Books in the Routledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society series

Lifestyle Sports and Public Policy is the first book to develop a comprehensive understanding of the interplay between lifestyle sports and the public policy environment which frames and regulates them. Drawing on a wide range of lifestyle sports from across the globe, including parkour, skateboarding, mountain biking and climbing, it identifies the critical issues facing practitioners and policymakers as these sports become increasingly popular. This book is a valuable resource for anyone with an interest in lifestyle sports, leisure studies, sport tourism, leisure management or sport policy.

Debates around the `sport for development and peace¿ (SDP) movement have entered a new phase, moving on from simple questions surrounding the utility of sport as a tool of international development. This book argues that critical research and new perspectives are necessary to balance the local aspects and global influences of sport and to better understand the power relations embedded in SDP on a transnational scale. It covers a wider agenda than previous books on SDP, exploring issues such as global health beyond HIV/AIDS, the role of new media, environmental concerns, child protection, and gender-based violence.

There has been a trend for urban "mega events" to be awarded to cities in the East and Global South. The book examines the ambition for spectacle that has emerged from these nations, exploring the theoretical and conceptual issues associated with this trend, from the critical political economy of mega-events in a changing world order to the social issues and contested legacies of mega-events in the East and Global South. This book also explores questions of governance, corporate power and the State, and 'living' the mega-events, from celebration to opposition and resistance.

This book explores the cultural, social, spatial, and political dynamics of skateboarding, drawing on contributions from leading international experts across a range of disciplines, such as sociology and philosophy of sport, architecture, anthropology, ecology, cultural studies, sociology, geography, and other fields. Part I critiques the ethos of skateboarding, its cultures and scenes, global trajectory, and the meanings it holds. Part II critically examines skateboarding in terms of space and sites, and Part III explores shifts that have occurred in skateboarding¿s history around mainstreaming, commercialization, professionalization, neoliberalization and creative cities.

With Islam¿s increasing visibility in global society, growing Muslim populations, and Muslim countries competing to be at the heart of global sport, the interplay between sport and Islam can tell us much about contemporary Islam, globalisation, and the challenges faced by Muslims, particularly young Muslims, in finding their place in contemporary society. With contributions from Muslim and non-Muslim authors, and drawing on sociology, anthropology, political science, Islamic studies and sport studies, this book examines the significance of sport in Islam, religious identity in sporting settings, and the interplay between sport, gender, political ideology and consumer culture.

What is, or should be, the social function of sport in a globalised, commercialised world? Why does sport matter in the 21st century? This book calls for a new model of sport that goes beyond the traditional view that sport automatically encourages positive social, moral and political values. Acknowledging that sport is beset by poor practice, corruption, harmful behaviours and illegality, it explores current issues in sport ethics, governance and development. It argues that identifying the root causes of harmful behaviour, those things that are characteristic of sport, and engaging sport managers, policy makers and leaders of sport organisations, is essential if sport is to thrive.

This book brings together scholars from disciplines including sport history, sociology, journalism, economics, sport development and management to explore the significance of sport in contemporary Korea. Presenting a variety of international perspectives, it plots the evolution of sport in Korea and envisions the possibilities for its future.

This is the first comprehensive study of the challenges that transgender athletes face in the hyper-macho, sex segregated institution of sport. The book discusses the historical role that sports have played in preserving sex as a binary and examines how gender has been policed within competitive athletics. It considers how transgender athletes are treated by a system predicated on separating males from females, forcing transgender athletes to negotiate the system in coercive ways, and reviews key issues and contemporary cases. Encouraging reflection on our culture¿s binary thinking on sex and gender, it offers recommendations on how to make sport a more inclusive place for all participants.

The institutional relationship between sport and the military appears to be intensifying. In the US, for example, which faced global criticism for its foreign policy during the "war on terror," militaristic images and discourses are commonplace at sporting events. This critical, interdisciplinary and international volume seeks to identify intersections of sport and militarism as a means to interrogate, interrupt, and intervene on behalf of democratic, peaceful politics. Viewing sport as a crucial site in which militarism is made visible and legitimate, it explores the connections between sport, the military and the state, and their impact on wider society and culture.

This book offers a wide-ranging exploration of the sport-identity nexus, drawing examples from a variety of sporting contexts and geographical locations, and incorporating perspectives from players, spectators, officials and policy-makers. It covers key themes in the social scientific study of sport such as gender, ethnicity and national identity.

Despite a growing interest in the sociology of the body, there has to date been a lack of scholarly work addressing the body in the context of sport. Researching Embodied Sport explores the political, social and cultural significance of embodied approaches to the study of sport, explains how embodied approaches fit with existing theory in sport studies, and makes a compelling case for incorporating an embodied approach into the study of sporting practices and experience. The book adopts a multi-disciplinary lens, moving beyond the traditional dualism of body and mind, and incorporating the physical with the social and the psychological.

Commercial, media, and academic accounts have routinely erased, excluded, ignored, and otherwise made absent the Asian American presence in sport. This book seeks to redress this pattern of neglect by presenting a comprehensive perspective on the history and significance of Asian American athletes, coaches, and teams in North America.

This book advances current literature on the role and place of animals in sport and society. It explores different forms of sporting spaces, examines how figures of animals have been used to racialize the human athlete, and encourages the reader to think critically about animal ethics, animals in space, time and place, and the human-animal relationship. The chapters highlight persistent dichotomies in the use of and collaboration with animals for sport, and present strategies for moving forward in the study of interspecies relations.

Drawing on a diversity of topics including sport for development and peace, transnational feminism, disability sport, refugees and football activism, FIFA, the Olympics, sports journalism and digital sports media, this book makes a case for sport sociology as an agent of positive change in the institutional hierarchies of contemporary sport.

Soccer has long been known as 'the beautiful game.' This multi-disciplinary volume explores the representation of soccer in art, film, and literature, using the critical tools of aesthetics, poetics, and rhetoric. It is a fascinating read for anybody with an interest in sport, culture, literature, philosophy, linguistics, and society.

The Olympic Games is undoubtedly the greatest sporting event in the world, with over 200 countries competing for success. This important new study of the Olympics investigates why some countries are more successful than others. It addresses the factors that determine a country's failure or success and discusses the theoretical concepts that explain why national sporting achievement has become a policy priority around the globe.

The family is an important site for the transmission of knowledge and cultural values. Amidst claims that young people are becoming sedentary, failing to adhere to health and physical activity messages, dropping out of sport and at risk of an ever-expanding list of lifestyle diseases, families have been targeted as crucial sites for government interventions. This book is the first to offer critical sociological perspectives on how families do and do not function as a pedagogical site for health education, sport and physical activity practices. It is essential reading for anybody with an interest in physical education, health studies, family studies, or the sociology of sport and exercise.

This book brings together scholars, writers and commentators to examine the relationship between football, violence and the larger relations of power in which we all live our lives. Within the context of the NFL and the structural conditions in which the NFL has emerged, this book explores issues of racism, sexism and homophobia as a window into the social, political and cultural imprint of Americäs national pastime. The book argues that the NFL reveals a collective psychic participation, by which our subjectivity is formed within historical systems of violence, power, and hierarchy. The NFL¿s participation in and production of hegemonic masculinity, alongside its practices of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and ableism, allows us to think deeply about the historical and contemporary systems of violence we are invested in and entertained by. Football becomes a cultural text to examine and learn from.