Qing-song Han, M. Theeboom, Dong-ping Zhu, I. Derom
{"title":"Promoting the Chinese martial arts internationally: Is it ‘Kung Fu’ or ‘Wushu’?","authors":"Qing-song Han, M. Theeboom, Dong-ping Zhu, I. Derom","doi":"10.1177/10126902221117973","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221117973","url":null,"abstract":"The term ‘Kung Fu’ is used internationally more often than its official name ‘Wushu’ to depict the Chinese martial arts. Yet the latter term has been promoted by the Chinese government for nearly 50 years and also used by the International Wushu Federation (IWUF) during the past three decades. This paper examines the distinction in the meaning between both terms through Stuart Hall's Representation Theory, based on 20 in-depth interviews with international expert witnesses. Findings suggest that the term ‘Kung Fu’ is mostly associated with traditional Chinese martial arts, Kung Fu cinema, Oriental imagination, and fighting practicability. For expert witnesses, Kung Fu represents an identity of traditional Chinese martial arts and a way to experience ‘Chineseness’. By contrast, although the IWUF has made efforts to package Wushu as the term representing Chinese martial arts, ‘Wushu’ is regarded as a competitive sport, shaped significantly by IWUF's Olympic ambition. Also, three key aspects regarding the representation of the Chinese martial arts in relation to both terms are discussed.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"570 - 588"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48682582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Let's face it, it's not a healthy sport’: Perceived health status and experience of injury among Polish professional mixed martial arts athletes","authors":"M. Lenartowicz, A. Dobrzycki, M. Jasny","doi":"10.1177/10126902221119041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221119041","url":null,"abstract":"With this article we present findings from the research on professional MMA fighters and their perception of health and injury. The frequency and types of injuries they have sustained while practicing MMA were analysed alongside self-assessment of health conditions and attitudes towards health problems. We also analyze fighters’ risk culture of neglecting pain and underestimating injuries, and the organization of health care in the event of an injury. A mixed methodology was applied. We administered a questionnaire to 88 male professional MMA athletes. Additionally, in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 athletes from the surveyed group. Respondents’ mean age was 27.5. They had sound MMA experience, with the most experienced competing in over 20 professional fights. Investigated athletes reported numerous health problems, high injury rate and frequent occurrence of pain. The MMA risk culture seemed to shape specific competitors’ perceptions and responses to injury and health problems and specific hierarchy of injury severity. MMA athletes showed a high level of risk acceptance regarding their health and the social and economic terms of their professional MMA involvement. They also reported inadequate medical care and oversight, and independently organised and financed medical and rehabilitation treatments. Nevertheless, for investigated athletes this risk culture seems to be internalized and considered an acceptable cost of their professional sport involvement and recognition.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"589 - 607"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46886814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christopher R. Matthews, Ashleigh Hurrell, Thomas B Oliver, A. Channon
{"title":"Boxing, myths and reality building in sport for development programmes","authors":"Christopher R. Matthews, Ashleigh Hurrell, Thomas B Oliver, A. Channon","doi":"10.1177/10126902221112878","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221112878","url":null,"abstract":"The training regimes which are associated with boxing are thought to impart lessons in discipline that are particularly valuable for social groups often associated with the sport. This leads to a variety of sport for development programmes that seek to leverage this potential in one way or another. Research which is conducted on such programmes is often produced internally without academic support. We argue it is possible, and perhaps likely, for such research to evidence, justify and recreate sporting myths. To this end, we explore the allure and apparent utility of boxing as a sport for social development. We then consider how people involved in such programmes attempted to evidence their passionate beliefs in boxing's positive potentials. Rather than considering myths as being completely unfettered from objective reality, we have explored how they are part of an interactional process that can produce stubbornly persistent accounts of the world. We present this analysis as evidence of the ways that myths can become embedded in people’s lives and, as such, must be conceptualised accurately, accounted for empirically and explored using considered research strategies. Our observations paint an awkward picture of the validity of the evidence-base upon which boxing programmes boasted of their success. That is, embracing personal biases and avoiding rigorous, critical research methods were being financially incentivised, with no external accountability for challenging pre-conceived ideas and a priori conclusions. Our concluding remarks situate these claims within ongoing ontological, epistemological and axiological debates which sport development scholars have developed.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"531 - 549"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47385872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Antisemitism as a football specific problem? The situation of Jewish clubs in German amateur sport","authors":"Lasse Müller, J. Haut, Christopher Heim","doi":"10.1177/10126902221114057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221114057","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the undisputed existence of antisemitic incidents in sport, little is known about their exact prevalence and forms of manifestation. Also in Germany, physical and verbal attacks against Jewish sports clubs have repeatedly come to light. To estimate the prevalence of antisemitic incidents in German grassroot sports, a standardised online survey was conducted among members of Jewish sports clubs in Germany (N = 309, data collection 3 November 2020 to 24 January 2021). Results show an accumulation of cases in football: more than two-thirds (68%) of the football players have experienced an antisemitic incident at least once, while the share in other sports is only 14%. The results indicate that football offers a particularly large number of constellations that lead to the expression of antisemitic patterns. At its core, football is shaped by a clash of group identities. It is widely accepted that opponents and their supporters are devalued through aggressive and emotionalized behaviour. A tendency towards underreporting can furthermore be observed in dealing with the incidents, among other reasons due to a significant proportion of those surveyed do not trust the sanction mechanisms of the sports associations – this in turn applies to footballers and non-footballers.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"550 - 569"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42472373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘We now have Catholics and Blacks’: Whiteness in a Northern Irish rugby club","authors":"T. Kavanagh","doi":"10.1177/10126902221112776","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221112776","url":null,"abstract":"Northern Ireland is often considered in terms of the two majority communities, Catholics and Protestants, and the inter-communal conflict which structured, and continues to structure, much of Northern Irish society. However, situated within often volatile situations, the small ethnic minority communities of Northern Ireland have often been overlooked. This article investigates a Northern Irish rugby club, and examines the way in which whiteness is normalised, racist discourses are dismissed, and the sectarian boundaries, which are normally so strongly maintained, are overlooked in the presence of ‘others.’ As such, this research offers a contemporary perspective of the way whiteness, racism and sectarianism intersect in Northern Irish society, and starts a conversation about the provision of sport for ethnic minority communities in Northern Ireland.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"491 - 510"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47205101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How do Hong Kong fans choose their favourite overseas football club? Origins of transnational fandom in late modernity","authors":"C. Lee","doi":"10.1177/10126902221112779","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221112779","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the importance of transnational fans to the globalisation of European football, there have not been many studies that aim to understand why they support specific overseas clubs. On the basis of qualitative interviews with transnational fans in Hong Kong and supplemented by findings from an online fan survey, I argue that most of them lack genuine choices when choosing their favourite overseas clubs. Even when all English Premier League matches are shown live in Hong Kong and with information about many European clubs available on the Internet, transnational fans tend to support teams that they were familiar with when they were still young, and clubs that star players play for. Such clubs are usually the richest ones that can help them achieve success on the pitch. Also, family members and peers can be influential to the origin of football fandom, but there is little pressure to support the same overseas club as their family members or peers. The choices of transnational fans based in Hong Kong should also be understood by taking the historical context of the city into account. Such findings suggest that globalisation has freed Hong Kong football fans from geographical constraints, but the individualisation thesis in the late modern era needs to be qualified since the wealth of European clubs and fans’ immediate social context do often have important impacts on their decision to support an overseas club.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"511 - 530"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42211541","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Trendafilova, Walker J. Ross, S. Triantafyllidis, Jamee Pelcher
{"title":"Tokyo 2020 Olympics sustainability: An elusive concept or reality?","authors":"S. Trendafilova, Walker J. Ross, S. Triantafyllidis, Jamee Pelcher","doi":"10.1177/10126902221110157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221110157","url":null,"abstract":"The Olympic Games continue to be a creator of adverse environmental impacts for host communities. Given the role that the Olympic Games play in sustainability due to their size, the number of people attending, new construction and infrastructure, and the extensive exposure by the media, this study investigated the Tokyo 2020 Games by evaluating the efficacy of their ecological sustainability efforts. Methods for this study were framed by the conceptual model of Müller et al. Specifically, the model is grounded on the three general aspects of sustainability: ecological, social, and economic. Compared to all Olympic events from 1992 through 2020, results from the present research indicated that Tokyo 2020 Olympics may have been the most ecologically friendly Games. This ecological record is significant, but it may be an unrealistic benchmark, given that the lack of attendance due to the COVID-19 pandemic influenced much of the ecological sustainability scores.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"469 - 490"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46583273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted’: Searching for the value of metrics and altmetrics in sociology of sport journals","authors":"Rebecca Olive, Stephen Townsend, M. Phillips","doi":"10.1177/10126902221107467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221107467","url":null,"abstract":"Metrics, and increasingly altmetrics, are a pervasive aspect of academic life. A proliferation of digital tools available have seen greater emphasis on the quantification of the ‘performance’ of individual journals. Although metrics and altmetrics are justified in terms of increased accountability and transparency, there are significant inequities in the ways they are deployed. Key among these is the unsuitability of many popular metrics for assessing publications in the humanities and social sciences, as the data, algorithms and systems which support them cater to authorship and citation practices of the various science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. These issues are amplified for journals in the sociology of sport, which publish research by humanities and social science scholars whose work is quantified according to the standards of the health science departments in which they frequently work. In this discussion, we critically examine how common forms of metrics and altmetrics, including those produced by Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Altmetric.com, are applied to available sociology of sport journals. We analyse and critique how different metric algorithms produce variable measures of performance for each of the journals in the field and reveal how other information available on these databases can augment our understanding of the sociology of sport publishing ecology. Far from advocating the value of metrics and altmetrics, our analysis is intended to arm scholars and journals with the information required to critically navigate the entanglement of metrics and altmetrics with neoliberalism, audit culture and digital technologies in universities.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"431 - 454"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43732544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Homophobia in Brazilian football: A critical discourse analysis of fans’ comments in online football forums","authors":"Juliana Nabono Martins","doi":"10.1177/10126902221107323","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221107323","url":null,"abstract":"Football is one of the many fields where the display of orthodox masculinity, often related to sexism and homophobia, reaches its peak. Studies indicate that such behaviors negatively affect athletes who do not fit heteronormative standards and closeted gay players, who fear coming out due to an intimidating and toxic environment. Fans have been central to some empirical studies investigating homophobia in football; however, most research to date focuses on western countries. Through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper examines how Brazilian football fans see the presence of openly gay players on a men's team. One hundred and fifty comments were collected from thirteen online football forums. The results indicate similarities in the responses provided by Brazilian fans compared to western studies. Although fans’ positive views towards the presence of openly gay players were expressed, homophobic opinions were also identified in this environment. Several fans also demonstrated no objection to the use of homophobic language. The present study is relevant to the existing literature as it aids in clarifying previous notions of homophobia in Brazilian football. At the same time, it problematizes and officially places Brazil on the map of studies on the topic.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"392 - 410"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48328563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What’s in a game? A dialectic of competition and cooperation in Squid Game","authors":"Soon-Yeon Kim, Sungjoo Park","doi":"10.1177/10126902221107468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221107468","url":null,"abstract":"Squid Game, a Netflix original series about children's games turned into deathmatches, has become a phenomenal global success and has captivated the latest cultural and media scenes. This article examines the representation of games in Squid Game to argue that their unprecedented appeal to the masses derives from a paradoxical human desire for ruthless competition and moral cooperation. That is, while Squid Game presents a superb allegory of the degree to which contemporary game playing is driven by consumer capitalism, it simultaneously unfolds a moving drama in the midst of competition where unanticipated team spirit is kindled and underdogs win against all odds. Focusing on a dialectic between result-oriented competition and utopian cooperation, the article concludes that the huge popularity of Squid Game demonstrates the contemporary spectator's need for a hybrid entertainment when watching games.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"455 - 468"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43812678","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}