Sports Sociology

Sports played either by professionals, amateurs, or just for leisure, are a large part of all industrialized societies. Nonetheless, early on sociologists have looked at sports with distain. For instance Emile Durkheim thought of sports as simply ritualized civic ceremonies, whereas early feminists viewed them as masculine cultural displays (Giulianotti, 2005). However, Bourdieu, Elias, and Dunning were among the first sociologists to take a serious approach in viewing sports as sociological phenomena, although they understood that there were issues involved as Bourdieu (1990, p. 156) notes: "The sociology of sport: It is disdained by sociologists and despised by sportspeople."

Karen and Washington (2001) reviewed the sports sociology literature between the late 1980s to the early 1990s and found that the field was oriented more towards micro-level analyses about gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and the media. Macro-oriented level research during that period was underrepresented and mostly oriented toward gender and...
[ View Full Essay]