Browse

Drawing upon 3 years of fieldwork with a nonprofit fitness education development program targeting “at-risk” Baltimore youth, this article examines pedagogical barriers rooted in the perceived, and materially experienced, differences of race, gender, class, and culture. Set within the confines of increasingly privatized spaces of fitness/health in a starkly divided Baltimore, MD, this study demonstrated how interventions were rooted in a self-congratulatory and neocolonial benevolence—steeped in a largely unacknowledged form of neoliberal individualism—which routinely denied and silenced impacts of racism. Observations of instructor–student interaction revealed substantial disconnects concerning definitions of the body, fitness, and significance of race in health disparities, resulting in student refusal and program cessation. Given the power dynamics between white fitness-philanthropists and Black youth, the author, as active participant–observer, occupied a liminal space where considerations of authenticity and immersion became critical.

This study sought to identify factors that reduce parental concern of concussion risks for children who play youth tackle American football. Interviews were conducted with parents who allowed children between the ages of 10 and 15 years to play on tackle football teams. Factors that reduced parental concern included advances in equipment safety and helmet technology, active parental monitoring and relationship building with coaches, and social comparisons to other youth athletes regarding their own child’s athleticism and ability to avoid injury. Although these factors reduced parents’ concern for concussion risks, the findings highlight biases that influence parental risk judgments, suggest that interventions to reduce concussions must account for competing narratives of concussion prevention, and offer recommendations for improving education efforts focused on player safety in contact sports.

RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR) is a reality television show wherein drag queens compete for the title of America’s next drag superstar. This article contends that RPDR is sport and that the queens are contestants in a culture of risk wherein queens must be willing to play through pain, risk their bodies, and demonstrate emotional toughness to succeed. A hegemonic power structure exists on RPDR wherein judges, fans, and contestants reward queens willing to participate in the culture of risk and deem queens unwilling to participate as unworthy. Using a discourse analysis of Season 9, this article will demonstrate how the contestants on RPDR must conform to the traditional masculine and feminine gender norms commonly found in sporting contexts to garner success on and off the show.

Using Black Feminist Theory and qualitative data gathered from 20 Black Canadian female U.S. athletic scholarship recipients, this article identifies race–gender barriers to accessing informal athletic spaces for athletic training such as recreation centers and public gyms. I argue that these access barriers are rooted in a sexist anti-Blackness, while also examining the resistance and navigational strategies employed by the participants such as playing back and avoidance and considering how those efforts often led to additional financial expense and psychological and navigational labor. In so doing, I elucidate how the race and gender of the participants intersected to create social and athletic experiences and opportunities that are distinct from existing dominant discourses in collegiate athlete research, which tend to center American and Black males, while often neglecting the specific and more granular experiences of Black (Canadian) female athletes.

While there is increasing recognition that sport is sociomaterial, little is known about what this means for an analysis of coaching practice. This paper develops a cartography of coaching based on an actor–network theory ethnography of two volunteer football coaches’ practices in Scotland. A sociomaterial analysis generates anecdotes that are reordered into five parts: (a) moving from the eleven-a-side game toward a field of practice, (b) delegation, (c) quasi-object, (d) interruptions, and (e) manufacturing. Each part is accompanied with an analytical move inspired by Latourian actor–network theory. Coaching is conceptualized as a field of practice resting on three propositions. The first proposition is that coaches intervene by fabricating passages in practices which are always under construction. The second proposition is that materials and materiality shape practices in ways which can make players more, or less, disciplined. And the third proposition is for a local and situated sociomaterial competence where nonhumans are matters of concern. Coaching with Latour paves the way for a new space in the sociology of sport for studies dedicated to the sociomateriality of sport.

The objective of this article was to describe the experiences of normalization of pain and injuries among elite adolescent basketball players and their staff. A total of 10 elite adolescent basketball players, ages 15–17 years and eight members of their staff, were interviewed. Results showed that (a) for both players and staff, being able to normalize pain is considered as a necessity and requires experience; injury is regarded as inevitable and as a way to gain body expertise and (b) technical and medical staffs have difficulties in agreeing on pain and injury management. The originality of the results presented lies in the fact that the elite players interviewed are in training; and that the expectations of the players, the technical staff, and the medical staff were questioned at the same time.

This article aims to outline the characteristics of the publications on the sociology of sport found in three Argentinian journals, observing the education of the authors involved, the disciplines and subjects most investigated, and the bibliographic references most used by Argentinian authors. Based on the content analysis of this empirical evidence, we could see that the Argentinian production is more linked to sociology researchers. In addition, studies are predominantly about soccer, notions of identity, and mostly used local bibliographic references. That is, they are Argentinian or Latin American references. Finally, this study is itself a contribution to a greater understanding and analysis of sociology of sport in Argentina and Latin America.