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The intent of this chapter is to examine the historical and present-day intersections of injury, impairment, pain and risk-taking in the Paralympic Movement. While much has been written about injuries that end an athlete’s career, far less consideration has been given to how an injury might launch a sports career. In this chapter, I explore the experiences of athletes for whom injury and sports participation are fundamentally entwined.

To accomplish this, I draw on sociological literature on sport and injury, psychological literature on identities and sport retirement and feminist disability theories. The discussion is further enriched by interviews with Paralympic athletes and informed by own experience as a researcher, guide and volunteer in the Paralympic Movement.

This work illustrates how systems of representation intersect to (re)produce identities. This includes demonstrating how some individuals use sport as a means of claiming an athletic identity while distancing themselves from devalued disabled identities and the subsequent impact this can have on their psycho-social well-being.

This chapter demonstrates how sociologists of sports can engage with critical disability scholarship to deepen understandings of how and why individuals with impairments enter into sport and their experiences therein.

This chapter coins the term Development through Mega-Events (DME) in order to propose a next step for developing social legacies in accordance with the principle of social development.

This chapter’s argument for DME is developed using quantitative, indicator-based data from the Olympic Games Impact (OGI) study as well as relevant literature from the sub-fields of Sport for Development and Peace and Sport Mega-Events.

We discuss the absence of a baseline understanding of the properties of sport mega-events. Also absent are progressive efforts to achieve sustainability by means other than competition among prospective bidders. We recommend that hosts tie social legacies to public policy objectives that are concomitant with the properties of the sport mega-events. Retrospectively applied, OGI data from 2010 reveals social inclusion as one potential social legacy that reflects the nature of the Olympics and the policy realm in the host region.

This chapter is original work. It would be of interest to potential host communities, policymakers, and researchers.

This chapter honors the opportunity I have had to learn with David Maines over the past 35 years. I connect my research on communication and disability, specifically among individuals who are blind and visually impaired, to Maines' discussion of narratives incorporating Rawlins' exploration of similarity and difference. I discuss narratives of disability as difference using three examples: A short story written by H. G. Wells; the American with Disabilities Act; and interviews conducted with elite blind goalball athletes. I conclude with 10 lessons learned about disability and difference including that the goal of my research is to help us all perceive disability as a difference that matters, but not as a difference that disables.

This chapter introduces the development of sport sociology in Japan especially focusing on the activities of the Japanese Society of Sport Sociology (JSSS) and research by members of the society. Following a brief history, we discuss some notable and influential research in Japanese sport sociology. Then we pick up the two areas of Olympic Studies and Sport for Development and Peace to show the current situation of sport sociology in Japan. In Japan, the development of sport sociology and sport itself are tightly linked with the development of the society as a whole, especially influenced by economic factors. In regards to the future of sport sociology as well as sport, we believe that this will depend on the economic situation, although sport-related persons (except for sociologists) tend to expect much of the governmental body. Because the volume of Olympic Studies and Sport for Development and Peace research is increasing, sport sociology will achieve a certain amount of success by the 2020 Tokyo Olympics/Paralympics. However, we need to seek a way to maintain the momentum of sport sociology in Japan after the year 2020.

This case examines the concept and role of adaptability in destination governance, particularly as it relates to hosting a mega-event such as the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. It describes how the Resort Municipality of Whistler in British Columbia, Canada, used its broad sustainability-focused destination governance system to guide and manage relationships and outcomes related to the Games. Through its strategic and adaptive interactions with the International Olympic Committee and the Vancouver Organizing Committee, the Resort Municipality of Whistler leveraged unprecedented sustainability benefits from this mega-event.