Search results

1 – 10 of 72
Book part
Publication date: 10 November 2016

John Horne and Dominic Malcolm

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…

Abstract

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.

Details

Sociology of Sport: A Global Subdiscipline in Review
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-050-3

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 17 July 2014

Brian Wilson

To outline strategies for balancing a critical approach to sport for development and peace (SDP) interventions with approaches that highlight the potentially positive outcomes of…

Abstract

Purpose

To outline strategies for balancing a critical approach to sport for development and peace (SDP) interventions with approaches that highlight the potentially positive outcomes of SDP. Two examples of attempts to balance these approaches are highlighted. One is a critical analysis of responses to sport-related environmental problems. The other is a study of how a sport-related reconciliation event led by celebrity athletes was successfully organized.

Design/methodology/approach

In the first part of the chapter, the complexity of the SDP concept (and the terms sport, peace, and development) is discussed along with the challenges of negotiating critical and more optimistic stances on SDP. In the second part, two approaches to navigating between “extremely critical” and “unwaveringly optimistic” stances on SDP are outlined through two case studies.

Findings

The two case studies are described along with preliminary findings from studies that were conducted. Each case study is accompanied by a discussion of how the author “middle-walked” between “extremely critical” and “unwaveringly optimistic” positions on SDP. A focus in this section is on how theory, methods, and strategies for reporting findings were accounted for in the process of balancing these distinct positions.

Research limitations/implications

The difficulties attempting to balance critical and optimistic positions are discussed. The difficulties connecting critical analysis with practical suggestions for improving SDP-related work were also outlined.

Details

Sport, Social Development and Peace
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-885-3

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 9 October 2012

John Sugden

Purpose – Good investigative sociology and high-quality investigative journalism are not just the same but they are close relatives. For both professions, getting under the…

Abstract

Purpose – Good investigative sociology and high-quality investigative journalism are not just the same but they are close relatives. For both professions, getting under the surface soil of social life, digging deeply into and making coherent sense of the social experience of others, and translating those findings and interpretations into a universal language for widespread consumption are hugely challenging tasks. Understanding the difference and similarities regarding how sociologists and investigative journalists go about this task raises fundamental philosophical, epistemological, ethical, methodological, theoretical and practical concerns, the outline considerations of which are all featured in this chapter.

Design/methodology/approach – Drawing upon more than three decades of investigative research experience in the field and the original and the innovative personal scholarship that this has yielded, the chapter offers students a map reader's guide of how to navigate a way through the complex, challenging and sometimes hazardous labyrinth of investigative qualitative research.

Originality/value – In addition to offering a ‘how to’ primer for thinking about and doing investigative-qualitative sociology, the chapter also offers advice on how to survive the experience and authoritatively tell the tale well to the widest possible audiences.

Details

Qualitative Research on Sport and Physical Culture
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-297-5

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 17 October 2017

Abstract

Details

Reflections on Sociology of Sport
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-643-3

Abstract

Details

Reflections on Sociology of Sport
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-643-3

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 9 October 2012

Abstract

Details

Qualitative Research on Sport and Physical Culture
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-297-5

Book part
Publication date: 9 October 2012

Kevin Young and Michael Atkinson

In assembling a research design using qualitative methods, what we are really doing is building bridges between the ways that we see the world and the ways that we think it would…

Abstract

In assembling a research design using qualitative methods, what we are really doing is building bridges between the ways that we see the world and the ways that we think it would be best examined and explained. Another way of saying this is that qualitative methods link ontology, epistemology and the Millsian sociological imagination (Mills, 1959).

Details

Qualitative Research on Sport and Physical Culture
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-297-5

Book part
Publication date: 9 October 2012

Michael Atkinson

Purpose – This chapter explores a traditional mode of ethnography referred to as ‘realist ethnography’ as it relates to sport and physical culture (SPC…

Abstract

Purpose – This chapter explores a traditional mode of ethnography referred to as ‘realist ethnography’ as it relates to sport and physical culture (SPC) research.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter discusses different approaches to ethnography, but principally addresses a realist ethnography I conducted on Ashtanga yoga in Canada.

Findings – I discuss how data evolved from the realist ethnographic method, and outline the manner in which ethnographic research is as a ‘way of life’. The chapter concludes that the realist ethnographic method is not untenable, as some authors suggest, but rather a viable and exciting mode of knowledge production in the SPC field.

Originality/value – The chapter is original work. It makes a case for the retention of realist ethnographies in our methodological lexicon, and illustrates the empirical process of writing culture. It also endeavours to engage students and scholars alike regarding the value of ethnographic methods more broadly.

Details

Qualitative Research on Sport and Physical Culture
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-297-5

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 10 June 2009

John B. Davis

Recent work on the theory of teams and team reasoning in game interactive settings is due principally to the late Michael Bacharach (Bacharach, 2006), who offers a conception of…

Abstract

Recent work on the theory of teams and team reasoning in game interactive settings is due principally to the late Michael Bacharach (Bacharach, 2006), who offers a conception of the individual as a team member, and also to Martin Hollis (1998) and Robert Sugden and Natalie Gold (Sugden, 2000; Gold & Sugden, 2007), and is motivated by the conflict between what ordinary experience suggests people often to do and what rationality prescribes for them, such as in prisoner's dilemma games where individuals can choose to cooperate or defect. The source of the conflict, they suggest, is an ambiguity in the syntax of standard game theory, which is taken to pose the question individuals in games ask themselves as, “what should I do?,” but which might be taken to pose the question, particularly when individuals are working together with others as, “what should we do?” When taken in the latter way, each individual chooses according to what best promotes the team's objective and then performs the role appropriate as a member of that team or group. Bacharach understood this change in focus in terms of the different possible cognitive frames that individuals use to think about the world and developed a variable frame theory for rational play in games in which the frame adopted for a decision problem determines what counts as rational play (Janssen, 2001; Casajus, 2001).In order to explain how someone acts, we have to take account of the representation or model of her situation that she is using as she thinks what to do. The model varies with the cognitive frame in which she does her thinking. Her frame stands to her thoughts as a set of axes does to a graph; it circumscribes the thoughts that are logically possible for her (not ever, but at that time). (Bacharach, 2006, p. 69)Sugden understands this framing idea in terms of the theory of focal points following Thomas Schelling's emphasis on the role of salience in coordination games (Schelling, 1960), and his theory similarly ties decision-making to the way the game is understood (Sugden, 1995). This all recalls what Tversky and Kahneman (1981, 1986) termed standard's theory's description invariance assumption, whose abandonment makes it possible to bring a variety of the insights from psychology to bear on rationality in economics.

Details

A Research Annual
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-656-0

Book part
Publication date: 14 June 2018

Luis Mireles-Flores

This essay is a review of the recent literature on the methodology of economics, with a focus on three broad trends that have defined the core lines of research within the…

Abstract

This essay is a review of the recent literature on the methodology of economics, with a focus on three broad trends that have defined the core lines of research within the discipline during the last two decades. These trends are: (a) the philosophical analysis of economic modelling and economic explanation; (b) the epistemology of causal inference, evidence diversity and evidence-based policy and (c) the investigation of the methodological underpinnings and public policy implications of behavioural economics. The final output is inevitably not exhaustive, yet it aims at offering a fair taste of some of the most representative questions in the field on which many philosophers, methodologists and social scientists have recently been placing a great deal of intellectual effort. The topics and references compiled in this review should serve at least as safe introductions to some of the central research questions in the philosophy and methodology of economics.

Details

Including a Symposium on Bruce Caldwell’s Beyond Positivism After 35 Years
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-126-7

Keywords

1 – 10 of 72