Journal of Sport & Social Issues recent issues

Swimming and the Will to Improve

Cole, C. — 2008-07-14

Broadcasting Major League Baseball as a Governmental Instrument in South Korea

Cho, Y. — 2008-07-14

This study investigates governmentality in the relationships between local governments and global sports by examining the contexts of broadcasting Major League Baseball (MLB) in South Korea. Compared to how the Korean Baseball League (KBO) was used in the 1980s to divert public interest from political issues and encourage state nationalism, the sensational popularity of MLB in the 1990s helped construct alternative governmentality during the International Monetary Fund intervention. This new governmentality not only legitimated global competition but also emphasized responsible individuals and a new kind of citizen. Rather than arguing either total failure or success of the governmentality of the 1990s, this study suggests that individuated nationalism was its consequence, meaning that most Koreans remained deeply involved with nationalistic discourse but responded to it in different and diverse ways.

Contested Masculinities: The New Jew and the Construction of Black and Palestinian Athletes in Israeli Media

Shor, E. — 2008-07-14

This study examines how Israeli media present the masculinity of two non-Jewish groups, foreign Black players and Israeli Palestinian players. A systematic qualitative content analysis during the years 2002-2003 revealed very similar media images of these two groups. In both cases, the players are often portrayed as tough and physically superior (i.e., more masculine) but also as cognitively inferior and childish (i.e., less masculine). These findings shed light not only on Israeli views of the other, but also on the way the media perceives Jewish masculinity. The tension between the hypermasculine and the hypomasculine perception of non-Jews serves as an inverse mirror. On one hand, it allows the cultivation of a cognitively superior and mature Jewish image. On the other hand, it corresponds with the historic image of the weak and frail Jewish man and serves as a constant reminder of the failure to achieve the demands of masculine physical ideals.

Drug Use in Sport: Implications for Public Policy

Stewart, B., Smith, A. C.T. — 2008-07-14

Many of the models and theories that aim to explain drug use in sport are limited by a focus on individual athlete decision-making that centers on the socioeconomic costs and benefits of using drugs. However, this limitation narrows the debate to how various penalties and sanctions might curb use. The authors suggest that to broaden the debate the investigation should include an exploration of the context in which drug use occurs and a situational diagnosis of the assumptions, values, and beliefs that underpin drug use in sport. To this end, the authors have developed a model of drug use in sport that combines the micro orientation of individual athlete and interpersonal behavior with the macro orientation of sporting context, structure, and culture. They use this contextualized model to contrast a use-reduction policy with a harm-minimization policy that allows sport organizations and athletes to manage their drug use in a safe and secure environment.

The Rebirth of the Football Fanzine: Using E-zines as Data Source

Millward, P. — 2008-07-14

This article presents e-zines as both a legitimate data source and a basis of investigation for sociologists of popular culture. To do this, the article describes and evaluates the rise of the "fanzine" in the 1970s and 1980s along with its decline in the final years of the 20th century and parallels this with the emergence of the Internet as an "everyday" commodity. The unfolding argument is that e-zines provide a site for both the construction of (collective and individual) identities and "information age" sports fan democracy.

For the Love of Football: Australian Rules Football and Heterosexual Desire

Wedgwood, N. — 2008-07-14

The sexual attraction of some women specifically to sportsmen is such a taken-for-granted and commonplace phenomenon in Western society it receives little academic attention. This article first examines the handful of studies that have considered the relationship between heterosexual desire and Australian Rules footballers. Second, it reviews the few sociological studies of the groupies and wives of elite sportsmen. The article concludes that the social construction of sexual desire is an important but neglected element of the reproduction of the gender order. It is suggested that the concept cathexis may provide a useful conceptual framework for illuminating the ways in which women's heterosexual desires affect the maintenance, reproduction, and/or subversion of the existing gender order.

Fox Sports, Super Bowl XLII, and the Affirmation of American Civil Religion

Butterworth, M. — 2008-07-14

Golf, Race, and Rituals of Progress

Cole, C. — 2008-04-10

Progressive Ethnocentrism: Ideology and Understanding in Dominican Baseball

Klein, A. — 2008-04-10

This study is an effort to examine the problems associated with interpreting events and practices emanating in one cultural context (the Dominican Republic) by those of another (the United States)—part of the classic definition of ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism has been considered to be a problem linked to close-minded individuals and agencies, but this study attempts to show that progressive thinkers can also fall prey to it. Two case studies are looked at—the case of buscónes (those responsible for finding and developing Dominican ballplayers) and the case of former Little League sensation Danny Almonte (himself a Dominican émigré). The cases involve young men who have been wronged in one way or another. Guilt and innocence has been reported in the United States. However, ethnographic research into these cases shows that one can be right on the particulars while wrong in matters of cultural context and therefore unintentionally furthering ethnocentric bias.

Pittsburgh in Fort Worth: Football Bars, Sports Television, Sports Fandom, and the Management of Home

Kraszewski, J. — 2008-04-10

This article examines how sports fandom fits into the nexus of late capitalism, displacement, and identity within the United States. The article adds to a growing literature on late capitalism and sports fandom by analyzing how displaced fans look to sports teams from their former places of residence as a way to understand "home." An ethnography of a Pittsburgh Steelers fan club in Fort Worth, Texas, is used as a case study. Drawing on the fields of television studies and cultural geography as well as theories of diaspora, this article argues that sports fandom allows displaced people the ability to reconnect with and manage the irreconcilable tensions of home.

"Getting Caught in the Net": Examining the Recruitment of Canadian Players in British Professional Ice Hockey

Elliott, R., Maguire, J. — 2008-04-10

This article is a study of global athletic labor migration that examines the mechanisms through which some athletic migrant workers are recruited. The article adopts a critical case study which analyses the movement of Canadian workers into Britain's Elite Ice Hockey League (EIHL) and synthesizes concepts derived from the sociology of sport and the sociology of highly skilled migration to explain these movements. Using a theoretical framework based on a figurational or process sociological approach, the article shows that the recruitment of migrant workers to EIHL teams need not be facilitated by a formal mediator such as an agent. Instead, informal communicative "friends-of-friends" networks and "bridgehead" contacts more commonly facilitate flows of information to the potential employer and potential migrant employee. Accordingly, mutually beneficial recruitments can be seen to be occurring as the result of human mediation facilitated by a series of informal interdependent networks of social relationships.

Sport in Postcolonial Uganda

Chappell, R. — 2008-04-10

This article examines the structure of sport in postcolonial Uganda in the context of being a developing country in East Africa. The intention is to provide a wealth of empirical, concrete data that are often missing from many theoretical polemics on the politics of sport and to link the empirical data to political theory. In the context of this article, it is suggested that Uganda is best understood through a neopluralist analysis of the state.

Foucault, Technologies of Self, and the Media: Discourses of Femininity in Snowboarding Culture

Thorpe, H. — 2008-04-10

This article draws on Foucault's concepts of discourse and technologies of self to analyze the relationship between young women and the media. More specifically, it sheds light on the various discursive constructions of femininity in the snowboarding media and examines the conditions under which female snowboarders learn to recognize and distinguish between different types of media discourses. It also examines the different ways in which women act on this knowledge, including the production of their own media forms. The article evaluates sexist discourses in the media and their effects on women's snowboarding experiences and considers women-only media forms as a foundation for wider social transformation. Ultimately, Foucault's unique conceptualization of power enables an account of the mundane and daily ways in which power is enacted and contested in snowboarding culture and allows an analysis that focuses on the female snowboarder as both an object and a subject of media power relations.

Eamus Catuli

Nerone, J. — 2008-04-10

Nikes Especially for American Indians: Noble Gesture or Savage Racism?

Cole, C.L. — 2008-01-07

From Straight to Gaie? Quebec Sportswomen's Discursive Constructions of Sexuality and Destabilization of the Linear Coming Out Process

Ravel, B., Rail, G. — 2008-01-07

Sport is often perceived as affected by heteronormativity; however, it also seems to facilitate the expression of nonconventional sexualities. In this article, the authors explore the narratives of 14 young Francophone sportswomen from Montreal (Quebec, Canada) who identify themselves as "gaie," "lesbian," "bisexual," or refuse labels altogether. A feminist poststructuralist approach is used to examine their discursive constructions of gender, sexuality, and sport. More specifically, the article aims to investigate the coming out process and the expression of nonconventional sexualities in sport. In line with queer theory, the findings challenge the heterosexual/homosexual binary, the idea of a fixed sexuality, and the linearity of the coming out process. The results also suggest that the coming out process and the expression of nonnormative sexualities may be influenced by sport.

"Women Could Be Every Bit As Good As Guys": Reproductive and Resistant Agency in Two "Action" Sports

Laurendeau, J., Sharara, N. — 2008-01-07

This article examines two action sports—skydiving and snowboarding—as cases of women on men's turf and explores the construction of gender in the ways women negotiate space in these male-dominated arenas. It investigates some of the ways in which women's participation in these activities is constrained and the strategies women employ to carve out spaces for themselves in these sporting contexts. Women in both sports tend to engage in strategies rooted in middle-class and liberal notions of resistance. Most of these exemplify what researchers have called "reproductive agency." Some strategies, however, seem to exemplify "resistant agency." The article explores the potential of these strategies to bring about meaningful social change.

The Media Sports Cultural Complex: Local Global Disjuncture in New Zealand/Aotearoa

Scherer, J., Falcous, M., Jackson, S. J. — 2008-01-07

This article explores the interdependence of interest groups operating within the media sports cultural complex in relation to the national sport of rugby union in New Zealand/Aotearoa. Specifically, we scrutinize the corporate "partnerships" between the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU), Adidas, and News Corporation in relation to issues and debates surrounding the globalization of New Zealand's iconic rugby team, the All Blacks. The article draws on extensive interviews with the NZRU's marketing and sponsorship manager and Adidas New Zealand's marketing manager. These interviews provide rare insights into how the strategies of these organizations, and their interrelated (but not interchangeable) commercial objectives, set limits and exert powerful pressures on aspects of the production and consumption of the national sporting mythology in New Zealand.

Local Media Coverage of Sports Stadium Initiatives

Delaney, K., Eckstein, R. — 2008-01-07

This article empirically investigates media coverage of 23 publicly financed stadium projects in 16 U.S. cities. Typically, media coverage uncritically supports these initiatives but, occasionally, it offers a far more critical view. In addition, the media in many cities take a "hybrid" approach, which is neither completely critical nor uncritical of these projects. The authors contend that media approaches matter a great deal in helping or hindering a stadium initiative. However, this impact is highly dependent on the unity and strength of the city's local growth coalition, which usually develops and champions these projects. A relatively critical media can seriously impede a stadium project, but only when the local growth coalition is weak or fragmented. Conversely, an uncritical media often becomes the primary institutional booster of stadium projects in cities with a weak growth coalition.

The Print Media Coverage of Skiing and Snowboarding in Britain: Does It Have To Be Downhill All the Way?

Stone, J., Horne, J. — 2008-01-07

Content analyses of sport in the media have primarily focused on mainstream sports or major sporting events, and few have looked at winter sports or studied the print media in Britain. This article seeks to address this gap by examining the British print media portrayal of athletes representing Snowsport GB—the national governing body for skiing and snowboarding—in the season 2004—2005. Concentrating on themes common to other media content analyses and some that have not been widely explored before—gender, stardom and risk—this article analyses representations of British male and female skiers and snowboarders. Differences in coverage according to type of snowsport (skiing or snowboarding) are identified and recommendations for further research into the media coverage of snowsport in Britain are made.

Erratum

2008-01-07

Testing Barry Bonds' Mustache

Cole, C.L., Cate, S. L.C. — 2007-10-29

Army of Whiteness? Colonel Reb and the Sporting South's Cultural and Corporate Symbolic

Newman, J. I. — 2007-10-29

This article contributes to an already vibrant discussion on the politics of race and ethnicity as mobilized through the semiotic embodiments of sporting mascots. Grounded in a poststructuralist theoretical framework, guided by the political thrust of cultural studies, and informed by a range of qualitative modes of inquiry, this study more specifically mediates on how the University of Mississippi's ("Ole Miss") sporting mascot, Colonel Rebel, constitutes an important discursive space through which (a) the corporatized academic institution accumulates sign-valued capital and (b) the power/knowledge relationships formed under a localized spectator/fan subjectivity—constructed out of a parochial, conservative, "Old South" Whiteness—become incontrovertibly bound to the symbolic territories of a localized sporting neo-Confederacy.

Eliminating Native American Mascots: Ingredients for Success

Davis-Delano, L. R. — 2007-10-29

Many scholars have written about the problems with Native American mascots. Yet no scholar has systematically studied what factors affect the outcomes of struggles over Native American mascots. In this study, the author compares seven cases in which Native American mascots were eliminated to seven cases, where they in which retained to discover factors that affect these outcomes. In all 14 cases, the author interviewed two opponents and two supporters of the mascots. In this article, the author not only describe her findings, the factors that influence outcomes of struggles over Native American mascots, but also utilizes these findings to make concrete suggestions for activists and practitioners who are attempting to eliminate these mascots.

The Decolonizing National Imaginary: Promotional Media Constructions During the 2005 Lions Tour of Aotearoa New Zealand

Falcous, M. — 2007-10-29

This article explores the representational politics of postcolonial national identity in New Zealand/Aotearoa. Specifically, it interrogates the promotional media surrounding the 2005 British and Irish Lions rugby tour as a site in which narratives of nation were enacted. Symptomatic of the emergence of "corporate nationalisms" advertising emerged as a space in which a selective "national imaginary" was constructed. This sought to reconcile the challenges of the sociopolitical moment by positing a unified decolonized "kiwi" culture invoking several interlocking discourses. These included foregrounded representations of indigenous Maori culture as a central symbol of national essence. These representations simultaneously interlock those grounded in a longstanding discourse of Maori as primordial, spiritual, ignoble warrior. Furthermore, symptomatic of an ongoing "ethnogenesis," active constructions of White settler—Pakeha—identities asserted a unique tie to Aotearoa/New Zealand and distinction from "the British." Critically, these discourses operate to account for postcolonial challenges and shifts in reasserting a hegemonic national imaginary.

Helpmates of the Rodeo: Fans, Wives, and Groupies

Forsyth, C. J., Thompson, C. Y. — 2007-10-29

This article provides an ethnographic account of women as supporting agents for professional cowboys and the rodeo enterprise. This research draws from participant observation, field interviews, western folklore and historical accounts, and Internet group discussions to provide a frame for and interpretation of women's patronage of rodeo cowboys. The primary data are derived from interviews with rodeo cowboys and women who are involved in rodeo life in various supporting roles. Interviews with professional cowboys provide validation of the vital nature of supporting roles for the success of rodeo careers. The analysis places women's supporting performances in historical and ideological contexts and illuminates the gendered nature of the rodeo as a professional sport.

Constructing Diverse Sports Opportunities for People With Disabilities

Nixon, H. L. — 2007-10-29

This article examines what the concept of sport without disability might mean in the structuring of sports and sports settings to accommodate the participation of people with disabilities as serious competitors. Two of its main purposes are (a) to provide a lens for thinking about sports opportunities for people with disabilities that are strongly filtered by considerations of structure, choice, and fairness and (b) to suggest a set of sports models that reflect these considerations in a variety of sports opportunities that are appropriate for different types of people with disabilities. A broader purpose is to present concepts, facts, findings, and a rationale to help sports policy makers, organizers, and administrators to formulate more responsive and appropriate sports policies, rules, and organizations to accommodate people with disabilities.

A Response to the Motion Picture Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Talley, H. L., Casper, M. J. — 2007-10-29

Synopsis: National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing superstar Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) and his racing partner and best friend Cal Noughton Jr. (John C. Reilly) win at all costs, in positions #1 and #2, respectively. That is, until flamboyant French Formula One driver Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen) challenges the duo and threatens to supplant their racing dynasty. A dramatic wreck, complete with invisible fire and Ricky Bobby stripping down to his underpants, forces the beleaguered racer to confront what his winning record has cost him. After returning to his childhood home, his stern but loving mother (Jane Lynch) and long-absent badass father (Gary Cole) challenge him to question whether his multimillion-dollar endorsements, McMansion, Barbiesque wife, and cheeky kids represent what being a winner is really all about.