Browse

The Iroquois Nationals’ participation in the 2018 World Lacrosse Championship was welcomed by the hosting Israeli state despite the call for boycott from the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and pro-Palestinian groups’ appeal for Indigenous solidarity. This paper discusses the historical/geopolitical contexts of this event and examines the responses from multiple parties, including the team representatives, pro-Israel groups, and Indigenous media/activists. By bringing together literature in Indigenous studies, settler colonial studies, Palestinian studies, and critical sport studies, it highlights the challenges for transnational solidarity in the sport industry as well as the urgency for deepening an internationalist anticolonial/anti-imperialist political consciousness among athletes and sport organizations, Indigenous or non-Indigenous alike.

This study investigates the ability of Gender Equality Committees (GECs) to drive change in the governance of International Federations, particularly in the overrepresentation of men in leadership roles. We situate GECs within the gendered fields of strategic action, whose change efforts must engage diverse actors beyond the immediate organizational context of a given International Federation. In examining the GECs of two gender-progressive International Federations through semistructure interviews, we develop the concept of “field containment” and show that the political and material conditions of the GEC constrain its ability to perform impactful work and particularly to achieve field-wide change, ultimately resulting in the containment of the GEC. The article concludes with practical implications.

Through a systematic review of gender critical feminist rhetoric in the realm of sports, this article excavates a rhetorical strategy of what the author calls “trans tolerance,” a strategy that is at once trans-affirming and trans-exclusionary. The author argues that three themes run across three gender critical feminist organizations: (a) nonpartisanship, (b) biofeminism, and (c) trans tolerance. In a sports world that desperately needs transformation, scholars and activists alike must sharpen analyses of violent transphobic rhetoric in a way that moves beyond a “pro-trans versus anti-trans framework.”

This article introduces sociological conceptions of loss to literature on sport to assess the “life” and “death” of golf courses—as well as the “afterlife” of golf terrain once golf courses close. As indicated by the quotation from Rebecca Elliott’s writing (2018) in our title, a loss framing differs from the concept of sustainability by considering practices that might be discarded to serve better environmental futures. We consider loss vis-à-vis three golf industry “outlooks”: (1) strategic and gradual loss, where loss serves an industry-friendly view of sustainability; (2) permanent loss, where courses “die,” potentially toward greener “afterlives”; and (3) transformational loss, where golf courses remain but are substantially changed. We conclude with reflections on loss and the study of sport beyond golf.

This paper examines the intersection of Black hair aesthetics and three dimensions of safe sport: environmental and physical safety, relational safety, and optimizing sport experiences. Black hair, a fundamental aspect of cultural identity for people of African descent, has been historically stigmatized; an issue that extends into sports yet remains unexplored. Through a predominantly Canadian perspective, we define Black hair aesthetics as encompassing various textures and styles related to real and potential risks of injury, inattention, and disregard in sport contexts. We contend that Black hair is a safe sport issue as it intertwines with risk, safety, and human rights. By exploring Black hair stylization, we uncover its political dimensions and its ability to challenge colonial norms that impact sporting access and success.

Female eligibility policies punish people for gender nonconformity and normalize patriarchal rule. These policies were used first to exclude women deemed “too masculine” from competing against women who more closely conform to gender stereotypes. In recent years, this form of discipline has dovetailed with efforts to determine the circumstances, if any, under which transgender women may compete against cisgender women. Modern sport, as a set of institutions, does not stand apart from capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy. In this article, I use a prison abolitionist lens to connect anti-trans campaigns and female eligibility policies that police sporting identity to the carceral logics of racial capitalism to make the argument that sex surveillance is related to race, social control, and capital accumulation.

Out-of-school youth sport in the United States is bigger, more varied, and more impactful than ever before. In dialogue with existing scholarship, this paper uses multisite, collaborative fieldwork to identify core elements of program variation and develop a composite typology of this organizational field. The typology is based on a distinction between “sport-focused” programs and programs oriented toward nonsport social and developmental goals. Our primary insight is that programs within these domains exhibit two different organizational logics, one hierarchical, the other categorical. We also argue that variabilities of funding, social context, and reliance on public facilities are additional factors that impact the operation and effectiveness of these program types including their ability to address the racialized challenges of access, equity, and inclusion. Theorizing these differential configurations and their underlying characteristics can help parents, policymakers, practitioners (including coaches), and sports researchers engage youth sports more effectively under increasingly competitive neoliberal conditions.