Marxism as a Way of Seeing: Beyond the Limits of Current “Critical” Approaches to Sport
in Sociology of Sport JournalClick name to view affiliation
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Like capitalism, Marxism constantly experiences contradictions and crises to which it reacts, adapts, and somehow survives. Currently, Marxism is under attack by post-Marxist critical theorists and certain feminist scholars. In this paper, some of the criticisms made by these writers are applied to neo-Marxist approaches to sport. It is contended that the specific critiques of Marxism need to be situated in a wider framework that is concerned with theorizing all forms of domination (i.e., economic, sexual, ethnic/racial, and political) in sport. Some recent topics researched by neo-Marxists are used to illustrate the theoretical problems raised by restricting any critical theory of sport to the Marxist paradigm.
A version of this paper originally was presented at the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Conference, Boston, November 1985.
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