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The Four-Minute Mile
Breaking records and challenging the limits of human ability are central to much of our understanding of athletic track and field sports, with a world record title arguably as valued as an Olympic gold medal. Some particular limits and records take on greater significance, however, as in the case of the Four-Minute Mile which was roundly believed to be impossible until Roger Bannister shattered the illusion with half a second to spare in May 1954. These essays look at the background of Bannister’s achievement and the meaning that was ascribed to it by the media and the public at large, drawing on an array of interdisciplinary and international influences to unpick the legend surrounding an historic moment in our social and sporting past.
Towards a Social Science of Drugs in Sport
The debate around the role of drugs in sport is vibrant. There is a wealth of evidence from the hard end of science, telling us how drugs work, how drug testing works, and how many athletes have fallen foul of the system. The evidence from social science is still building momentum. For example, what makes an athlete use a performance enhancing substance? "To win" simply fails to explain the drug use behaviour we see among athletes. This book provides a foundation for anyone trying to understand the drugs in sport problem beyond the hard science by looking at the "people factor" from different perspectives. After building a case for the social science of drugs in sport, it is examined from the ethical, sociological, economic, legal and psychological points of view. The book concludes with a definitive statement about what researchers, policy makers, sports administrators, athletes and fans can do to achieve a social science of drugs in sport that puts people firmly in the centre of the debate. This volume was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.
Key Concepts in Sports Studies
Written by experienced academics use to teaching the subject, this book will help students and researchers find their way within the diverse field of sport studies. Clear, well researched entries explain the key concepts in the debates surrounding the social significance and social dynamics of sport. Each entry provides clear definitions, relevant examples, up-to-date suggestions for further reading, and informative cross-referencing.
Host Cities and the Olympics
Rather than interpreting the Olympics as primarily a sporting event of international or national significance, this book understands the Games as a civic project for the host city that serves as a catalyst for a variety of urban interests over a period of many years from the bidding phase through the event itself. Traditional Olympic studies have tended to examine the Games from an outsider's perspective or as something experienced through the print media or television. In contrast, the focus presented here is on the dynamics within the host city understood as a community of interacting individuals who encounter the Games in a variety of ways through support, opposition, or even indifference...
Sport and the Social Significance of Pleasure
This innovative text's critical examination foregrounds the prime reason why so many people participate in or watch sport – pleasure. Although there has been a "turn" to emotions and affect within academia over the last two decades, it has been somewhat remiss that pleasure, as an integral aspect of human life, has not received greater attention from sociologists of sport, exercise and physical education. This book addresses this issue via an unabashed examination of sport and the moving body via a "pleasure lens." It provides new insights about the production of various identities, power relations and social issues, and the dialectical links between the socio-cultural and the body. Taking a wide-sweeping view of pleasure - dignified and debauched, distinguished and mundane – it examines topics as diverse as aging, health, fandom, running, extreme sports, biopolitics, consumerism, feminism, sex and sexuality. In drawing from diverse theoretical approaches and original empirical research, the text reveals the social and political significance of pleasure and provides a more rounded, dynamic and sensual account of sport.
Serious Leisure
'Leisure' is often associated with terms such as 'freedom', 'escape' and 'frivolity', and viewed as an antithesis to work. This volume explores leisure from an array of perspectives. It also includes an introduction by the originator of the 'serious leisure' concept, Dr Robert A Stebbins.
Whatever Happened to the Leisure Society?
LSA 2007 What ever happened to the leisure society? aims to turn the leisure studies multi-disciplinary gaze to the shifts in leisure practices, industries, cultures and economies over the past 30 years or so. The call for this timely reflection aims not only to consider work-leisure shifts but also seeks to evaluate developments in the theorising of leisure. The conference is aimed at academics, including researchers, research students, and lecturers in leisure studies, politics, economics, history, sociology, cultural studies, cultural policy, social policy and media studies. Practitioners in the leisure services (public, private and voluntary) will be attracted to the conference by distinctive policy and practice-based contributions. Practitioners from the cultural industries, including market researchers, industry analysts and cultural commentators, will also find the conference of interest.
Media Sport Stars
Media Sport Stars considers how masculinity and male identity are represented through images of sport and sport stars. From the pre-radio era to today's specialist TV channels, newspaper supplements and websites, Whannel traces the growing cultural importance of sport and sportmen, showing how the very practices of sport are still bound up with the production of masculinities. Through a series of case studies of British and American sportsmen, Whannel traces the emergence of of the sporting 'hero' and 'star' , and considers the ways in which the lives of sport stars are narrated through the media. Focusing on figures like Muhammad Ali and David Beckham, whose fame has spread well beyond the world of sport, he shows how growing media coverage has helped produced a sporting system, and examines how modern celebrity addresses the issues of race and nation, performance and identity, morality and violence. From Babe Ruth to Mike Tyson, Media Sport Stars demonstrates that, in an era in which both morality and masculinity are percieved to be 'in crisis', sport holds a central place in contemporary culture, and sport stars become the focal point for discourses of masculinity and morality.
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