Sport is something rather taken for granted and little studied as part of man's and society's behaviour. This collection of essays, many of which appear in print for the first time, provides an international comparative and developmental orientation to the sociology of sport, thereby clarifying the nature of modern sports and their central structural and functional characteristics. The sports treated include football, soccer, rugby, wrestling, baseball, and bull-fighting, and some historic...

1999 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Annual Book AwardSport Matters offers a comprehensive introduction to the study of modern sport from a sociological perspective. It covers such topics as the history of sport, the development of ideas of 'fair play', sport and the emotions, the professionalization of sport, race-relations and sport and sport and gender.Unique in its cross-cultural analysis, it uses examples from around the globe...

This systematic historical and sociological study of the phenomenon of football hooliganism examines the history of crowd disorderliness at association football matches in Britain and assesses both popular and academic explanations of the problem. The authors’ study starts in the 1880s, when professional football first emerged in its modern form, charting the pre and inter-war periods and revealing that England’s World Cup triumph formed a watershed. The changing social composition of foot...

This book presents a synthesis of the work on early football undertaken by the authors over the past two decades. It explores aspects of a figurational approach to sociology to examine the early development of football rules in the middle part of the nineteenth century. The book tests Dunning’s status rivalry hypothesis to contest Harvey’s view of football’s development which stresses an influential sub-culture outside the public schools. Status Rivalry re-states the primacy of these latte...

This book traces international developments in the hooligan phenomenon since the Heysel tragedy of 1985. The authors make special reference to the troubled European championships in West Germany in 1988 and look critically at political responses to the problem. The authors used ‘participant observation’ in their research on British fans at the World Cup in Spain, and at matches in Rotterdam and Copenhagen, and capture the authentic voice of football hooliganism in their interviews....

Sports Histories draws on figurational sociology to provide a fresh approach to analysing the development of modern sport. The book brings together ten case studies from a wide range of sports, including mainstream sports such as soccer, rugby, baseball, boxing and cricket, to other sports that until now have been largely neglected by sports historians, such as shooting, motor racing, tennis, gymnastics and martial arts. This groundbreaking work highlights key debates in the analy...

Examines the causes of football hooliganism as a world phenomenon, considering the links between player violence and crowd violence, and the role of the media. It looks ahead to the 1994 World Cup in Los Angeles and asks why soccer hooliganism has not been a problem in the USA.

First published in 1979, this classic study of the development of rugby from folk game to its modern Union and League forms has become a seminal text in sport history. In a new epilogue the authors provide sociological analysis of the major developments in international ruby that have taken place since 1979, with particular attention to the professionalism that was predicted in the first edition of this text. Sports lovers, rugby fans and students of the history and sociology of sport will...

'Space' and 'place' are concepts central to both geography and sport. Places, for example, are the means of identifying most sports teams, while sport both affects, and is affected by, the physical environment and landscape. In this fully revised and updated edition of his classic, discipline-defining text, John Bale comprehensively explores the relationships between sport, place, location and landscape. Drawing on examples from around the world, the book addresses key topics from the geog...

Sport has changed. Traditions and territorial distinctions are dissolving as a result of new global, political, economic and cultural conditions. The team of authors examine these changes, investigating the power relations that govern the new global sport and assessing the consequences for the future of sport.The book is founded on a series of case studies, linked by a common process-sociological approach, and is divided into four sections - each dealing with an important aspect of...

'Richly documented and convincingly presented' -- New SocietyMods and Rockers, skinheads, video nasties, designer drugs, bogus asylum seeks and hoodies. Every era has its own moral panics. It was Stanley Cohen’s classic account, first published in the early 1970s and regularly revised, that brought the term ‘moral panic’ into widespread discussion. It is an outstanding investigation of the way in which the media and often those in a position of political power define a con...

Written from the contrasting yet complementary perspectives of sociology and philosophy, this book explores the far-reaching ethical consequences of the runaway commodification of sport, focusing on those instances where commodification gives rise to morally undesirable consequences. The authors consider three main areas of concern for participators and observers alike: the corrosion of the core meanings and values of sport, the increasing elitism of access to sporting commodities, and the...