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To examine the ways in which sports-related brain injury (concussion and subconcussion) is both similar to and different from other injuries and to set out a sociological understanding of the injury, its manifestation and management.

There is a broad contextualization of the ‘issue’ of concussion and the processes that have brought this to the fore, an examination of the ways in which concussion has been figuratively clouded from plain view, and an outline of the main contributions of the social sciences to understanding this injury – the culture of risk and the mediating effect of social relationships. The chapter concludes by questioning whether the emergence of concerns over chronic traumatic encephalopathy has stimulated a fundamental change in attitudes towards sport injuries, and if this has had a significant impact on the social visibility of concussion.

The two available sociological studies of the lived experiences of concussion are situated within a broader analysis of the politicization of sports medicine and the emergence of a particular social discourse around sports-related brain injury.

The difficulties emanating from the dominance of a biomedical approach to concussion are discussed along with the need for further research, incorporating a more holistic view of concussion, as a bio-psycho-social phenomenon.

This chapter draws upon the sociological concept of rationalization to explore the role and practice of sports medicine. It highlights attempts by the profession to create a rationalized model of health care for sports participants – particularly those involved in high-performance sports settings and the enabling and constraining elements of its enactment.

The chapter explains how changes in the organization of sports medicine have dovetailed with the increasing rationalization of sport which has been significant in enacting changes in sports medicine that are aligned with a more rationalized model of care.

Key findings from the literature highlight the difficulties of implementing rationalized health care policy into practice. Specifically, the chapter examines macro-organizational changes to the structure of sports medicine and the extent to which sports medicine represents a rationalized model of health care by virtue of micro-organizational constraints.

While the discussion draws upon a breadth of research by sociologists of sport who have examined sports medicine practices, the chapter draws heavily on the UK model of sports medicine care in high-performance sport and thus the conclusions may not be wholly transferable to non-UK and non-sports contexts.

Sociology of sport in the United Kingdom is as old as the subdiscipline itself but was uniquely shaped by the prominence of football hooliganism as a major social issue in the 1970s and 1980s. While it remains a somewhat niche activity, the field has been stimulated by the growing cultural centrality of sport in UK society. This quantitative and qualitative development has been recognized in recent governmental evaluations of research expertise. Current research reflects this expanded range of social stratification and social issues in sport both domestically and on a global level, while the legacy of hooligan research is evident in the continuing concentration on studies of association football. Historically, this empirical research has largely been underpinned by figurational, Marxist/neo-Marxist, or feminist sociological theories, but there is now a greater emphasis on theoretical synthesis and exploration. As a consequence of the expansion of the field, allied to its empirical and theoretical diversity, there is a burgeoning literature produced by UK sociologists of sport that spans entry-level textbooks, research monographs, and the editorship of a significant number of specialist journals. The chapter concludes by noting the future prospects of the sociology of sport in the United Kingdom in relation to teaching, research, and relations with other sport-related subdisciplines and the sociological mainstream.

To outline the multiple ways in which animals are inserted into sporting practices, outline historical and contemporary approaches to studying human–animal sporting practices, and advocate for the centering of sociological problems in human–animal research in sporting contexts and cultures and for considering such problems in relation to environmental issues.

In the first part of the chapter, conceptual differentiation of animals in the animal–sport complex is presented. Subsequently, studies of interspecies sport are reviewed with reference to the “animal turn” in the literature. In the second part, a critique is presented relating to: (1) the privileging of companion animals, especially dogs and horses, which overlooks the multiple ways animals are integrated into (multispecies) sport; (2) micro-sociological and insider ethnographies of companionship displacing of sociological problems in favor of relationship perspectives; and (3) the environment as absent from analysis. The conclusion offers implications for understanding multispecies sport and the environment.

I chart a general shift in emphasis and focus from animals as an “absent presence” in pursuit of sociological knowledge toward a clearly defined focus on interspecies sport as a field of research characterized by investigations of relationships with companion animals through the “animal turn.”

The focus on companion species means other animals (i.e., noncompanions) are understudied, big picture sociological questions are often sidelined, environmental concerns marginalized, and sociological understanding of the environment more generally is either ignored or reduced to a conduit of human–animal interactions.