The existence of a close relationship between sports and nationalism is widely accepted. This relationship manifests itself in the concept of national sports, in the enduring popularity of international competitions, events, and contests, and in the myriad ways in which politicians and politically motivated groups have sought to harness sport to national causes. On the
Sports and religion have a conflicted relationship. At times, sport has served the objectives of religious authorities and has been imbued with a morality and philosophy derived from religious doctrine. At others, it has been rejected for its secular, corporeal emphasis and its capacity to divert attention from godly activities. Sport has been utilized as
There is a long tradition of research on sports and socialization. The roots of this research are grounded in theories that explain the role of play in child development, in Progressive era notions that team sports constituted an environment in which valuable lessons could be learned, and in popular twentieth century assumptions that playing sports
People in all cultures have always engaged in playful physical activities and used human movement as part of their everyday routines and collective rituals (Huizinga 1955). The first examples of organized games in societies worldwide probably emerged in the form of various combinations of physical activities and religious rituals (Guttmann 1978). Those games were connected
Sport became an industry at the point at which events (matches, races, bouts) ceased to be oriented solely toward participants and became largely organized so that they could be consumed by spectators. In perhaps the earliest sociological analysis of this process, Gregory P. Stone (1955) argued that consequently ‘‘play’’ (unscripted, spontaneous) became overshadowed by ‘‘display’’
There are two likely sources for the word gambling: the Old Saxon gamene, which became abbreviated to the contemporary ‘‘game’’; or the Italian gambetto, source of ‘‘gambit,’’ a practice of sacrificing something minor in order to secure a larger advantage. Gambling now refers to playing games of luck or skill, using a stake, usually a
Gender refers to the socially constructed differences between women and men, while the term ‘‘sex’’ is a reference to the biological and physical differences between males and females. Gender draws attention to the socially unequal distinction between femininity and masculinity. Femininity is used to describe characteristic behaviors and emotions of females and masculinity refers to
There is widespread acceptance of the idea that ‘‘sport is good for health.’’ The ideology linking health and sports has a long history and the promotion and maintenance of the health of schoolchildren has long been an area of concern to physical educators in Europe and America. Outline Exercise, Sport, and Health The Epidemiology of
Ideology and sports refers to the way in which the latter, as a distinct form of leisure activity, impacts upon the body of ideas which reflect the beliefs of a social group or political system. Indeed, the ideological capacity of sport can be considered so great that it may now be apt to rework Marx’s
According to the ideal type suggested by Freidson (2001), sport does not exhibit all of the characteristics of a profession. Unlike archetypal high status professions (e.g., medicine) in which the practitioners rather than governments or markets exert significant control over their labor, professional athletes work in cartels and oligopolies where they must respond to the