Drawing on original research, this book looks at what sport can tell us about the social processes, patterns and outcomes of forced migration and the 'refugee crisis'. Adopting a systems theory ...framework and examining different sport disciplines, performance levels and settings, it represents a significant contribution to our understanding of one of the most urgent social issues facing the modern world. The book explores four key aspects of sport’s intersection with forced migration. Firstly, it looks at how the media covers sport in relation to the 'refugee crisis', specifically coverage of refugee elite athletes. Secondly, it examines the adaptation of sport organisations to the 'refugee crisis', including the culture, programmes and structures that promote or obstruct sport for refugees. Thirdly, the book looks at sport in refugee sites, and how sport can be used as therapy, an escape or empowerment for refugees but also how it can reinforce the divisions between staff and the refugees themselves. Finally, the book looks at how forced migration influences and is influenced by participation in elite sport, by examining the biographies of elite migrant athletes. A richly descriptive, critical and illuminating piece of work, this book is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in sport, migration, sociology or the relationship between sport and wider society.
Metrics, and increasingly altmetrics, are a pervasive aspect of academic life. A proliferation of digital tools available have seen greater emphasis on the quantification of the ‘performance’ of ...individual journals. Although metrics and altmetrics are justified in terms of increased accountability and transparency, there are significant inequities in the ways they are deployed. Key among these is the unsuitability of many popular metrics for assessing publications in the humanities and social sciences, as the data, algorithms and systems which support them cater to authorship and citation practices of the various science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. These issues are amplified for journals in the sociology of sport, which publish research by humanities and social science scholars whose work is quantified according to the standards of the health science departments in which they frequently work. In this discussion, we critically examine how common forms of metrics and altmetrics, including those produced by Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Altmetric.com, are applied to available sociology of sport journals. We analyse and critique how different metric algorithms produce variable measures of performance for each of the journals in the field and reveal how other information available on these databases can augment our understanding of the sociology of sport publishing ecology. Far from advocating the value of metrics and altmetrics, our analysis is intended to arm scholars and journals with the information required to critically navigate the entanglement of metrics and altmetrics with neoliberalism, audit culture and digital technologies in universities.
Based on a decade of research by two leading action sports scholars, this book maps the relationship between action sports and the Olympic Movement, from the inclusion of the first action sports to ...those featuring for the first time in the Tokyo Olympic Games and beyond. In an effort to remain relevant to younger audiences, four new action sports, surfing, skateboarding, sport climbing, and BMX freestyle were included in the Tokyo Olympic program. Drawing upon interviews with Olympic insiders, as well as leaders, athletes, and participants in these action sports communities, the book details the impacts on the action sports industry and cultures, and offers national comparisons to show the uneven effects resulting from Olympic inclusion. It reveals the intricate workings of power and politics in contemporary sports organisations, and maps key trends in this changing sporting landscape. Action Sports and the Olympic Games is a fascinating read for anybody studying the Olympics, the sociology of sport, action sports, or sport policy.
Scholarship indicates that there are many benefits of social support, yet theoretical questions remain as to whether the perceived efficacy of support depends upon its source. Drawing on in-depth ...interviews with a sample of collegiate athletes with access to a vast support network, this research examined the perceived utility of support received from significant others, similar others, and individuals who were both personally significant and experientially similar, albeit to varying degrees. Five categories of similar and/or significant other supporters emerged, each of which seemed to fulfill a different support function. Significant-only others provided support based in personal significance, whereas similar-only others supplied experience-based coping assistance. And a particularly valued resource, individuals who were both significant and similar were solicited based on the relative salience of their significant and similar other role identities and the uniquely specialized support they could provide to match the needs of both individuals and their stressful circumstances. In support of theory, findings highlight the potential for support interventions aimed at cultivating different types of similar and significant other relationships.
The sociology of sport has become a burgeoning subdiscipline in the 21st century. To assess knowledge domains and the status quo of the field in Europe and North America, this study uses CiteSpace (a ...bibliometric visualization software) to analyse 870 academic articles published in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Journal of Sport & Social Issues and Sociology of Sport Journal from 2008 to 2018. By mapping/examining core contributors, keywords, high citations/cited authors, major clusters and citation bursts, the findings echo John W. Loy’s ‘risk of critical mass’ calling for various citation analysis approaches. The study expands Jon Dart and Ørnulf Seippel’s recent topic model studies on subdisciplinary development in recent decades, contributing to informed discussions of geographical politics and research directions in the field. The scale and scope of this analysis is highly generalizable to assess pre-existing state-of-the-art research on the sociology of sport.
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