Notes on Contributors ix

Introduction: Sport as Escape, Struggle, and Art 1 
Ben Carrington and David L. Andrews

Part One: Sporting Structures and Historical Formations 17

 1 Constructing Knowledge: Histories of Modern Sport 23 
Douglas Booth

 2 Sport and Globalization 41 
Richard Giulianotti and Roland Robertson

 3 The Sport/Media Complex: Formation, Flowering, and Future 61 
David Rowe

 4 Political Theories of Social Class, Sport, and the Body 78 
Joshua I. Newman and Mark Falcous

 5 Gender, Feminist Theory, and Sport 96 
Sheila Scraton and Anne Flintoff

 6 Sports Medicine, Health, and the Politics of Risk 112 
Parissa Safai

 7 Sport, Ecological Modernization, and the Environment 129 
Brian Wilson and Brad Millington

Part Two: Bodies and Identities 143

 8 Paradox of Privilege: Sport, Masculinities, and the Commodifi ed Body 149 
Jeffrey Montez de Oca

 9 Racism, Body Politics, and Football 164 
Mark Q. Sawyer and Cory Charles Gooding

10 Physical Culture, Pedagogies of Health, and the Gendered Body 179 
Emma Rich and John Evans

11 Gay Male Athletes and Shifting Masculine Identities 196 
Eric Anderson

12 Sport, the Body, and the Technologies of Disability 210 
P. David Howe

Part Three: Contested Space and Politics 223

13 US Imperialism, Sport, and “the Most Famous Soldier in the War” 229 
Toby Miller

14 The Realities of Fantasy: Politics and Sports Fandom in the Twenty-fi rst Century 246 
Michael Bérubé

15 Sport, Palestine, and Israel 257 
Tamir Sorek

16 Cities and the Cultural Politics of Sterile Sporting Space 270 
Michael L. Silk

17 Swimming Pools, Civic Life, and Social Capital 287 
Jeff Wiltse

Part Four: Cultures, Subcultures, and (Post)Sport 305

18 Sports Fandom 311 
Edwin Amenta and Natasha Miric

19 Sporting Violence and Deviant Bodies 327 
Kevin Young and Michael Atkinson

20 Dissecting Action Sports Studies: Past, Present, and Beyond 341 
Holly Thorpe and Belinda Wheaton

21 Heidegger, Parkour, Post-sport, and the Essence of Being 359 
Michael Atkinson

22 Race-ing Men: Cars, Identity, and Performativity 375 
Amy L. Best

23 Chess as Art, Science, and Sport 390 
Antony Puddephatt and Gary Alan Fine

Part Five: Sport, Mega-events, and Spectacle 405

24 Sport Mega-events as Political Mega-projects: A Critical Analysis of the 2010 FIFA World Cup 411 
Scarlett Cornelissen

25 Sporting Mega-events, Urban Modernity, and Architecture 427 
John Horne

26 Sports, the Beijing Olympics, and Global Media Spectacles 445 
Douglas Kellner and Hui Zhang

27 Always Already Excluded: The Gendered Facts of Anti-Blackness and Brazil’s Male Seleção 465 
João H. Costa Vargas

28 To Be Like Everyone Else, Only Better: The US Men’s Football Team and the World Cup 481 
Grant Farred

29 Sport, Spectacle, and the Political Economy of Mega-events: The Case of the Indian Premier League 493 
Ian McDonald and Abilash Nalapat

Part Six: Sporting Celebrities/Cultural Icons 507

30 Global Sporting Icons: Consuming Signs of Economic and Cultural Transformation 513 
Barry Smart

31 Embodying American Democracy: Performing the Female Sporting Icon 532 
C.L. Cole and Michael D. Giardina

32 Monty Panesar and the New (Sporting) Asian Britishness 548 
Daniel Burdsey

33 Earl’s Loins – Or, Inventing Tiger Woods 564 
Davis W. Houck

34 Deleuze and the Disabled Sports Star 582 
Pirkko Markula

Index 602

“Combining accessible overviews of established fields of research in sport studies with lively discussions of emergent ideas, this landmark text is invaluable.”
Samantha King, Queen’s University

“An outstanding cast of authors has provided a veritable tour de force of critical inquiry and analysis into the roles of sport in contemporary society. Cutting edge scholarship.”
Daryl Adair, University of Technology, Sydney

“This collection offers an important resource documenting the ways in which sport matters culturally as a site of popular pleasure and identifications fraught with ideological and political significance.”
Mary McDonald, Miami University

From the paternal bonding ritual of a baseball thrown to a small gloved hand to the shared anxiety and elation of a football crowd, sport has long been a central element of cultures throughout the world. It brings together communities, nations and people with little else in common, whether as an activity or a spectacle, operating as a vital form of human expression.

Yet despite its importance as a means of understanding social formations and interpersonal relations, sport has often been viewed by social scientists as a marginal activity. This wide-ranging collection of essays aims to address this inconsistency, exploring the ways in which sport has been marked by the discourses of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation which inform the structure and experience of wider society.

Both theoretically ambitious and accessible, A Companion to Sport includes the thoughts of well-known social and cultural theorists whose work lends itself to an interrogation of sport. It is an invaluable extension to the field and is set to become a default text for anyone interested in contemporary cultural forms and their political significance.

“Combining accessible overviews of established fields of research in sport studies with lively discussions of emergent ideas, this landmark text is invaluable.”
Samantha King, Queen's University

“An outstanding cast of authors has provided a veritable tour de force of critical inquiry and analysis into the roles of sport in contemporary society. Cutting edge scholarship.”
Daryl Adair, University of Technology, Sydney

“This collection offers an important resource documenting the ways in which sport matters culturally as a site of popular pleasure and identifications fraught with ideological and political significance.”
Mary McDonald, Miami University