{"title":"Critical Issues In Sport And Society","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"why-would-anyone-do-that-book-stephen-c-poulson-9780813564432","title":"Why Would Anyone Do That?","description":"Triathlons, such as the famously arduous Ironman Triathlon, and “extreme” mountain biking—hair-raising events held over exceedingly dangerous terrain—are prime examples of the new “lifestyle sports” that have grown in recent years from oddball pursuits, practiced by a handful of characters, into multi-million-dollar industries. In Why Would Anyone Do That? sociologist Stephen C. Poulson offers a fascinating exploration of these new and physically demanding sports, shedding light on why some people find them so compelling. Drawing on interviews with lifestyle sport competitors, on his own experience as a participant, on advertising for lifestyle sport equipment, and on editorial content of adventure sport magazines, Poulson addresses a wide range of issues. He notes that these sports are often described as “authentic” challenges which help keep athletes sane given the demands they confront in their day-to-day lives. But is it really beneficial to “work” so hard at “play?” Is the discipline required to do these sports really an expression of freedom, or do these sports actually impose extraordinary degrees of conformity upon these athletes? Why Would Anyone Do That? grapples with these questions, and more generally with whether lifestyle sport should always be considered “good” for people.  Poulson also looks at what happens when a sport becomes a commodity—even a sport that may have begun as a reaction against corporate and professional sport—arguing that commodification inevitably plays a role in determining who plays, and also how and why the sport is played. It can even help provide the meaning that athletes assign to their participation in the sport. Finally, the book explores the intersections of race, class, and gender with respect to participation in lifestyle and endurance sports, noting in particular that there is a near complete absence of people of color in most of these contests. In addition, Poulson examines how concepts of masculinity in triathlons have changed as women’s roles in this sport increase.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49604000776465,"sku":"GOR013411631","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51257236062481,"sku":"NIN9780813564432","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52617114091793,"sku":"NLS9780813564432","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813564433.jpg?v=1761389199"},{"product_id":"soccer-in-mind-book-andrew-m-guest-9781978817319","title":"Soccer in Mind","description":"From the FIFA World Cup to pick-up games at your local park, soccer is the closest thing in our world to a universal entertainment. Many writers use this global popularity to describe the game’s winners and losers, but what happens when we use social science to explore how soccer intersects with culture, society, and the self?     This book provides a thinking fan’s guide to the world’s most popular game, proposing a way of engaging soccer that sparks intellectual curiosity and employs critical consciousness. Using stories and data, along with ideas from sociology, psychology, and across the social sciences, it provides readers with new ways of understanding fanaticism, peak performance, talent development, and more. Drawing on concepts ranging from cognitive bias to globalization, it illuminates meanings of the game for players and fans while investigating impacts on our lives and communities. While it considers soccer cultures across the globe, the book also analyzes what makes U.S. soccer culture special, including its embrace of the women’s game.     As a scholar, former minor league player and coach, and fan, Andrew Guest offers a distinctive perspective on soccer in society. Whatever name you call it, and whatever your interest in it, Soccer in Mind will enrich your own view of the one truly global game.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49645255000337,"sku":"GOR013629985","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1978817312.jpg?v=1761388968"},{"product_id":"no-slam-dunk-book-cheryl-cooky-9780813592046","title":"No Slam Dunk","description":"In just a few decades, sport has undergone a radical gender transformation. However, Cheryl Cooky and Michael A. Messner suggest that the progress toward gender equity in sports is far from complete. The continuing barriers to full and equal participation for young people, the far lower pay for most elite-level women athletes, and the continuing dearth of fair and equal media coverage all underline how much still has yet to change before we see gender equality in sports.    The chapters in No Slam Dunk show that is this not simply a story of an “unfinished revolution.” Rather, they contend, it is simplistic optimism to assume that we are currently nearing the conclusion of a story of linear progress that ends with a certain future of equality and justice.  This book provides important theoretical and empirical insights into the contemporary world of sports to help explain the unevenness of social change and how, despite significant progress, gender equality in sports has been “No Slam Dunk.”","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49650139234577,"sku":"GOR013276679","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51695680553233,"sku":"CIN0813592046G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51819673190673,"sku":"CIN0813592046VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813592046.jpg?v=1761390891"},{"product_id":"when-women-rule-the-court-book-nicole-willms-9780813584157","title":"When Women Rule the Court","description":"Winner of the 2018 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Book Award   For nearly one hundred years, basketball has been an important part of Japanese American life.  Women’s basketball holds a special place in the contemporary scene of highly organized and expansive Japanese American leagues in California, in part because these leagues have produced numerous talented female players. Using data from interviews and observations, Nicole Willms explores the interplay of social forces and community dynamics that have shaped this unique context of female athletic empowerment. As Japanese American women have excelled in mainstream basketball, they have emerged as local stars who have passed on the torch by becoming role models and building networks for others.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49657918292241,"sku":"GOR013276717","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50362084884753,"sku":"CIN0813584159VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813584159.jpg?v=1761390291"},{"product_id":"testing-for-athlete-citizenship-book-kathryn-e-henne-9780813565903","title":"Testing for Athlete Citizenship","description":"Incidents of doping in sports are common in news headlines, despite regulatory efforts. How did doping become a crisis? What does a doping violation actually entail? Who gets punished for breaking the rules of fair play? In Testing for Athlete Citizenship, Kathryn E. Henne, a former competitive athlete and an expert in the law and science of anti-doping regulations, examines the development of rules aimed at controlling performance enhancement in international sports.  As international and celebrated figures, athletes are powerful symbols, yet few spectators realize that a global regulatory network is in place in an attempt to ensure ideals of fair play. The athletes caught and punished for doping are not always the ones using performance-enhancing drugs to cheat. In the case of female athletes, violations of fair play can stem from their inherent biological traits. Combining historical and ethnographic approaches, Testing for Athlete Citizenship offers a compelling account of the origins and expansion of anti-doping regulation and gender-verification rules.   Drawing on research conducted in Australasia, Europe, and North America, Henne provides a detailed account of how race, gender, class, and postcolonial formations of power shape these ideas and regulatory practices. Testing for Athlete Citizenship makes a convincing case to rethink the power of regulation in sports and how it separates athletes as a distinct class of citizens subject to a unique set of rules because of their physical attributes and abilities.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49915897118993,"sku":"CIN0813565901G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52343460364561,"sku":"NLS9780813565903","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813565901.jpg?v=1761388864"},{"product_id":"child-s-play-book-michael-a-messner-9780813571454","title":"Child's Play","description":"Is sport good for kids? When answering this question, both critics and advocates of youth sports tend to fixate on matters of health, whether condemning contact sports for their concussion risk or prescribing athletics as a cure for the childhood obesity epidemic. Child's Play presents a more nuanced examination of the issue, considering not only the physical impacts of youth athletics, but its psychological and social ramifications as well. The eleven original scholarly essays in this collection provide a probing look into how sports—in community athletic leagues, in schools, and even on television—play a major role in how young people view themselves, shape their identities, and imagine their place in society. Rather than focusing exclusively on self-proclaimed jocks, the book considers how the culture of sports affects a wide variety of children and young people, including those who opt out of athletics. Not only does Child's Play examine disparities across lines of race, class, and gender, it also offers detailed examinations of how various minority populations, from transgender youth to Muslim immigrant girls, have participated in youth sports.  Taken together, these essays offer a wide range of approaches to understanding the sociology of youth sports, including data-driven analyses that examine national trends, as well as ethnographic research that gives a voice to individual kids. Child's Play thus presents a comprehensive and compelling analysis of how, for better and for worse, the culture of sports is integral to the development of young people—and with them, the future of our society.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50270240669969,"sku":"CIN0813571456G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008035029265,"sku":"NIN9780813571454","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52586808967441,"sku":"NLS9780813571454","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53075660898577,"sku":"GOR014729585","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813571456.jpg?v=1761389574"},{"product_id":"sport-physical-culture-and-the-moving-body-book-joshua-i-newman-9780813591810","title":"Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body","description":"2020 Choice​ Outstanding Academic Title   The moving body—pervasively occupied by fitness activities, intense training and dieting regimes, recreational practices, and high-profile sporting mega-events—holds a vital function in contemporary society. As the body moves—as it performs, sweats, runs, and jumps—it sets in motion an intricate web of scientific rationalities, spatial arrangements, corporate imperatives, and identity politics (i.e. politics of gender, race, social class, etc.). It represents vitality in its productive and physiological capacities, it drives a complex economy of experiences and products, and it is a meaningful site of cultural identities and politics.     Contributors to Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body work from a simple premise: as it moves, the material body matters. Adding to the burgeoning fields of sport studies and body studies, the works featured here draw upon the traditions of feminist theory, posthumanism, actor network theory, and new materialism to reposition the physical, moving body as crucial to the cultural, political, environmental, and economic systems that it constitutes and within which is constituted. Once assembled, the book presents a study of bodies in motion—made to move in contexts where technique, performance, speed, strength, and vitality not only define the conduct therein, but provide the very reason for the body’s being within those economies and environments. In so doing, the contributors look to how the body moving for and about rational systems of science, medicine, markets, and geopolity shapes the social and material world in important and unexpected ways.     In Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body, contributors explore the extent to which the body, when moving about both ostensibly active body spaces (i.e., the gymnasium, the ball field, exercise laboratory, the track or running trail, the beach, or the sport stadium) and those places less often connected to physical activity (i.e. the home, the street, the classroom, the automobile), is bounded to technologies of life and living; and to the political arrangements that seek to capitalize upon such frames of biological vitality. To do so, the authors problematize the rise of active body science (i.e. kinesiology, sport and exercise sciences, performance biotechnology) and the effects these scientific interventions have on embodied, lived experience.     Contributors to Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body will be engaging a range of new and emerging theoretical perspectives, including new materialist, political ecology, developmental systems theory, and new material feminist approaches, to examine the actors and assemblages of movement-based material, political, and economic production. In so doing, contributors will vividly and powerfully illustrate the extent to which a focus on the fleshed body and its material conditions can bring forth new insights or ontological and epistemological innovation to the sociology of sport and physical activity. They will also explore the agency of the body as and amongst things. Such a performative materialist approach explicates how complex assemblages of sport and physical activity—bringing into association everything from muscle fibers and dietary proteins to stadium concrete or regional aquifers—are not only meaningful, but ecological.     By focusing on the confluence of agentive materialities, disciplinary technologies, vibrant assemblages, speculative realities, and vital performativities, Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body promises to offer a groundbreaking departure from representationalist tendencies and orthodoxies brought about by the cultural turn in sport and physical cultural studies. It brings the moving body and its physics back into focus: recentering moving flesh and bones as locus of social order, environmental change, and the global political economy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50362125189393,"sku":"CIN0813591813VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813591813.jpg?v=1761387064"},{"product_id":"discipline-and-indulgence-book-jeffrey-montez-de-oca-9780813561264","title":"Discipline and Indulgence","description":"Winner of the 2014 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) Outstanding Book Award   The early Cold War (1947–1964) was a time of optimism in America. Flushed with confidence by the Second World War, many heralded the American Century and saw postwar affluence as proof that capitalism would solve want and poverty. Yet this period also filled people with anxiety. Beyond the specter of nuclear annihilation, the consumerism and affluence of capitalism’s success were seen as turning the sons of pioneers into couch potatoes.   In Discipline and Indulgence, Jeffrey Montez de Oca demonstrates how popular culture, especially college football, addressed capitalism’s contradictions by integrating men into the economy of the Cold War as workers, warriors, and consumers. In the dawning television age, college football provided a ritual and spectacle of the American way of life that anyone could participate in from the comfort of his own home. College football formed an ethical space of patriotic pageantry where men could produce themselves as citizens of the Cold War state. Based on a theoretically sophisticated analysis of Cold War media, Discipline and Indulgence assesses the period’s institutional linkage of sport, higher education, media, and militarism and finds the connections of contemporary sport media to today’s War on Terror.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50367230837009,"sku":"CIN0813561264G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813561264.jpg?v=1761390296"},{"product_id":"black-sporting-resistance-book-joseph-n-cooper-9781978839854","title":"Black Sporting Resistance","description":"In recent years, there has been increased attention towards activism in sporting spaces. A vast majority of these contributions have focused on intra-nation tensions and impact. Yet, there is a dearth of scholarship that has engaged in a theoretically grounded analysis of how Black sportspersons have exhibited resistance in and through sport across national borders across time, space, and context. In this text, Joseph N. Cooper introduces the Black Sporting Resistance Framework (BSRF) as an analytic lens to examine how resistance actions in and through sport have contributed to the advancement of local and global racial justice efforts. Key concepts such as African (Black) diaspora, transnationalism, internationalism, sporting resistance typology, and sport activism typology are incorporated throughout the book. Black sporting resistance is also analyzed alongside broader social movements such as the Black Liberation Struggle, Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and Black Radicalism. Insights on the ways in which sport can be used to advance social justice in the future are presented.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51064456478993,"sku":"NIN9781978839854","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51216305389841,"sku":"NGR9781978839854","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1978839855.jpg?v=1761391324"},{"product_id":"iron-dads-book-diana-cohen-9780813570945","title":"Iron Dads","description":"\u003cdiv\u003eAmong the most difficult athletic events a person can attempt, the iron-distance triathlon--a 140.6 mile competition--requires an intense prerace training program. This preparation can be as much as twenty hours per week for a full year leading up to a race. In \u003ci\u003eIron Dads\u003c\/i\u003e, Diana Tracy Cohen focuses on the pressures this extensive preparation can place on families, exploring the ways in which men with full-time jobs, one or more children, and other responsibilities fit this level of training into their lives. \u003c\/div\u003e \u003cdiv\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e \u003cdiv\u003eAn accomplished triathlete as well as a trained social scientist, Cohen offers much insight into the effects of endurance-sport training on family, parenting, and the sense of self.  She conducted in-depth interviews with forty-seven iron-distance competitors and three prominent men in the race industry, and analyzed triathlon blog postings made by Iron Dads. What sacrifices, Cohen asks, are required--both at home and at work--to cross the iron-distance finish line? What happens when work, family, and sport collide?  Is it possible for fathers to meet their own parenting expectations while pursuing such a time-consuming regimen? With the tensions of family economics, how do you justify spending $5,000 on a racing bike? At what point does sport become work?  Cohen discovered that, by fostering family involvement in this all-consuming effort, Iron Dads are able to maintain a sense of themselves not only as strong, masculine competitors, but also as engaged fathers. \u003c\/div\u003e \u003cdiv\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e \u003cdiv\u003eEngagingly written and well researched, \u003ci\u003eIron Dads\u003c\/i\u003e provides a penetrating, firsthand look at extreme endurance sports, including practical advice for aspiring racers and suggestions for making triathlons more family-friendly.\u003c\/div\u003e \u003cdiv\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51008426967313,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008429981969,"sku":"NIN9780813570945","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813570948.jpg?v=1761386066"},{"product_id":"say-her-name-book-letisha-engracia-cardoso-brown-9781978831797","title":"Say Her Name","description":"Say Her Name offers an in-depth look into the lived experiences of Blackgirlwomen as athletes, activists, and everyday people through a Black feminist lens. With so much research on race centered on Black men and gender research focusing on white women, Say Her Name offers a necessary conversation that places Blackgirlwomen at the center of discussion.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51202107801873,"sku":"NGR9781978831797","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51295685443857,"sku":"NIN9781978831797","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53573672141073,"sku":"GOR014966283","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/197883179X.jpg?v=1761387641"},{"product_id":"indian-spectacle-book-jennifer-guiliano-9780813565545","title":"Indian Spectacle","description":"Amid controversies surrounding the team mascot and brand of the Washington Redskins in the National Football League and the use of mascots by K–12 schools, Americans demonstrate an expanding sensitivity to the pejorative use of references to Native Americans by sports organizations at all levels. In Indian Spectacle, Jennifer Guiliano exposes the anxiety of American middle-class masculinity in relation to the growing commercialization of collegiate sports and the indiscriminate use of Indian identity as mascots. Indian Spectacle explores the ways in which white, middle-class Americans have consumed narratives of masculinity, race, and collegiate athletics through the lens of Indian-themed athletic identities, mascots, and music. Drawing on a cross-section of American institutions of higher education, Guiliano investigates the role of sports mascots in the big business of twentieth-century American college football in order to connect mascotry to expressions of community identity, individual belonging, stereotyped imagery, and cultural hegemony.   Against a backdrop of the current level of the commercialization of collegiate sports-where the collective revenue of the fifteen highest grossing teams in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has well surpassed one billion dollars-Guiliano recounts the history of the creation and spread of mascots and university identities as something bound up in the spectacle of halftime performance, the growth of collegiate competition, the influence of mass media, and how athletes, coaches, band members, spectators, university alumni, faculty, and administrators, artists, writers, and members of local communities all have contributed to the dissemination of ideas of Indianness that is rarely rooted in native people’s actual lives.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51328294224145,"sku":"CIN0813565545A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51442657100049,"sku":"CIN0813565545VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52472209801489,"sku":"NLS9780813565545","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53397555904785,"sku":"NIN9780813565545","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813565545.jpg?v=1761391415"},{"product_id":"black-sporting-resistance-book-joseph-n-cooper-9781978839861","title":"Black Sporting Resistance","description":"In recent years, there has been increased attention towards activism in sporting spaces. A vast majority of these contributions have focused on intra-nation tensions and impact. Yet, there is a dearth of scholarship that has engaged in a theoretically grounded analysis of how Black sportspersons have exhibited resistance in and through sport across national borders across time, space, and context. In this text, Joseph N. Cooper introduces the Black Sporting Resistance Framework (BSRF) as an analytic lens to examine how resistance actions in and through sport have contributed to the advancement of local and global racial justice efforts. Key concepts such as African (Black) diaspora, transnationalism, internationalism, sporting resistance typology, and sport activism typology are incorporated throughout the book. Black sporting resistance is also analyzed alongside broader social movements such as the Black Liberation Struggle, Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and Black Radicalism. Insights on the ways in which sport can be used to advance social justice in the future are presented.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51383976952081,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51383976984849,"sku":"NIN9781978839861","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52111415378193,"sku":"NGR9781978839861","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1978839863.jpg?v=1761388169"},{"product_id":"nation-of-family-and-friends-book-aarti-ratna-9781978834118","title":"A Nation of Family and Friends?","description":"In A Nation of Family and Friends, sociologist Aarti Ratna examines the complex and dynamic relationships between South Asian women and sporting and leisure cultures. Mining autobiographical insights (as a South Asian scholar living in the UK) she links the chapters of this innovative book using the sociological concepts of family and friends, particularly as they relate to an analysis of wider debates about the complexities of race, gender, and the nation. Ratna underscores the importance of studying informal spaces of sport and leisure as friendly, familial, sociable, and political spaces. She simultaneously highlights the role of earlier sociological research in disseminating myths about South Asian women as too physically weak to play competitive sports; culturally passive victims of South Asian cultures and religions; and as sexually exotic women requiring saving through colonial and imperial projects led by white men and women.   Ratna also examines two key cultural objects - the popular films \"Bend it Like Beckham\" and “Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal” - to examine in detail the gendered representation of South Asian soccer players’ engagement in amateur and elite levels of the sport. She critiques studies of women’s football fandom and sport that fail to acknowledge social differences relating to race, class, age, disability, and sexuality. By linking the social forces (across time and space) that differentially affect their sporting choices and leisure lifestyles, Ratna portrays the women of the South Asian diaspora as active agents in the shaping of their life courses and as skilled navigators of the complexities affecting their own identities. Ultimately Ratna examines the intersections of class, caste, age, generation, gender, and sexuality, to provide a rich and critical exploration of British Asian women's sport and leisure choices, pleasures, and lived realities.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51384499536145,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51384500814097,"sku":"NGR9781978834118","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/197883411X.jpg?v=1761389882"},{"product_id":"say-her-name-book-letisha-engracia-cardoso-brown-9781978831803","title":"Say Her Name","description":"Say Her Name: Centering Black Feminism and Black Women in Sports offers an in-depth look into the lived experiences of Blackgirlwomen as athletes, activists, and everyday people through a Black feminist lens. With so much research on race centered on Black men and gender research focusing on white women, Say Her Name offers a necessary conversation that places Blackgirlwomen at the center of discussion.  Say Her Name delves deeply into issues of gender, the politics of punishment, athlete activism, the politics of Black hair, fingernails and fashion, and the representation and commodification of Blackgirlwomen in sport and society. An entry point into the growing research in sport studies and beyond from a Black feminist lens, Say Her Name offers a clear window into the power and potential of nuanced examinations of sport. As a reflection of the larger social world, sport provides a framework for understanding larger social issues, including racism, sexism, and misogynoir. Blackgirlwomen have varied experiences in sport, and Say Her Name provides a window into those experiences. The book discusses Black women in sports including the South African runner Caster Semenya and the American runners Florence Griffith Joyner and Sha’Carri Richardson, as well as Venus and Serena Williams, Gabby Douglas, and Simone Biles. The women in this book have lived experiences that speak to the larger experiences of Black women and girls in sport and society, while also leaning into a larger discussion of the importance of the social movement #SayHerName.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51629271351569,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51629271515409,"sku":"NGR9781978831803","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1978831803.jpg?v=1761387488"},{"product_id":"high-school-book-michael-a-messner-9781978839533","title":"The High School","description":"Taking over a centurys worth of yearbooks from his alma mater, Salinas High School, as a historical archive, acclaimed sociologist Michael A. Messner discovers a not-so-distant time when all the cheerleaders were boys and nearly equal attention was paid to boys and girls sports. In the process, he explores the changing meanings of high school athletics.  ","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51632495821073,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51632496115985,"sku":"NIN9781978839533","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51632496148753,"sku":"NGR9781978839533","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1978839537.jpg?v=1761388575"},{"product_id":"testing-for-athlete-citizenship-book-kathryn-e-henne-9780813565910","title":"Testing for Athlete Citizenship","description":"Incidents of doping in sports are common in news headlines, despite regulatory efforts. How did doping become a crisis? What does a doping violation actually entail? Who gets punished for breaking the rules of fair play? In Testing for Athlete Citizenship, Kathryn E. Henne, a former competitive athlete and an expert in the law and science of anti-doping regulations, examines the development of rules aimed at controlling performance enhancement in international sports. As international and celebrated figures, athletes are powerful symbols, yet few spectators realize that a global regulatory network is in place in an attempt to ensure ideals of fair play. The athletes caught and punished for doping are not always the ones using performance-enhancing drugs to cheat. In the case of female athletes, violations of fair play can stem from their inherent biological traits. Combining historical and ethnographic approaches, Testing for Athlete Citizenship offers a compelling account of the origins and expansion of anti-doping regulation and gender-verification rules.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52345008128273,"sku":"NLS9780813565910","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780813565910.jpg?v=1758175171"},{"product_id":"indian-spectacle-book-jennifer-guiliano-9780813565552","title":"Indian Spectacle","description":"Amid controversies surrounding the team mascot and brand of the Washington Redskins in the National Football League and the use of mascots by K–12 schools, Americans demonstrate an expanding sensitivity to the pejorative use of references to Native Americans by sports organizations at all levels. In Indian Spectacle, Jennifer Guiliano exposes the anxiety of American middle-class masculinity in relation to the growing commercialization of collegiate sports and the indiscriminate use of Indian identity as mascots. Indian Spectacle explores the ways in which white, middle-class Americans have consumed narratives of masculinity, race, and collegiate athletics through the lens of Indian-themed athletic identities, mascots, and music. Drawing on a cross-section of American institutions of higher education, Guiliano investigates the role of sports mascots in the big business of twentieth-century American college football in order to connect mascotry to expressions of community identity, individual belonging, stereotyped imagery, and cultural hegemony.   Against a backdrop of the current level of the commercialization of collegiate sports-where the collective revenue of the fifteen highest grossing teams in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has well surpassed one billion dollars-Guiliano recounts the history of the creation and spread of mascots and university identities as something bound up in the spectacle of halftime performance, the growth of collegiate competition, the influence of mass media, and how athletes, coaches, band members, spectators, university alumni, faculty, and administrators, artists, writers, and members of local communities all have contributed to the dissemination of ideas of Indianness that is rarely rooted in native people’s actual lives.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52472180637969,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52472181326097,"sku":"NLS9780813565552","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780813565552.jpg?v=1759837657"},{"product_id":"why-would-anyone-do-that-book-stephen-c-poulson-9780813564449","title":"Why Would Anyone Do That?","description":"Ironman Triathlons and extreme mountain biking are prime examples of the new lifestyle sports that have grown in recent years from oddball pursuits into multi-million-dollar industries. In Why Would Anyone Do That? Stephen C. Poulson offers an exploration of these new and physically demanding sports, shedding light on why some people find them so compelling.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52617399632145,"sku":"NLS9780813564449","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780813564449.jpg?v=1761530171"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/critical-issues-in-sport-and-society-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}