This book examines how social issues shape and influence our engagement with sport, leisure time physical activity, and health-promoting exercise. Connecting the personal with the public, it helps the reader understand how individual exercise, leisure, and sport participation are both facilitated and constrained by their social contexts. Presenting a series of in-depth descriptions of grassroots sport, urban lifestyle sport, physical activity across the life course, sport for children with special needs, and the development of creative climates in sport, this book seeks to encourage what C. Wright Mills described as the “sociological imagination”. Every chapter begins with an individual-level account centred on everyday challenges with accessing sport, partaking in leisure activities, and meeting guidelines for daily exercise before exploring the larger, socially determined patterns in which those experiences are located, establishing a vital template for the social scientific study of sport, leisure, and health. Touching on key contemporary themes including diversity, inclusion, health inequalities, and physical inactivity, as well as selection and intensification in sports, this book offers new case material and theoretical tools for understanding the relationships between sport, leisure, health, and the wider society. This is an indispensable companion for any course on the sociology of sport, exercise, leisure, or physical activity and health.

Social Issues in Sport introduces students to a sociological study of sport and is the first book to draw mainly from British sources for its material. It aims to describe the nature and extent of sporting issues prevalent in society, to analyse research studies in sport and offer explanations for sporting behaviour. Topics covered include: participation patterns in sport, health, women, social class, race, drug abuse, football hooliganism and commercialism.

Social Issues in Sport, Fourth Edition With HKPropel Access, introduces students to the study of sport as a social phenomenon. It explores current trends in sport and examines complex connections between sport and politics, economics, religion, race, gender, youth, and more. Author Ronald Woods draws on his experience of more than 40 years as a professor, coach, and sport administrator to explore modern sport from historical and cultural perspectives. New coauthor B. Nalani Butler offers a fresh perspective to the study of sport from an emerging generation of Black female scholars. She draws on her background as an athlete and professor, and leverages her international experience from working with the Center for Sport, Peace and Society and the International Olympic Academy (IOA). The text’s presentation style, full-color design, and ample learning tools are designed to keep students engaged. Social Issues in Sport, Fourth Edition, addresses the Common Professional Component topics outlined by the Commission on Sport Management Accreditation (COSMA). The text remains grounded in practical application and provides opportunities for students to examine real-world issues through the lens of social theory. The fourth edition also features the following enhancements: Online learning tools delivered through HKPropel: case studies on current events, video lectures, and essay and multiple-choice questions to support applied learning and encourage critical thinking Increased emphasis on emerging issues such as sport wagering, the use of social protest by athletes, sexual harassment of or by athletes, and sport safety Discussions on the rise in popularity of esports and on the exploding influence of social media on athletes, spectators, and fans Updated sidebars that address current topics such as the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on sport, offering a contemporary context to which students can apply the concepts in the text Social Issues in Sport, Fourth Edition, is streamlined into three parts, maintaining an accessible and student-friendly format that aligns with a 16-week semester. Part I sets the stage for studying sport from a sociological perspective by defining key terms and presenting crucial social theories. This section examines participation in sport, from spectators to performers, and explores sport economics through sport management, sport marketing, and sport media. Part II discusses sport institutions at all levels, from youth sport to Olympic competition. Part III is devoted to current issues and critically analyzes the effects of gender, race, economic status, religion, and government on sport. It also offers a detailed look at both ethics and deviance in sport. Social Issues in Sport, Fourth Edition, provides the foundations for critically examining the multifaceted roles of sport and physical activity in society. The information and activities offered by the text invite students to evaluate the sociocultural issues intertwined with sport and relate these themes to their own lives. Through this in-depth examination of sociocultural issues, students will be able to understand and appreciate the development of sport as a part and reflection of our society. Note: A code for accessing HKPropel is not included with this ebook but may be purchased separately.

Social Issues in Sport, Third Edition, explores common questions and issues about sport and its relation to society through various sociological and cultural lenses. The text is grounded in practical application and provides social theories through which students may examine real-world issues.

Sociocultural Issues in Sport and Physical Activity explores the intersections between modern physical activity and society. The text surpasses the scope of sociological texts that focus solely on sports, covering a broad range of physical activities such as fitness, dance, weightlifting, and others. The authors emphasize the promotion of healthy individuals and a healthy body in the many movement settings where the body is active. Sociocultural Issues in Sport and Physical Activity explores contemporary topics such as reducing disparities in education and income, increasing socioeconomic diversity in communities, the medicalization of fitness, the rise of cosmetic fitness, the promotion of physical activity as a requirement for health, and the globalization of the fitness industry. The text includes the following features to enhance student engagement: Chapter objectives help students achieve their learning goals Key points and terms to highlight important information throughout the text Active Bodies sidebars that offer context for concepts presented in the chapter and provide examples and applications Discussion questions that provide opportunities to reflect on chapter topics Part I of Sociocultural Issues in Sport and Physical Activity examines political, educational, media, and economic institutions that influence the relationship between society and physical activity. Part II explores how an individual’s race, gender, social class, and ability are interpreted through a social lens. Part III of the text discusses the process of developing healthy populations as well as promoting public health and body positivity. Sociocultural Issues in Sport and Physical Activity offers a cross-cultural perspective of society, health, and the body in motion. Readers will finish the text with a greater understanding of social theory applications in physical culture.

This handbook provides an original, comprehensive and unparalleled overview of feminist scholarship in sport, leisure and physical education. It captures the complexities of past, current and future developments in feminism while highlighting its theoretical, methodological and empirical applications. It also critically engages with policy and practice issues for women and girls taking part in sport and leisure pursuits and in physical education provision. The Palgrave Handbook of Feminism and Sport, Leisure and Physical Education is international in scope and includes the work of established and emerging feminist scholars. It will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, gender studies, sport sciences, and sports business and management.

This is the first book to explore in breadth and in depth the complex intersections between sport, leisure, and social justice. This book examines the relations of power that produce social inequalities and considers how sport and leisure spaces can perpetuate those relations, or act as sites of resistance, and makes a powerful call for an activist scholarship in sport and leisure studies. Presenting original theoretical and empirical work by leading international researchers and practitioners in sport and leisure, this book addresses the central social issues that lie at the heart of critical social science – including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, religious persecution, socio-economic deprivation, and the climate crisis – and asks how these issues are expressed or mediated in the context of sport and leisure practices. Covering an incredibly diverse range of topics and cases – including sex testing in sport; sport for refugees; pedagogical practices in physical education; community sport development; events and human rights; and athlete activism – this book also surveys the history of sport and social justice research, as well as outlining theoretical and methodological foundations for this field of enquiry. The Routledge Handbook of Sport, Leisure and Social Justice is an indispensable resource for any advanced student, researcher, policymaker, practitioner, or activist with an interest in the sociology, culture, politics, history, development, governance, media and marketing, and business and management of sport and leisure.

Sport has come to have an increasingly large impact on daily life and commerce across the globe. From mega-events, such as the World Cup or Super Bowl, to the early socialization of children into sport, the study of sport and society has developed as a distinctly wide-ranging scholarly enterprise, centered in sociology, sport studies, and cultural, media, and gender studies. In The Oxford Handbook of Sport and Society, Lawrence Wenner brings together contributions from the world's leading scholars on sport and society to create the premier comprehensive and interdisciplinary reference for scholars and students looking to understand key areas of inquiry about the role and impacts of sport in contemporary culture. The Handbook offers penetrating analyses of the key ways that today's outsized sport is integrated into the lives of both athletes and fans and increasingly shapes the social fabric and cultural logics across the world. Featuring 85 leading international scholars, the volume is organized into six sections: society and values, enterprise and capital, participation and cultures, lifespan and careers, inclusion and exclusion, and spectator engagement and media. To aid comprehension and comparison, each chapter opens with a brief introduction to the area of research and features a common organizational scheme with three main sections of key issues, approaches, and debates to guide scholars and students to what is currently most important in the study of each area. Written at an accessible level and offering rich resources to further study each topic, this handbook is an essential resource for scholars and students as well as general readers who wish to understand the growing social, cultural, political, and economic influences of sport in society and our everyday lives.

This innovative text's critical examination foregrounds the prime reason why so many people participate in or watch sport – pleasure. Although there has been a "turn" to emotions and affect within academia over the last two decades, it has been somewhat remiss that pleasure, as an integral aspect of human life, has not received greater attention from sociologists of sport, exercise and physical education. This book addresses this issue via an unabashed examination of sport and the moving body via a "pleasure lens." It provides new insights about the production of various identities, power relations and social issues, and the dialectical links between the socio-cultural and the body. Taking a wide-sweeping view of pleasure - dignified and debauched, distinguished and mundane – it examines topics as diverse as aging, health, fandom, running, extreme sports, biopolitics, consumerism, feminism, sex and sexuality. In drawing from diverse theoretical approaches and original empirical research, the text reveals the social and political significance of pleasure and provides a more rounded, dynamic and sensual account of sport.

With sport sustaining a prominent place in international development policymaking, discourse and delivery, this comprehensive Handbook provides a contemporary, multi-disciplinary overview of state-of-the-art scholarship in this critical space. It investigates the role that different sport initiatives – from community-focused projects to large-scale events – can play across a great variety of development contexts.