry from the perspective of gender division. The review reveals that gender division in esports is around four main findings namely: (1) misogyny in the esports is the main idea, (2) female esports teams are manipulated by the commercial logic of the capitalist structure, (3) there are expectations of gender division in esports industry, and (4) training and career path of esports players is gendered. Through this research, there are significant implications for female workers including players in esports industry, which reproduce patriarchal ideology and gender stereotypes.
The purpose of this study is to explore the media discourses from major Spanish news agencies regarding female soccer players during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. 32 male and 26 female soccer games were held from July 21st to August 8th in 2021. Data were collected from Agencia EFE, El País and Diario ABC using keywords such as Juegos Olímpicos (the Olympic Games), Tokio 2020 (Tokyo 2020) and fútbol (football/soccer). A total of 90 articles have been collected as of January 2023. Goffman’s (1974) framing theory was used as a framework to understand the implications of media discourses in the frame building and frame setting processes of portraying female soccer players. In doing so, media reports on male and female soccer games from 60 days prior to 60 days after the Olympics were analyzed through a corpus analysis (Vaughan & O'Keeffe, 2015). Male soccer game reports were collected in order to make comparisons on coverage, word frequency and tones. Preliminary findings show that in the frame building stage, female soccer players did not receive sufficient or proportionate media coverage compared to males. Male players obtained more than 90% of media coverage, while female ones only received 7.1%. In the frame setting stage, the representation of female players was more negative than their male counterpart, and the media reports tend to emphasize their femininity instead of their sport performance. Through such framing, media discourses contribute to the gender stereotyping in sports (Koivula, 1999). Implications and future research directions will be discussed.
During the last decade, football fans in Europe became more active and participated in different (symbolic) struggles for power in football and beyond. Nummerato (2018) compared fan activism in different European countries and detected both similarities and national singularities. This presentation aims to go a big deepeer and compare the reasons and dynamics of fan activism over a decade in two specific national settings: Germany and Ukraine.
The presentation’s evidence is based on an analysis of publicly available online documents, like the fanzine www.faszination-fankurve.de for Germany or ultras.org.ua for Ukraine. Furthermore, websites and social media channels of individual groups are used. Thus, fan activism from 2012 to 2022 is categorised and analysed based on reasons, tactics, structures, and spaces in which activism takes place.
In both countries, fans become increasingly visible in the public discourse. Two reasons are postulated for this development: Firstly, media outlets are more likely to report on fan activism since the public is primed for this phenomenon by previous protests. Secondly, a trend of PR-professionalisation is observed in the ultra groups themselves.
In Germany, fans mainly engage on the level of football governance, including a declared war on the national football federation. In Ukraine, fan activism is rather related to national politics. Also, here, fans try to increase their influence at the club level, too. The difference is among other things caused by the Russian occupation since 2014. As a result, fans' nationalist attitudes increased and several of them joined the nationalistic, eventually right-wing, Azov regiment.
This study focuses on the linkages between sport, development, and diplomacy in the South Korean context. Current approaches to the use of sport to achieve (social) development goals can be traced to the longstanding tradition of “sport for good” stemming from the 19th century British public school system. Korea’s initial involvement in sport for good was influenced with the first introduction of modern sport in the 19th century too. However, its first foray into sport for development in line with sovereign diplomatic efforts started with the development of modern Korea after Japanese rule ended in 1945. Focusing on the diplomatic roles played by sport during the period of national development, this study focuses its analysis on four critical stages: 1) Korea’s introductory steps into the global sporting world at events from 1945 to 1960; 2) Park Chung-hee’s Korean developmental state from 1961 to 1979; 3) Korea’s global coming out via the Seoul 1988 Olympics; and 4) Korea’s development cooperation efforts from 1991 to the present. Drawing on the conceptual frameworks of sport diplomacy, public diplomacy, and soft power, this analysis offers a comprehensive understanding of the tripartite blending of sport, diplomacy, and development at both the national and international levels, as well as of the historical transformation of Korean sport diplomacy during the course of Korea’s politically-guided development practice. This study will contribute to the ongoing discussion on alternative approaches to mainstream (Western) sport for development by offering new insights into Korea’s forthright approaches to diplomacy in the development context.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, there has been growing discussion of a ‘bicycle boom’ taking place around the world (Coulibaly, 2020). However, though a ‘bicycle boom’ may have occurred, critical analyses of cycling remains imperative, particularly since cycling may “reinforce the already existing social, spatial and racial fault lines within cities” (Doucet & Mazumder, 2020, para. 5). This is especially important as governments have historically favoured motorized transport (Porter, 2007), indicating there is a need to explore the policies that guide transportation development and infrastructure. Thus, the purpose of this presentation is to examine transportation policies in three different countries, Uganda, Nicaragua and Canada, specifically in relation to the ‘bicycle-for-development’ sector, whereby a number of organizations and local communities use the bicycle as a tool for addressing various development aims. In the first part of the presentation, we unpack the national and/or provincial laws associated with bicycling, including that of infrastructure, import and export laws, and ‘viewpoints’ of cycling by governments based on both grey literature and scholarly research. Second, we extend this overview of transportation policies with empirical data focused on the experiences of cyclists in each locality, and the noted benefits and challenges of bicycling and/for achieving social ‘development’ aims. Third, we discuss future research, policy, and practice in the BFD sector with a specific aim of enabling public advocacy by way of complementing policy with firsthand experiences and perspectives from cyclists ‘on-the-ground’.
Young males report the central role of sport in many areas of their lived experience: wellbeing, identity, belonging and community connection among them. The place of aggression in sport has also received much attention. This paper discusses research with 16–25-year-old males from diverse cultural and socio-economic backgrounds in Australia, focusing on how sport has enabled them to learn controlled aggression, and the extent to which sport has fostered an environment for developing knowledge and skills that are transferable into areas of political engagement, social activism and redressing inequities in both the sporting and broader lifeworlds. Exploring potentially paradoxical themes around responsibility, leadership, hard work, respect, fairness, reason and passion, this paper concludes from the research that there are parallel pathways of learning occurring for young males through sport that facilitate the development of controlled aggression and its infusion into political ideation and action.
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The anxiety associated with public locker rooms have proven to be one of the most substantive barriers to engagement in sport and physical exercise for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (Haegele & Maher, 2022). However, little is known about existing and/or potential accommodations to help improve the locker room experience for people with ASD. This presents a troubling dichotomy: On the one hand, both strength and endurance exercise has been shown to generate improvements for persons with ASD in terms of regulating their emotions and reducing episodes of aggression and rage (Sowa & Meulenbroek, 2012; Tse, 2020). On the other hand, the unpredictability of locker rooms (e.g., new people, nude bodies, uncertainty about locker availability, etc.) renders engaging in regular physical activity exceedingly difficult for persons with ASD (Dowdy & Tincani, 2020), especially for those without the luxury of a home gym or other resources to help relieve this situational anxiety. This presentation focuses on a significant barrier to physical activity for people with ASD: the locker room. We explore the following two research questions: 1) What barriers exist within the locker room for people with ASD? 2) What adaptive measures might be implemented to help improve the locker room experience for people with ASD? Our primary methodology for this study consisted of a formal scoping review of existing literature on locker rooms, ASD, and environmental adaptations following the six-step framework laid out by Arksey and O’Malley (2005)—the gold standard in scoping review methodologies.
This presentation intends to analyze the links that Paralympic athletes and their staff members establish between the Paralympic athletes’ selfpresentation as cyborgs or supercrips and their access to sponsors. Based on an interview survey of 15 Paralympic athletes and 42 members of their staff, we will show that not all Paralympic athletes can be associated with inspirational cyborg or supercrip figures. Indeed, according to the Paralympic athletes and staff members interviewed, some discriminating criteria prevail for sponsors in their attribution of sponsorship contracts. Some Paralympic athletes report numerous situations in which they are perceived and presented in a miserabilist perspective of pity remote from any sponsorship perspective. We will then analyze the ableist dimension of the intelligibility frameworks through which Paralympic athletes claim to be recognized by sponsors. Finally, we will show how this type of recognizability continues to exclude and invisibilize Paralympic athletes who are the least inspiring for nondisabled people. Therefore, it appears that there are inequalities between Paralympic athletes in their access to sponsors according to the inspiration they arouse in non-disabled people.
The aim of this study was to understand Deaf as agents who had the potential to diverge from the dominant discourse, such as suppression and helplessness, by exploring the negotiation processes between Deaf culture and hearing culture through the experiences of Deaf athletes. As a theoretical framework, the concept of cultural hybridity presented by Bhabha (1994) provided a basis for analysis and discussion. To collect and analyze the experiences of Deaf athletes narrative research methods were applied. The researcher conducted in-depth interviews with 2 Deaf athletes and all interviews were recorded and transcribed for narrative analysis materials. The experience stories of the study participants were analyzed based on three-dimensional narrative inquiry spaces and four different directions of experience presented by Clandinin & Connelly (2000). The findings of the intersectionality of Deaf athletes with hearing and disability sport cultures reveal three characteristics: (1) Concealed merits in the hearing world, (2) Mechanisms of exclusion from the interest group, (3) Disability hierarchy pyramid in disability sport. It is important to note, however, that the dominant and vertical structure of disability sports did not colonize the identities of Deaf athletes. A hybrid identity and the resistance to forming an alternative culture were depicted as follows: (1) Athlete as an agent, (2) Distorted hegemony based on solidarity with others, (3) Possibility of diversity beyond meritocracy.
While the multifactoriality of Olympic performance is well documented, there is little work that specifically addresses the factors of Paralympic performance. In this paper, we will present i) the performance strategies implemented by Paralympic athletes; and ii) the variety and complexity of these experiences, which are at the interface of high-level sport practice, but also of impairment and social representations of disability. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with athletes with motor and/or sensory impairments who were involved in a selection project for the Tokyo Paralympic Games. The analysis of the results reveals i) that the mobilisation of the different factors of performance intensifies among all athletes but also that it evolves according to the time of life; ii) that athletes develop strategies of adaptation and/or overcompensation of their deficiencies with the aim of performing; and iii) that the social representations of disabilities play an essential role in the identity constructions of high-level disabled athletes.
Since 1970, the Arctic Winter Games have been bringing together young people from across the circumpolar north. This sporting and cultural gathering prioritises sharing and exchange between young people and promotes indigenous cultural and sporting practices (Dene Games, Arctic sports). As such, the Games’ purpose is to contribute to building an Arctic community. Furthermore, via their educational objectives and social aims, their organizers intend to give them a role as an actor in the development of the territories.
We will first briefly present our research (theoretical framework, methodology and main results). This will allow us to think about the idea of “thinking about major sports events differently” (Gouguet, 2015). We will thus discuss the dimensions of heritage and legacy, environmental responsibility or local development issues, that certainly seems imperative nowadays for the major sports events (and officially integrated in the Arctic Winter Games) but difficult to put into practice. Finally, the study of this case will give us the opportunity to understand the interest of the institutional partners of the project and the interest it has for civil society stakeholders. We will conclude with some reflections about the way in which the reflections based on this research can be used to train social science students interested in sport.
Peripheral countries hosted the main sporting events in the 21st century, we can say that these countries had a strategic interest in organizing mega-events. This study will analyze the way in which the peripheral countries used the mega sporting events as a discourse to expand their political influence and as public diplomacy. As objectives we will seek to: discuss the concept of diplomacy of sporting events in the context of global society and its limits; understand how the western media evaluated mega-events; analyze the speeches of the selected newspapers to understand how the countries were portrayed during the sporting event in terms of culture, event infrastructure and political values. It is expected to discuss with other studies the reasons/consequences that led countries to host these mega-events and what are the interests of large federations and international confederations in choosing them. With the exception of Qatar, for which we have not yet collected data, we will seek to take stock of recent research on tangible and intangible legacies and, especially, the problems faced by these countries in hosting mega sporting events. Some problems were raised to deepen this theme: there are academic discussions about international federations and confederations choosing these countries because they are fragile democracies, therefore, easier for legislative changes; locations with endemic corruption, which would facilitate agreements with global partners and the local political elite; particularly, we are interested in interpreting the first World Cup in an Arab country.
Since its introduction by Roland Robertson’s seminal work in 1992, the concept of glocalisation has been widely adopted and discussed across a variety of disciplines including the sociology of sport. In their conceptual paper, Giulianotti and Robertson (2012) identified mega-events – along with sports, business and identity – as one of the four key fields of inquiry into glocalisation within sport studies. While a few scholars such as Brannagan and Giulianotti (2015) and Giulianotti et al. (2015) referred to the concept in their studies of sports mega-events, the application has yet been fully explored to date. Sports mega-events offer a strategic site to analyse forms and flows of both globalisation and localisation through various processes, representations and interactions. As such, the paper examines the utility of glocalisation as a central theoretical framework to investigate the scope and intricacy of glocality manifested through sports mega-events. In doing so, it outlines key aspects, institutions and processes for conceptualising glocalisation of sports mega-events and identifies the future research directions. This includes the linkage of glocalisation with cosmopolitan nationalism – a framework that captures interactions between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, and more broadly the global and the local.
COVID-19’s impact on physical activity in local neighbourhoods has been significant given that many communities have had to severely limit access to or completely close physical activity spaces in efforts to help reduce transmission risk. As a direct consequence, some local governments in Canada turned their attentions to re/organizing infrastructure such as major public roads and streets into free, accessible active transportation-only spaces for residents. The City of Toronto introduced ActiveTO in the Summer 2020 as one such initiative. In this paper, we highlight key findings from a study examining the changing representation of ActiveTO’s benefits for residents in Canadian media between 2020 and 2022. In the early days of ActiveTO, it was framed as helping residents feel a sense of normalcy through freedom of movement. However, over time, its benefit to the city became more questioned and contested as industry and private sector stakeholders opposed the regular closure of major streets on the grounds of how they understood the return to normalcy as freedom of business. Throughout these various framings, the ways in which ActiveTO missed opportunities to attend to existing geographic inequity in physical activity spaces across the city remained relatively unaddressed. Although ActiveTO held (and still holds) potential for the reclamation of public space for physical activity, it did not (and still does not) improve access to safe, free, and accessible physical activity space for all residents, particularly those groups and neighbourhoods that bore (and still bear) a disproportionate burden of illness and hardship due to COVID-19.
This paper takes as its point of departure how semi-professional sportswomen talk about their own alcohol use. Drawing on semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with 21 sportswomen in three elite codes in Australian women’s sport: rugby league, netball and Australian Rules Football, the paper describes how these women narrated their own drinking, and its relationship to their sporting lives, throughout COVID-19. The cancellation of women’s sport in Australia meant the cancellation of income and identity. This financial and social precarity hit particularly hard those sportswomen who were vulnerable to some of the problems associated with alcohol use. The key themes articulated by the women of self-loathing and self-reproach, uncertainty and despair, and secrecy and surveillance surrounding their own drinking informs the paper’s analysis and shapes the broader recommendations for player wellbeing and welfare that stem from the data.
The system of settler colonialization in Canada has made Indigenous, racialized, 2SLGBTQ+, and disabled community members increasingly vulnerable to poverty, violence, and policing. The (post-)COVID-19 pandemic and climate crisis context has created an urgent need to support community members who are experiencing the exacerbated effects of inequality that have preceded the pandemic. Although there has been a surge in mutual aid organizing as a response to the pandemic; Black, Indigenous, and other racialized communities have been practicing forms of community care that resist colonial and capitalist systems, preceding the pandemic (de Loggans, 2021). This presentation draws from a participatory project with a Toronto-based non-profit organization (NPO) that facilitates resource deliveries to vulnerable community members, by bicycle. This presentation discusses the ways in which a bicycle-focused NPO facilitated community care within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Research colleagues in this study embodied three key mutual aid values: 1) reallocating resources; 2) skill-sharing; and 3) ensuring community members thrive (de Loggans, 2021). Drawing from Spade’s (2020) work on mutual aid, this presentation explores the potential for using bicycles to build ‘new social relations centered in solidarity’ (p. 9). Further, the discursive narrative of ‘suffering’ often associated with racialized communities (Tuck & Yang, 2014) was challenged by research colleagues. Indeed, these research colleagues demonstrated how they, themselves, thrived and experienced joy out of engaging in mutual aid activities. This finding echoes decolonial feminist works that prioritize liberation through being in relation with one another (Lugones, 2010).
Like many urban centres across Europe, Liverpool was hard hit by the socio-economic realities of government austerity and the Covid-19 pandemic. To help prevent the city’s foodbanks from emptying, Fans Supporting Foodbanks was set up in 2015 to raise funds and groceries in the battle against food insecurity. Established by normally opposed fan groups in Liverpool, the concept has grown, with similar initiatives being set up across the UK and Europe with help and advice from the Liverpool original. Spanning the past 2 years across multiple sites in Liverpool, the UK and mainland Europe, this research uncovered and learnt from the origins and motivations of the movement utilizing ethnographic and participatory methods. The research contributes towards strengthening the practice of fan groups as catalysts for progressive social change in the UK and overseas. Written and presented through a critical theoretical frame, this paper presents a multidimensional image of football/soccer fan activism across Europe. The research reflects the shifting face of fan activism in response to growing rates of poverty in Europe while building theoretical knowledge on the counter-hegemonic potential of civil society activism and resistance through sport.
The underrepresentation of women coaches worldwide is a significant issue facing sport. While research shows women coaches bring many benefits to the sport environment, significant barriers preclude women from coaching, including gender role assumptions, experiences of harassment, a male dominated environment, competing domestic responsibilities, low pay or an unclear career pathway, lack of self-efficacy, and a lack of programs designed to mentor and develop women coaches (LaVoi & Dutove, 2012; Kerr & Banwell, 2016; Norman, 2013). To address these barriers and increase the number of women in coaching, a Canadian community soccer club implemented a three-year pilot program designed to provide strategic supports, including, organization-funded coach training, a social support network, and free childcare to encourage girls and women to participate and develop as coaches. A mixed-methods evaluation included 43 participants for the pre-participation survey (42 identified as women, 1 identified as nonbinary), 16-48 years of age, 17 of whom participated in focus groups, and 17 of whom completed the post-participation survey to assess the effectiveness of the program, the perceived outcomes of participation, and recommendations for improving the program. Results demonstrated the program is successful in recruiting and developing women coaches by alleviating key barriers through the provision of informational (e.g., communication with participants), emotional (e.g., community through participation), and instrumental (e.g., financial and childcare) supports. This presentation will discuss successes in program design and delivery, the perceived impacts of participation, and the importance of this program for advancing women and girls in sport.
This paper examines how international discourse on sex testing is localized in South Korea and used as a means of policing athletes’ bodies in local sports leagues. Since the World Athletics and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) instituted sex testing in the 1940s, it has provoked a persistent debate on its aim, necessity, effects, standards, legitimacy, and practices in public as well as academia. While the majority of feminist sociologists highlight the imperialistic procedure of sex testing which mainly targets athletes of color in female leagues by reinforcing Western norms of femininity and race all over the world, little scholarly attention has been paid to its local effect; how it affects a local sports culture and gender discourse which envision and regulate athletes' bodies in local leagues. Park Eun-Sun, a female soccer star in South Korea, was subjected to sex testing to play in the national female soccer league in 2013. Sex testing has never been officially practiced or legitimized in South Korea's sports history, and the affair brought controversy to the nation. Combining content and textual analysis including 513 news articles, I conducted a discourse analysis of the Park Eun-Sun affair in the South Korean media. Findings demonstrated that international sex testing is localized through patriarchal nationalism in South Korea. In this process, Korean athlete’s body is reimagined along with the Western norms of race and femininity by using abstract terms such as hormone level and testosterone level.
Despite numerous interventions for equality between women and men in sports, the number of women sport coaches has not increased. Even though women’s participation in sports and qualification for coaching has increased, the representation of women in sports coaching has rather declined (La Voi, 2014). That said, scholars argue that the underrepresentation of women in the coaching role is a cultural problem related to male dominance, rather than related to women’s personal qualification deficits (Kane, 2016; Murray, 2022). Thus, the overall aim of this study was to explore team sport coaches’ perceptions and understandings of the underrepresentation of women as floorball coaches within organized sport in Sweden, and to discuss actions required to facilitate increased representation of women in team sport coaching. Data were gathered through semi-structured focus group interviews with 16 sport coaches, 8 women and 8 men. The results show how sociocultural patterns of interactions, behaviour and perceptions related to the gender of coaches significantly influence women’s opportunities, difficulties, and choices to become a team sport coach and how the male norms are maintained. Furthermore, the study highlights how both women and men perceive that it is easier for a man to become and act as a coach in a male-dominated leadership culture.
Video Assistant Referee (VAR) has been implemented in numerous football leagues in Europe. The Norwegian Football Federation aims to implement VAR in both the men’s and women’s elite divisions, however, it has only been confirmed for the men’s division. This is also the case for many other countries. The gendered differences in the implementation of VAR may negatively impact the professionalization of women’s football. Gender differences in access to novel sports technologies such as VAR may also have (un)intended equity consequences considering that men tend to referee both male and female sports, while women referees are often limited to women’s sports. This study examines the research question: (a) how is the implementation of VAR gendered in Norwegian elite football? This is investigated through interviews with Norwegian referees and VAR instructors working within the VAR implementation process in Norwegian elite football. The interviews were conducted during the VAR-training of Norwegian referees in 2022. The analysis show that the referees do not believe that their role will change after VAR is implemented. Consequently, neither referees nor instructors believe elite football refereeing will become more available to women, even with the inclusion of a technology which increases the number of match referees from 4 to 6. Recruitment to elite refereeing and access to VAR-training appears as a closed process involving vague criteria, resulting in an overweight of men being selected. Finally, male referees perceive VAR as a gender-neutral technological tool which male and female referees have equal possibilities to learn and use.
Within the contexts of New Zealand and Norway, where an increased number of private actors in sport are observed, we ask the research question: What should we call a young football player, based on their relationship with the organization that provide sport for them? We apply an institutional perspective on neoliberalism and a case study design with qualitative data from various actors’ internet sites. Temporary analysis from football – rugby in New Zealand and soccer in Norway – reveals a rise of the market sector’s influence on mainstream sport (which in these countries is traditionally provided by voluntary and democratic organizations) and a process of commodification of young athletes. More specifically, with more private actors in the football field, the athlete can be considered (i) a customer that pay for services (i.e. training sessions); and/or (ii) have a contracted relationship with an organization (be employed and make a living – sometimes big money – out of being and athlete); (iii) the athlete can also – due to the same contract with an organization – be considered a product for sale and purchase. These observations stand in contrast to the view of an athlete as a member with democratic rights in organizations and counting on voluntarily conducted activity provision to play their sport; and in contrast to viewing the athlete as a citizen of the public sector with the inherited rights and duties.
For the first time, the East Asian Youth Games, formerly the East Asian Games, were scheduled to be held in Taichung of Taiwan in 2019 following four years of preparation. However, Taichung's hosting rights were revoked by the East Asian Olympic Committee on July 24, 2018. Why was the 2019 EAYG - one of the few international sporting events in which Taiwan won the bid - cancelled? Did the preparations run behind schedule? Were there any other factors involved? This study conducted its analysis of the issue using Kingdon's Multiple Streams Model, which depicts the interplay of three streams - problems, policies and politics. Semi-structured interviews were held with 15 senior members of EAYG bidding team, EAYG Organizing Committee, EAOC, Taichung City Government, Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee and the group of the Name Rectification Campaign. According to this research, we found that the Chinese Olympic Committee has exercised de facto control over the EAOC. The so-called Olympic protocol, which has been in effect for 40 years, laid the foundation for China's mechanism of mutual trust with Taiwan. It is imperative to note that Taiwan's internal attempts to break away from the Olympic protocol negatively affected China's perception of Taiwan as a mega-event host. In 2018, a convergence of three streams on the Olympic protocol issue led to the demise of the 2019 EAYG. This study presents a unique case analysis that may serve as an experience and a historical lesson for other countries seeking to host mega sporting events.
Wellbeing has emerged as a central feature of social life. By virtue of its intersection with politics, economics, health, education, and consumer lifestyle – wellbeing is now a key concept within an ever-expanding network of discourses and policies linked to state policy, power and resources. This presentation explores the contested terrain of wellbeing by examining it in relation to various emerging politics, complexities and contradictions. More specifically, the essay: (1) briefly describes the historical origins and development of wellbeing; (2) discusses how it has been reconceptualised within the context of neoliberalism; and (3) introduces the concept of “wellbeing washing” within state and other institutional structures and policies including those associated with sport. The paper concludes by reflecting on the increasingly problematic nature of wellbeing.
Athlete maltreatment has become “one of the greatest concerns faced by governing bodies, authorities and practitioners in sport” (Stirling, 2009, p. 1901). Yet, despite this concern, maltreatment scandals continue to occur globally, with many countries remaining committed to elite sport systems for ideological and political purposes. To date, the most dominant causes of athlete maltreatment have been identified as stemming from: (1) the culture of organised sport; (2) sport organisation lack of oversight; (3) limited legal rights of athletes; and, (4) the fragmented system for addressing maltreatment (Donnelly & Kerr, 2018; Kerr et al., 2019). However, one often neglected source of maltreatment is the distinct institutionalised instruments within the elite sport system itself. In combination, these instruments operate within a ‘policy mix’ that may contribute to sustaining institutional structures and systems (Capano & Howlett, 2020). This research focuses on how policy instruments shape/reinforce the interrelated routines and practices of athletes, coaches, and administrators, but also the wider governing system that may facilitate maltreatment. Employing a multi-method approach, three consequences emerged. First, the instruments in the system are connected and complement each other to maintain the existing hierarchical structure. Second, four key instruments of the system and their potential role in contributing to maltreatment are discussed. Third, the interaction of instruments leading to maltreatment is examined. Overall, this study suggests that policy instruments reinforce the pursuit of national success, operating both via a ‘logic of consequence’ (e.g., salary negotiation) and a ‘logic of appropriateness’ (e.g., there can be no alternative).
Boxing has been the subject of an ongoing debate of its effects on the physical and mental health of participants as well as the legitimization and glamourization of physical violence which may result in the exploitation of men and women from vulnerable socioeconomic communities. To the contrary, advocates argue that boxing provides a healthy lifestyle alternative to the appeals of antisocial behaviour. More specifically the boxing gym is seen as a safe therapeutic space for men and women to challenge hegemonic masculinity, managing emotions as well as effecting change. The purpose of this phenomenological study is to contextualise the debate through the voices of local boxers. Utilizing interviews and thematic analysis, the following questions will be explored: What does boxing mean to them? Has it played a role in negotiating life challenges? What issues they have had to counter inside and outside the ring? How would they like to be received by boxing administrators and society? The researcher’s activism will take the form of awareness sessions to pave the way for discussions and negotiations with boxing officials to build and improve on existing interactions.
This paper seeks to shine a sociological light on the recent and rapid rise of LIV – a new professional golf tour, financed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, that is causing considerable concern in the established golf profession – the PGA. The paper frames the PGA as a longstanding profession and ‘moral community’ (Durkheim, 1952), which saw its position, until recently, as dominant, exclusive and solid – and furthermore, as one that exercised exclusive occupational closure regarding both established and future members of the elite competitive golfing profession. The paper additionally follows the seminal work of Abbott (1988) who introduces the concept of ‘bump-chains’ as a means of creating space for new entrants to dislodge professions from their position of exclusivity in the market. This paper argues that LIV is seeking to dislodge the PGA as the proprietor and guardian of competitive professional golf through a sustained, brute-force ‘bump-chain’ incursion. In formulating and evidencing this argument, the paper reviews other recent ‘bump-chain’ attacks on established sporting professions, namely the failed ‘European Super League’ attempt of 2021 (Brannagan et al, 2022), in seeking to understand how and why LIV has gained a foothold – and continues to make territorial advances – into the formerly exclusive territory of competitive professional golf. The paper concludes by assessing the likely outcome(s) of this jurisdictional contest and consider the prospective longevity of LIV as a credible, workable alternative to the PGA and European (aka DP World) golf tours.
The socio-economic and socio-cultural situation of a particular athlete affects their concept of empowerment and fulfillment, especially in the sporting world. Bodybuilding, which is a non mainstream sport in developing countries like the Philippines, shows this dynamic, especially in training, coaching, and engagement in fitness and physique sports by women. Even though there are a number of diverse studies on female bodybuilders, mainly in developed countries, there are no extensive case studies with a focus on other parts of the world, characterized by more traditional gender roles. Through this study, we would like to investigate how female bodybuilders in developing countries shape their identity, ideals, and goals for their ideal body and health, among gender relations that are different from ‘Western’ contexts. It will be discussed as well if their situations really empower them, given that most of the gatekeepers in the sport are males. This includes how acceptable their bodies are within their subculture. Using case studies of female professional bodybuilders in the Philippines, the author will provide diverse narratives of female bodybuilders and look at these through the lens of cultural relativism and gender theory. Through this, it can provide a better perspective on how athletes process their situations which can be empowering or conforming rooted in different hegemonic factors.
High school baseball players first appeared in professional league in Taiwan as early as 1998. However, it was not an official and systemized entry for them until 2013 when the first draft for high school players came into play. Compared to most players who announced their eligibility in college, these 18-year-old players took a big gamble on their career decisions. There are growing numbers in high school draftees being waived from professional teams in the recent years. These players took the “shortcut” to pursue their dream yet ended prematurely. After a decade in practice, it is a critical time to revisit the draft system per se and the people involved. This essay examines the exist of these players and the failed draft system from three layers of perspectives: personal and family socio-economic status of these players from the micro-level; the draft system sanctioned by the professional league, mandatory military and other domestic sport policies from the meso-level; and the dynamics of global baseball from the macro level. The findings highlight how the socio-economic status of high school baseball players affects their willingness to get into the draft and the draft system does not have positive development to protect players’ futures. An understanding of how the effects of changing policies on mandatory military for high school players and domestic sport policies hinder these young players from returning to baseball. With these findings in mind, the league should ease players’ career dilemmas and construct a better draft system for them.
Indigenous baseball players play an important role in Taiwan baseball. In Taiwanese professional baseball, more than 40% of the players are indigenous. This study examines the relationship between the Taiwanese indigenous’s socio-economic status and baseball participation. The research methods are semi-structured interviews and participatory observations on 15 high school new graduate indigenous baseball players in the Taoyuan City of Taiwan to analyze participants’ family economic, social status, and power classes. This study inducted the reasons for initially participating in high school baseball and combined the research findings with social class theory. The results showed five main reasons for initially participating in baseball: interest, family influence, poor academic performance, influence from peers, and failure of family members to take care of them. In addition, there are four main reasons for joining a high school baseball team: high school coach invitations, family recommendations, team performance considerations, and influence from peers. This study further implemented a social class analysis and found that all participants were from the middle and lower classes, which is an important finding of this study. The findings highlight how high school baseball players becoming professional league players affects their family environment, and this phenomenon is widespread in low socio-economic status—an understanding of how the effects of social class for high school players participate in baseball.
A foundational purpose of the sociology of sport is “to critically examine the role, function and meaning of sport in the lives of people and the societies they form” (ISSA, 2016). From theoretical perspectives borne within the sociology of sport, sports are substantive cultural experiences that can advance diverse social goals, including responding to the needs/interests of student groups marginalized by race, ethnicity, and other social identities. To this end, I have investigated the impact of sports as educational resources to support science curriculum development and to enhance classroom experiences for culturally diverse students historically underserved in science education (Author, 2022). Further, I have applied insights gained from this research in teaching within teacher education. As such, my research and teaching regarding the sociology of sport have engaged two local communities – school-aged students who experienced classroom instruction framed around sport; and teachers and teacher candidates in my courses who learned how to teach science using sport. These efforts in theorizing and implementation have led to substantive and practical research and teaching outcomes that are relevant to both student and teacher communities as these efforts respond to calls for equitable and culturally-relevant classroom instruction and school experiences, both nationally and throughout local communities in the U.S. (Gallard et al., 2014; Mensah, 2011). Limitations experienced and to be addressed include navigating racialized and/or deficit-based ideologies about marginalized student groups regarding sports, such as Black students and students with disabilities; and responding to the diverse interests and attitudes of students towards sports.
Even though sport has been characterized by scoring higher, winning against the other team, improving performance that are highly based on competition, there are other ways to conceptualize the nature and purpose of sports. Especially, folk physical education and activity hold a significant potential to challenge the Anglo-Saxon sport culture and organization. Following Alexey Kylasov's conceptualization of 'ethnosport' (2015), this paper looks at the sportization of traditional games and physical activity using oil wrestling as an example. The aim of this paper is to understand ethnosports' resistance potential against the standardized, white, Western perception of sports. In this paper, I argue that ethnosports can be a site for celebrating cultural and ethnic diversity and embodying local and cultural styles of movement. In the face of globalization of sport cultures, ethnosports are fundamental in preserving traditional physical activities and movement. The study of ethnosports is crucial for preserving the richness of meanings, movements and understandings around physical activity and sports.
Persons with a migration background (PMM) are underrepresented in German sports clubs, hindering the integrative potential of organised sports activities. This phenomenon has been explained in past research mostly through individual factors such as socialisation or personal preference. This research project aims to investigate underrepresentation from a structural perspective, filling a research gap by postulating discrimination (operationalised via the concept of Group-Focused Enmity [GFE, Zick et al., 2008]) as a barrier that facilitates an exclusive climate in sports clubs.
To do so, the author conducts a quantitative survey, linking the extent of GFE in sports clubs to the extent of integration of PMM in such clubs. These findings are triangulated with qualitative research. PMM are addressed directly in qualitative interviews to learn about differences between their demands from sports clubs and the reality they experience in this setting. Thus, recommendations for action can be formulated to achieve positive social change in local communities by understanding the needs of the people in these communities.
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 returns to the forefront of francophone culture. While Jos, the person, died in Montreal, his legend lived on in the province of Quebec and the Ottawa Valley. Montferrand was, after all, a lumberjack and a raft man who worked around Bytown (which became Ottawa) in the 1830s. Most importantly, he was a fighter; both instigator and protector. How is it that his legend lives on? This presentation discusses how communities turn to the representations of heroes to understand their history and their existence. From 1960 and onwards in a changing context with different entrenched social values, Montferrand returns as something more fluid, changing. What changes is how he is represented. For the Outaouais region, he is the manly worker. For the Quebec nation, he symbolizes the necessity to establish itself in a growing country. For the francophone minority of Ontario, he is a protector, a symbol of victory in front of a lasting historical struggle. Jos Montferrand is a representation that changes through time and between communities. Yet, he remains a useful symbol for all surrounding Ottawa Valley communities and beyond.
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 traditional-historical? What are the non-sportive underpins of those rivalries?
Despite numerous attempts of both qualitative or quantitative research on football fans all around the world, no comprehensive study on perception of club football rivalries has been ever conducted using the triangulation of both qualitative and quantitative research methods and techniques.
Adopted methodological framework that includes qualitative component (series of ca. 100 in-depth interviews with football fans from Central-Eastern Europe, mainly of Legia Warszawa from Poland, Slavia Praha from Czechia, Slovan Bratislava from Slovakia and Ferencvaros from Hungary) and qualitative component (CAWI questionnaire open to 20 000+ club football fans from Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary) has never been used in that scale before to research football fans.
Previous stages of this 4-years research project has been presented and discussed at the World Congresses of Sociology of Sport in Lausanne (2018), Otago (2019) and Tubingen (2022), covering theoretical and methodological issues, initial results of the qualitative study and framework of quantitative research.
The main impact of this paper is a demographic profile of club football fans in Central-Eastern Europe that also includes relevant data on their socio-political views which can be presented in comparative manner.
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 behaviours of a young person’s use of the Welsh language within education and community sport settings through using ethos and Bourdieu’s theory of linguistic capital and habitus as frameworks. Through empirical, qualitative data, our research shows that they are key difficulties associated with changing the linguistic ethos of community sport from an ‘English speaking one’ to a ‘Welsh speaking one’. Furthermore, the ‘power’ of teachers, language legitimacy, availability and ability of Welsh speakers, and language courtesy contribute to the social and cultural mechanisms of language use. We found that intended and/or experienced ethos largely depends on individual and collective ethos within the two social settings (school and community), and that habitus, norms and expectations play a critical role in the legitimacy and capital of language. We conclude that Welsh is not considered a legitimate community sport language in the Anglo-dominant case study area of Wales and accentuate that normalising the language is crucial to achieve the Welsh Government’s goal of a million Welsh speakers by 2050.
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 labor, and distribution of resources in policy implementation, thus arguably vital in the construction of appropriate practices. To address this gap, the aim of this study is to explore how school leaders’ actions influence the transformation of practices and beliefs within PE. Conducting semi-structured interviews with 13 school leaders, the author examines what types of institutional work school leaders engage in as they navigate government-initiated policy. The analysis reveals that school leaders engage in structural work, operational work, conceptual work, and relational work when navigating government-initiated policy. The results indicate that most of the power to shape the implementation process is passed on to PE teachers. This means that even though school leaders are the ones in possession of strategic resources and other forms of power they might not be the ones making significant impact on practices and beliefs within PE. The theoretical significance of these findings lies in their potential to shed light on how transformation processes are manifested and their impact on institutionalization. In practice, knowledge about how ideas and practices guide future decisions can be used in efforts to support those working in and/or with PE, struggling to develop the subject.
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 purpose of this presentation is to interrogate the organizational transformations associated with the shift in management of (un)ethical behaviour that is currently taking place in sport. We do this by exploring the ‘sport integrity officer’ as an emerging institutional role located in broader integrity governance frameworks.
Relying on data from interviews with 37 employees in Swedish sport who are variously involved in what we term ‘ethics-work’, we convey an analysis of the nature and organizational implications of the sport integrity officer role. Our analysis shows that role prescriptions are underpinned by a logic of standardisation, specialisation and professionalisation, and that they centre on clarification of the mandates, responsibilities, competencies, and modus operandi associated with “reactive case management”.
One important organizational implication of this role construction is that favourable role performance come to be about building procedural legitimacy and evaluating the internal effectiveness of the system, rather than its external effects on ethical behaviour. Thus, while ethics management systems enable sport’s underbelly to be exposed and the severity of the ethical breaches to be properly acknowledged, they also produce a fragmentation that implies that ethics work becomes someone’s, rather than everyone’s, responsibility.
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 and social justice and an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusivity in sport – targets that we argue have been missed by many sport governing bodies and federations.
The first phase of our research was designed primarily as a thought experiment with the “if we build it, will they come?” approach at the centre of our inquiry. Our next phase, which will be the basis of this presentation, will explore the first steps of something more tangible. We will begin with historical precedents for building new sport organizations, exploring how the CAS and WADA were developed from within existing global sport governing bodies. We will then show our preliminary results from a survey of a diverse pool of sport governance experts and scholars. We seek to gauge the interest of the broader sport sociology community for, amongst other things, whether or not this new organization should be built; what issues the community sees within existing sport governance; and the possibility of forming working groups to help develop the organization.
As we have stated from the start, we know that if we build it, they might not come, but it is certainly better to try.
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 analyse both the structure and content of the main sport platforms (DAZN, fubo.tv, RDS, TSN and TVA Sport). Digital and social media are transforming the sports media dynamic in many ways in Canada and elsewhere. Hence, new digital environments are laying the groundwork for a complex and fragmented process involving new business models, new platforms, and new arrangements between the media, sport, and entertainment industries (Hutchins and Rowe, 2012; López-González et al. 2017; Meese et al, 2006).
In this presentation, we identify the main Canadian players of the media sport content economy and develop a macro analysis . Our analysis aims to show that, while digital media offer new terrains for the renewal of practices in the production and distribution, the boundaries between new and mainstream media are rather fluid as they extend reach into each other’s territory. Our analysis highlights lines of continuity and rupture from linear to over-the top television sport in Canada.
Our analytical themes include : digital turn of Major League Sport; sport platform politics; limited free access; internationalisation ; diversification of content; language differences in the Canadian context.
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 marking history more today than yesterday? Does it suffice to break a record through a result? Or rather, must you break a social barrier (becoming the first athlete of a specific social category to do so)? To answer these questions, we analyzed 758 newspaper and magazine articles from Europe (L’Équipe and Le Monde) and North America (USA Today and Sports Illustrated) from the last three decades (2003; 2010; 2020). Our study has shown that: 1) As time passes, more sports history is made; 2) Individual performances mark sports history above collective performances; 3) There has been a growth in recent sporting history of social dimensions. Thus, we do not mark sports history independently of the society in which we live. Indeed, to mark sports history is to mark the normative, social, and cultural history of a society at a specific time. The emphasis on individual performances reinforces the myth of the democratic ideal of sport (Queval, 2004), and the breaking of social barriers (gender, ethnic origin, etc.) demonstrates modern concerns for inclusion and the fight against discrimination in Western societies.
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 these stories, critique institutions and call for social change continue to bear disproportionate personal, social and economic risk to challenge the morally good image of sport and safeguard people in the process - calling us to consider the safeguarding role of sports journalists. Despite existing research exploring the experiences of athletes, bystanders, coaches, parents, sport administrators, sport psychology consultants and other practitioners (i.e., medical doctors), sports journalists have not yet been explicitly conceptualized as safeguarding agents. As key cultural actors capable of making issues visible and signifying actions needed to prevent maltreatment, this research sought to explore sports journalists’ experiences of covering athlete maltreatment. A qualitative, constructionist approach was employed through semi-structured interviews with sports journalists in North America. Engaging in reflexive thematic analysis led to the generation of two main themes; journalistic implications of social justice orientations in sport and society, and safeguarding people and their stories. The findings highlight the process and personal and professional challenges of bringing these cases to light, and that the risks are not the same for everyone - further supporting the call for shared responsibility to effectively safeguard athletes.
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 leadership/governance is missing. Such a review could contribute to an improved understanding of the workings of gender/ gender power relations by providing an in-depth discussion of dominant theoretical perspectives within the field and highlight gaps in these perspectives. We present a review of how the gendering of positions of leadership in sport organizations has been theorized in leading sport sociology journals between 2015 and 2021 and chapters in edited books (2017-2022) that have an empirical sociological focus. We discovered 44 such papers/chapters and mapped their theoretical lens. We discuss the contribution that the use of different theoretical approaches drawn upon in these papers has made to understanding gender inclusion within sport organizations and suggest other theoretical lenses that could be used to provide new insight into organizational practices that contribute to the production of gender inequity and exclusion in sport organizations.
Women face several challenges in elite sports around the world. A few of these challenges are gender stereotypes, the combination of motherhood and elite sports, fewer resources and equipment, and the lack of opportunities for women to hold managerial positions (Bowes et al., 2022; Carson et al., 2018; Tjønndal, 2019). Women in elite sports in Islamic nations face broader limitations than those in non-Islamic nations (Sadeghi et al., 2018). Yet, in the last decade, Iranian women in elite sports have achieved significant success at the international level.
Despite the challenges in gathering information about the conditions of elite female sports in Iran, this qualitative study sought to obtain a realistic and unfiltered perspective of Iranian women's experiences in elite sports through an interpretive phenomenological approach. We selected female athletes, coaches, referees, and managers who had previously participated in Olympic, World, and Asian events through purposive sampling for unstructured, in-depth interviews. Four main themes emerged from the analysis of Iranian participants' lived experiences of elite female sports. These included barriers, challenges, and changes in Iranian society, gender discrimination in Iranian sports organizations, Islamic and Iranian cultural aspects, and inspirational motivations. This research revealed women's perceptions and experiences of elite sports in Iran, as well as their life-world and what it means to them. These concepts have been experienced to varying degrees by elite women in both their personal and professional lives. The elite women in Iran's sport are like super-heroes who are fighting on two fronts at once.
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 inform evidence-based recommendations for change. According to the International Labour Office (ILO), a gender audit: “establishes a baseline; identifies critical gaps and challenges; and recommends ways of addressing them, suggesting possible improvements and innovations. It also documents good practices towards the achievement of gender equality”. To this end, the gender audit focused on collecting data that could be used to establish a baseline for Biathlon Canada with respect to gender equity, and to identify the organization’s critical gaps and challenges. Findings indicated a distinction between the experiences of the culture of, and participation in, grassroots or club-based biathlon and the perceptions of Biathlon Canada. Both the culture of biathlon and participation in biathlon include facilitators of and barriers to girls’ and women’s participation. Experience with this research process revealed both the potential of and the challenges associated with conducting a gender audit of a national sport organization.
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 archive can be used to ‘do sociology’ which is accessible to and serves the climbing public. We draw on data that records women and gender diverse people’s experiences of climbing in the UK, underpinned by a poststructural feminist approach and drawing on a framework of intersectionality. This epistemological framing is used to generate interview data with [cisgender and transgender] women, non-binary people, people who were assigned female at birth and intersex people, excluding cisgender men, to generate recordings of experience that are reflective of the current climbing community where binary gender is losing relevance. Participants are given space to comment critically on aspects of climbing ecologies, community, space and culture which facilitates the exploration of how dominant power relations impact on the experience and wellbeing of women and gender diverse climbers. Thus, resulting in an historical record that more accurately represents those being researched, encourages criticality, and can be publicly accessed to understand complex factors that influence this community’s experiences, and subsequently drawn on by policy makers and NGBs to act on pertinent issues.
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 review of the literature on current environmental conservation concerns and the links known between sport, PA, PE and CC. The second part presents several influences between sport, PA, PE and the natural environment such as practices adaptations and modulation for now and for the future. Finally, the third part will focused on solutions and presents an original approach to the use of outdoor in PE for environmental education without losing one of the strong specificities of the discipline, namely the development of motor skills. Thus, it is through the development of body techniques specific to outdoor activities and in particular concerning the sensitive dimension of physicality that an education related to the preservation of the environment can make sense in PE. A portrait of several initiatives that use sport, PA or PE to achieve environmental education or climate change awareness will be presented.
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 spaces further or inhibit the development of “post-growth” communities, meaning communities that are decoupled from environmentally destructive processes of economic and consumer growth? In their recent book Post-Growth Planning, Savini et al argue that the planning of ecologically balanced built environments requires emancipating those environments “from the imperative for economic growth” and community planning that can “contribute effectively to a system that pursues prosperity within ecological limits in a socially fair way” (2022, p. 16). How can sports positively contribute and further the creation of such post-growth communities as well as alleviate social inequalities?
This presentation uses historical analysis to address the question of sport’s role in the creation of ecologically sustainable, post-growth communities. It draws specially from archival research on the role of sport in the early twentieth-century international garden city movement, an influential movement in modern urban planning that post-growth planning discourse. In studying the work of garden city planners and their inclusion of sport, recreation, and leisure in garden city community designs, the presentation contends that the planning of sustainable communities may require rethinking the growth-oriented dictates of modern sporting spaces.
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 for these products. This study focuses on the bike and its role in global waste accumulation through various forms of planned obsolescence. Through interviews with experts in and around the bike industry and waste management, we provide insight into the environmental barriers that are structural and specific to the bike industry. This presentation advocates for extended producer responsibility and the circular economy as an imperfect but radical alternative future.
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 analyzing this attitude-action gap by using the concept cognitive dissonance. Further, I analyze the phenomena from a cultural, Bourdieusian perspective where values within the surf-field is highlighted. On the one hand, surf culture highly values connection to nature and “green” thinking, on the other hand it also values and gives recognition to surfers that travel to and explore exotic destinations. Hence, values within surf culture leads surfers to conflicting actions. I end the presentation by discussing if these conflicts could be framed as cultural dissonance.
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 that an overwhelming number of athletes have experienced at least one category of harm. While quantitative research that highlights the extent of maltreatment provides some insight, the exclusionary and harmful culture present within sport must also be explored through qualitative studies. Though current literature regarding maltreatment and non-accidental violence explores harm perpetuated towards athletes by coaches, sport administrators and medical staff, the experiences of Para sport athletes are underrepresented. Drawing upon qualitative studies of safeguarding in mainstream sporting contexts we explore how Para sport can be made safer through the use of Goffman’s dramaturgical model that enables us to understand harm and the effectiveness of safeguarding policies in Para sport contexts. Ultimately, this study aims to highlight aspects of Para sport culture that normalize athlete abuse and maltreatment as well as gaps in policy in order to promote the development of adequate safeguarding practices at the organizational level.
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 regulations on violence/abuse in sport challenge the long-lasting relational hierarchy based on Confucianism, this paper examines how coaches and athletes manoeuvre in the new social order created by the new horizontal relational ethics. Analysing data from semi-structured interviews with 20 participants (safeguarding policy providers and the beneficiaries of the policies), the paper shows that the new safeguarding policies question old coaching practices, leaving coaches ‘disarmed’ to be re-equipped with new knowledge and practices. Also, coaches and athletes develop the old relational hierarchy into a more harmonious form of hierarchy at best, rather than a fully horizontal partnership, due to the deeply ingrained vertical norm in the society. That is, a Rights-based, Western-born relational norm that underlies the notion of Safe Sport is diluted with the Confucian hierarchy and localised into this gentler form of paternalistic care. The findings suggest that the Safe Sport movement is not simply about introducing new regulations, but it can potentially shake the very socio-cultural norms running deep across the society. The tensions observed in this study can inform other non-western cultural contexts by opening discussions on potential (in)compatibility of local cultural norms and the global standard of Safe Sport.
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 both reflected an “enforced hierarchy, dominance, and submission.” For public facing social scientists, Pronger’s work has arguably never been more relevant or important than it is today. Hockey Canada’s recent mishandling of numerous allegations of sexual assault against elite players has once against pulled the curtain back on competitive sport’s brutal libidinal economy. Unfortunately, the actions of Hockey Canada’s CEO and board suggest that sexual violence is very much part of the elite men’s game. Following Pronger, we examine the power relations at play at Hockey Canada over the last two decades, and how these relations allowed administrators to rationalize an abandonment of accountability that continues to reverberate throughout the nation.
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’ engagement in various leisure activities. For example, our participants experienced severe exhaustion as single mothers in a foreign land trying to discover new leisure opportunities for their children whist juggling other personal and professional responsibilities. Next, we explore how conflicting definitions of leisure among newcomers and their children resulted in several disagreements about free time. For example, while children preferred spending their leisure time with friends or on the internet, both mothers prioritized school, family, and social advancement over any type of leisure pursuit. Finally, we examine how various socio-economic inequalities in Montréal were ultimately enhanced during the global pandemic, making life more difficult and stressful for our participants. Consequently, the ability to engage in—or even contemplate—leisure pursuits was severely complicated by the “chaos monde” (Glissant, 1990) of resettlement during unprecedented times.
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 ethnography's focus draws on the conjunctural shift that the Korean diaspora experienced in the transformation of knowledge production (i.e., a notion of race, hegemonic white Americanness, and everyday politics), in which a Korean immigrant family became the pro-Trump sympathizer. On the one hand, assimilation into the youth ice hockey community was helpful to mitigate cultural distances and Asian stereotypes (e.g., the model minority) but on the other hand, it led the Korean diaspora into the interpellation of white reconstruction, which is "an ensemble of cultural and political projects, narrative structures, ideological tendencies, and state formation that exhibit the resilient, reformist qualities of white supremacy as an aspirational logic of sociality" (Rodriguez, 2021, p. 216). Referencing the structural theory of racism (Jung, 2015), I suggest that the discourse of multiculturalism in U.S. sport is illusory as it is strategically immune to a process of deracialization; and therefore, it is cruel optimism (Berlant, 2011). In a sense, physical culture consistently situates the Korean diaspora on the margins of physical culture resonated with Asian racialization in the larger society.
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 facilitate/justify ‘integration,’ and the approach can be extended to the concepts of ‘assimilation' and ‘multiculturalism.’ Thus, for immigrants, sport appears as a contested site for negotiating their nationalism and the anti-colonial struggle. In the Canadian sporting context, immigrants also encounter complex interactions with hockey, Canada’s winter national sport, a colonial game, and lacrosse, Canada’s summer national sport, an indigenous sport. While hockey is promoted enthusiastically by the government, often equating with Canadianness, the spread of lacrosse is rather limited. To muddle the situation further, many immigrant communities bring with them their own sporting preferences and identity. Bangladeshi immigrants’ contemporary sporting identity is inextricably linked to the colonial sport of cricket. In this context, Bangladeshi immigrants in Canada navigate their sporting practices and identities in two directions: decolonizing colonial sports and preserving their own national identity. This paper aims to develop an analytical framework to assess how immigrants produce and reproduce their sporting nationalism through their interactions with colonial and indigenous sports. Using a decolonial lens, the study will also examine how immigrants might engage in decoloniality through colonial sports in postcolonial societies through their everyday lived experiences.
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 Tamil diasporic sport community, paying particular attention to the voices of Tamil women who are largely missing from diasporic, sport, and postcolonial literature. This paper will share the insights I have gained from my experiences navigating this study as both a researcher and insider within this community – as I am a Tamil female in a leadership position within a Tamil women’s community sport organization. The paper will begin with a discussion of diasporic identity focusing on its role in defining the GTA Tamil sports community and the importance of understanding diaspora when engaging this community/”public” in research. The paper will then discuss how the insights gleaned during data collection have impacted the way in which I work as both as a researcher and as a Tamil sports leader. Finally, the paper will end with a discussion of the complexities of operating as an insider researcher within the community by identifying the challenges and opportunities legitimizing this work to effect social change.
Many action sports are undergoing the process of what can be called sportisation with their Olympic inclusion. However, previous literature focuses mainly on external features of sportisation (e.g., forming NGBs, and introducing related schemes), with little attention afforded to how sportisation internally transforms action sports’ own communities and their cultures. Drawing upon a case study of breaking in South Korea, this paper investigates the process of sportisation resulting from its Olympic inclusion. Using document analysis and semi-structured interviews with 10 key individuals in the Korean breaking community, this paper presents four aspects of sportisation in K-breaking. First, aggressive anti-social practices in breaking (e.g., Burn and Call out) have become regulated. Second, the appellation of breakers has changed from ‘b-boy or b-girl’ to ‘athlete’ and from ‘nick-name’ to ‘name’ while the formal positions and roles have emerged (e.g., coaches and referees). Third, breaking battle or competition formats have become formalised. Finally, the breaking community has been split into two distinctive groups: a) a culture scene; and b) a sport scene. These Olympic-prompted changes cause concerns among veteran breakers about the potential collapse of the culture scene and standardisation of breaking styles. From the findings, this paper suggests that the Olympic-sparked sportisation comes not only with new opportunities, but also with conflicts and unintended consequences.
This paper will highlight findings from a larger project examining the ways in which social, political and economic pressures within and on the Canadian higher education sector are impacting undergraduate Kinesiology programs. Like many other academic programs and disciplinary areas in universities in this contemporary neoliberal moment, Kinesiology programs are being tasked with preparing both work-ready and civic-minded graduates. Academic administrators’ perspectives on the pushes and pulls facing Kinesiology programs shed light on local responses to these competing and potentially conflicting aims. As part of a larger multi-year study of Kinesiology programs in universities, we conducted seven, semi-structured interviews with Kinesiology administrators working in different institutions across Canada. This paper will highlight key findings from these conversations including, but not limited to: (1) tensions around accreditation and the influence of external professional bodies on what occurs within undergraduate Kinesiology programs; (2) austerity and the expectation of doing ‘more’ with ‘less;’ and (3) the challenge of how to create more culturally diverse and relevant programs. Our discussion will add to ongoing conversations that question the reparative capacity of neoliberal universities and observations that suggest that higher education tends to manage, rather than dismantle, social disparities and injustices. To conclude, we will consider the implications of the need imposed upon and taken up by Kinesiology in the Canadian higher education sector to continuously demonstrate “relevance” to neoliberal, capitalist regimes for external stakeholders, and the consequences and perhaps even possibilities of such pressures on Kinesiology’s futurities.
Competitive dance has risen in popularity recently, partially due to media content such as So You Think You Can Dance and Dance Moms. Unfortunately, as interest has increased, cases of harm in dance are being brought to the forefront. While there has been some research conducted on understanding harm in dance, literature is specific to ballet or professional dancers. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to explore experiences of harm in competitive dance. After receiving ethical approval from the University, participants were recruited using a combination of purposeful and snowball sampling. 24 competitive dancers were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Following analysis and theme generation, data were represented as a written report as well as piece of choreography developed by dancers from the study. Choreography was developed by providing dancers with generated themes and quotes as a point of inspiration and allowing dancers to express themselves through movement. Findings included experiences of emotional and physical harm, harm influenced by social identity (gender, race, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation), downplaying harm, positive experiences outweighing harm, and communicating through dance. Implications of harm in dance communities will be discussed, specifically in relation to arts-based methods and dancer social identity. Benefits of using arts-based methods in dance communities will be examined as well as future directions for creating a safer dance environment.
The sphere of lifestyle sports has shown a remarkable growth in participation, institution, and industry in South Korea since the 1990s. While snowboarding has been one of the long-established lifestyle sports in the country, little research has been conducted to understand ways in which the field of snowboarding has been formed and developed within the broader social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. It should be highlighted that the cultural formation of lifestyle sports has been closely associated with a series of historical progression of youth (sub)cultures and identities. The 1990s witnessed the rapid introduction and popularization of snowboarding and its combined commercialized aspects with fashion and music, which showed strong manifestations of cultural struggle between the emerging unprecedented youth culture and the existing dominant culture. This paper intends to examine ways in which complex sociocultural, political and economic relations are negotiated through various historical conjunctures and trajectories within the generational politics of lifestyle sports – snowboarding in particular. While the two distinctive generational divisions have consistently maintained, the early homogeneous features no longer hold their significance within each division. It is noted that snowboarding is also no longer characterized as a symbolic manifestation of youth culture and lifestyle. The paper concludes with discussions on the sportification process of snowboarding and the broader cultural process of individualization.
The rise of Wrexham AFC, a used-to-be anonymous football club in Wales, has become one of the most intriguing stories in the world of sport in the past two years. This essay aims to examine the global-local dynamics through the lens of the improbable rise of the fifth-tiered club in the English football system since the takeover by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny in 2020. In doing so, critical discourse analysis on the docuseries “Welcome to Wrexham”, which is streaming globally on Hulu and Disney+, is adopted. This essay argues that, with the broadcast of the games and various alternative narratives on sport widely available through streaming platforms, new media conglomerates not only control “what you watch” but also set the tone on “how to think about what you watch”. With the rise of global streaming platforms, nothing is ever deemed “too local”. In terms of the media industry, “the local is global” has become a fashionable motto. Local places have become “phantasmagoric”, in Anthony Giddens’ sense. Football clubs have long been associated with local communities in the west. However, via the narratives of “Welcome to Wrexham”, the club has been elevated to an unprecedently global scale. It is especially critical to understand the dialectics between global and local in sport under these circumstances. Wrexham AFC embodies the complex of the topophilia of the local Welsh town and the global media narratives and becomes an icon of the globe’s endearing local club.
Movies engage and facilitate social awareness and the meaning of sport with people we cross paths with. Sport-orientated movies that transgress the boundaries of race, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and culture inject a different narrative and representation. Global migration of diasporic South Asian communities into Western, colonial spaces has led sports to facilitate multicultural citizenship and identity in “spaces, relationships, and [to build] forms of social capital” (Burdsey et al., 2013, p. 212). The movie Bend It Like Beckham (Chadha, 2002) follows a South Asian women soccer player in London, England who overcomes challenges of cultural, ethnic, and traditional gender norms by negotiating of her multicultural identity. This significantly changed the discourse of representation of women in sports for South Asian communities. Recently, the Indian film industry released more women in sports movies such as soccer in Bigil (Atlee, 2019), boxing in Irudhi Suttru (Kongora, 2016) and Mary Kom (Kumar, 2014), cricket in Kanaa (Kanaraj, 2018), and wrestling in Gatta Kushti (Ayyavu, 2022).
While these movies focus on empowerment of women (Karupiah, 2022; Amaljith, 2021), sports participation, and identity affirmation, the female protagonist narrative is still centred around the patriarchy and neoliberalism and perpetuates problematic behaviours in “male characters” that are being normalized as part of the athlete journey for local South Asian communities. Through film analysis, this inquiry aims to examine the transnational representation and meaning of women in sports over time, and the tensions that affect socio-cultural studies' ability to effect social change in South Asian localities.
In 2019, Nissin Foods released commercials featuring Japanese professional tennis player Naomi Osaka alongside anime characters from the manga ‘Prince of Tennis’. Some viewers criticized the advertisement based on their perception that Osaka was represented as having lighter (‘whiter’) skin than her actual skin tone. As a result, Nissin voluntarily cancelled the ad from the airwaves. Ho and Tanaka (2021, p. 1) indicated that these advertisements reflect the tendency for local Japanese media to ‘regularly portray “racially neutral” characters, [and] celebrate lighter-skinned hafu (half; multiracial) women’. Subsequently in 2020, Nike Japan released a video advertisement featuring three teenage student female footballers all of whom are bullied: one is Japanese, one is a Korean born in Japan, and the third is African-Japanese. This advertisement attracted both positive feedback and angry criticism both within and outside of Japan. Oh and Han (2021) conducted a textual analysis of this advertisement including comments on Nike’s YouTube channel. However, while this was a useful study it focused solely on the comments of relatively anonymous YouTube users. The aim of this study is to examine the perspectives of Japanese university students towards three TV advertisements in relation to the intersection of gender, race and national identity. The study conducted focus group interviews with six to twelve students based on their viewing of these TV commercials in November, 2022 and used the circuit of commodification and communication model (Jackson, 2012) as its theoretical framework in order to examine the links between production, representation and consumption.
Digital platforms, especially the expansion of over-the-top (OTT) platforms and online video streaming services, are changing the sport media around the world in recent years. Global online media and streaming platforms, such as Eleven Sports, Line TV, Twitch, have reshaped Taiwanese sport media. Based on in-depth interviews with managers in local sport and media industries, this paper is aimed at: (1) illustrating the transformations of sport/media complex in Taiwan within global digital platforms context; (2) examining not only challenges but also chances for local sport and media industries in the platform era. On the one hand, the relatively lower cost for online live coverage provides new possibilities to local leagues to access fans and generate a certain amount of income. For example, the Chinese Professional Baseball League (Taiwan) launched the CPBL TV as a pay channel in 2022 on Hami Video, a local OTT. The P. League+, a local professional basketball league, established a channel on YouTube in 2021. On the other hand, transnational media and online streaming services have become the dominant players for sports rights in Taiwan while local televisions were reluctant to invest in sports broadcasting due to the escalating rights fee of major sporting events. Meanwhile, many local sports or niche events that are unprofitable for commercial media have become more difficult to be seen by audiences and thus cultural citizenship is at stake.
Researchers and advocates have long been aware of the under-representation of women in coaching, particularly in highly competitive levels of sport. Although attention has been paid to a range of issues influencing women’s lack of advancement into high-level sport coaching, little critical attention has been paid to the nature of sport coaching as work, and even less attention has been paid to women’s experiences of sport coaching as work. This presentation will share data from a two-year study that explored sport coaching as a form of precarious labour for women. Drawing on Feminist Political Economy (FPE), this study focused on the sport-work-gender nexus, with particular attention paid to the demands placed on and taken up by female sport coaches to perform socially reproductive and emotional labour. Through the sharing of the participants’ stories of their sport coaching work, this presentation will attempt to both make visible the invisible labour of female sport coaches, and to highlight the problematic ways in which participants internalized and rationalized the demands on their time and efforts as normal; the consequences of which resulted in a near-constant effort by our study participants to be ‘on the job’ regardless of other work-life commitments.
Highly skilled female athletes often find their achievements devalued and their performances judged as inferior to men. Thus, the cultural changes that truly move us towards the social inclusion of women in boxing are still to be achieved. This paper explores how gendered power dynamics impact on experiences of female boxers who are active and present in traditionally masculine boxing gym spaces. We draw on ethnographic data taken from eighteen months of field notes collected at two sites, twenty-seven voice interviews and eight video interviews collected using the principles of semi-structured interviewing. Thematic analysis of the data identified and developed three emergent themes relating to the complex nature of gender-power relations for women in the boxing gym: (i) insider-outsider relations, (ii) marginalising practices, and (iii) embodiment of gender. We explore how the elements of female gendered embodiment and social expectations impact on how girls and women who box experience practices of inclusion, exclusion, belonging and marginalisation in boxing gym environments. We examine how women experience boxing gym spaces considering the gendered nature of the social and cultural expectations and values that influence the production and reproduction of embodied gender-power. The paper will also highlight the significance of exploring and understanding the gendered character of space on the boxing gym and wider competitive arena to gain further understanding gender power and the themes identified.
Since basketball tends to be publicly perceived as a male sport in South Korea, the recent decade’s rapid increase in basketball participants among female college students has drawn academic attention. The typical format of club league participation can be characterized as their voluntary engagement in organized amateur competitive sport. As an initial scholarly work, this paper aims to explore the experiences and meanings of college female basketball club league participants. The notion of “serious participation”, identified from the early survey stage of the research interest, has been used as a guiding analytic concept. Data collection and analysis have been conducted through an ethnographic field work including participant observations and in-depth interviews. The results firstly analyze ways in which the basketball club leagues for college female students have been formed and developed during the recent decade. Secondly, aspects of serious basketball participation are detailed to understand their devotion and commitment to basketball. Various participation activities, active acquisition of basketball knowledge and information, ongoing communication through social networks, multiple roles and statuses in clubs and leagues are prioritized as crucial aspects of serious participation. Thirdly, the authentic experience of being a basketball athlete is conceived as equivalent to disregarding gendered stereotypes about women’s sport participation.
Tackle football is often seen as a masculine space where boys and men can exhibit their physical superiority over one another. The variety of roles in football places value on a diverse range of body sizes, including larger bodies (Liechty, Sveinson, Willfong & Evans, 2015). But gendered myths position women and girls as inherently smaller and frailer than men and boys (Dowling, 2000; McCaughey, 1997). So, what does that mean for girls trying to enter these masculine spaces? In this paper, I discuss the experiences that some girls have had playing on boys’ tackle football teams in Canada, the United States, and Poland between 1993-2020. The paper is based on interviews I conducted with 12 women. My presentation builds on scholarship pertaining to women’s football, co-ed sport, youth sport, and feminist understandings of embodied patriarchy and gendered body discourses. I use football as a lens to analyse how girls are taught to see their bodies’ capabilities. I argue that girls’ experiences on boys’ football teams can be empowering by helping them unlearn physical inferiority discourses and teaching them to appreciate their bodies’ capabilities beyond its size and appearance.
To date, sport for reconciliation (SFR) research has mostly focused on post-conflict settings or settings in which conflict is ongoing: Northern Ireland (Mitchell, Sommerville, Hargie, 2016), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Gasser & Levinsen, 2004), Israel/Palestine (Spacey & Sugden, 2015;), and Kosovo (Krasniqi & Krasniqi, 2019), to name a few. Amongst these studies, the concept of reconciliation has often been undefined or narrowly defined as bringing people together, likely because this research has been grounded in theories developed from peace studies (Alport, 1954; Lederarch, 2005). SFR has thus primarily been understood as something to achieve within broader attempts at peace building, and not as contributing to Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, which are key to Indigenous-settler reconciliation in settler states. In our presentation, we examine SFR in three settler states: Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). These countries share many similarities. In attempts to reckon with their brutal histories, each country has undertaken a process of reconciliation, often with explicit and implicit connections to sport. Professional sport organizations in all three countries have also engaged in activities that they have framed as facilitating reconciliation, including ceremonial “puck drops” by Indigenous leaders and Residential School survivors at National Hockey League games in Canada (Warren, 2019) and “Indigenous rounds” in cricket and rugby in Australia and Aotearoa NZ. In this paper, we trace the emergence of SFR in each of these countries and outline the tensions at work in attempts to achieve Indigenous-settler reconciliation through sport.
In this presentation, the distribution of state funds to Indigenous communities in Canada and NZ is discussed within the context of being a ‘good governor’.
In 2017, the Aboriginal Sport Circle (ASC), an Indigenous-led organization and authority for sport, was provided with $800,000 from the Government of Canada who claimed it would make a “real difference in the lives of Indigenous people by supporting self-determination through reconciliation” (2017). However, in the “Reconciliation” section of the 2018 federal budget, the government announced it would provide $47.5 million to Right To Play (an international, non-Indigenous NGO that engages in sport-for-development) essentially, ignoring the ASC’s history of delivering similar programs. This was a decision that the state later retracted (Giles & van Luijk, 2018).
Similarly, in 2020, the NZ Government’s sport agency (Sport NZ) announced a $265m ‘relief package’ for the sport sector, to mitigate disruptions caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Sport NZ’s framework distributed these funds aiming to: ‘reset and rebuild’ community and elite-level sport ($82.6 million); ‘strengthen and adapt’ the sector ($104 million); do things ‘different and better’ ($78 million). A fraction of this ($7million) was ‘tagged’ for a specific ‘Kaupapa Māori Response Plan’. Initially, the 10 ‘recognis=zed’ Māori National Sport Organizations were only allocated $350,000 in attempt to “build meaningful relationships in these communities” (Sport NZ, 2020). This was later ‘topped-up’ to $1.2million.
In our presentation we critically discuss these examples of resource allocation, exploring the myriad tensions, including colonial paternalism and woeful underfunding, alongside opportunities to ‘govern better’.
With the impetus for equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) across societal landscapes, and increasing attention drawn specifically to ‘safe sport,’ sport organizations across Canada are under increasing pressure to create EDI polices. What values are centered in creating such policies? Furthermore, we ask, do the policies inadvertently reinscribe inequity, harms, and injustice? Do they alienate the very stakeholders they are meant to serve?
The Re-Creation Collective includes researchers with both lived and academic expertise in the ways that sport and recreation opportunities are impacted by intersections of racism, colonialism, (dis)ableism, sanism, (hetero)sexism, transphobia, islamophobia, fatphobia, and barriers around poverty and citizenship. As researchers committed to disrupting such harmful intersectional oppressions, we co-conspire with leading sport organizations to think about their policies and create accessible ways to initiate changes across their spheres of influence. We implemented a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of all publicly available EDI-related policies of National-level Canadian sport organizations. We found that many policies in such organizations (un)intentionally reproduce, reinforce, and justify many if the dynamics through which exclusion and inequity is enacted.
Therefore, in this presentation, we present a robust conversation about these findings. Moreover, we will uncover our analysis methodology and offer a toolkit of resources to assist researchers and organizations committed to ‘doing-the-work’ of EDI. The language built into policies has can potentially affirm the humanity of historically marginalized people and generate justice-based process across the sport sector.
The paper highlights how activities (outdoor activities and sports) offered to children and young people below 18 years old at Sàmi/indigenous festivals in Norway might function in decolonization against Norwegianization, and how the festivals have influence on the local community. There is lack of knowledge about indigenous festivals in the Nordic countries. The aim is to fill this gap with presenting the participants expression of the institutional importance of indigenous peoples' festivals both for Sàmis and indigenous peoples in other countries. The activities offered in close collaboration with the local public schools and language centres in the region. The governing bodies and participants at eight Sámi/indigenous festivals in Norway state that to participate at indigenous festivals increases their cultural and environmental understanding and extends their knowledge in both Sámi and the culture of other indigenous peoples. The various activities offered to children and young people seems to be crucial in the revitalization of Sámi culture. To even extend the influence, there is a need for even closer collaboration with the schools and the language centres. Indigenous paradigm and indigenous methodology are applied with an intersectional approach where aspects as gender, age, ethnicity, and nationality are intertwined. The article is based on long-term fieldwork in the period 2009-2019. The data used are documents, field-conversations, observation notes, and 42 in-depth interviews. Sami festivals prove to be an important arena for highlighting and revitalizing Sámi and indigenous culture, and the festivals are of great importance in the local communities where they are situated.
Climate change is an issue yielding much attention in the international football context, with initiatives from federations, and various efforts from environmental organizations We Play Green (WPG) is an international environmental organization aimed at mobilizing support for a green shift through football. Through collaborations with grassroots football clubs, international governing bodies in football and politics, and by strategic use of social media content, WPG works to challenge dominate practices and discourses on sustainability in football as well as local communities. This study investigates how WPG’s media content on environmentalism in football differs from media content by FIFA and UEFA, as governing bodies of international football. The aim is to examine how activism may produce counter-discourses that expands how issues related to climate change are framed in football. The study is based on a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of 64 media texts considering environmental sustainability, published by FIFA, UEFA and WPG on their websites in 2021-2022. The findings suggest that all three organizations communicate a strong belief in football’s power to contribute towards environmentally sustainable practices, and a belief that cooperation is essential in order to achieve it. Furthermore, the problematizations and the solutions offered to the identified problems differed between WPG and the governing bodies. Here the analysis shows that FIFA and UEFA focuses on adjustments and gradual changes of current practices through new technology, while WPG focuses on radical changes in current practices, mindsets and political systems using communication and education as means for change.
Sport and physical activity are increasingly recognized as potential tools for social change and are now being used to serve various social development purposes. Reflecting the modern context and the types of social problems that define it, new perspectives are flourishing, including sport for psychosocial development (Moreau et al., 2014), sport for peace and development (Gadais et al., 2022), or sport for gender equality and empowerment (De Soysa and Zipp, 2019).
The goal of this conference is to present findings from an intervention-research that examined how a sport and nature-based intervention program for youth could enable a shift in relationship to nature. We thus hypothesize that outdoor sport and physical activity can also be powerful tools for ecosocial development. Rosa’s theory of resonance served as the main framework and was complemented with Wacquant’s (2015) carnal sociology to answer our research question and capture the micro-dynamics of embodied experiences, central to the reorganization of our relationship to the natural world. In line with our methodology (intervention-research), a collaborative approach was used to co-develop the intervention protocol by consulting with multiple social actors, including youth eco-activists, community partners and eco-leaders and the program participants, a key process to frame the program around specific ecosocial development goals.
Findings show that outdoor sport and physical activities, when combined with reflective and ecopedagogical tools, can help foster learnings with/in/from nature and (re)connections with self, others (including Earth-others), nature and community, therefore challenging the dominant colonial discourse on nature as commodity for self-enhancement (Larocque, 2022).
Sport events have both positive and negative legacies for the host community (in particular) and the world (in general), one of which relates to the environment. Environmental legacies are concerned with accomplishing sustainability goals such as minimizing negative impacts on the natural resource base, reducing and managing waste, and lowering pollution. This paper proposes retrospective archival research to explore the environmentally friendly efforts undertaken at the Arctic Winter Games. The analysis of the AWG International Committee and past Host Societies (organizing committees) documents show that the environmental initiatives of the AWG fall into the five themes of food system, transportation system, recycling management, air protection, and sustainable construction. We contextualize the AWG organizers' existing efforts toward sustainability and reducing negative impacts on the environment within the larger literature on the environmental legacies of sport. The findings have implications for event management as we consider further possible steps and strategies to support AWG and other sport organizers in their shift toward implementing environmental sustainability programs.
In this presentation I report findings from an exploratory qualitative study based on interviews conducted with 7 high-level outdoor athletes. The study is concerned with athlete perceptions of the influence of their involvement in outdoor sport on the development of their ecological consciousness, ecological literacy, sustainable behaviours, and climate activism. While previous research has shown the efficacy of outdoor, experiential, and place-based education in facilitating ecological literacy, ecological consciousness, and climate change awareness (Greenwood, 2013; Hanna, 1995; Khadka et al., 2020), few studies have been conducted with the aim of learning more about the development of this process outside of an educational context, nor in high-level outdoor athletes whose careers often demand spending considerable time in nature settings (Brymer et al., 2009; Maltarich, 2020; Mihala, 2019). This study was designed to contribute in this area, and to support more nuanced understandings of the potential of outdoor sport in facilitating environmental engagement and climate action through the perspectives of these athletes as they reflect on their process of developing environmental consciousness and an environmental activism. Findings suggested that connection to nature through sport may have a profound influence and impact how these athletes conceptualize the environment, climate change, thus guiding their environmental action. This aligns with goals of environmental and sustainability education by providing insight into ways that outdoor sport may present opportunities to engage with nature in a meaningful and sustainable way, while also enabling a deeper understanding of the potential of outdoor sport to motivate individuals to climate action.
Trans athletes are becoming an increasingly marginalized demographic within competitive and recreational sport. Despite growing research on policy and physiology of trans athletes, there is little attention given to the experiences of these athletes regarding harm, discrimination, and violence. The present study aimed to uncover the experiences of gender-based violence that exist for trans folks across the gender spectrum in sport in an attempt to suggest community-based strategies for safeguarding. This research incorporated both an intersectional approach, as well as a grounding in queer theory to understand the relationship between gender/race/disability/sexuality, and the gender-based violence faced. Data collection included brief demographic questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was used to analyze interview transcripts, and to generate themes. Findings indicated that within these sport systems, the athletes experienced harm from peers, coaches, and other staff. Generated themes include harms that exist on lines of identity invalidation, politics of passing, and an interconnectedness with other axes of oppression. Additionally, identities such as non-whiteness, disability, and fatness worsened, triggered, and made more frequent the experiences of gender-based violence. Outside of interpersonal violence, athletes also experienced systematic harm, including gendered team policies as well as the locker room as a site of harm. The findings from this study identify a need to safeguard sport for trans athletes on multiple fronts through a community approach in order to promote education and celebration of gender diversity within sport.
In a number of Western countries, the protection and safeguarding of children and youth in sport has come to the focus of both scientific research and policy measures in the past decades. Contrary to this, in post socialist countries, including Hungary, the topic has only come to the agenda in the past few years, partly because of a number of scandals related to past incidents of violence in coaching, and partly because attitudes towards verbal and physical violence have changed over time. The objective of the paper is (1) to introduce the r&d project entitled GYISZVÉD, which was launched to address the issue (2) to describe the sports-cultural context in which we have to work for our goal, and (3) to present the initial results of a survey carried out among a national sample of sports coaches working in Hungary, with various age groups at different levels. The results of the survey are to be presented according to the following dimensions: (a) coaches’ awareness and knowledge of the topic, (b) their views on the role and competencies of the coach and their motivations in these situations, (c) the organizational contexts they work in, and (4) their experience and potential actions when encountering incidents. The analysis will also reflect on how the historical and cultural context may influence the results, what impact the first two years of the project have had on the state of affairs, and what opportunities and limitations there are for possible future interventions in the field.
Research on professional ballet schools has explored the training environment; however, there is a lack of research on holistic experiences of living, training, attending academics, and socializing at these live-in, competitive schools. Despite high attrition and deselection rates (Hamilton et al., 1997) and reports of child maltreatment at international schools (e.g., Greb, 2020), a paucity of research exists on student living experiences. Using a social constructionist paradigm and a theoretical feminist framework of an ethic of care, which emphasizes the relational ethics around caring for others (Gilligan, 1982; Noddings, 1984, 2012), the purpose of this study was to explore the nature of care ethics in relation to former professional ballet school students’ living experiences. As students live at school from a young age, adult leaders may act in loco parentis, have a greater duty of care, and face complex care ethics. Participants included nine former professional live-in ballet school students from five countries, ages 18-27. Online, semi-structured interviews were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Interpretations included: participants perceived the school setting to be their home; formed strong bonds comparable to those of socially and legally defined family relationships; and described struggles, feelings of loss and grief, and challenges reconceptualizing relationships after transitioning from school. There was little transition preparation and a desire for some follow-up care. Further research on care ethics and safeguarding at professional ballet schools is needed to contribute to social change and advance the relevance of the sociocultural study of dance to organizations and the public.
This paper examines group sexual assaults, which involve multiple perpetrators in a single sexually violent act, in the context of junior men’s hockey in Canada. Research outside of the context of sport suggests that group sexual assaults are relatively rare. However, the prevalence of group sexual assaults reported against male junior hockey players in Canada is significantly disproportionate to reported perpetration rates by men who do not participate in competitive sports. While group and individual forms of sexual assault share obvious similarities, there are also important distinctions between them that are explored in this paper. The data analyzed include media files and written legal decisions involving group sexual assault allegations against 65 Canadian junior men’s hockey players, of which 64 have been found not guilty or had charges dismissed, and one pleaded guilty. The aims of the paper are to examine how sport organizations and the Canadian legal system have responded in these cases, why group sexual assaults continue to be common in junior men’s hockey in Canada, and how group sexual assaults perpetrated by competitive male athletes can be more effectively prevented.
En France, la question du rapport entre production scientifique et société locale passe régulièrement par l’intermédiaire des collectivités territoriales. Ces dernières regroupent des communes, départements et régions dont les compétences touchent, d’une manière ou d’une autre, à l’organisation et au développement des activités sportives (Honta, 2003). Garantes du service public de proximité, ces collectivités cherchent à répondre aux enjeux sociaux et sociétaux qu’ils jugent majeurs ou prioritaires pour leurs territoires. Entre 2020 et 2022, le département du Finistère a souhaité interroger les freins à la pratique sportive des jeunes femmes sur son territoire, sollicitant à cette fin une équipe de chercheur.e.s en sociologie appartenant à l’Université de Bretagne Occidentale. Pour répondre à cette commande qui touche l’ensemble du champ sportif, l’équipe de recherche (dont l’auteur du résumé) a conçu une recherche-action visant à intégrer au maximum les acteurs locaux (communes, clubs, écoles, maisons des jeunes, etc.) au processus de construction et de diffusion des résultats produits par la recherche. Notre communication vise à rendre compte de ce processus collectif, en revenant sur les dynamiques positives qu’il implique, avec en premier lieu la visibilité et légitimité de l’enquête par l’intervention des acteurs sociaux concernés (Morrisette, 2013). Mais il s’agit aussi de pointer les difficultés d’une telle démarche, en questionnant les jeux d’acteurs au sein du champ sportif et l’effet des conditions matérielles sur la reconnaissance et la diffusion des résultats de l’enquête.
En tant que pratique sportive et culturelle, le thème du skateboard a donné lieu à des études qui s’inscrivent en grande partie dans les approches culturalistes. Celles-ci ont mis l’accent sur deux concepts : la résistance et l’authenticité, et ont conduit à produire une vision homogène de la culture skateboard en dressant notamment le portrait des pratiquant·es « core ». Or le niveau d’engagement des pratiquant·es de skateboard est variable, et une large partie du public peut être considérée comme amateur·trices, ne se définissant pas uniquement à travers leur identité de skateur. L’objectif de montrer comment ces approches ont amené à une compréhension partielle de la pratique du skateboard en mettant de côté la pratique des amateur·trices. Nous souhaitons souligner en quoi la prise en compte de points de vue et participations de pratiquant·es non professionnel·les favoriserait la réflexion sur la production d’un modèle sportif qui au-delà de l’olympisme, promeut une pratique sportive plus accessible et ouverte à un large public, quels que soient leurs engagements par ailleurs. Pour ce faire, nous proposons une revue de littérature, basée sur un corpus de cinquante articles écrits entre 1995 et 2020, et rédigés en français, anglais ou portugais. Nous mettrons en avant en quoi les cadres théoriques et pratiques méthodologiques utilisés dans l’étude du skateboard ont jusqu’ici omis de donner la parole aux amateur·trices. In fine, nous souhaitons par ce travail, qui émane d’un doctorat en cours, pouvoir mieux comprendre et répondre aux besoins, souhaits et attentes des skateur·euses.
Cette communication met en lumière la dynamique de recherche collaborative entre les universitaires et des clubs et associations de sport au féminin et la manière dont cette démarche permet de composer avec une communauté plus large des mondes du sport au féminin.
Cette démarche indisciplinaire ou d’intelligence collective s’incarne dans le projet intitulé "European Women in Sport - For an adaptive governance of women's sports practices" (E-WinS), financé par le programme Européen Erasmus+ Sport. L'objectif global du projet est de promouvoir et d'accélérer la féminisation du Sport dans les cultures européennes en développant la prise de conscience et la compréhension des problématiques spécifiques que les femmes rencontrent dans leurs carrières sportives. L’accent est mis sur trois axes : les modèles économiques et organisation quotidienne ; le développement et gestion de la performance sportive des femmes ; la visibilité et les pratiques de communication. Il s’agit particulièrement de questionner les bonnes pratiques et de penser des outils avec et pour les communautés des sports au féminin à travers l’exemple des six pays partenaires du projet (Angleterre, Bulgarie, Espagne, Finlande, France et Pologne). Nous montrerons comment se construisent les interactions et comment les communautés académiques pluridisciplinaires ainsi que celles issues des mondes sportifs au féminin et de leurs publics composent ou dialoguent entre elles pour l’identification des bonnes pratiques, la conception et la diffusion des outils pertinents à la féminisation des sports.
Il existe peu d'études caractérisant la socialisation la place de la carrière sportive dans les projets de vie des joueuses internationales de rugby à XV et 7. Actuellement, les joueuses internationales françaises sont sous contrats à durée déterminée avec la Fédération Française de Rugby, à 100% de leur temps de travail pour les joueuses à XV et à 75% pour les joueuses à 7. L’objectif principal de cette étude est de caractériser et de comparer les socialisations sportives et la place de la carrière sportive dans les projets de vie des joueuses de rugby à XV et à 7.
Des entretiens semi-directifs ont été effectués avec 16 joueuses internationales de l’Equipe de France de rugby à XV (28 ans ± 3,6 années) ou à 7 (28 ans ± 4,5 années).
Les résultats montrent que les joueuses de rugby à XV et à 7 ont des socialisations sportives similaires. En revanche, en ce qui concerne la pratique du rugby, les joueuses de rugby à XV ont débuté à un âge plus précoce que les joueuses de rugby à 7.
Par ailleurs, les joueuses de rugby à XV et à 7 n’attribuent pas la même place à leur carrière sportive dans leurs projets de vie.
En conclusion, au-delà du fait que le rugby à XV et à 7 soient deux sports relativement différents, il semblerait que leurs contextes économiques respectifs aient un impact sur la façon dont les joueuses envisagent la place de leurs carrières sportives dans leurs projets de vie.
In the past decade, a massive influx of international coaches in China has been observed. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the factors influencing international football coaches' migration to China. The result provided a comprehensive understanding of how different dimensional factors sculpted coaches' migration by investigating influential factors at institutional, structural, individual, and ideational levels. The qualitative research evidence was produced through semi-structured interviews of 32 international coaches who worked in China across different levels. Consequently, we identified various factors that contributed to coaches' migration. Institutional factors covered the Chinese football strategy, policies, and investment in football. Structural factors stressed the concerns caused by differentials in the football markets between China and the sending countries (e.g., the wages gap and football coaches' overproduction). Factors related to coaches' individuality involved their migration motivation (e.g., occupational, economic, and personal life-related motivation) and the role of the family. Finally, this study evidenced that the cultural and traditional ideas (e.g., the extent of local migration culture), which were conceptualized as ideational factors, could influence coaches' migration desires. The study elaborates that the combined effects of multi-level factors led to the coaches' migration. Structural and ideational factors triggered the initial migration ideas of coaches in the study, and individual factors appeared to consolidate such intention. Then, both the Chinese official and private agencies contributed to the large-scale introduction of football expatriates. This empirical work showcases the mutable, dynamic, and complex relationship between individuals and contexts in facilitating coaches' migrations.
Community sport clubs (CSCs) can provide newcomers to a country an opportunity to engage in sport. Building social contacts, developing relationships and emotional bonds, and learning social and cultural norms of the local community through sport can help promote integration (Nagel et al., 2015; Waardenburg et al., 2019). The purpose of our study was to learn about the willingness and capacity of CSCs in Canada that offer programs for newcomers, and to understand the consequences for the clubs. Sport clubs are established across Canada, and so drawing on the experience and knowledge of practitioners engaged with newcomer programming can provide insight to help scale up CSCs’ efforts that may facilitate integration.
Framed by capacity theory, with its focus on understanding organizations’ ability to draw on key assets to achieve their goals (Hall et al., 2003), our study complements the growing body of research on newcomer sport programming in Canada and elsewhere (e.g., Barrick et al., 2021; Forde et al., 2015; Jeanes et al., 2015; Rich et al., 2015; Spaaij et al., 2018, 2019). Using a multiple case study approach (Stake, 2006), we conducted semi-structured interviews with CSC leaders from six clubs who are directly involved with newcomer programming. They shared with us their club’s capacity to introduce and maintain effective programming for newcomers, and the implications for other aspects of their club. Our findings highlight the experiences and challenges practitioners in Canada face with programming for newcomers and inform recommendations to mobilize the potential of CSCs to support integration efforts.
In recent years we have seen an increasing number of non-Western researchers in sport-related social research who conduct qualitative interview in their own cultural contexts with following a set of rigorous ethical codes that set up by Western academia. These ethical codes have largely impacted upon the design and practice of those cross-cultural interviews and indeed protect the rights of participants. However, some research also found these ethical codes can be less applicable to the non-Western researchers due to the cross-cultural difference and higher appeal to decolonizing methodologies. Indeed, in the researcher’s PhD project that studies the management and development of sport in China, a series of methodological and ethical issues emerged as the researcher managed to apply the ethical principles required by his university in the UK to interview 55 Chinese sport practitioners. These issues are related to: signing documents and building trust/rapport; engaging with the Chinese ‘gatekeepers’; and c) cross-cultural differences in remote interview. We argue that these issues demonstrate the limitation of simply applying Western ethical codes to proceed qualitative interview in a non-Western context, and the importance of cultural and power asymmetry in cross-cultural social research. In this regard, this article advances our understanding of the ‘principlism’ in current ethical consideration and, specifically, we have proposed three strategies to respond to the issues: using flexible and contextualized approaches to meet both research ethics and local culture; being more sensitive to participants’ socio-cultural backgrounds to gain and maintain access; and using localized research tools to collect data.
Based on the concepts of “trust”, this study seeks to explore the match-fixing phenomena within professional sports systems in the “Chinese Community” which are regarding the development of match-fixing and its theoretical implications and practical perspectives. A case study was to be presented by an examination of the match-fixing of professional baseball in Taiwan. A major attempt of this study has been made to synthesize this evidence by reviewing literature of documentary materials and conducting interviews. The results first indicate that trust plays a role in match-fixing with the bright and dark sides of trust coexisting. Second, actors’ motivations and the exchange of intangible resources (e.g. trust, friendship) are identified. Third, the actors are embedded within a structure so that match-fixing can be understood from a trust perspective which shaped the corrupted contexts to some extent.
Community-based experiential learning can provide students with the opportunity to engage with local communities during their program of study. Kolb’s experiential learning paradigm resonates with post-secondary students and community partners as experiential learning is not just recognized for the knowledge acquired through doing, but also its role in building participants’ confidence to learn in different settings, make critical connections to their curricula learning and recognize their role as partners in community engagement (Kolb 1984).
While the resources and relationships invested in university-community collaborations are extensive, we remain attentive to potential disconnect among stakeholders. Community partners, administrators and professors may be unaware of the responsibilities of a student-athlete and neglect to consider this in the design, supervision and evaluation of experiential learning placements. This gap can result in missed mutual learning opportunities, community development and networking and require the student to choose between university sport or an experiential learning placement. In this poster, we will share results from a qualitative open-ended online survey sent to uOttawa student-athletes who participated in a 4th year internship in the community or a sport-related organization. Research objectives are two-fold: 1) Identify opportunities and challenges for student-athletes who choose experiential learning placements, 2) Discuss student-identified recommendations to build their capacity as partners with community organizations to enhance mutual learning and engagement. Using a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke 2019), broad themes will be identified and interpreted within experiential learning theory, students as partners model (Healey & Harrington 2014) and situated in the literature.
Despite substantial research and advocacy, including the advancement of Safe Sport policy, specific cases of harassment, abuse, neglect, and maltreatment, as well as the broader (re)production of maladaptive sport culture, are still present in the Canadian youth sport system. Coaches are a critical stakeholder in youth sport and nexus between youth athletes and parents, playing a central role in the uptake and implementation of such policies and policy-driven practices. Although it is known that youth coaches play a vital role in implementation and promotion of positive sporting environments, there continues to be a lack of consensus and clarity as to what constitutes a ‘safe sport’. Employing qualitative research methods, this paper will highlight findings from a study exploring the knowledge, perceptions, and implementation experiences of Safe Sport practices and safe sport culture among youth sport coaches at the grassroots level. Although there seems to be more mention of safe sport than ever before in Canadian public consciousness, this paper emphasizes that there remain challenges with the implementation of safe sport policy and related initiatives due, in part, to a conceptual murkiness around what is ‘safe sport culture’ and to whom it applies. The study aims to provide insights as to how safe sport culture is conceptualized and implemented (or not) at its most elementary stage, which may afford further insight into how safe sport can be better translated to higher levels of sport and/or long-term sport participation.
According to World Health Organization (2020), South Korea has the fastest growing aged population in the world. It is expected to become a ‘Super-Aged Society’ in three years where more than 20% of their total population is aged 65 years and older. With the rapid increase in the population aged 65 and older, various social problems are emerging, such as an increase in the suicide rate of the elderly and the increase in medical expenses which brings about a heavy burden on the national finances. Therefore, the health of the elderly is an important issue in South Korea. Many studies suggest that regular physical activity for the elderly is a vital element for maintaining health and improving the quality of life. Despite the proven effectiveness of physical activity, there has been little research on why they do not participate in physical activities and what factors affect their physical activities. Drawing upon Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, this study aims to systematically analyze factors influencing physical activity among the elderly in South Korea. Reasons for the results are discussed and compared to previous studies exploring factors affecting participation of the elderly in physical activity.
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2022S1A5C2A07090938).
Strength and conditioning coaches typically reflect on program design, training methods, and other biophysical aspects of performance, not psychosocial aspects (Gearity et al., 2021). In response to a wider call to advance psychosocial scholarship and theorizing in strength and conditioning coaching (see Potrac et al., 2017; Szedlak et al., 2021), this poster addresses the lead author’s emotional experiences and reflective practice in strength and conditioning coaching. Our intention is to provide a relevant and relatable story that illustrates the interconnectedness of the emotional experiences of a young, female strength and conditioning coach (SCC) and her reflective practice, and the evolution of her emotions and reflective practice throughout the coaching season. We critically consider how the lead author’s emotional experiences influenced, and were influenced by, her engagement in reflective practice when working to understand and resolve an interpersonal problem she experienced with one athlete during training sessions. Extending the work of Goffman (1959) to the strength and conditioning coaching context, this autoethnographic account illuminates how a young, female strength and conditioning coach’s coaching performance and desired coaching image were intricately affected by her emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983) and reflective practice (Schön, 1983). Further, we integrate emotions and emotional labor throughout Schön’s reflective practice cycle as the strength and conditioning coach worked to resolve an interpersonal problem with a male athlete during the American football season. With this new sociology of sport coaching knowledge, coaches and coach developers may mitigate the negative effects from emotional labor associated with interpersonal coaching problems.
Nike as a transnational sport corporation has powerful capability to shape local sports culture deeply. For instance, Nike corporation constructed the sporting discourses and promotional strategy of Taiwan’s feminized sports culture in recent twenty years. As a result, Nike’s promotional strategy turned more and more girls and women into sports consumers and lovers. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate “Nike Women: promotional strategy of Taiwan’s feminized sports culture”. In order to get this point, this study interviewed 10 cultural intermediaries (including project manager of Nike Women, female fitness trainer, event planner of Nike Women's Half Marathon, event planner of Nike+ Run Club & Nike Training Club App and manager of Nike sales channel) of Nike corporation. In addition, this study used “the circuit of culture” (representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation as a circuit of culture) as conceptual framework. Findings reveal that Nike cultural intermediaries built different kinds of feminized promotional strategies included sporting image and discourse of Taiwan’s female athletes, event planning, sporting training and sales channel with local taste and connection to introduce numerous female sporting lovers into the social space of sport culture practice, even if each link of Nike Women is related to the guidance of consumer goods and the goal of making profits.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been massively conducted in sports research. However, the gap between professional team sports (PTS)-related CSR and community development needs to be filled by shifting attention to the capacity building of employees’ collaboration. While the social self-identity foundations of CSR are recognized, it is essential to understand the ideological varieties driving CSR that can enable employees’ cooperation in the practice of CSR as a core organizational value. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the course of corporate social responsibility from the PTS organization employees’ perspective. Participants (n = 260) were drawn from PTS organization employees’ in Taiwan using a convenience sampling technique. This study contributes to the literature on CSR-PTS -related in social self-identity contextual and sets the stage for a employees’ collaboration framework for research. This study provides empirical evidence on the impact of PTS employees' perceived CSR on employee identification and behaviors. It identifies the critical role of employee identification as a mediating mechanism and value co-creation (i. e., co-production) in PTS moderates employees' turnover intentions.
Taekwondo received more media attention when the Kukkiwon Teakwondo Demonstration Team and World Taekwondo Demonstration Team performed well at American TV talent shows, and in turn, more foreign Taekwondo trainees became interested in studying Taekwondo at the University level. However, there are few empirical studies on factors affecting their decision to study Taekwondo in Korea. Drawing upon Altbach’s push & pull model, this study explores the factors that determine foreign Taekwondo trainees’ decision to study Taekwondo in Korea. Based on interviews with 15 participants, this study reveals that: (1) push factors from their home country are environmental factors (the lack of infrastructure, equipment, supplies, and institutions), economic factors (market ability and profitability of Taekwondo gyms), institutional factors (unsystematic organization of local institutions), educational factors (level of local instructors, training methods, and outdated content), social factors (relationship with Korean instructors). (2) Pull factors to South Korea are environmental factors (high-quality facilities, and abundant equipment), economic factors (scholarships and income from part-time jobs), institutional factors (systematic operation and events), educational factors (high-level education and new content), social factors (social position after studying Taekwondo in Korea, formation of a global network, and the possibility of choosing various careers). Taekwondo instructors have a significant impact, because they provide information about Korea to foreign Taekwondo trainees and help them study abroad. The results of this study indicate that Taekwondo instructors can activate foreign Taekwondo trainees to study abroad in Korea, which may also have an influence on the structure of Taekwondo departments in Korean universities.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been massively conducted in sports research. Although some studies show employee well-being as a theoretical framework in CSR, research on employees' creative self-efficacy behavior is limited. Professional team sports (PTS) have been involved in CSR initiatives for a long time, not only for profit and social reputation but also for strengthening relationships with the local community. However, in the PTS, employees are frontline workers who collaborate with customers and stakeholders in CSR campaigns. Hence, this study demonstrated the impact of CSR on employee turnover intention and creative self-efficacy with the mediator effect of subjective well-being. A total of 321 PTS employees were recruited, and PLS-SEM was applied to test the conceptual model. The results showed that perceived CSR positively correlates with employee subjective well-being; moreover, subjective well-being played a mediator between perceived CSR and employee creative self-efficacy. The results from this research recommend that perceived CSR plays a crucial role in strengthening employee subjective well-being. Furthermore, the study highlights subjective well-being as a potential mechanism to ensure the fulfillment of creative self-efficacy.
This study focuses on the development of baseball in Taiwan from 1950 to 1989 and discusses how Taiwanese baseball was gradually disconnected from local communities during the period from the perspective of historical sociology.
Under Japanese rule, baseball had been a popular sport in Taiwan. Although Japanese—the main ballplayers—were repatriated after World War II, Taiwanese people continued playing baseball in local communities, and became the protagonists of the fields. However, after the retreat to Taiwan in December 1949, the Kuomintang government (KMT) implemented a series of political and economic policies which greatly changed the social conditions in Taiwan, including the social image of baseball.
This study argues that there were two major shifts away from baseball in Taiwan during 1950-1989. The first shift occurred from the 1950s to the mid-1960s because of insufficient educational capacity and the KMT’s marginalization of baseball. The second shift occurred from the mid-1970s to the 1980s. The huge success in Little League World Series in the 1970s perfectly exemplifies how baseball was hijacked and utilized as a prop by the KMT to demonstrate their legitimacy to the international community. Consequently, baseball became a national symbol, and its participants was limited to few elites in pursuit of championship. The analysis shows that the two disruptions reduced the number of people involved in baseball, and gradually decoupled the development of baseball from local communities.
The outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic has made a significant impact on the implementation of sports policies and action plans around the world. Academia pointed out that the crisis has exacerbated gender inequality in the proportion of physical activity. Since the pandemic has provided an unfortunate setback and a challenge to the campaign of England's "This Girl Can" and Taiwan’s “White Paper on Promoting Women’s Participation in Sport”, This study aims to explore the nature of the development of women’s sport under the epidemic in two nations with different background, namely England and Taiwan, that have been committed to promoting women’s sport participation in recent years. By using a qualitative approach based on documentary material and semi-structured interviews, two complementary theoretical concepts provide a theoretical lens to the practical analysis, those of governance theory and a strategic-relational approach, which allows us to identify how such outcomes were mediated and shaped, and in particular how different sets of interests were implicated. Provisional findings are as follows: Statistics show that women’s participation rate in sports in England has only dropped by 3% due to the epidemic, while in Taiwan it has grown by 2%. However, field survey data show that during the epidemic, most of the housework was given to women and their sport participation was greatly hindered. Meanwhile, the interviewees/stakeholders indicated that the above-mentioned statistics are “beautified” data. Therefore, to understand the development of women's sports, it is necessary to integrate environmental factors and practical experience for a more comprehensive discussion.
This study analyzed the narrative and representations of the entertainment program ‘Sport Sisters’. ‘Sport Sisters’ is an entertainment program that aired on Channel E from August 4, 2020. Season 2 aired from September 7, 2021, to July 5, 2022. It is an entertainment program mainly starring female athletes, reproducing various narratives of female athletes in Korean society. In addition to Pak Se-ri, a golfer, female athletes from unpopular sports appear to talk about the concerns and hardships of each sport. Through understanding the sports entertainment program ‘Sport Sisters’, we intend to promote an understanding of female athletes in Korean society. Drawing upon media content analysis: 1) conflict of femininity in male-dominant sports events, 2) discrimination against unpopular sports female athletes, and 3) abuse of power by sports organizations. As a result, an overall understanding of female sports players in Korean society was promoted, and the socio-cultural context of female athletes according to the event was understood.
Due to COVID-19, effective healthcare measures for the elderly are needed. Therefore, this study aims to reveal the structure of value-based culture discourse on exercise participation of the elderly using healthcare applications. An application exercise system was used for improving the physical function of 30 elderly people, and data were collected through in-depth interviews after exercise.
Collected data were analyzed through archaeological discourse analysis suggested by Foucault (1969). First, value-based culture discourse on exercise participation using healthcare application for the elderly was formed as an exercise application with disconnected communication. Second, subject position of value-based culture discourse on healthcare applications for the elderly was determined by informal groups. The subjects were facing alienation of social learning and polarized use of resources. Third, among formation of the concept of healthcare applications for the elderly, basis of value was based on distribution of application. Relationship between basis of values was revealed in the form of compromise; using healthcare application only when help was given. Fourth, strategy formation of the elderly’s health care application was in three categories: the first was exercise environment accompanied by paradox, the second was formation of macroscopic discourse, and the third was conflict of discourses. Fifth, relationships between discourse and exercise participation were as follows, “value perception of healthcare application is not correlated with exercise participation,” “lack of application distribution and technology excluding the elderly resulted in disregard of healthcare application,” “Gap between value-based culture of healthcare application and exercise practice represents the elderly’s value-based culture exercise discourse.”
Panelists: Lawrence Wenner (Loyola Marymount University, USA), Dominic Malcolm (Loughborough University, UK), Cheryl Cooky (Purdue University, USA), Jay Coakley (University of Colorado, USA), Catherine Palmer (Torrens University, Australia), Tien-Chin (Tony) Tan (National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan), Annelies Knoppers (Utrecht University, Netherlands)
Breakdance has gained increasing popularity throughout the Western world in recent decades. As subcultural movements involving physical culture and bodily practices among youth reach a certain threshold of prevalence, it is no surprise that the IOC strive for the inclusion of such activities at the Olympic agenda. Breakdance makes its Olympic debut at the Paris Games in 2024. We take this as a potential sign of sportification of lifestyle sport. Sportification refers to the emergence of new sporting practices which gradually forms organisations that have the power to define the rules of sport-like recreations (Elias 1971). We would suggest that the term may refer to some of the distinguishing characteristics of modern sport identified by Guttmann (1978), including the rationalisation, bureaucratisation and quantification of sporting practices and governing bodies. We ask: How does the sportification of breakdance influence negotiations of the symbolic meaning of breakdance in sport policy documents, and among athletes and administrative representatives? Our aim is to light-shed this question by digging into relevant documentary sources, as well as to conduct in-depth interviews with athletes and leaders of sporting bodies. Conceptually, our point of departure is twofold. First, we assess the negotiations between the IOC and breakdance in the light of insights from the Cultural Studies tradition. This is to identify dominant, negotiated and/or oppositional responses from breakdance towards the established governing bodies within sport. Second, we make use of the concepts of boundaries and boundary work, from Lamont, to analyse processes of negotiations within breakdance.
Various forms of recreational sports entail self-inflicted pain and suffering that can be experienced by practitioners as emotionally and spiritually uplifting. Building on the ethnographic example of a small but growing community of recreational ultrarunners in Estonia, this paper scrutinises the moral language that runners use to make sense of the pain and suffering that running extended distances often entails. In many respects, ultrarunning events are ritualised occasions for performing technologies of the self that, according to Foucault (1985), can be understood as consisting of various practices and techniques that individuals, drawing from available and imagined cultural models, perform on themselves to become moral subjects. Sensations of extreme exhaustion, severe physical pain, or sleep deprivation – common effects of ultrarunning – constitute “bodily affordances” (Gibson 1986) in this self-making process. Capacity and one’s willingness to withstand these sensations, and the self-discipline required when training for and enduring ultrarunning events, can, in turn, be interpreted as “ethical affordances” (Keane 2016) that provide the runners with legitimate means and values for the process of ethical self-making through extreme physical as well as mental effort. But ultrarunning can also engender new sensations on “the edge of experience” such as visions, voices, novel ways of perceiving oneself, nature and life in general. These intimate sensations, often deemed as “almost mystical,” figure prominently in the moral language of the runners, and their descriptions rely heavily on spiritual and also animistic vocabulary.
Sport’s role in city branding historically focused on large-scale event hosting such as the Olympic Games and the World Cup. While such mega sporting events are increasingly linked to legacy effects on host cities, there is a lack of recognition for recreational and daily physical activity which impacts a sense of belonging, social integration, and community cohesion in hosts. Residents and local communities are important internal stakeholders when it comes to envisioning a city’s brand since they live, experience, and embody the city daily. The participation of local communities is increasingly highlighted in place branding literature with co-created city brands resonating collective experiences and promoting shared values.
To understand the opportunity of more increased local community engagement in mid-size city branding, this paper examines Ottawa city officials’ and residents’ perceptions of participatory city branding, with an emphasis on community sport and recreational leisure activities. Based on the integration of binary data sets in a case study, 17 interviews with officials and representatives of Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, present themes pertaining possibilities and challenges for Ottawa city branding via the use of community sport. Survey results indicate that Ottawa residents(n=127) advocate for more reflective consultation with local communities in line with the existing government-centred image-making process. This research indicates community sport can positively impact city branding, leading to greater resident participation in more collaborative governance processes.
La responsabilité sociale est un concept qui considère qu'un individu ou une organisation a, au-delà de ses objectifs propres, l'obligation d'agir au bénéfice de la société au sens large. À ce titre, le sport, favorise les discours relatifs à l’intérêt général (Bernardeau Moreau, 2009) par l’irruption de question sociétales contemporaines (diversité, développement durable, inclusivité…). Elles émanent d’organismes supranationaux, d’ONG ou de mouvements associatifs militants qui se déclinent au sein des états, impactant désormais les fédérations et les clubs et ainsi l’ensemble des acteurs du sport. Cette déclinaison stratégique, du global au local pose la question de son opérationnalité qui se traduit essentiellement au travers de l’obtention de label et /ou du respect de chartes souvent accompagnés de conditions de financement ou l’obtention des marchés.
Nous proposons d’analyser la déclinaison stratégique de ces normes au travers de La Charte écoresponsable (2017), du label FIER-IRIS crée en mai 2021, et par le lancement du plan de sobriété énergétique du sport 13 octobre 2022.
Nos premiers résultats montrent que les acteurs du sport peinent dans la mise en applications de ces normes nouvelles dont les finalités, souvent managériales et ou économiques brouillent et dévoie la notion même de responsabilité.
Ils sont également confrontés à une double vulnérabilité. D’une part, ils doivent répondre à des injonctions nouvelles qu’il est parfois difficile de satisfaire, et d’autre part, ils sont interpelés dans leur activité professionnelle suscitant polémiques et controverses nourris par la réactivité des internautes sur les médias sociaux qui alimentent une vision simplifiée du monde.
Le vieillissement des populations nous invite à repenser les modèles de participation sociale des personnes âgées. Si la retraite professionnelle marque un tournant du parcours de vie, peu d’études ont documenté les parcours d’engagement bénévole et citoyen des personnes âgées dans le domaine du loisir et de l’activité physique. Comment certains participants acquièrent l’expertise nécessaire au cours du cycle de vie pour se réengager socialement comme bénévoles ? Quelles sont les motivations à l’adoption de rôles sociaux (entraineurs, arbitres, mandataires sportifs, etc) connectant l’individu à la communauté ? Quels bienfaits sont perçus par ces bénévoles dont l’engagement dépasse la simple participation active ? En nous appuyant sur le concept de loisir sérieux (Stebbins, 1982), cette étude documente les parcours de vie (contraintes et facilitateurs) de participants experts afin de mieux comprendre leur engagement social comme bénévoles. Notre analyse qualitative a été réalisée sur la base d’entretiens semi-dirigés d’une durée de 25 à 65 minutes auprès de 15 bénévoles de 50 à 88 ans engagés dans l’organisation des arts martiaux et d’haltérophilie olympique. Bien qu’il existe une hétérogénéité des parcours de vie, nos résultats exposent les points de convergences sur les bienfaits individuels et sociaux perçus par les participants, notamment sur leurs intentions altruistes de redonner aux membres de leur communauté de pratique. La conclusion expose en quoi leur participation sociale puise dans les notions de préservation identitaire et d’affirmation de leur pertinence sociale par l’action bénévole.
Le Boys and Girls Club d’Ottawa (BGCO) et les Jeux de l’Acadie (JA) sont deux organismes communautaires qui œuvrent auprès de jeunes en situation minoritaire. Le BGCO cible les jeunes provenant de milieux défavorisés de la ville d’Ottawa en fournissant différents programmes sportifs, alors que les JA sont une compétition sportive et artistique pour les jeunes francophones de l’Acadie. Autant au BGCO qu’aux JA, plusieurs des employés et bénévoles sont d’anciens participants. Des entrevues réalisées avec vingt-neuf jeunes leaders et sept gestionnaires des BGCO et des JA aident à comprendre de quelles façons ceux-ci conçoivent leur engagement actuel comme moyen de ‘redonner’ à ces deux organisations. Les entrevues révèlent que les anciens participants cherchent particulièrement à offrir différentes opportunités aux jeunes faisant désormais partie de ces organisations. Plusieurs jeunes leaders et gestionnaires du BGCO mentionnent que, sans l’organisation, ils n’auraient pas eu la chance de pratiquer un ou des sports pendant leur jeunesse alors que ceux des JA reconnaissent le rôle crucial des entraîneurs, organisateurs et bénévoles qui leur ont permis de vivre cet évènement de grande envergure. Alors que les intervenants du BGCO réfèrent principalement à leur attachement à l’organisation ainsi qu’un désir d’aider les jeunes, les leaders des JA s’engagent principalement pour les jeunes, sans souligner d’attachement explicite à l’organisation ou à la francophonie. Curieusement, dans un cas comme dans l’autre, la définition de la communauté visée par leur engagement varie d’un leader à l’autre, quoique l’impact de leur engagement soit semblable pour l’insertion communautaire des participants.
Introduction: Le texte porte sur la sportivisation de la Lutte Marajoara - LM, lutte traditionnelle du nord du Brésil, et la valeur sociologique de ses règles dans le développement régional de la modalité. Objectif: Comprendre l’engagement des communautés marajoara dans la revendication de la pratique de la lutte, selon leurs habitus. Méthode: observation participante en deux événements sportifs de la modalité dans les villes de Ponta de Pedras et de Soure; respectivement, le « 1er Championnat de LM», en 2021, et la « 6e édition de la course de chevaux », en 2022. L’événement course de chevaux comprend également des tournois de LM. Résultats et discussion: Lors des événements, les règles définies par les institutions pour la lutte marajoara ont été remises en question. Dans la sociologie configurationnelle de Elias, une « société » se structure à partir de la formation de réseaux d’interdépendances (habitus) dans lesquels les individus tissent des relations, procèdent à des échanges et produisent des coutumes et des formes d’actions collectives. On a observé l’existence de différents habitus, exprimés par les communautés Marajoara organisées à partir du sport, qui “luttent” pour l’engagement à travers la transmission de leurs savoir constituées sur leurs propres règles et manières de pratiquer la lutte dans leur communauté locale. Conclusions: L’existence de différentes compréhensions et intérêts locaux à propos de la lutte révèle la force des communautés et la multiplicité des configurations autour la LM, en réponse à la standardisation des règles proposées par des entités externes de gouvernance sportive centralisée.
Sex-integrated sport is but one strategy proposed to address gender-based oppression and oppose the binary construction of sex. Yet little progress has been made in existing sport practices to move towards integration. Utilizing essentialism and social constructionism as the theoretical framework, the current study utilizes a cross-sectional survey of U.S. college student-athletes (N=295) to assess support for sex integration in sport in both training and competition. First, participants answered questions discussing the extent of their exposure to sex-integrated sport. Secondly, participants reported their level of support for sex integration at various competitive/age levels. Lastly, as gender essentialist beliefs have been associated with prejudice and sexist attitudes, athletes’ beliefs (i.e., essentialist and social constructionist) regarding gender were also investigated. As one of the few quantitative investigations of sex integration, findings can provide valuable information on the potential reception by athletes of sex integration in sport and provide direction for future implementation in practice and policy.
Sex categorization in sport is usually perceived as something natural and is hence hardly questioned. This draws on the notion that there are two – and only two – sexes and that these are mutually exclusive, especially in terms of physical strength. Accordingly non-binary, intersex and trans women have been facing discrimination regarding the participation in their gender category. Whereas it is a normality in many martial arts clubs, that all its members do sparring with each other, it is also perceived as a normality that the genders may not fight against each other.
In spite of that, we recognize a trend in some local training communities in (East) Germany towards the queering of fights. That is, fights are organized for all people identifying as flintas and are solely organized in weight classes. The special feature of these communities is one of an intertwining local and (sub)cultural characteristic, that is, they emerge from an subcultural left scene that defines itself in and through an antisexist etc. space. Urban districts, like those of Leipzig and Berlin, the sites of our research encounter, have been known to bring forth these cultures of resistance.
In this paper, we seek to answer the question, which potential gender neutral fights, organized by these local communities, have, regarding the deconstruction of sex categories. That is, how are the participants themselves undoing (or doing) gender and do we indeed find assemblages of gender neutrality? Our study design foresees to include an ethnographic account as well as interviews.
Men were a part of the artistic swimming event when the sport was initially introduced to the public, but were subsequently barred from competing at the highest level until the 2015 FINA World Championships. This is recognized as a turning point in artistic swimming, empowering males’ side in the female-dominated sport through embracing mixed duets in the event. Nevertheless, there has been limited attention from the academic society paid to this watershed event in the history of artistic swimming, the significance of which is considerably under-explored, to a great degree, downplayed.
Inspired by Feminist Critical Theory, we explore why the experiences of men in artistic swimming are different from women and what kinds of knowledge are created by male practices in artistic swimming, and how the male knowledge in artistic swimming takes effect on the traditional knowledge of artistic swimming dominated by females.
We used a qualitative methodological approach to understand male artistic swimmers’ experience. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants. We interviewed 16 male artistic swimmers and 18 female artistic swimmers. We used the Foucauldian discourse analysis to deal with this data.
From a Foucauldian perspective, we focus on “The individualization of male artistic swimmers, " meaning the power of traditional knowledge becomes more anonymous and functional to affect the behaviors of male artistic swimmers. Besides, we focus on “The subjectivation of male artistic swimmer’’, which means the power to make male artistic swimmers observe, analyze, interpret and recognize themselves as a domain of possible knowledge.
On September 29th, 2022, Miami Dolphins’ quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa, received two concussions in five days and was taken off the field on a stretcher. The media framing around Tagovailoa’s concussions focused on the flaws of the NFL concussion policy and the poor decision-making of the neurotrauma consultant, demonstrating a noticeable shift in how the media has previously framed concussions as a natural by-product of sport (Karimipour & Hull, 2017). Since scholars have demonstrated a connection between how the media frames concussions with how they are experienced in practice, it is possible that the framing of Tagovailoa’s concussions expresses a change in the culture surrounding concussions on the field. However, a closer look at less publicized concussions demonstrates this may not be true. For instance, Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson suffered a concussion on December 11th, 2022, and the media focused on how he was “battling his ass off” and “fighting the whole game,” vitalizing his willingness to put his brain on the line (Legwold, 2022). Further, considering that BIPOC athletes are more likely than white athletes to return to sport with a concussion (Wagner et al., 2020), understanding what role the media might have in contributing to racialized interpretations of risk with respect to concussions is important. Therefore, this presentation will examine findings from a 4-month discourse analysis exploring all ESPN articles about athlete concussions through the lens of critical race theory to understand what role the media might have in contributing to racialized interpretations of risk with respect to concussions.
This presentation offers a critical perspective on theories and practices of coproduction in community sport research partnerships. Coproduction commonly refers to the involvement of end-users in design and delivery decisions with the promise of improved quality of services but there is no single agreed definition or theoretical perspective. I discuss the problem and limits of a one-way consultation from service deliverer to service user in coproduction approaches which destroys the potential for meaningful collaboration, emancipation and transformation. I explore approaches which adopt more creative, participatory practices and go beyond consultation to facilitate the sharing of experiences and ideas and focus on maintaining transparent, honest and mutual exchanges of information. This necessarily involves the development of intricate relationships between partners, recognition of diverse, experiences and expertise and being mindful of the complex dynamics of power, negotiation and meaning that operate in this type of coproduction work. I critically explore these issues using examples from a range of community sport for health projects designed, delivered and evaluated at Brunel University London over the past 10 years.
The parkrun organization provides free, community-based runs across the UK, and in 2019 started their first run on the grounds of a mental health hospital for service-users, staff, and the general public. However, the experiences of those partaking in these runs, and the ways that they are experienced as emplaced, relational, and therapeutic have yet to be explored. This study therefore sought to explore the individual and collective experiences of those involved in the Bethlem parkrun. A mobile ethnography was conducted on the grounds of the hospital in London, UK. Ethnographic coding was used to organize the findings into two key themes focusing on ‘what it is like’ to participate in this parkrun: i) Bethlem as a Shared Leisure Space and ii) Shared Leisure Space, But for Whom? The findings illustrated the emplaced and relational (both human and non-human) experiences of some participants in this ‘therapeutic landscape,’ while highlighting that the events were highly exclusionary for others, namely service-users. These findings contrast the therapeutic landscapes literature which largely assumes their benefits are experienced equally or that these spaces are inherently salutogenic. Collectively, this work emphasizes the need for future leisure provision that is co-produced by service-users and guided by their experiences, abilities and desires. These findings can also be integrated in the development of future parkruns on the grounds of other mental health hospitals by ensuring that service-users are actively involved in their design and delivery.
Ice hockey is well known for its fast paced and physical style of play that is reportedly putting participants at greater risk of injury compared to other sports. Cusimano et al. (2016) support this stating: “injuries are common in all contact sports, but those who play ice hockey are at particular injury risk” (p. 1). Head injury in particular is receiving greater attention, in part because of high profile cases of professional athletes suffering career ending/threatening concussions, and because of the increase in medical studies identifying how repeated head trauma can lead to long term health problems, most notably degenerative brain disease. These concerns are intensified for youth hockey in light of recent evidence which suggests that effects of head injury are worse for youth than they are for athletes in later stages of life. To better understand concussion injury rate trends in youth hockey our research group for the past seven years has been documenting head contact events across all levels of youth hockey to determine age related differences in frequency and the manner which head contact events occur. Through captured video of youth hockey games, this study examines if head contacts events are occurring as a result legal ice hockey play, or illegal contact that would warrant penalty. The purpose is to determine if injury prevention strategies should be targeting rule modification or focus more on the reduction of transgressive play to better protect players.
The purpose of this study was to examine health, well-being, and physical education through a decolonial lens that focused on Indigenous worldviews, knowledges, and experiences. Utilizing a qualitative case study methodology, the goals of this project were to recognize how health and wellbeing (HWB) were understood by a small culturally diverse group of Indigenous Peoples located in the greater Tkaronto areas. It additionally explored how these cultural understandings of HWB might support decolonized approaches to health and physical education (HPE) curricula within the municipality of York Region.
The project embraced a variety of perspectives from diverse Indigenous students, educators, administrators, and Traditional Knowledge Keeper from two urban southern Ontario universities. Storytelling and thematic analysis were supported by decolonizing methodologies including the strength’s perspective (Paraschak & Thompson, 2014) and two-eyed seeing offered by Albert and Murdena Marshall (Bartlett et al., 2012; Lavallée & Lévesque, 2013) that assisted in making visible how HWB were culturally understood. Indigenous Grounded Analysis (IGA) (Tuck & Gorlewski, 2016) and Traditional Indigenous Knowledges (TIK) (Maaka & Fleras, 2009) served as theoretical orientations that privileged and foregrounded Indigenous stories, knowledges, and experiences to consider how culturally diverse understandings of HWB might decolonize HPE within York Region.
Through application of an Indigenous - Māori informed theoretical framing, articulated as Mana Wāhine values, this presentation draws on fieldwork findings to considers firstly, the role of weightlifting in developing personal, relational, and collective empowerment for Aotearoa New Zealand Indigenous (Māori) women, and then secondly how this empowerment aligns with the strengthening of Mana Wāhine values and fosters social change.
Findings suggest that lifting weights and strength-based training enhanced the development of taha tinana (physical wellness), taha wairua (spiritual wellness), and this had flow on effects into other areas of life, hence they reported better taha hinengaro (mental and emotional wellness). While seemingly an individual sport, feelings of belonging and camaraderie due to being part of the lifting community and subscribing to a similar kaupapa (purpose/vision) lead to better taha whānau (social wellness). Wāhine spoke very much about having a sense of authority, notions of manakitanga (care; generosity) and giving back to publics on the ground, especially Māori publics for the purpose of promoting the kaupapa of strong wāhine. However, any broader transformative impacts will require the ongoing challenges of predetermined ideologies i.e., stereotypes of women not being strong, or norms, rules, exclusionary practices and under resourcing, for example, which sees women’s lifting to be situated at the margins.
In this presentation, we explore why a select group of women who achieved belonging to or at least positions in an Olympic national team choose karate as their sport, and how they dealt with the experience of pain and suffering from training sessions and competitions. We researched the Spanish women’s Olympic karate team in their preparation for the Tokyo 2020 (2021) Olympic Games. We conducted an ethnographic project with auto-ethnographic elements, since the original plan was not possible for full completion given the advent of COVID-19. The first author of the chapter has been a karate practitioner for several years counting then in her experience in order to question, corroborate, and deepen understanding of the data offered by athletes. Even though she was always an amateur athlete, proceeding from the Global South, data evidenced that her experience regarding training sessions, the tradition of martial art, experiences of a woman performing in a masculine environment, the motivation to start and keep training, some strategies to deal with challenges, pain, suffering, weight, defeat, among other elements, found shared meanings with elite athletes from the Global North. She built herself as a karateka in Brazil, and between 2018 and 2022 she trained in karate in Spain, Scotland, Italy, and Australia, which enables her to analyse karate experiences internationally.
In conclusion, we reflect on the somewhat precarious situation of women in the hyper-masculine environment of karate and the conditions that need to be in place to ensure their full and valued participation.
This paper explores the interviews conducted within the “Memories of Soccer” project, developed by the Museum of Image and Sound (São Paulo, Brazil). In these, the figure of Brazilian Professor José Sebastião Witter stands out as a master of what can be classified today as ‘deviation of good practices.’ During the recordings, he promoted interruptions and comments, debating the interviewees and counterpointing his own thesis on the topics discussed. By posing his questions, he took the lead of the testimonies, reiterating his experiences within soccer. If such heterodoxy curtailed the interviewee’s line of reasoning, embarrassment to expose ideas or defense of biased versions to please the interviewer, on the other hand, the set of accounts allows us to construct a mosaic of Witter’s thought, a pioneer in raising soccer to the status of academic object.
The importance of football in the construction and reproduction of national identity has been analyzed by many scholars. This research aims to understand and explain the effect of football on the construction and reproduction of national identities beyond the borders of the national state. In this context, the Turkish Community Football Federation (TCFF), which was established in London in 1976 as an amateur football league, primarily by Turkish-Cypriot immigrants, has been analyzed as a case study. As part of the study, ethnographic field research was carried out among Turkish immigrants in London over a six-month period. In the data analysis, participants’ views were considered in relation to existing literature and three main themes were identified in relation to football: “Collective memory”, “National language”, “National representation and national symbols”. As a result, it has been determined that football has an impact on the construction and reproduction of the national identities of immigrant communities living beyond the borders of the national state. However, there are fundamental differences between generations in this regard. The first generation with migration experience is strongly attached to Turkish national identity and their country of origin (homeland). The ethnic-national identities of later generations, who have no migration experience and have spent their entire socialization process in England, are do not have such strong feelings. This study was supported financially by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK; project number 2219).
While sports athletes have empirical links to multi/trans/nationalities, the different links to the nation and national identity are not outdated within the cultural sports media landscape (Rowe, 2013). Because hockey has long dominated the bulk of media narratives about sport, its heroes, and Canadian nationalism, soccer, "the global game" as opposed to the “our game”, offers a new perspective on national narratives in its recent emergence as a Sport Media Spectacle in Canada. The dynamics inherent in the transformations of identity stories, offer us other relevant (and unexplored) narratives of what it is to be Canadian, especially for multinational citizens embodied in athletes like Alphonso Davies. This paper focuses on the media coverage of this Canadian soccer star from 2016 to 2022, and pays attention to "negotiating belonging" as a key dimension of narratives within the media/sports cultural complex where the sports stars' multiple nationalities are played out. Alphonso Davies’ trajectory as a refugee from Liberia, born in Ghana and raised in Canada, suggests in its own way the fluidity of national identities, as he has already crossed three nations, and now a fourth as a player for Bayern Munich in Germany. He is a testament to several transnational movements, but also to the persistence of the nation when it comes to time to "choose" the nation in the Canadian sports media landscape. His case suggests the different ways of choosing the nation, but also the fate of those who do not choose "the right" nation.
Although sport and nationalism have been closely related in numerous research studies, the relationship between sport and nationalism in the Chinese context still lacks attention, especially as regards gender.
Chinese women’s volleyball has been responsible for eye-catching nationwide achievements, especially in the 1980s and the 2010s, which are recognised as a ‘legend’ in Chinese sports and frequently associated with a significant impetus to nationalism. Even though nationalism and sports are generally gendered as masculine, under the influence of Confucianism, Communism, modern capitalism, and other ideologies, Chinese female sports have gained more attention and have been significantly linked to nationalism in previous research. However, the situation in recent years remains unclear.
Hence, it is important to study how sport, nationalism, and gender have interacted in the context of China and how they have developed against a backdrop of social change through a study of Chinese women’s volleyball.
This research focuses on China’s women’s volleyball legend and how it has reflected nationalism at different times. By using media analysis and focus groups, the aim of the study is to assess how this changed from the 1980s to the 2010s in a period when the Chinese economic situation and society also changed considerably. Additionally, this study also explores the interaction between sport, gender, and nationalism in the Chinese context and discusses the multi-dimensional aspects and various discourses behind the phenomenon.
The situation in Latin America concerning the area of SDP has been evolving over the last couple of years. The focus on this continent brought also more and broader topics into the SDP research. Similarly, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda has been one the most visible frameworks in the field of SDP. The Advanced Olympic Research Grant Programme helped us to collect data about the situation in specific SDP projects in several Latin American countries (Brazil, Uruguay, and Colombia). The proposed presentation will discuss the general relation of SDGs to the observed SDP area and, at the same time, the relevance and role of specific SDGs for specific organizations and projects. The SDGs number 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, and 16 proved to be the most significant for the work of the local organizations. The data was gathered through qualitative research methods – mainly interviews and focus groups – during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The whole research was done through the use of online tools as the pandemic did not allow for personal encounters. Thematic analysis using deductive and inductive approaches was mainly used in the analysis of the data. Therefore, the relation to the selected SDGs will be depicted and the different approaches of the organizations towards the pandemic and their operations in the field will be discussed.
Sport for development and peace (SDP) organizations work with marginalized and vulnerable individuals to achieve a range of development goals, including gender equality. Whilst a growing body of research has explored the gendering of SDP programmes and initiatives, there is a significant lack of research and applied work examining gender inclusion within SDP organizations themselves.
Objective: To explore the extent to which the leadership and governance of SDP organizations are gender inclusive.
Methods: An online survey with responses from a diverse sample of 118 SDP organizations. Interviews with senior leaders of SDP organizations across six continents.
Theory: An intersectional feminist framework.
Findings: Overall, the SDP organizations in the survey sample were gender balanced across both their boards and senior leadership teams (47.71% and 48.92% female representation, respectively). Additionally, the organizations were gender titled in favour of men across both chairs of the board and the most powerful leadership positions (36.33% and 37.50% female representation, respectively). There were no notable differences in findings according to where the organizations were geographically located. The interview findings will generate information on the extent to which women ‘having a seat at the table’ also translates to recognition and having a voice to influence the SDP sector.
Discussion: The complex, intersectional relationships between gender, representation, knowledge, and power within SDP organizations will be explored. Comparisons with the sport sector will be discussed, as well as learnings that can be provided to, and taken from, the SDP sector.
Our paper will discuss the posture of the researcher working in the field of Sport for Development (SFD) with local communities. This work is part of a larger scientific study, which aims to analyze the socio-educational effects of a SFD program implemented by the French NGO PLAY International in Burundi, Kosovo and Senegal. We will base our paper on a series of 140 biographical interviews with beneficiaries of the program (children and educational actors) and 7 months of ethnographic observation in the three intervention countries.
The local communities tell their life stories and express their needs in different ways depending on the countries and localities we visited, but also according to the distance they perceive - or not - and maintain with the doctoral student (a young French and white woman). A variety of asymmetries between the interviewer and the interviewees characterize the investigation relationship, which affect the data gathered. While generational and language differences hinder the collection of data from children, it is rather cultural, social and gender asymmetries that take precedence over others with adults, particularly in a non-western context. However, these barriers should not prevent the researcher from accessing and recognizing local knowledge, which is essential for understanding the concept of SFD (Nicholls & al., 2011). In this paper, we will present the methodological and epistemological challenges we encountered in the field and the solutions we envisaged, while critically reflecting on the posture of the Western interviewer, working on complex phenomena in non-Western cultural contexts (Kay, 2009).
This paper considers how sport sociologists can engage publics by including sonic walks in their research alongside scholarly publications. It thus addresses the ISSA’s call for papers that make the study of sport meaningful to groups outside academia. Specifically, it identifies the value of designing a sonic walk of the parade route designed to celebrate the Toronto Raptors’ 2019 National Basketball Association (NBA) Conference Finals victory.
The Raptors’ participation in the 2019 competition carried national significance. Commentators suggested that the association between hockey and national identity was declining, and Canada was becoming a basketball nation (Aladejebi et al., 2022). This development offers an ideal opportunity to evaluate the growth of basketball culture in Canada. However, it is imperative to expand beyond a limiting focus on national myths to account for the material and embodied dimensions of the relationship between sport and nationalism. Springgay and Truman’s (2018) concept of “walking with” and approach to designing sonic walks offers an ideal methodology to achieve this goal. Informed by their queer, decolonial, and more-than-human approach to conducting place-based research, this paper proposes a sonic walk of the Raptor’s parade route narrated by Canadians discussing their relationship to the land. This walk advances three goals. First, offer Canadians the opportunity to co-author national narratives about basketball (see: Szto, 2020). Second, create a multi-sensory (aural, visual, haptic) experience for users that will prompt them to evaluate their relationship to the land. Third, highlight the material, racial, and Settler colonial dimensions of the Raptors’ victory.
Sport sociologists who adopt a comprehensive and carnal perspective (Wacquant, 2015) attempt to account for the dynamics of lived sport experiences from a physical, emotional, and sensory vantage point. To this end, while observant participation has historically occupied a hegemonic position (Quidu, 2022), several other methodological tools exist. The objective of this conference is to present three alternative and complementary methods to observant participation that we’re explored in different research settings. First, we used a “real-time explicitation” method (Quidu and Favier-Ambrosini, 2022) to collect in acto, the thoughts, perceptions, and sensations of runners. Second, still with runners, a “removal” method (Homewood et al., 2020) was employed to study self-tracking practices of amateur athletes by “imposing” on them a “disconnected” run, meaning they had to complete their run without their habitual use of a tracking device. The objective of this method was to examine the extent to which this momentary disconnection would destabilize them and document, in depth, the embodied modes of appropriations of embedded technologies. As a third method, in the context of a study of lived experiences of self-defined exercise addicts, we experimented with a “mobile interview” method (Carpiano, 2009), where interviews were conducted while running or cycling with participants. In pursuance of critically examining these methodological tools, our conclusion will entail comparing the “differential knowledge effects” (Lahire, 2005: 85-86) produced by each method, as well as highlighting their respective limitations.
Sport for Development (SfD) is often situated within a Freirean approach. A Freirean approach advocates a critical, flexible and contextualized curriculum as part of transformative education processes through sport. Critical literacy and critical pedagogy, as described by Freire, consists of the ability 'to name the world and to change it'. This change is based on a theoretical premise of dialogue as an 'essential necessity'. The methods used to collect data for such projects usually assumes participants are able to articulate their experiences, feelings and thoughts and understand each other. Forced migration, however, has meant many people are on the move. This move is accompanied by complexities of language and of cultural understanding making it difficult for participants of SfD to communicate with and comprehend each other. This complexity suggests that other methods may be needed. Forced migration and Freire’s notion about the need for critical thinking are not necessarily tied to specific forms of literacy however, especially since new media for recording communication are readily available. A relatively ‘new’ method that attempts to circumvent these methodical difficulties is Participatory Video Research (PVR). PVR draws on digital resources to enable participants in projects to communicate their thoughts and feelings. We examined how the use of PVR by youth living in an asylum refugee reception center allowed them to a create videos of their sport participation experiences while also enabling researchers to collect data about how these experiences might contribute to positive health and wellbeing of participating youth.
Rationale: There have been increasing calls to amplify marginalized voices across sport studies (Fink, 2016); yet the process of recruitment may be complex reflecting the inequitable systems of power that silence the voices intended to be studied. This is an important issue to understand as the recruitment process has a significant impact on the feasibility of a research study and influences knowledge creation (Andoh-Arthur, 2019; Clark, 2010; De Laine, 2000). This paper, through a feminist paradigm, aims to discuss the difficulties experienced when attempting to amplify marginalized perspectives in sport research. Specifically, we examine and reflect upon, the difficulties we encountered when studying professional female athletes and (inequitable) sponsorship experiences due to various gatekeepers and systemic inequities (English, 2020; Fink, 2016; Toffoletti & Thorpe, 2018; Tredway, 2014).
Findings/Implications: Our methodological reflections explore three main challenges we encountered including; i) the gatekeeping role of player agents who specifically seek out monetized opportunities, ii) resistance across clubs/league who, were under an external investigation related to widespread abusive practices, and iii) a lack of physical and emotional capacity from professional female athletes to participate in research, mirroring the inequities professional females face compared to their male counterparts. These reflections highlight the challenges researchers should consider when their research aims to amplify traditionally marginalized voices in professional sport with lessons learned along the way.
The recent rise in women's sport in Mexico evinces a historic debt with women athletes, especially during the first half of the 20th century. Current research aims to make visible women’s sports history, as well as public or private institutions, or social-political process that encouraged, or discouraged women’s sport practices. Sports literature in Mexico is vast, especially that related to soccer, male sports, and those taking place in Mexico City. The literature suggests three main sources for the Mexican Sport's practice: 1) the European immigrant influence, mining industry and/or railroad expansion in the 20th century beginning; 2) immigrants social-sporting clubs foundation, or upper class, in urbanized cities; and 3) the introduction of physical education in public schools during the postrevolutionary years. These stages are not a process, since they do not happen in the same way, or at the same time throughout the whole country. Suggesting a Mexico’s sports history through these three stages sheds light about women situation and their relationship with sports through their national, regional, or local social and political contexts. This research describes the origins of women sport in Torreon, Coahuila through the four stages (1922-1950), focusing on physical education introduction in public or private local schools, and/or physical-sporting activities in sporting clubs. It intends to analyze, diagnose, and problematize these women in Torreon sports through local press, particularly El Siglo de Torreon. The present research allows to make visible women sport's history and contributes to the local historical memory.
This study examines the experiences of indigenous sportswomen of the Mulan football team in Taiwan. Mulan football is a famous football team in Taiwan’s sports history for their remarkable record, three times Asian football champion between 1977 and 1981. However, the indigenous female footballers’ experiences are unclear, primarily since the Han ethnicity dominates the discourse of Mulan football history. The name Mulan comes from ancient China and relates to the Xianbei or Han people. As sports sociologists remind us that women are the focus of attention, and another process of exclusion is taking place. Postcolonial feminists criticize that feminists provide strategies to challenge patriarchy by using ‘women’ as a category without differences. This study takes postcolonial feminism theory to analyze Mulan football history, especially recognizing sportswomen with their gender, class, and ethnicity. The research question is, what are indigenous female footballers’ experiences when participating in sports? This research uses semi-structured interviews to collect indigenous footballers’ unique insights. The interviewees were those who had ever joined the national team between 1977 and 1981. The evidence shows that Mulan football history makes indigenous athletes stay periphery. Although most indigenous sportswomen are historically invisible, they experience various difficulties depending on their social positions. For example, only some indigenous footballers had opportunities to enroll in university with their sports talent. At the same time, others did not go to college and worried about their economic condition. To conclude, indigenous female footballers’ experiences are different due to intersecting with gender, class, and ethnicity.
This presentation explores how new materialist theory, specifically Jane Bennett’s vital materialism, can contribute to the field of sport sociology. Within vital materialism, Bennett stresses the vitality of the nonhuman, encouraging scholars to recognize the “thing-power” of objects in worldly phenomena and emphasizing the inseparable connections between humans and the nonhuman. To explore the potential of using thing-power and vital materialism for studying objects in sport, this presentation will draw upon research conducted around two objects at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics; unitards worn by the German Artistic Gymnastics Teams and a swim cap designed for Black hair, banned by FINA prior to the Tokyo Olympics. Using a thematic analysis of popular press published during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, this research highlights the multiple ideas and stories developed in response to the objects. In so doing, it speaks towards the ways in which objects were integral actants and helped ignite conversations around the treatment of gender, the sexualization of female athletes, and the racism and exclusionary practices of elite swimming. Using this research as an example, the presentation will discuss the possibilities and implications of using vital materialism and thing-power across the socio-cultural study of sport and its potential to lead to innovative and impactful scholarship.
Spectators of the match between Querétaro F.C. and Atlas F.C. on March 5, 2022 were horrified to see fan violence break out among the stands. Though television cameras refused to focus on the fighting, the images circulating on social media were very disturbing. Twenty-six people, all of them Atlas fans, were later hospitalized, some with severe injuries.
While brawls and fist fights are not uncommon in stadiums, the level of violence in Querétaro was horrifying. Likewise, this episode stands out for several reasons. Spontaneous sports violence usually starts due to some event on the field (Murzi & Segura, 2020; Negroe Álvarez, 2021; Spaaij, 2014) such as fights between players, or a painful loss (Wann & James, 2018), but here there was no clear trigger for the events. There was no referee error, and the match was not a particularly relevant one for either team.
In the following days, blame was placed on the “barras bravas” -organized fan groups, made up mostly of young men- of both teams, on the security personnel, on the local teams’ administrators, and on organized crime. Government officials called for more police presence, ban of alcohol sales, and other measures which research (Alzina, 2019; Newson, 2021; among others) has shown to be ineffectual.
This qualitative study uses video evidence and eyewitness accounts as data. These were content analyzed to try to make sense of what happened that Saturday in Querétaro. The aim is to propose research-backed measures that can contribute to making stadiums safer for all.
The historical and geographical vulnerability of Pakistan to violent extremism (VE), as well as the increasing number of Pakistani communities using Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) programmes, informed the need for this research. The government has often adopted a top-down approach to its VE prevention efforts. In cases where civil society organisations are consulted or engaged, the role of sport/SDP programmes is largely overlooked, despite their social significance in local communities and Pakistan in general. Due to this gap, the study included four SDP programme implementers and eight youth beneficiaries from two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) located in the Multan district of Punjab province, where they operate in 27 high-risk local communities. The study aimed to seek local perspectives about the factors considered when implementing SDP programmes in high-risk local communities. Hedieh Mirahmadi’s (2016) BRAVE model was the theoretical tool used to analyse the factors that organisations consider when they engage vulnerable youth from the targeted communities. Using semi-structured in-depth interviews and document analysis, it was revealed that sociological and psychological factors were the most significant considerations when executing SDP programmes. Other factors such as economics; politics; and ideologies, beliefs, and values were less emphasised. The discussion revolved around the government's recent scrutiny of NGOs in Pakistan and its implications for the sustainability of the SDP.
Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore links between child maltreatment (CM) and experiences of interpersonal violence (IV) in sport among adolescents’ sport participants.
Methods: The sample consists of 983 adolescents aged 14 to 18 years old practicing organized sport. They completed a self-report survey in class in six Canadian schools assessing CM and IV in sport. Logistic regressions were performed to examine the associations between CM and IV in sport.
Results: Physical abuse, emotional abuse, and exposure to domestic violence were significantly associated with psychological violence in sport. Exposure to domestic violence was the only form of CM that was significantly associated with physical violence in sport. Sexual abuse and neglect were significantly associated with sexual violence in sport. Emotional abuse and exposure to domestic violence were significantly associated with peer violence in sport. Physical abuse was the only form of CM that was significantly associated with violence from coaches. Physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and exposure to domestic violence were positively associated with violence from parents in sport.
Conclusions: Considering the associations between CM and IV in sport, further investigations are necessary to clarify this relation, particularly the direction of the association and other possible related factors. It also highlights the importance of athlete-centered and trauma-informed practices in sport.
Researchers, athletes, decision-makers, and the media have documented numerous instances of sport-related violence (SRV) in recent years. There is a growing understanding of the need to rethink the sporting system to tackle SRV more efficiently. This communication will present a two-phase study that rallied sport stakeholders to develop an integrated action plan to tackle SRV in the province of Quebec. In the first phase, 37 sport stakeholders (administrators, athletes, coaches, officials, parents, and researchers) participated in one of six online workshops to co-construct a vision of a sport environment that respects the safety and integrity of all involved. The research team then conducted a content analysis to develop a shared vision that focused on a change in culture that would emphasize fun, development, and well-being rather than just performance. Six orientations for change, such as establishing a clear framework and definitions, or providing support, from prevention to evaluation were also identified. In the second phase, this vision was presented during an online survey. Participants from each stakeholder group were asked to suggest actions that would lead the sport community closer to its shared vision. The results of this survey will be analyzed using content analysis to form the basis of an action plan. This study shows that bringing together various sport stakeholders is not only useful, but it is also necessary. Before developing prevention initiatives, it is essential to create a shared vision including all stakeholders around the shared goal of tackling SRV.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said that “Sports are an important symbol of social development and human progress, and an important reflection of comprehensive national strength and social civilization,”. While this view of sports is prevalent in China, perceptions of sportsmanship have changed over time. We lack a clear understanding of this evolution, yet knowledge of this historical trajectory can provide insight into the role of sport in Chinese society.
Taking the news reports related to sportsmanship in People’s Daily from 1949 to 2020 as the research object, this paper uses python for code writing, text analysis, and adopts the method of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and frame theory to explore the mainstream social concepts reflected by news discourse and the meaning of sportsmanship constructed by news discourse.
We found that the discourse and connotations around “sportsmanship” changed over three historical periods, with different social and cultural contexts, which shows a trend of diversification and deepening of the report content. From the first stage (1949-2002), "National sports, Mass Participation", "Friendship first, Competition second", "Win glory for the country"; To the second stage (2003-2008) " Integrating into the Olympic Spirit ", "Spread sports culture", "Show the national image"; To the third stage (2009-2020) "more open", "more inclusive" and "more comprehensive" sportsmanship of the new era. We suggest that the evolution of the connotation of sportsmanship is not only a change in Chinese society's understanding of sports, but a demonstration of national confidence, mark of national development, and evidence of social progress.
The lion dance, including the Guangdong lion dances and Minnan lion dances, is one of the traditional physical activities in Taiwan. Sport is directly related to the composition of national identity. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze the content of the national consciousness constructed by the official discourse of the lion dance in Taiwan from 1949 to the present. This study adopted a textual analysis method to collect newspaper reports on lion dances and the political ideology they embody. It was found that the "national consciousness" of the lion dance had different meanings in different contexts and was divided into three stages: (1) After the Nationalist government came to Taiwan in 1949, the Guangdong lion dance gradually became popular due to the anti-communist policy of restoring the country and promoting the "revival of Chinese culture"; (2) After lifting Martial law in 1987, Minnan lion dance was officially incorporated into Guangdong lion dance, whose rules are international. At this time, the official national consciousness moved toward "bringing Chinese culture closer to the world"; and (3) Recently, due to the government's gradual emphasis on Taiwanese subjectivity, the official discourse of lion dance has shifted toward "localization" and emphasis on the culture of the Minnan lion dance. Overall, the lion dance has become a tool for constructing national identity.
Due to globalized sports migration, the idea of a national seems to have become more and more flexible and fluid, pluralistic and multi-layered. This research presents how culturalism and nationalism come together to contribute to the inclusion and exclusion of those naturalized footballers who acquired Chinese nationality in the context of the qualifying stages for the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup. Based on semi-structured interviews and social media extracts, the study explored how a Chinese cultural identity has been prioritized in order to identify who is Chinese and who is not. Assimilating into Chinese culture becomes their most significant condition to become members of the Chinese nation, which means naturalized players must not only have a Chinese name, but also learn the Chinese language, write Chinese characters, respect Chinese culture, live like and become modern Chinese people. Among these cultural conditions, Chinese language has become the most important one and was highlighted most frequently by fans. However, there is no agreement amongst fans as to what level of Chinese language a naturalized player should attain in order to be recognized as Chinese. Additionally, how well can naturalized athletes be assimilated into the system of Chinese language whether spoken or written is questionable. Thus, the paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of the relationship between culturalism and nationalism, and the paradox of imagining naturalized footballers as Chinese.
Although not explicitly aligned with Sport for Development and Peace, yoga programs in prisons and community justice settings—both of which we understand to be “carceral” environments—share similar goals around achieving human development through engagement with physical activity. In this paper, we explore multiple meanings given to yoga by instructors who have taught in these carceral settings, including their philosophical understandings of yoga, pedagogical approaches to teaching incarcerated or justice-involved students, and experiences teaching yoga in carceral spaces. We find that instructors understand yoga to provide unique and holistic mental, physical and spiritual benefits, a belief which is often derived from individual experiences of transformation through yoga. This understanding of yoga drives their passion for working with justice-involved individuals, but also risks replicating a form of “sport evangelism” by overstating the positive impacts of yoga in carceral settings. Nonetheless, instructors offer nuanced understandings of how carceral environments negatively affect their students and how these experiences create both barriers and opportunities for yoga to be practiced in unique ways. We argue that, while their individual experiences and passion lead to a very optimistic view of yoga’s positive impacts, instructors develop nuanced understandings of how justice-involved persons engage with yoga in diverse ways; and how these engagements are contoured both by individual biographies and the daily realities of living in carceral spaces. The distinct characteristics of carceral spaces interact with broader philosophical underpinnings and social meanings of yoga to produce “carceral yoga” as a unique form of physical culture.
The development of theories specific to sport for development has increased over the last decade, with numerous general theories being put forth by scholars. Despite this, there is a lack of "bespoke" theories exploring connections to specific outcomes. Likewise, there have been calls for theories to engage with related fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology and more. This lack of theoretical engagement is especially striking regarding the vaunted connections between sport and social cohesion. Social cohesion has become a crucial focus in policy and practice, and sport has been prominently positioned as a vehicle to promote social cohesion. Yet the connections between sport and social cohesion have not been explored in a robust fashion. Literature and programmes have been criticised for failing to adequately define their understanding of social cohesion. At a practical level, there remains a lack of knowledge concerning practices, activities, and mechanisms within sport for social cohesion programmes. Put together, this creates a rather vexing problem: we neither have a clear picture of the goals being addressed nor the mechanisms supporting those goals. The following paper seeks to address these gaps by presenting a conceptual map connecting common practices within programmes with existing theories and specific social cohesion outcomes. To do so, findings from extensive previous work on sport and social cohesion are contextualised against existing theories. In turn, this will help generate a better understanding of the potential mechanisms in sport for social cohesion, provide guidance to implementers, and identify areas for future development.
This presentation is based on personal experiences gained over the past 3 decades in 'Community Engaged Research and Learning' (CERL) in the Sport for Development (SfD) domain in Flanders and the Brussels region (Belgium) and which has been largely inspired through close contacts with local practitioners and policy makers. It discusses the challenges and needs of sports-based developmental programmes targeting at-risk populations (primarily youth) and how we as SfD researchers have identified our role and positioned ourselves in the context of a university that has labelled itself as an ‘Urban Engaged University’. It will provide insights into the tension that exists between the expectations from the academic world with regard to the recognition and funding of scientific research, the vision on academic teaching and service provision on the one hand, and on the other hand, the desire to support and contribute as social scientists to a broader legitimation base for the work of local SfD initiatives in their relation to local policy makers and other potential funders. Both opportunities and limitations in working with practitioners who operate in challenging inner-city areas will be highlighted. The specific case of a university-based 'Martial Arts Expertise Center' will serve as an illustration for CERL and will highlight its transition from a (virtual) living lab to a (physical) ‘interdisciplinary social laboratory’ located on campus in Brussels.
The academic literature on Sport-for-Development and Peace is no longer a novelty. However, there are scarcely studied topics such as university-based initiatives, as well as those of mixed and/or unified sports. Tiro en Braille (Braille Shot) is a Mexican university-based sport, completely designed by undergraduate students with the guidance of professors. Tiro en Braille, as an organization (indeed it is both a sport and a SDP organization) has developed the VECTOR-I methodology, which was intentionally designed to contribute to the fulfillment of SDGs 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 16, and 17. The methodology also aims at recovering traditional Mexican sports. Furthermore, it prohibits the use of fossil fuels and inputs, while requiring that the resulting sport activity is suitable to be played in a mixed (gender) and unified (ability) format. Tiro en Braille has three core components: 1) teaching; 2) research, and 3) a inclusive sport activity. Covid-19 stopped the inauguration tournament from taking place in April 2020. The first (experimental) tournament was played during May 2022. This paper presents the results using the VECTOR-I methodology as a template/benchmark. The findings are both quantitative (based on questionnaires), as well as qualitative, i.e., based on participant observation as well as on interviews at the end of the tournament. Finally, the findings may orient SDP initiatives in other geographies as a result of the semi-flexibility of the VECTOR-I methodology.
Le rôle des méga-évènements internationaux comme la Coupe du Monde aurait participé aux économies politiques et culturelles qui ont encore des effets biens tangibles dans les façonsde raconter les évènements sportifs dans les médias locaux et internationaux. Dans cette étude, nous profitons du contexte récent de développement du soccer spectacle au Canada afin de nous consacrer à l’analyse de la couverture de presse de l’équipe Canadienne du soccer lors de la Coupe du Monde de la FIFA de 2022. Le matériau recueilli concerne tous les médias traditionnels canadiens. L’analyse permet de dégager une série de thèmes : le corporatisme multiculturel canadien, la gestion de la défaite, la progression du Canada comme Nation de Soccer, la célébrité, l'identité nationale et l'ethnicité. L'analyse révèle que pendant la phase précédant l'événement, une identité multiculturelle nationale canadienne apparait clairement et est articulée par la majorité des médias canadiens ; elle a ensuite été utilisée comme point de référence pour la couverture médiatique qui a suivi les trois défaites consécutives du Canada contre la Belgique, la Croatie et le Maroc. L'objectif de cet article est d'étudier le rôle joué par les médias canadiens dans la représentation, la production et la construction de l'identité nationale canadienne dans le contexte d'une compétition internationale comme la Coupe du Monde. La représentation médiatique du nationalisme sportif canadien est utilisée comme une lentille permettant d'examiner comment les éléments de l'identité nationale canadienne ont été représentés, reproduits et renforcés par les médias suite aux performances sportives de l'équipe canadienne de soccer.
Les médias numériques et les réseaux sociaux bouleversent les médias sportifs à travers le monde, affectant aussi bien le spectacle médiatique des événements sportifs, industrie des médias sportifs, que les façons de vivre l’événement aussi bien dans les stades, arenas qu’en dehors de ceux-ci. Ils contribuent aussi à diversifier les contenus sportifs et à faciliter l’internationalisation de certains sports. Dans cette présentation, nous nous intéressons au sport comme thématique populaire dans l’offre de contenu produite par les plateformes et services de télévision par contournement. Dans une stratégie d’attraction de nouveaux publics, et dans le contexte pandémique où les événements sportifs en direct ont fait défaut, une panoplie de formats fictionnels et documentaires misant sur des stars ou des contenus sportifs sont apparus sur les plateformes comme Netflix. Si le sport a toujours été plus qu’une catégorie de programmes, mais un spectacle de premier ordre et un produit d’appel central pour la télévision traditionnelle, que représente-t-il aujourd’hui pour la télévision par contournement et au-delà des plateformes spécialisées dans le sport? Cette communication nous offrira l’occasion d’observer les transformations actuelles de l’industrie sportive/médiatique dans le contexte des nouvelles intermédiations que permettent le numérique, et, plus spécifiquement, les plateformes télévisuelles. L’émergence de ces nouveaux services n’a pas encore fait l’objet d’une production scientifique au Québec ou au Canada, c’est donc aussi l’occasion d’ajouter une telle contribution de compréhension critique de relations entre le sport et les médias à l’ère des nouvelles plateformes.
Quinn qui joue au soccer pour le Canada est la première personne ouvertement transgenre non-binaire à remporter une médaille olympique quand iel a gagné l’or aux Jeux de Tokyo 2020 dans le tournoi féminin de soccer. Cet accomplissement sportif a attiré l’attention des médias du monde entier avec différents degrés de respect et d’inclusion. Cette communication orale va porter sur la couverture médiatique de Quinn en partant de son coming out en tant qu’athlète trans en 2020 jusqu’à maintenant, incluant donc l’épopée olympique en 2021. Les données recueillies sous forme d’articles publiés au Canada et ailleurs dans le monde seront soumises à une analyse textuelle inspirée par la théorie queer. Les résultats seront présentés et discutés en lien avec les écrits sur le sujet et, en guise de conclusion, une série de suggestions pour les médias sera fournie afin d’assurer une couverture célébrant Quinn et les athlètes trans en général.
Cette communication porte sur les usages de deux îles de loisirs à l’échelle de deux agglomérations (les villes nouvelles de Cergy-Pontoise et de Marne-la-Vallée). Lors de la période gaullienne, l’Etat français a impulsé l’aménagement d’équipements multifonctionnels : les bases de loisirs. En été, ces sites sportifs sont parmi les plus fréquentés d’Ile-de-France. Cependant, une offre d’activités payantes exclut une partie des citadins, prioritaires. De ce fait, leur accès est règlementé afin d’éviter les conflits entre usagers (pratiquants locaux vs. visiteurs extérieurs). L’approche ethnographique s’attache à comprendre in situ ces usages et les effets des politiques d’aménagements. En complément, j’analyse trente entretiens réalisés avec les directeurs d’équipements, des élus des territoires et complète l’étude sociologique qui comprend une problématique d’aménagements des sites à partir de données en lien avec les problèmes professionnels (gestion, renouvellement de l’offre…).
L’enquête menée auprès des acteurs locaux (habitants, riverains, étudiants…) interroge les logiques de spatialisation dans ces sites à l’aune des transactions sociales (Remy, 2016). La spécialisation nautique des îles de loisirs devient un enjeu d’identité locale dans un milieu d’interconnaissance. Il s’agit de comparer les dispositifs d’accès en se focalisant sur leurs ressources territoriales qui renvoient à des compromis de coexistence. Pour mener cette sociologie de l’espace (Löw, 2015), je relie ces apports à l’offre des sites. Un modèle d’analyse du degré d’accessibilité d’usagers dans l’espace public est présenté. Il a pour but de caractériser les spécialisations sportives des îles de loisirs pour analyser les liens entre sports nautiques olympiques et construction des identités territoriales.
My research is concerned with the understandings of talent in youth football clubs in Sweden and Germany and part of my doctoral studies at Malmö University, Sweden.
The first part of my research is concerned with the socio-cultural understandings of talent reinforced in German and Swedish news outlets. The second part of my research investigates the sensemaking processes of local elite football clubs in Sweden and Germany.
Before looking at how talent is constructed at the elite level, it is important to understand how talent is constructed in the media as it has the power to influence our actions as coaches and keeping in mind that often discourses are brought to life in specific situations (Linell, 2009). Therefore, the analysis is part of a multi-method, multi-lingual, qualitative project which is designed using a sensemaking-framework inspired by Wibeck and Linnér (2021), sensemaking theory (Weick, 1985) and discourse-theoretical tools (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985).
The cases for this research (Sweden and Germany) have been chosen based on the importance that the researcher needs to be able to understand the local context and cultural conventions happening in the countries and football clubs that are being investigated (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978).
As part of this first study, I have looked at twenty Swedish and twenty German news outlets and designed a new model based on Laclau and Mouffe (1985) to analyze and present the data. The preliminary results show some cultural differences in the socio-cultural understandings constructed and reinforced in German and Swedish media.
Almost all talented Norwegian footballers follow a dual career trajectory during their teenage years and secondary school. This is because Norwegian football values sustainable talent development and realises that only pursuing the sporting talent is problematic. Academic talent, however, has not traditionally been part of how we understand the concept of a football talent. An abductive research strategy has been employed in this project, which seeks to explore the consequences of the professionalisation of Norwegian football talent development. Players on one academy team and coaches in the academy were observed and interviewed during one season. From this it appeared that players and coaches were emphasising the academic talent more than expected. Interviews of players highlighted the role education plays for them. Coach interviews showed the undesired important role they and the club played in creating this understanding of talent. To understand how this talent concept has developed, Habermas’ theory of communicative action was used looking at both how communicative and strategic action influences the development. Furthermore, communicative action offers potential for an interesting reflection of how to involve research and the talent development community in the discussion about how talent is defined and what consequences come from this.
In today's world, physical activities and sport is one of the areas of life that competes with other areas of life for the attention of young people. Physical activity relationship (PAR) reflects the central role that physical activities plays in an individual's life. If PAR is weak, you will not find the strong and many individual appealing aspects of sport. Conversely, a person with a strong PAR will find many strong meanings that are important to them. This study uses the PAR approach to examine the positive meanings that Finnish children aged 11-15 years attach to physical activity and the change in their emphasis from 2014 to 2022, using data collected through the F-SPA survey in 2014 (n=2728), 2018 (n=2073) and 2022 (n=2177). The importance of physical activity for children was tracked in the questionnaires using a 34-item scale.
The results show that the valuing of the meanings of physical activities had fallen significantly between 2014 and 2022. In 2022, Finnish children did not find as many important meanings for themselves in physical activity as they did eight years earlier. The change has been particularly marked among girls. The results reflect a cultural shift where physical activity is less valued. Former research shows that the number of important meanings identified is linked to personal physical activity levels. However, the cultural change identified in this study does not bode well for the promotion of physical activity.
To enhance healthy habits in the new generation of Saudi Arabians, in the past decades Saudi authorities have been planning different policies aimed to increase levels of participation in physical activity and sports by the country’s youth. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate the challenges and possibilities for young Saudis’ participation in these domains. The research employed a mixed-method approach consisting, on the one hand, of an online survey targeting young Saudis (aged 12 to 17) to look at the prevalence, frequency, and types of physical activities practiced by them. To complement the survey, we undertook a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews with key actors in the promotion of physical activity and sport in Saudi Arabia, such as government officers and educational leaders. In those interviews, we were able to elaborate a thick understanding of their perceptions of the relationship between Saudi youth and physical activity and sports practice. The initial findings suggest that research participants - both Saudi youth and interviewed leaders - have noticed an enormous growth in the offer of possibilities for practicing sports and physical activity in recent years in the country. However, the level of engagement with sports and physical activities is still perceived as non-ideal.
This paper investigates new ethnographic research on racialized, gay men as they navigate weightlifting and bodybuilding in preparation for Pride events by identifying with a queer gym community as a common experience as they strive for their individual fitness goals within a safe space built into the larger gym experience. Black, East Asian, and mixed race males in their 30s to 50s were interviewed on their experiences in preparation for Pride and pride events for the summer of 2021and discuss their connection to fitness, the larger queer community, and how working on their bodies aids them in not only feeling connected to their own body, but also to others.
Modern sports ethics are often adopted and referred to by the queer football communities in Europe. Given that the fair play principle emerged as a salient moral framework to discipline competitive masculine relations among elite or middle-class men as of the late 18th century and still serves a function in maintaining the normative order of sexualities in contemporary sports relations, it is puzzling and worth investigating that such regulatory framework is frequently adopted by queer football communities in the construction of principles and practices on the football field.
This research argues that (1) the engagement of queer football communities with modern sports ethics and (2) the existing symbolic and actual relationship between LGBTQIA+ rights and Europe are two main elements that provide queer communities with resources to mobilize for their right to play. The research investigates manifold engagements that reproduce, negotiate or challenge these elements through the following questions:
• How do the activist-amateur queer football communities in Europe engage with the normative frames of fair play and human rights in the process of constructing their discursive and embodied ethical-political practices on the football field?
• How and why do the frames vary across communities?
The theoretical framework combines social movements theory, Bourdieu’s theories of field and practice, and queer/gender/sexuality studies.
The research is an insider ethnography that combines multiple methods, namely in-depth interviews with athlete-activists, focus groups with three communities, frame analysis on community-produced materials, and participant observation in several queer sports environments.
Queer, non-binary, and trans people face a number of barriers in accessing health services and opportunities, including engaging in fitness or exercise. While there is some important academic work on organized sport for both sexual and gender diverse minorities, there is a dearth of literature that addresses the experiences of queer and trans people who are not competitive athletes or interested in organized sport, but who want to be engaged in fitness, physical activity and exercise. This presentation shares insights from a participatory action research project that involved 12 queer and trans participants in a 10-week group fitness class held in a dedicated queer gym in the local community of the first author. Drawing on queer theorist Michael Warner’s idea of counterpublics and feminist theorist Sara Ahmed’s critique of inclusion, this paper frames participants’ desires for dedicated queer and trans spaces that think otherwise about hegemonic calls for ‘inclusion’. In so doing, this presentation grapples with questions raised by this year’s Congress’s call for papers with respect to social change in local communities where ‘needs, wants, and expectations’ are taken seriously.
With an increasing population of non-heterosexuals within the UK, their acceptance and inclusion within the workplace has become an important concern. Previous research in this area is binary in its approach and focused predominantly on singular categories of sexuality and gender, e.g., lesbian women. In response, this study included sports coaches of all gender identities that identify within the spectrum of non-heterosexuality (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, etc. including those who do not use labels). The coaches in this study had an array of coaching experience and ranged from grassroots to elite level sport. The research explored intersecting identity characteristics, such as gender, race, religion, etc., in which the coaches emphasised that gender significantly impacted their experiences. Additionally, the various factors across interpersonal and organisational levels that shape coaches’ experiences were explored, including the attitudes and behaviour of athletes, parents, colleagues etc., and organisational culture, intending to contribute to understanding the experiences of minority groups within sports coaching, and how non-heterosexual individuals negotiate their identity within sport settings. Adopting a participatory research approach enabled coaches to play an active role within the research process, rather than solely being a source of information. The participants were able to participate through a variety of methods, including creative methods of their choice, or semi-structured interviews, to give voice to their experiences. The coaches’ knowledge and lived experiences were prioritised to inform necessary changes for improving the experiences of non-heterosexual individuals in the sports workforce or maintaining inclusive practices, through coproduced recommendations.
Leading up to the 2022 Beijing Olympics, China commissioned 100 Norwegian winter sports coaches and supporting staff to develop and prepare 200 Chinese athletes for the upcoming Games. The winter sports collaboration between Norway and China began in 2017 and was terminated in 2022. The objective was to develop Chinese winter sport athletes who could attain medals in Beijing. To achieve this, Chinese cross-country skiers and biathletes were sent to Norway, and Chinese athletes from endurance sports (running and rowing) were enlisted to transfer to winter sports. Norwegian coaches were hired to select Chinese endurance sports athletes thought to have the potential to transfer to winter sports, teach them skiing, and coach them to become winter sport Olympians. This study investigates the experiences of Norwegian coaches who worked with Chinese athletes during the collaboration between Norway and China. We examine how conflicting coaching cultures impact the coach-athlete relationship and what strategies coaches employ to adapt to a sports culture with different values and traditions. The study is based on qualitative interviews with Norwegian winter sports coaches and administrative staff involved in the project. The analysis investigates what happens when coaching cultures with different ethical values and traditions converge. Our findings show that values were adjusted from both sides throughout the collaboration and that the coaches found creative ways to solve cultural conflicts in the coach-athlete relationship. Despite establishing well-functioning coach-athlete relationships, tensions between the collaborative partners remained due to the vastly different institutional systems of sports in Norway and China.
Strength and conditioning (S&C) coaches have accreditation pathways in coach education that mainly develop their understanding of biophysical-technological competencies. Due to a lack of sociocultural awareness, Szedlak and colleagues (2022) identified a disregard of hegemonic norms in S&C, that led to discriminatory behaviours going unnoticed and tolerated. The purpose of this ongoing participatory action research study was to identify whether sociocultural issues are taught and, if not, how they could be included in the United Kingdom’s Strength and Conditioning Association’s (UKSCA) coach education curriculum. Twenty-six stakeholders from the UKSCA engaged in either focus groups or individual one-on-one interviews where they discussed their knowledge, beliefs, and possible actions for the education of S&C coaches with regards to sociocultural issues. We completed a thematic analysis that outlines three sequential themes. The stakeholders have little knowledge of how sociocultural issues are enacted or relevant in S&C settings, such as the weight room. Stakeholders’ beliefs about elite sport culture led to a division about whether the UKSCA should be held accountable for teaching S&C coaches how to address sociocultural issues. Nonetheless, actionable suggestions were discussed, particularly the creation of a new UKSCA module on sociocultural issues for S&C coaches. Despite limited knowledge and a reluctance to teach such issues, the stakeholders were open to engaging with us on the topic and their suggestions provide important, novel, and practical ideas for the development of sociocultural knowledge and practices for S&C coaches that could address ongoing discriminatory behaviours.
Many sport organizations and coach education programs are concerned with a range of issues related to the sustainability of athlete development. These include, long-term athlete development, sustaining motivation for continued sports participation, preventing sports-related injuries, promoting life skills and positive youth development, and improving psychological health and wellbeing. Reflecting on my own education, professional coaching experience and research within athlete development and sport coaching, and a decade of educating coaches, I will demonstrate how strong elements of discipline, reductionism and capitalism constrain opportunities for coaches to move towards more sustainable athlete development practices. I argue how post-structural and critical theory can provide the starting point for coach education for sustainable development by moving beyond disciplinary boundaries. I show how this pedagogical strategy permeates my efforts to improve the design of our coach education program at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, and how I have used this to develop pedagogical material for two different sports coaching courses. By doing so, coaches can be inspired to integrate different disciplinary knowledges in a myriad of different and innovative ways to produce a more ethical, effective, and reflective coaching practice. I discuss the effects this pedagogical strategy had on my teaching and the implications this might hold for the future of coach education in higher education.
China has shown remarkable progress in international competitive sports since the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. A strong performance in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games would add to these achievements, and China commissioned 100 Norwegian winter sport coaches and supporting staff to improve performance in cross country skiing, biathlon, and ski jump competitions in the run-up to the Games. This paper explores how the Norwegian coaches managed tensions that arose as the intimate coach-athlete rapport was placed within fraught geopolitical relations. The analysis draws on data from semi-structured interviews with Norwegian coaches, which covered motivations for training Chinese athletes, developments in athlete-coach relationships, and responses to criticism raised against the program for propping up an authoritarian regime. Preliminary analysis suggests that the coaches were aware of accusations of ‘sports washing,’ and mainly rebutted such criticism by highlighting the meaningful relationships they built with the athletes. The coaches claimed to improve the athlete’s lives for the time they were in the program, for example through providing pastoral care, time for rest and play, and good living conditions. Some coaches also regarded these athletes as potential vehicles for change in China once they were convinced of the values promulgated by the Norwegian coaching model, including independent thinking and respect for personal integrity. While such rationalization insulated the coaches from abstract geopolitical debates, they reencountered political differences when they tried to reconcile their own coaching models with the demands placed on the athletes by the Chinese sports bureaucracy.
Northern Ireland is a deeply divided society and historically sport has played a key role in both reflecting and reinforcing those divisions. While the nature of the relationship between sport and ethno-religious differences has received considerable academic attention, there has been relatively little research on the implications of this for the growing migrant community in Northern Ireland. Moreover, although there has been a burgeoning of international research into the use of sport as a mechanism to support the integration of migrants, this has not translated to the specific context of post-conflict societies such as Northern Ireland.
This paper aims to address these gaps and, drawing upon ethnographic research on a number of sport-related integration initiatives, it will consider the extent to which football might help to facilitate cohesion and integration among the migrant and refugee community in Northern Ireland. We will focus on an initiative led by migrants themselves, which seeks not only to integrate migrants into wider society but also aims to encourage the development of a separate, cohesive, migrant identity within the already divided context of Northern Ireland. Working closely with local sporting organisations and disparate migrant groups has afforded significant research opportunities, but we will also discuss the challenges we faced engaging with diverse communities and consider the implications for our ability to effect social change.
The paper will increase our understanding of the complex relationship between sport, migration and social cohesion and inform current debates concerning the transformative potential of sport-related research.
The goal of sports community governance is to "make the city a space for people to live with high quality of life". In previous studies, more research findings have discussed how sports communities are governed, but the reality of communities is that the question is who should govern sports communities. Therefore, the study elucidates the temporal and spatial scope of sports communities from the perspective of urban development. Four models of government-managed sports community governance negotiated governance in which communities self-mediate "conflicts" between different groups, outsourced governance in which community service governance is enhanced, and self-governance by residents of residential communities are summarized and sorted out. Because Beijing hosted the 2008 Olympic Games and the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, we interviewed Beijing residents. Therefore, our study interviewed 34 local residents in the Beijing community to understand the role of sports in improving the quality of life of community residents.
The Opeongo Heritage Cup is an annual Hockey Tournament in Barry’s Bay, a rural town in Eastern Ontario. Organizers have styled the event as a Multicultural Community Hockey Event, where teams of various ethnic identities (i.e., Algonquin, German, Kashubian, and Irish) compete. The event symbolically engages a variety of heritage and cultural elements through both the structured sport and participatory (i.e., spectator) elements. We used an intrinsic case study to explore how ideas of heritage and community were articulated, constructed, and contested through this event. Data were collected through participant observation as well as semi-structured interviews with ten community members who were involved in various capacities. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006; 2012). Results highlighted the ways the event (1) constructed both historical-settler and contemporary-regional identities, (2) constructed flexible ideas of cultural and regional pride which evolved and adapted over time, and (3) served as an important platform for both inter-generational and inter-group relationship building. The results demonstrate the ways that heritage, community, culture, and competition are interwoven, constructed, and contested in the context of participatory community sport events. The results contribute to the literature on heritage sport events (Pinson, 2017; Ramshaw, 2019) by engaging participatory and performative elements of sport experiences. Further, we offer insight into ideas of heritage and multiculturalism in rural Canada. In this way, we argue that sport events offer a unique platform through which to examine rural communities and the implications of broader social and cultural change (Mair, 2006; Rich, 2021).
This research explores the development of the most important sports in Huanchaco, Northern Peru, surfing on traditional “caballitos de totora” or little reed ‘horses’. For more than 3000 years, this living legacy can be considered an important origin of modern surfing that transcends many generations and different cultural periods, from the Moche and Chimú pre-Columbian cultures until today. Crafted from reeds, the caballitos de totora were originally used for fishing but today, the narratives of deriving a livelihood from fishing, transformed by an industrialization of technique, and that of the development of Huanchaco as a surfing destination, combine to suggest that surfing is not such a modern sport, but has its historical origins in cultural and economic practice. Consequently, Peruvians assert that Moche and Chimú cultures were amongst the first wave riders who surfed for fun. Between economic development, sustainability, and the protection of a cultural heritage that derives from the reeds of wetland ecological reserves, this paper explores surfing activity in this coastal area by providing a short history of Huanchaco’s caballitos de totora and resort’s development of surfing-related tourism that manages cultural legacy and identity blended with the imperatives of economic and social demand.
Throughout the last few years, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in increased rates of gender-based violence (GBV) that have disproportionately impacted the lives of women, girls, and gender diverse people in Canada (Canadian Women’s Foundation, 2022; Illingworth & Ferrara, 2020). A novel effort to support survivors and victims of GBV has been the use of trauma- and violence-informed physical activity (TVIPA) (Darroch et al., in press; van Ingen, 2021). The objective of this study was to use feminist participatory action research (FPAR, Reid & Frisby, 2008) to explore how the use of TVIPA in SFD programs at MLSE LaunchPad – the largest SFD organization in Toronto – can support women, girls, and gender diverse people. Key features of MLSE LaunchPad’s programs that seemed to align with the tenets of trauma- and violence-informed physical activity included: 1) creating emotionally and physically safe environments; and 2) providing a capacity-building and strengths-based approach (Darroch et al., 2022; Darroch et al., in press). However, SFD programs that build trauma and violence awareness are lacking. Additionally, findings suggest SFD programs are embedded in a heteronormative sporting structure wherein cisgender and heterosexual identities were privileged. Although gender inclusivity was discussed by SFD participants, several interviewees positioned gender as binary and had little understanding of gender-diverse identities. Further research that critically explores TVIPA in the SFD field is needed to examine how trauma-informed SFD programs contribute to—and/or hinder—opportunities for women, girls, and gender diverse people.
Historically, sport has been a male-dominated realm that discouraged women from participating because they were thought to be too fragile (Gregg & Gregg, 2017). While progress has been made, women looking to enter the sporting domain remain faced with barriers and differential treatment based on anatomical differences and gender stereotypes. This study analyses the extent to which the experience of women in sports has changed through an investigation of ski jumping which saw the exclusion of women from the Olympic Games until 2014. Furthermore, it aims to explore the impact of differential treatment on women's identity and recognition.
Based on a purposive sampling technique, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a representative of the International Ski Federation as well as with former (n=5) and active athletes (n=8). This allowed detailed discussion on policy development and provided a better understanding of the personal tragedy that female ski jumpers faced in the past and the gender battle they are still fighting today. To facilitate this debate, reflexive thematic analysis was used supported by theories of gender equality, patriarchy, and Honneth’s theory of recognition.
This study identified some positive changes that have occurred in ski jumping. However, the communication gap between the athletes and the governing body in combination with insufficient investment was found to be a crucial detriment to gender equality. Results further suggest a deficiency in knowledge of women’s physicality resulting in persistent gender stereotypes. Moreover, some of these gender stereotypes are being internalized by female ski jumpers.
The purpose of this study is to investigate how fitness trainers adjust their bodies to meet the needs of the fitness industry, including their body figure, appearance, clothing and interaction methods with various clients. Moreover, it also analyzes how fitness trainers with different genders adapt their professional skills in the masculine field of sports by emphasizing their appearance and knowledge according to each client. This study deploys the concepts of body capital and body work, which make up the theoretical framework that illustrates the fitness trainers’ bodies as an important medium to showcase professionalism, as well as an embodiment of healthy sporting bodies. At the same time, this framework interweaves with the gender expectations and gender norms of the sporting field. Currently, the participants include 4 fitness trainers, including 2 females and 2 males, whose experiences in instructing or coaching from 4 to 20 years. For this ongoing study, the estimated number of participants is 16 fitness trainers of different genders and sexualities. Moreover, it is anticipated that the research results could offer further insights about the meaning of bodily construction and presentation that is embedded into sports culture, as well as the interrelation of sporting bodies with health and gender.
Background: “Tough it up”, “no pain no gain”, and “win-it-at-all-costs” are all phrases we have heard in sport, but what are the consequences of these messages? A substantial amount of literature, including Hughes and Coakley’s (1991) foundational research on the concept of conformity to the sport ethic norms, has suggested these expectations and normalizations are interlaced within the culture of sport. This conformity can impact athletes’ welfare causing them to engage in compromising behaviours such as overtraining, engaging in extreme weight controlling behaviours, acceptance of hazing practices, playing while injured, and using performance enhancement substances (Boudreault et al., 2021; Coker-Cranney et al., 2018; 2020; King et al., 2014; Waldron et al., 2011). Objective: The purpose of this research was to explore women athletes’ uncritical adherence to sport ethic norms and the influences on their conformity development. Method: Thirteen retired, competitive, women athletes participated in a one-to-two-hour online interview to discuss their experiences in sport. A constructivist paradigmatic approach and reflexive thematic analysis were utilized. Results: Athletes' uncritical willingness and self-sacrifice to the sport ethic norms was learned by the 3P's: people pleasing, peer modelling, and positive reinforcement. Discussion: Gaps in the literature, along with future directions and recommendations will be shared in an effort to contribute to the positive cultural shift in safeguarding sport. Conclusion: This study further highlights risk areas and vulnerabilities that are embedded within the culture of sport, which in turn is an important step in raising awareness and preventing harm in sport.
This conference presents the experiences of those who self-identified as having recovered from a substance-use disorder and who integrated running into this process. Adopting a carnal sociology lens (Wacquant 2015), the researcher-participant relationship was embodied through 22 running semi-directed interviews (Esmonde, 2020) in the Vancouver area (Canada). During these mobile interviews, we examined: 1) the symbolic systems associated with running; 2) the embodied psychosocial, existential suffering of running; 3) the sensate experience of the interview, including rhythms of the body and engagement with the environment; 4) the development of running skills; 5) the sedimented nature of the senses, suffering and skills, which build upon one another in the context of the larger temporal structure of one’s life. From this, we deduced that running implicated: 1) a symbolic importance of milestone achievements (time/distance goals, races) as measures of growth; 2) a process of connecting with one’s body and with the environment, likened to meditation; 3) contrasts and parallels between the body’s suffering in addiction and in running; 4) an evolution of one’s relationship to running across a lifetime, alongside changes in substance use. In conclusion, while running had become central to life it was characterized as a source of connection which enriched life, in contrast to the disconnection associated with the historical centrality of substances. From a carnal sociological perspective, this was understood as a developing a network of relationships that extended out from the body, embodying a connection to the world.
While there are many forms of social inequalities, few can better illustrate the impact of social and material disadvantage than class differences in maternal and fetal/infant adverse health outcomes. In sociology, three broad and interacting explanations can explain health inequalities. The first refers to various forms of sociopolitical and economic barriers to health knowledge, practices and spaces. The second refers to various somatic cultures that oppose health guidelines. The third refers to biopsychological responses to the one’s social environment that may be cumulated over time. More recently, sociologists are engaging in interdisciplinarity by meshing biology, psychology and sociology to identify strategies aiming to reduce inequalities. In sociology of sport, the work of Shannon Jette is highly relevant in showing the value of integrative frameworks to avoid simplistic solutions in perinatal health. Integrated models provide powerful explanatory tools, but they typically face difficulties to provide cohesive approaches and results that translate into policies and programs. This paper presents a knowledge-to-action interdisciplinary study (sociology-nutrition sciences) in perinatal health inequalities. Over 180 face-to-face meetings were held with 60 pregnant women from highly contrasting socioeconomic groups in Ottawa (Ontario). Data for each participant: 10 questionnaires (health & wellbeing, lifestyles and service use), in-depth interview, medical records on mother/infant health outcomes, and hair cortisol samples). Drawing on Göran Therborn, results show (a) how physical activity is a social marker of: (a) class/gender/ethnic inequalities in perinatal care, and (b) inequality mechanisms (distanciation, exclusion and hierarchization). We conclude, by identifying equality mechanisms to orient perinatal policies.
Athletes face unique personal and environmental risk factors (e.g., injuries) that influence the development of mental illness symptoms. However, there is currently a gap in the literature regarding the influence of sporting environments and risk factors on athletes’ symptoms of mental illness. The purpose of this study was to identify risk factors that influence the mental health of developing athletes (identified as next generation) in five sporting categories (individual, collective, esthetic, weight-category, and technical). 337 athletes (139 male and 198 female) completed an online survey and data were analysed using chi-squared and binary regression analysis. Barriers to help-seeking resources and being part of a sexual minority were identified as risk factors. 69.4% of athletes identified at least one barrier as ‘lack of time or access’, 43.2% at least one barrier as ‘lack of knowledge’, and 42.9% at least one barrier as ‘fear of stigma’. The barrier ‘fear of being misunderstood’ was associated with collective and endurance sports and the barrier ‘lack of knowledge’ was associated with esthetic and technical sports. Regression analysis showed that athletes who identified as a sexual minority were 4.69 times more at risk of developing clinical depressive symptoms, 3.98 times more at risk of developing clinical anxiety symptoms, and 5.68 times more at risk of developing clinical sleeping disorder symptoms. These findings highlight that more effort should be implemented to facilitate access to mental health resources. It also provides recommendations for practitioners and sporting federations to adapt or create programs to promote developing athletes’ mental health.
For the last 20 years, Putnam's conceptualization of social capital has become an important concept when promoting integration in sports policy. Parallel with the impact on sports policy, the concepts of bonding and bridging have been well explored in the literature on sports and integration. However, few researchers have looked at how migrants develop relations with formal associations, institutions, and agencies inside and outside civil society, known as linking social capital.
Objective: To explore how Norwegian voluntary sports clubs enable and/or hinder the development of linking social capital through trusting relationships between young refugees and formal, institutionalized power or authority gradients in society.
Methods: 11 semi-structured interviews with male and female refugees (17-23 y/o).
Findings: There were few examples of participants developing linking social capital through voluntary sport club participation, mostly due to refugees feeling unable to fulfill the expectations of these clubs. Where isolated examples of linking social capital were evident, these were mostly related to facilitating entry into higher education and the job market.
Discussion: We draw upon Szreter and Woolcock's conceptualization of linking social capital to discuss how voluntary sports clubs influence the nuanced and varied experiences of refugees in developing trusting relationships with formal associations and institutions as part of their integration processes.
Conclusion: Refugees’ access to/use of linking social capital seems to be limited in voluntary sports clubs. Where linking social capital was unobtainable through sports clubs, other arenas were identified as potential spaces for developing linking social capital, including spontaneous sports and refugee centers.
This conference consists to think on the ethical and the epistemological issues of a research intervention: 1) using sport and outdoor as a psychosocial tool and 2) putting the body (Wacquant, 2015) in the heart of our methodological device. The first issue that we will discuss is related to recruitment which, in the framework of a research intervention must be carried out in collaboration with the actors in the field. Since we are targeting young people and adults with mental health problems, the problem of stigmatization of a population during recruitment (Tranchant & al., 2019) and the issues of non-mixing of an intervention program through sport (Moreau et al., 2018) arise. Our action integrates a blue space and a green space (Foley & Kisteman, 2015) as we will alternate between forest and water activities. This raises technical issues regarding the implementation of these activities, but above all, it requires reflection on the risk (real or perceived) inherent in such activities (Parlavecchio et al., 2021). Finally, we will reflect on the place of the body in our data collection strategy (Wacquant, 2015): participant observation (Soulé, 2007) using field note taking (Martineau, 2016); mobile interviews (Carpiano, 2009) and Photovoice.
Integration of migrants and refugees is currently among the most relevant political issues in Western societies. Voluntary sport clubs (VSCs) in the community have the potential to promote social integration (Nagel et al., 2015; Waardenburg et al., 2019), and may have access to integrative programmes and public funding to do so. Nonetheless, only a comparatively small number of VSCs implement ‘integration through sport’ practices (Piatkowska et al., 2017). Therefore, the question arises which factors are relevant for the implementation of sports-related integrative programmes or initiatives. To address this question, the international research project INAMOS (Integration of Newly Arrived Migrants through Organised Sport) takes a holistic view within a multi-case study design. Across six countries, interviews were conducted with key decision-makers in 34 VSCs engaged in such programming. The focus of this presentation is the motivation and mechanisms of VSCs to support the integration of newly arrived migrants.
The clubs in our study focus mainly on sports activities open for all population groups. Not all clubs have specific “integrative” goals. Rather, for most of the clubs, normative motives are relevant for their integration work; they “feel obliged” to contribute to social integration in their community. Some clubs combine normative with functional motives (e.g., the recruitment of members.) Further, motivated and competent volunteers are often the driving force for the social integration initiatives in the VSCs. Our findings have implications for leveraging these goals and mechanisms for greater implementation of integrative programmes and initiatives for newly arrived migrants in community sport.
Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities and individuals are still consistently disadvantaged, under-represented, and discriminated against in sport (e.g., Shibli et al., 2021). The action research that we analyse in this paper, called Change Makers Melbourne’s West (CMMW), brings together local coalitions of sports club leaders, facilitators, researchers, and community partners. This study explores the co-creation of inclusive climates in sports clubs in Melbourne, Australia, and the ripple effects this process may stimulate. The CMMW project was conducted over a two-year period, consisting of four guided collaborative sessions with three cohorts of club leaders. Participants included four researchers, nine undergraduate and postgraduate students (so-called ‘facilitators’) and 67 club leaders from 37 community sports clubs across a range of sports. Multiple sources of data were collected and analysed, including audio recordings of the sessions, all artefacts produced in the sessions, a survey administered at the end of each cohort, interviews with club leaders, interviews and focus groups with facilitators, and field visit observations and reflections. Applying ripple effect mapping techniques, we discuss three sets of outcomes: instrumental (changes to policies, plans, decisions, behaviours, and practices); conceptual (i.e. changes to knowledge, awareness, attitudes, emotions); and capacity building (changes to skills and expertise). The findings also indicate some of the contextual and intervening conditions that influence these changes (or lack thereof). We reflect on the implications and limitations of the CMMW project aimed at promoting equitable social inclusion for CALD migrants in community sport.
From 2011 to 2014 Sport England invested £8 million in the Active Universities programme. The aim was to maintain sporting habits and encourage a healthy lifestyle among the student population. This programme supported 41 projects and the subsequent evaluation reports pointed to methods which could enhance a more inclusive university sports culture. While the three-year investment programme enjoyed some clear success at the time, this research seeks to explore the extent to which programmes can be sustained once funding is complete. This paper will report the findings of a qualitative research project conducted in 2018 to 2019 involving in-depth interviews with twelve university students and seven staff from two UK universities (both had benefitted from the Active University Funding). The research explores how students have experienced sporting activity and culture as part of their university community. The findings give an insight into the significance of support mechanisms, social networks and role of students themselves in leading and promoting positive sporting and physical activity cultures within the university setting. This research may be helpful for academics, universities and student unions who have an interest in reducing drop out and encouraging active lifestyles among university students.
The Arctic Winter Games (AWG) are a high-level circumpolar sports competition, which includes wide participation sports (such as hockey), 'traditional' Arctic sports, Dene games as well as emerging/potential sports (such as archery) (reports on past games; Lankford et al. (2010; 2015)). In such a context, “where tradition and modernity meet to create unity in diversity” (Thomsen et al., 2018), the question of athletic identity, widely studied in terms of “measurable achievement and social recognition” (Ronkainen et al, 2016), may not be as evident for participants from some Northern communities, where the cultural logic of cooperative practice tends to downplay the symbolic importance attached to results (Heine, 2013). We interrogate the place of sport in the lives of participants of the AWG 2023 through interview and a survey answers where they describe and define themselves as athletes. As the AWG develop "by integrating local cultures and territorial identities" (Fuchs, 2022), we can expect results in line with other studies of regional games that show a more participatory and less excellence-oriented approach (Dallaire, 2007) presenting sport as a means to "build bridges between cultures" (Skogvang, 2021). However, based "around a sporting reference, which remains dominant" (Fuchs, 2022) we can assume the existence of variations between the different sporting practices of the AWG.
In 1926, the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada (AAU of C) wrote that the “physical welfare of its children and adolescents is a matter of the utmost concern in the life and development of a nation.” The rules and norms of ice hockey, however, challenged such a position in the years to come. Indeed, a decade later, an Alberta representative to the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) put it bluntly: “the conduct of the juvenile and midget competition is not a matter in which the CAHA is interested.” During the early years of WWII, some branches of the CAHA fostered minor hockey, while others left the sport to provincial and local authorities. The Maritimes did not have organized juvenile hockey, featuring player between 16 and 18, until the 1940 season. That same season in the Ottawa Valley Branch the situation was quite different, with a robust minor hockey circuit, including 61 bantam, midget, and juvenile clubs. With so little coordination between branches, administrators sporadically addressed the safety and well-bring of young hockey players in various regions over the next 30 years. This paper examines how shifting social norms in and around sport generated a process of administrative innovation, sparking the reorientation of the CAHA from an organization that cared little about youth hockey, to one that – viewing the players as the future labour for junior, intermediate, and senior squads – steadily increased its attention to the on-ice safety and development of young players.
In this session we look to trouble the conference theme of being a ‘good neighbour’ in light of ongoing research in the area of sport for reconciliation. The idea of being neighbourly suggests an equal footing, and is associated with notions of harmony, reciprocity and respect, for example. However, in Canada, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, where the presenters of this paper are located, these countries have long and painful colonial histories and ongoing impacts where Indigenous publics have not mattered. In the research and scholarship environment there is also much evidence of Indigenous publics not mattering and of extremely un-neighbourly behaviours where Indigenous publics are mined for their knowledge, and research has been done on or to, by outsiders, as oppose to with or by Indigenous publics. Rather than being good neighbours, we argue the importance for scholars to understand and act in ways that are about being good guests on traditional territories, if Indigenous publics are to authentically matter.
This panel discusses over a 75-minute session how we work with Indigenous publics whereby a reconciliation agenda is centred. We ask ‘what does being a good guest look like?’ and ‘what does being a good Indigenous ancestor look like?’ in the research context. We reflect on some of the opportunities and challenges from the perspective of Indigenous people. Panellists will speak from their positionality as Indigenous or non-Indigenous persons and areas of knowing.
De nombreuses publications montrent les bienfaits de l’activité physique pour la santé des populations. Ces études ont progressivement écarté la notion d’activité sportive au profit de celle d’activité physique. L’activité physique se mesure uniquement à partir de la dépense d’énergie provoquée par le mouvement avec l’aide d’outils de mesure quantitatifs tel que les accéléromètres. Au contraire, l’activité sportive prend en compte des dimensions culturelles qui donnent sens aux comportements des pratiquants. Celle-ci est donc plus complexe à objectiver. Cette difficulté a, selon nous, conduit à écarter la notion d’activité sportive au profit de celle d’activité physique dans la littérature en santé. En France, les programmes de promotion de l’activité physique marquent leur distance avec l’activité sportive. En milieu scolaire, un enseignement de spécialité en Education Physique et Sportive à destination de lycéens a été mise en place. Deux de ses objectifs sont de « connaître les effets de la pratique physique sur la santé et sur le développement de la personne » et « à l’aide d’indicateurs, mesurer et analyser les effets de l’activité physique ». Dans ce cadre, de 2021 à 2023, nous avons animé une série de conférences sur ces thématiques. Après avoir délimité les notions d’activité physique et d’activité sportive, nous montrons les liens communs et distincts qui les unissent à la santé des populations. Nous questionnons ainsi le consensus général plaçant l’activité physique au cœur des politiques de santé publique, omettant l’activité sportive. Au cours de cette présentation, nous partagerons cette expérience de vulgarisation scientifique originale.
Les programmes Sport-études (PSÉ) ont été instaurés au Québec pour permettre à des étudiants du secondaire de concilier leurs projets scolaires et sportifs. Plus de 9 000 élèves-athlètes, répartis dans 37 disciplines sportives différentes, sont inscrits dans près de 700 programmes reconnus par le Ministère de l’Éducation. Seuls celles et ceux dont les qualités sportives ont été identifiées par leur fédération et qui ont démontré un niveau suffisant d’autonomie et de sérieux dans leur métier d’étudiant y sont a priori admis. Les configurations des PSÉ, variables selon les établissements et les sports, sont susceptibles d’imposer des ajustements nécessaires à la soutenabilité des programmes et posent la question des critères de recrutement des élèves-athlètes. Dans le même temps, ces programmes offrent aux familles l’opportunité d’adopter des stratégies de placement guidées par des logiques éducatives parfois éloignées des objectifs sportifs qui semblent au fondement des PSÉ. Cette étude repose sur un recueil de données qui combine une enquête par questionnaires auprès des familles des élèves-athlètes et des entretiens réalisés auprès des agents scolaires et sportifs et des familles. Elle analyse les intérêts croisés des acteurs sportifs et scolaires des programmes Sport-études et ceux des familles des élèves-athlètes qui y accèdent. Les résultats soutiennent l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’atteinte des objectifs sportifs et scolaires du PSÉ est aux prises avec des intérêts institutionnels et familiaux. Il s’agira ici d’objectiver les caractéristiques sociales, scolaires et sportives des élèves-athlètes sélectionnés au filtre des préoccupations des familles et des enjeux des établissements et des mandataires sportifs.
A partir d’une étude ethnographique (Beaud & Weber, 1998) capitalisant 9 mois d’observation dans un lycée français et des entretiens avec 14 élèves et 4 enseignant.es, notre communication analyse comment l’enquêteur peut construire (1) sa « légende » sur son terrain de recherche en fonction des publics rencontrés dans la communauté scolaire et (2) les influences que peut avoir cette dernière sur les données recueillies.
Si initialement notre doctorat questionne comment l’EPS facilite, ou non, l’accommodation scolaire des élèves immigré.es dans la discipline au regard de leurs socialisations antérieures (Darmon, 2006), nous montrerons que notre posture de doctorant nécessite d’être (re)pensée pour intégrer la communauté scolaire tout en limitant la modification des comportements des publics d’élèves et d’enseignant.es enquêtés. La casquette d’étudiant stagiaire en EPS a été favorisée pour échanger plus facilement avec les élèves immigré.es et accéder, en entretien, à des données intimes sur leurs expériences socialisatrices (Danic et al, 2006). En parallèle, notre statut d’agrégé d’EPS en thèse a été privilégié avec les enseignant.es d'EPS pour gagner rapidement leur confiance et donc, obtenir des données empiriques plus fines sur les élèves immigré.es. A leur demande et dans une logique de don/contre-don, nous leur avons proposé des potentielles applications pratiques, sans rompre l’anonymat des élèves enquêté.es. In fine, cette légende aux multiples casquettes, construite en fonction des publics enquêtés rencontrés, doit être critiquée épistémologiquement puisque notre posture de jeune homme, blanc, francophone et issu des classes sociales culturellement favorisées, a pu colorer les données empiriquement récoltées.
C´est étude est sur la relation entre le football et la migration et vise à comprendre la pratique du football en tant que phénomène socioculturel et constructeur d'inclusion chez les migrants haïtiens vivant dans la commune de Concepción Chili. Ce projet de recherche qualitative et approche descriptive-phénoménologique vise à investiguer à travers le football comment la communauté haïtienne regroupée au sein du club sportif haïtien de Biobío Chili est socialement intégrée dans le contexte local. L'un des problèmes est la stigmatisation de la race et du corps de l'immigré qui marque immédiatement le traitement des personnes de la population locale. C'est le plus gros problème que la population haïtienne affronte lorsqu'elle est d'ascendance africaine (couleur de peau, langue). On apprécie qu'il existe une relation à cause de la couleur de leur peau, ce qui exacerbe les attitudes xénophobes et hostiles au quotidien. La théorie des processus permet de comprendre comment les migrants et les ressortissants haïtiens établissent leurs relations à travers la pratique du football. Comme résultats, nous pouvons souligner que l'existence du club sportif haïtien de Biobío Chili permet à la communauté haïtienne de maintenir ses réseaux de soutien, une santé mentale positive et une communication favorable avec la communauté nationale.
In the absence of epidemiological evidence, the facts suggest that the involvement in high-level sport has many harmful effects on the health of athletes, in particular the construction of an identity based solely on performance, the deterioration of physical integrity and mental health, the "lost childhood syndrome" and the incitement to resort to sports doping. I will question the particular socialization experienced by athletes leading them to play the "game of overcoming limits", to the detriment of their health. This will lead me to consider the dynamics of the sports field (in Bourdieu’s sense) and the key role of performance (both physical and mental) which emerges as the dominant symbolic capital. An overview of the Olympic ecosystem suggests that the various stakeholders of this ecosystem participate in the construction and maintenance of the power of this symbolic capital, which is exacerbated in the context of neoliberalism. The Olympic ecosystem thus turns out to function as a multisectoral multinational which produces a "reality show" broadcast worldwide and whose artists (athletes) are exploited (unpaid and actively participating in this situation) for the benefit of the sale of an image of virtues where performance takes precedence over health. The question is then raised: Are the Olympic athletes instrumentalized (to the detriment of their health) without their knowledge or are we faced with an expression of governmentality as defined by Foucault as a method of social control that operates on autonomous individuals willfully regulating themselves in the best interest of the governing authorities?
This study aims to understand how Brazilian Olympic athletes make sense of their subjectivities throughout their sports trajectory towards the Olympic Games. Among the different manifestations of the elite sporting phenomenon, the Olympic Games occupy the top place in the contemporary scenario, as they are considered the ultimate goal in the athletes' careers. Approximately 3,452 Brazilian athletes have participated in the various editions of the Olympic Games. In the first edition hosted in South America, in 2016, in Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, 465 athletes represented Brazil, this being the largest delegation in the country's history. Seeking to give voice to these subjects, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight athletes who participated in the edition in Brazil and interpreted through discourse analysis (Foucault, 1971, 1982; Orlandi, 2001). The official events and media productions showcase these athletes as subjects representing the country, perpetuating and producing stories focused on nationalism. Pires et al. (2010) showed that the media narrative about the athletes in newspapers from Santa Catarina went from the expectation of good results to the near disappearance of those athletes who did not reach the expected results. Our analysis focuses on how the athletes questioned and resisted this media spectacle and their objectification as a productive subject (Foucault, 1971). Yet, athletes in individual sports also embodied the imperative of sport success. This discourse tied them to their own identity as ‘athletes’ in an embarrassing way, making them subject to their sport results.
Art competitions were an integral part of the official Olympic programme from 1912 to 1948. Medals were awarded for works of art inspired by sport. Previous studies focused on the aesthetic thought and its evolution, but seldom paid attention to its connection with politics. Based on a case study of the official archives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and prize-winning artworks, this paper attempts to assess the intrinsic connection between art competition and politics in the context of the rise of totalitarian regimes in Europe. Coubertin expressed the Olympic ideal of sport and world peace in his 1912 literary gold medal Ode to Sport. However, the study believes that the participation of the government has intensified the conflict between the two ideologies in the art works, namely nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The state, as the main political entity, often appropriates the art competition. The host country tried to carry out political propaganda through art competition. For example, The posters and entries of the 1936 Berlin Art Competition were mostly about the grandeur of the German nation. The participating countries, especially those newly independent after World War I and World War II, use the artwork as a tool to build and strengthen national identity. At the same time, the artist expressed the accusation of war and the desire for peace through his artworks as an active resistance to politicization.
Square dancing is a popular public activity in China, with more than 100 million participants, most of whom are elderly women. In this presentation, we discuss the preliminary results of an ethnography on square dancing in Shenzhen, which has a large population of migrant workers and a significant wealth disparity. Using square dancing as a lens, we focus on migrant experiences of square dancers in the context of China’s unique political and economic system and social culture, examining tensions between urbanization and migration, as well as unequal power and space relations, social capital, identity construction, gender, and interfamily relations in Shenzhen.
Our analysis explores how square dancing is a leisure activity and a gendered social space practice through which important emotional and relationship attachments are formed. Most migrant square dancers are "old drifters" who have relocated to Shenzhen from rural areas to provide childcare for their grandchildren as their adult children labour in Shenzhen. Many of the migrant square dancers experience anomie and the loss of self-identity after leaving their "acquaintance society" and entering an unfamiliar metropolis to perform unpaid gendered labour. This presentation explores how migrant square dancers accumulate social capital by constructing local and self-identities through practices of physical culture. This research augments understandings of square dancing culture and social change in China by analyzing the interplay between social structures, agency and creativity of migrant square dancers, their migration experiences, and stigmatization and various misunderstandings of square dancing behind public spatial disputes among different groups.
Administrators often fulfill the role of gatekeeper, as some of their decisions can contribute to facilitating or limiting access to certain groups, such as children of low-income families. The challenges faced by such families could be even more important in the competitive context, given the associated costs. The purpose of this study was to explore perceptions, attitudes, and roles of sport administrators with respect to the participation of children from low-income families in the competitive sport programs they managed. Semi-structured interviews with 11 administrators were conducted and Bourdieu's sociological stance was adopted in their analysis. Results showed how the administrators’ habitus appeared to be rooted in their own experiences in sport. Their habitus generated managerial practices that were geometrically variable with respect to socioeconomic issues. Also, administrators’ cultural and symbolic capital endowments bore important influence on their capacity to exercise power within their sports organizations. Also, the administrators’ framed their perspectives and decision-making within what appeared to be an uncontested doxa of sport talent development. In this respect, the State and sports federations could contribute, through the imposition of imperatives associated with the production of sports talent, to the issue of inaccessibility by driving an increase in participation fees where the predominant goal of competitive youth sport is the generation of high-performance athletes. As a result, by virtue of the decisions that are within their purview, administrators uncritical of these costs could unconsciously play a determining role in the economic, symbolic and cultural capital required to access competitive youth sport.
Sport for all has increasingly been highlighted by the Taiwanese government; nonetheless, there are some difficulties with sport participation, such as lack of stadiums. Baseball, which is a national sport, plays crucial social roles, such as social coherence, yet there is little participation. Although baseball is so popular in Taiwan, playing baseball is not for all but for elite athletes. Recently, local community baseball teams have been significantly established nationwide, they seem like a group for itself in sport participation that is a rare phenomenon in Taiwan. Even though many studies have examined how social classes may affect sport participation in Western countries, little research have the same discussion in the East. In light of this, we seek the influences of social classes and the way they manage the members (parents and children). To examine research aims, we applied seven interviews and three observations with four symbolic teams. We found that most adolescents are from middle class, yet their parents used not to be in the same class; the father role, most of whom had faced difficulties playing baseball in childhood, is the significant other influencing children's sport interests and participation. Furthermore, the requirements for participants and team regulations of community baseballs could forge a close connection, but they turn boundaries, time involvement and economic capital, for middle-lower classes. Finally, we suggest paying more attention to accessibility for middle-lower classes, eschewing baseball as a sport for specific classes.
Thinking about the links between sport and ideology is no simple task, as not only is the complexity of the sports phenomenon overwhelming on many levels, but also the theoretical discussions on ideology (of long tradition) are varied and intricate, as the concept itself is often used with different meanings. This paper aims to generate conceptual categories based on analyses and discussions on the relationship between sport and ideology. In this sense, the exposition of this paper is composed of four sections. The first focuses on conceptualizing the term ideology and its historically successive forms of understanding, with some fundamental theoretical analyses to arrive at a state of the term's art. In the second section, we try to point out how these ideas can be thought of within the sport system, taking as a basis the conceptions of authors who have interpreted sports through ideological keys. In the third section, we try to prove a relationship between these theoretical conceptions, focusing on the definitions developed by Gramsci to think of a "Hegemonic Sport System." Finally, we take the analysis of the Olympic Charter under these conceptual elements as a concrete case, intending to create new keys of analysis for the sports phenomenon, especially from Žižek's premises.
In recent years, many novel technologies are introduced to sports competitions with the aim of assisting referees in enforcing rules and increasing the accuracy of decisions. However, there is limited knowledge of how the implementation of novel refereeing technologies impacts the elite sports refereeing role. The purpose of our study is to examine how referees experience that the implementation of technologies impacts their everyday practices in sports refereeing. To examine this, we conduct qualitative interviews with elite referees in football, ice hockey, and ski jumping. The analysis investigates what happens to referees' practices when novel technologies are introduced to enhance decision-making in sports competitions. Our findings show that referees experience novel technologies as an asset and a threat to the refereeing role. The referees experience that some of these technologies represent a “safety-net” to enhance decision-making, or that they are valuable tools to optimize communication, learning, and development. However, the referees also express how the same technologies diminish their authority on the field and escalate a culture of surveillance of referees’ bodies and performances. Our findings also illustrate how women referees appear to have fewer opportunities to use novel technologies compared to their male counterparts, creating a digital divide among elite sports referees. Despite highlighting multiple benefits of novel technologies, the referees in our sample raise several concerns related to the trustworthiness of the data these technologies produce and the surveillance that come with their implementation.
Particulate matter (PM), a toxic airborne pollutant known for its microscopic size, has become a pressing concern in South Korea since the early 2010s. Due to health risks associated with PM, such as its ability to penetrate lung cells and cause inflammation, South Koreans gradually started to navigate their outdoor physical activity (PA) according to PM levels. For instance, people base their decisions about outdoor PA on real-time air pollution reports on smartphone applications, as well as, I argue, bodily senses regarding air pollution. In this presentation, I explore the interplay between mobile technology and bodily senses in shaping people’s understanding of air pollution and experiences of outdoor PA. I particularly illustrate the embodied, sensory, and affective dimensions of the app experiences that manifest through a transformation of bodily capacities and performances. Looking into this interplay can help us understand the ways in which technology complicates the relationship between human bodies and the environment.
Considering the rising numbers of people who engage in fitness practices, physical well-being and active lifestyle, the concept of fitness and exercise has been infused with digital tracking instruments. This study explores the experiences of long-term users of sports watches and Strava. The study draws on a series of 10 individual interviews and participant observations with fitness enthusiasts in fitness centres and outdoor running tracks. I explore the paradoxical facets of how surveillance and monitoring technologies shape fitness enthusiasts' experiences and thoughts about their moving bodies in fitness spaces. Drawing on Foucauldian concepts of the technologies of the self and panopticism, the study delves into the nuances of the use of self-tracking technologies. The findings convey how fitness enthusiasts negotiate the blurry lines between their fitness practices and consuming real-time biometric data. I present my findings in four main themes: (1) accessorising the body (2) surveilling the body (3) listening to the body (4) knowing the body. For fitness enthusiasts who accessorise and surveil their bodies, I argue that digital self-tracking technologies can inspire them to new forms of freedom, empowerment, and self-knowledge (technologies of the self) in their everyday fitness practices. However, the surveillance gaze (panopticism) from other individuals and performance metric features on Strava and sports watches could become more impactful than the experience (turning freedom into discipline).
The war in Ukraine has brought the demand for “energy sobriety” to the forefront of the media and into the daily lives of Europeans. In this specific context, the objective of “less” or “without” appears as a constraint imposed on citizens. Nevertheless, in other contexts, the search for sobriety can be a self-determined choice, desired and claimed. This is particularly true in the field of sports, following the example of the French community of Ultra-Light Walkers who practice itinerant hiking and advocate a drastic reduction in the weight of their backpacks (Boutroy, 2022). For our part, we are interested in sportsmen and women evolving in minimalist modalities of running (via a voluntary withdrawal of the connected watch, a detachment from the heavy shoe and/or a refusal to register for large-scale competitions) and bodybuilding (as in the context of participation in the StrongFirst school advocating a barefoot practice, without protective equipment and organized around an extremely limited number of movements). Based on mobile interviews conducted with twenty amateur sportsmen and women engaged in these desired forms of sobriety, we shed light on the intimate, political and philosophical meanings they assume. These result from varied trajectories, oscillating between dispositional continuity and point of bifurcation. Finally, we show that, depending on the athlete, intentional sports sobriety can be an isolated practice or part of a genius global lifestyle turned towards rusticity.
The article explores how national and local identities influence Chinese football fandom. Previous research has failed to provide detailed information about how these two social identities influence the process of fans’ self-identification. This study uses fans of Henan Jianye Football Club and Shenzhen Football Club because they can typically represent native and internal immigrant fans in China as examples to fill the knowledge gap. By combining the experiences of these two fan groups, the article reveals that international games and the feeling of supporting the nation can strengthen the influence of national identity on fandom for the national football team. It also reveals that fans’ recognition of their teams’ local symbolic status stimulates local identity in developing native fans’ support for local football clubs. Although internal immigrant fans do not share their local identities, their desire to acquire local affiliation also allows local identity to affect their fandom.
The issue of an erosion of voluntary engagement in sports clubs in local communities in Germany has been discussed for a long time. The causes for this are often seen in long-term social modernisation processes, which are also accompanied by a "structural change in voluntary engagement". The lecture takes up the multi-layered discussion about the "crisis of volunteering" in the local sports club and discusses it with a view to more recent empirical findings on voluntary engagement in sports (clubs) in Germany before and during the Corona pandemic. The empirical basis is formed by the results of a research project that we carried out at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and which was funded by the Federal Institute of Sports Science (BISp); cooperation partner of the project was the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB). The empirical results show that voluntary engagement in sports clubs was already tending to decline before the Corona pandemic and that this trend continued during the pandemic. Apparently, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the lifeworld-integrated sports club system to rely on the early socialised and long-tracked club career as a mode of attracting and retaining voluntary engagement. It will be discussed that the contemporary development of opportunity structures for the type of "new" or "modernised voluntary work" in sports clubs should be central so that members can and want to participate in the self-organisation of sports clubs in local communities.
The focus of this paper is on the identities of Chinese female athletes with physical impairments, with specific reference to menstruation and their athletic identity. There has been limited research and media coverage to date on the experiences and identities of Chinese athletes with physical impairments, especially female athletes, and the existing literature fails to highlight the intersection of athletic identity, gender identity and disability identity in the lives of these women. Moreover, although research on the relationship between sport and menstruation has increased in recent years, few of the studies have included disabled women voicing their feelings, ideas, and experiences. Therefore, with the aim of giving a voice to these athletes and bringing more attention to a neglected group of people, this research examines Chinese disabled female athletes' perceptions of their own multiple identities, and this particular paper sheds light on the intersections between their menstruation experiences, being disabled and their athletic experience. The 15 participants were elite female athletes who have belonged to national teams and/or attended international sport mega events, competing in a variety of sports. Through the use of semi-structured interviews, this research elicited the women’s stories about menstruation experiences while training and competing. Diversity and commonality in the experiences of participants were found and will be discussed in this presentation.
This essay focuses on the leisure weight training experience of Taiwanese men and their social media self-representations. The “spornosexual” as a new, dominant type of masculinity was coined by Mark Simpson in 2014. It’s a study on modern Taiwanese men’s leisure sport practice and their gender display. This qualitative research adopts semiotic analysis, critical discourse analysis and in-depth interview. The main research purposes are, first, to understand how Taiwanese men adopt, negotiate, or subvert the hegemonic masculinity. Second, the practice and display of spornosexual masculinity in modern Taiwan.
Women’s committees (WCs) have been adopted by many international sports federations (IFs) as part of their efforts to address pervasive gender inequalities (Matthews & Piggott, 2021). Yet, despite their proliferation, little has been documented about the challenges such commissions face, about the conditions under which they can create change, and how they can avoid - as they are frequently criticized - of silo-ing women and making gender equality women’s work alone (Matthews 2021). WCs have also been called a “token gesture,” given they can be continually beset by roadblocks stemming from an IF’s internal politics (Krech et al., 2022). In this paper, we consider the potential of WCs to transform the gendered field relations of sport (Pape & Schoch, 2022). We investigate the case of two IFs - the federations of triathlon (World Triathlon) and hockey (FIH) - which have had a WC for 22 and 3 years respectively, relying primarily on 38 semi-structured interviews with key individuals. We show that while WCs are a strong symbolic gesture, providing an IF with the means to show that it duly recognizes the importance of gender equality, the structural location of the WC within a male-dominated governance structure significantly limits its impact. WCs tend to be advisory committees, with limited topic-specific expertise and little authority to take meaningfully decisions. Importantly, we show that WCs themselves are not the cause of these shortcomings, but rather the existing system of sports governance that tends towards reproducing the male-dominated status quo.