Opportunities to interpret: a methodological discussion of insider research,perceptions of the researcher,and knowledge production

Abstract

Insider research is increasingly common in sociocultural studies of sport. Less common is insider research in socio-historical work. As a women’s lacrosse umpire and a lacrosse scholar, I maintain multiple investments in the sport; this insider perspective and role fosters unique considerations during the research process. In this article, I assess my position as an insider in women’s lacrosse and the manners in which relationships – both actual and perceived – impact knowledge production. My experiences and this article exemplify the importance of consistent reflexivity throughout the research process; my role as an umpire was ever-present, even when I was unaware in the moment. Reflexivity enabled my recognition and analysis of this status. A researcher’s multiple group and professional affiliations, whether consciously employed or tacitly assumed, impact the knowledge that is shared and produced.     

London is Just Around the Corner: Belgium,Britain and Sport

Answering the legitimate call for a more transnational approach to the history of sport in Europe, we seize upon the 2012 Olympic Games as an opportunity to look back on Belgo-British contacts in sport since the Middle Ages. Contextualising this history within the wider Belgo-British political, economic and cultural contacts is, indeed, much more revealing than recounting a superficial story about the three medals the Belgian Olympic delegation actually obtained in London. We illustrate that transnational flows and contacts – crucial to the shaping and diffusion of sport – are not always reflected at the level of the Olympic Games. The cases of cycle racing and soccer demonstrate the divergent adoption and adaptation processes of specific sporting disciplines in Belgium and Britain. At the end of the paper, we also reflect on David Cameron's competitive sport policy in primary education, and raise the question whether the dissipation of public funds for elite sport – to the detriment of ‘Sport for All’ – is still defendable in times of government budgetary scarcity.     

Organisational perception management in sport: The use of corporate pro-environmental behaviour for desired facility referenda outcomes

The subsidisation of professional sport facilities has inspired deeply contentious debates. In North America, these debates have culminating historically in a vote by referendum. In order to obtain a favourable outcome, sport organisations have relied largely on controversial means, including using the influence of urban regimes, disseminating unreliable economic impact analyses to the public, or using political influence to circumvent the democratic process. In this paper, organisational perception management is proposed as an alternative approach to these tactics. This strategy is defined and illustrated using corporate pro-environmental behaviour in sport to demonstrate professional sport organisations can protect their images, reputations, and identities and obtain favourable referenda outcomes. From this analysis, the Desired Voting Outcomes Framework is presented, illustrating that effective organisational perception management can interrupt anticipated no-voters’ decision-making processes, leading to a reconsideration of voters’ judgments. Furthermore, the organisation's longterm reputation is sustained due, in part, to the perceived legitimacy of referenda. Implications of this framework and directions for future research are discussed.     

Too late for talent to kick in? The relative age effect in Argentinian male football

Does a young football (soccer) player’s birthdate affect his prospects in the sport? Scholars have found a correlation between early births in the competition year among young players within the same cohort and improved chances in sports as they advance to other stages. This article is one of the first studies to ask this question about a male premier league in Latin America – the Argentinian ‘A’ league. It uses a large-N data-set of all players in the period 2000–2012, around 3000 players. The article finds a large effect of the player’s relative age on his prospect to become a professional, though the effect is only present in the case of Argentinian-born players. The effect evaporates once a set of measures are employed to compare professional players with one another. The article contributes to the discussion of the biased effect of seemingly neutral institutional policies, and its conclusions may shed light in other areas.     

Push-and-Run between Power,Participation and Performance: Political Playmaking and the Tactics of the Asian Football Confederation

In the wake of the nomination of Qatar as host country for the World Cup 2022 and the subsequent debate on ethical and organizational aspects of running world football, more public attention has been drawn to actors that play an important role in the politically, economically, and culturally globalized ‘game’ of football. Journalists, academics, and fans have therefore spotlighted the significance of sport governing bodies in the context of aspects relating to power, profit, participation, and performance. This article provides an insight into the significance of political issues in sport in general and particularly with regard to football in Asia and the role of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). Referring to the political processes within the football system as well as the political relations between non-governmental, governmental, and business actors this analysis produces an account of the complexity of football politics. Under consideration of three theoretical perspectives – globalization, neo-institutionalism, and governance – the paper assesses the AFC as Glocal Player, Corporate Actor, and Skilful Negotiator.     

Wicked Wikipedia? Communities of Practice,the Production of Knowledge and Australian Sport History

Academic responses to Wikipedia since its inception in 2001 have shifted from scepticism and hostility to serious critique. Wikipedia is a project driven by a community of amateur, and sometimes professional, scholars and it is this community – and associated rules and practices – that shapes the site's publicly viewable content. Despite the centrality of egalitarianism and communal wisdom to the Wikipedian ethos, the encyclopaedia is not filled equitably with historical knowledge or topics. This article addresses the role of Wikipedia in the production of knowledge in a sport history context. An analysis of 115 Wikipedia articles written about notable Australian sportspeople revealed a disproportionately large group of high-quality cricket biographies. Further investigation revealed that a small group of Wikipedians were responsible for writing these articles. The work of this community of practice is indicative of the influence that dedicated special interest groups can have over the production of knowledge on Wikipedia and raises broader questions about the production of knowledge in sport history.     

‘You Had to Cover Nadia Comaneci’: ‘Points of Change’ in Coverage of Women’s Sport

Abstract

In the 1970s, women’s sport underwent significant change in the United States resulting in an increase of participation opportunities and funding at the interscholastic, intercollegiate, professional and international levels. Yet, media outlets continued to ignore women and, at best, portray them in gender stereotypical ways. Considering the lack of progress for women in sports media coverage, this study employs sport historian Jaime Schultz’s ‘points of change’ framework in order to identify those moments that constituted an ideological shift in the process of covering women’s sport. Drawing upon oral history interviews with journalists who wrote about women’s sport in the 1970s and 1980s, this research provides a deeper look into how journalists experienced and addressed the shifting gender ideologies of the time period. Journalists’ memories, accompanied by their articles, reveal how media practitioners negotiated meanings about femininity and athleticism in response to events that challenged deeply embedded assumptions about gender and its intersections with ethnicity, race and sexuality. This exploratory research, thus, identifies several ‘points of change’ – or points of struggle, conflict and resistance – and calls for a re-periodization of the history of women’s sports coverage.     

Political activity in escalation of commitment: Sport facility funding and government decision making in the United States

In the United States, the decision to commit extensive public resources to sport facilities is a contentious topic of debate. Elected officials often commit substantial public resources to sport facility projects amidst contrary empirical evidence and mixed residential approval. This behavior not only implicates the presence of political activity to advance a course of action, but also suggests an escalation of commitment (EoC), the subject of this study. The authors implemented a collective case study approach to examine three municipalities with long-standing histories of subsidizing professional sport facilities. Data collected from influential elected officials and public leaders (N = 13) as well as documents and records revealed (a) political action to be essential in EoC with decisions involving multiple stakeholder groups; (b) the influence and interaction of political action within each EoC determinant; (c) the substantial role of support, resources, power, and influence in efforts to increase and prevent commitment to a failing course of action; and (d) noticeable spillover effects from use of political activity in EoC.     

Don’t bring it on: the case against cheerleading as a collegiate sport

The 2010 Quinnipiac cheerleading case raises interesting questions about the nature of both cheerleading and sport, as well as about the moral character of each. In this paper we explore some of those questions, and argue that no form of college cheerleading currently in existence deserves, from a moral point of view, to be recognized as a sport for Title IX purposes. To reach that conclusion, we evaluate cheerleading using a quasi-legal argument based on the NCAA’s definition of sport and conclude that cheerleading fails to qualify as a legitimate sport. A philosophical argument leads to the same conclusion, primarily because of the essential entertainment-aspect of cheerleading. We then examine a consequentialist moral case for making cheerleading an intercollegiate sport and argue that the balance of moral reasons is against doing so. Finally, we look at cheerleading’s newest offspring – Acrobatics and Tumbling, and STUNT – and express our moral reservations about their current claims to be worthy of Title IX recognition. While we would not claim that any single one of our arguments is decisive, we are convinced that the cumulative weight of the arguments against granting intercollegiate sport status to any of the forms of cheerleading or its derivatives is, at present, irresistible.     

Situated knowledges,sports and the sport science question

Abstract

In this article, I will elaborate on the feminist scholar Donna Haraway’s understanding of the concept of situated knowledges. I believe it is a concept that can be usefully applied to sports and sport science, in that it may create stories about the intertwined relationship between sport science and the narratives of sport science – stories we can believe in.     

Club Identity/Class Identity: Negotiations of Popular Memory by Followers of the Australian Football League

A lot of the fun in contemporary sports talk relies on shared understandings about the culture of competitive sporting teams. The purpose of this paper is to explore how often humorous discourses are negotiated by sport fans as they narrate a sense of their own history and identity as followers of professional sports teams. This analysis draws on research conducted with followers of the Australian Football League (AFL), which included 21 life story interviews. As an oral historian, I was interested in how individuals negotiated popular ideas about Australian football in the ‘composition’ of their memories. This attention to the dynamic between the public and personal is described as a ‘popular memory approach’ to oral history. In this paper I explore the place of class in popular understandings about AFL club cultures. I argue that the role class plays in popular discourse around sporting club cultures is revealed more fully when we examine the ways in which individuals – in this case followers of AFL teams – make sense of it.     

The uniqueness of sport: Testing against marketing's empirical laws

Two key law-like patterns – the double jeopardy and duplication of purchase laws – have consistently been found to explain and predict consumer behavior across a wide range of industries. There has been speculation that these empirical generalisations may not hold in the case of professional team sport brands. The reasons given include the passionate loyalty of sport fans, the fact that two sport teams must be consumed at once in any contest, and the strong geographic dominance of sport brands. In this study, we examine the applicability of these two law-like generalisations to professional team sport. With a few caveats, these law-like patterns hold, suggesting that sport team brands operate in line with what is known about other consumer markets. Results suggest the unique aspects of the sport market do not meaningfully impact consumer behavior and therefore sport brands should be managed in fundamentally the same way as most consumer markets.     

“If people are wearing pink stuff they’re probably not real fans”: Exploring women’s perceptions of sport fan clothing

Given the growth in the female sport fan base of North American major league sports and the development and expansion of women’s team-related apparel, the purpose of this study was to examine women sport fans’ perceptions of team apparel. The authors collected data through in-depth interviews with 16 Canadian women who self-identified as fans of professional sport teams. They perceived a lack of options in team apparel, despite the development of women’s clothing lines. Analysis of the aesthetics, symbolism, and instrumentality of team apparel using a third-wave feminist approach provides socio-cultural explanations for women fans’ dissatisfaction with existing offerings. This approach advances understandings of the social circumstances shaping women’s sport experiences as fans and the impact of gender on consumer engagement. Results suggest that sport teams need to recognize the diversity of women’s gender identities and expressions and provide a wider range of clothing that demonstrate their status as authentic fans.     

Do public subsidies and facility coverage matter for voluntary sports clubs?

In many countries, voluntary sports clubs are the main recipients of public subsidies regarding the provision of recreational sport, and the economically most important level of government is usually the local government (i.e. the municipalities). The purpose of this article is to examine whether and how municipal framework conditions matter for sports clubs. Inspired by previous studies, we examine the role of direct and indirect public subsidies as well as facility coverage. The authors conduct analyses on a general level (for all sports) and specifically for five sports (badminton, football, gymnastics, handball and swimming). The differentiation between sports allows us to examine how municipal framework conditions might be associated differently with density and participation across sports. In the statistical analyses, the authors apply data collected among all 98 Danish municipalities. The results show that the municipal levels of direct and indirect subsidies are weakly correlated with both the density of and participation in sports clubs, while stronger correlations can be identified with regard to facility coverage. The analyses for the five sports reveal that the supply of relevant facility types is – with few exceptions – positively correlated with sports club density and participation levels within each sport. Thus, facility coverage seems to play a more important role for sports clubs than the levels of indirect and particularly direct subsidies.     

Outdoor life,nature experience,and sports in Norway: tensions and dilemmas in the preservation and use of urban forest

Abstract

How should contemporary societies promote physical activity in nature and preservation of the natural environment? Outdoor life occupies a central and contested position on this question in the Nordic countries. In Norway, a 1957 Act of Parliament took a major step by guaranteeing free public access to both public and private uncultivated land. This article explores the media debate that raged in 2008–2009, when the national government proposed new legislation intended to promote outdoor life, sport, nature experience and urban forest preservation around Oslo, Norway’s capital. Applying narrative and discourse methodologies, this case study reveals how the media debate evolved from an initial cacophony of voices into a schism between advocates of nature preservation and advocates of sport. The controversy explored here is increasingly relevant throughout all of Europe: how to encourage urban active living, sustainable recreation and democratic citizenship that embody distinct social practices, identities, emotional bonds and symbolic meaning.     

Performance Enhancement and Politicisation of High-Performance Sport: The West German ‘air clyster’ Affair of 1976

While the politicisation of high-performance sport is perceived to represent one of the driving forces behind doping, we know not much how exactly the cold war in sports has affected sporting misconduct in western societies. Therefore, we propose here to distinguish between ideological and institutional politicisation and explicit and implicit acceptance of dubious practices. We apply our framework to analyse the West German ‘air clyster’ affair of 1976 in order to examine to what extent the politicisation of high-performance sport during the cold war affected the search for innovation in performance enhancement. We find that political pressure for improved competitiveness in West German sport had served to create a semi-autonomous high-performance sport sector in West Germany where blurred lines of accountability allowed questionable practices to prosper. While the public despised the use of questionable methods, sportive nationalism served to eclipse dubious practices. West German sport leaders adopted insofar a permissive attitude towards questionable practices as sporting misconduct was not sanctioned. Thus, our results strongly suggest that sport's politicisation during the cold war facilitated the search for performance-increasing methods in western societies.     

Establishing a professional Rugby Union Football League in the USA: Managing institutional pluralism in sport entrepreneurship

Given the growth of sport leagues globally, we sought to understand how sport entrepreneurs addressed institutional plurality as they worked to establish a new professional sport league in the USA. Drawing on institutional pluralism, we critically examine two efforts to establish professional rugby union football leagues in the USA. Pluralism resulted in tensions among rugby stakeholders. While both leagues sought to reconcile tensions through institutional infrastructure work, one of the leagues garnered more stakeholder support as it was attentive to more institutional contexts. The other league’s infrastructure work was limited and resulted in the alienation of many important rugby stakeholders. Our research demonstrates the theoretical and practical importance of institutional infrastructure work within sport entrepreneurship, especially when navigating institutional pluralism.     

Do they make a difference? Professional team sports clubs’ effects on migration and local growth: Evidence from Denmark

It is a common argument in Denmark that municipal involvement in professional team sports can be justified on the grounds of local impact. The use of public funds to directly or indirectly subsidise local professional team sports clubs (PTSCs) is often seen as warranted due to the PTSCs’ positive effects on local economic growth or (inbound) municipal migration. However, can PTSCs be associated with tangible effects at all? This question has never been answered properly in a European context. Based on data covering the 2008–2013 period, and using spatial panel regression models, this article examines this issue in relation to three dominant professional sports in Denmark: football (soccer), handball and ice hockey. The study finds effects for only one of the sports examined, with Danish handball clubs exercising a marginal effect on average income. Ice hockey’s effect is negative and football remains insignificant in all models deployed. Concerning migration, negative effects are found in relation to female handball clubs. These findings are consistent with previous research and have implications for local sport policies and managers. Municipal politicians, public authorities or sport managers should no longer rationalise the use of public funds for local PTSCs on the assumption of (tangible) economic effects or population growth, as it appears to be an inefficient use of public money. If policy makers want to increase municipal income or inbound migration, they should engage themselves in developing more appropriate strategies.     

‘If God Be for Us,Who Can Be Against Us?’: Religion and Religiousness in Polish Football, 2008–2017

Abstract

Relations between sport and religion constitute an intriguing field of research. The aim of this paper is to analyze the historical development of a religious face of Polish sport (mostly football). Religion – meaning here the Catholic Church, since Poland is an almost completely Catholic country – pervades sport in different ways. The teachings of Pope John Paul II, who appreciated the role of sport in developing the all-around integrated personality, are still often recalled in Poland. The paper includes several sections. First, the policy of the Church towards sport in the last decades is discussed; then, the question of sports chaplaincy in Poland is presented. Next, public manifestations of religious beliefs of football players, managers, and fans (for example, crossing oneself or fans’ choreographies with religious overtones) are analyzed. The main focus of interest is, however, very popular religious pilgrimages organized (since 2008) by the fans of most Polish clubs. The main objective is to examine some selected cases, representative of Polish football fandom of the last decades, showing the phenomenon clearly. The study has largely been based on historical and statistical data. The information about this period (2008–2017) was garnered mainly from newspapers and fans’ publications.     

‘What an absurdity’: Penny Chuter and the polemics of progress in British rowing during the early 1970s

ABSTRACT

‘What an absurdity’: thus railed ‘P. Barnsby, Male Coach’ in the Letters page of Rowing magazine in August 1973, on the appointment of Penny Chuter as professional rowing coach for the Amateur Rowing Association (ARA). The flurry of responses prompted by his letter suggest that his views were not aligned with the majority of the rowing community; yet women’s role and position in the sport was still highly contested. Chuter’s appointment as an ARA National Coach, an elite level role with responsibility for the national squad as well as coach education in clubs, complicated and extended this polemic. Situated at the intersection of societal fears around female athleticism, employment and leadership – and the ideological conflict within the conservative Amateur Rowing Association about professional coaches regardless of gender – it provoked the rowing community to express some of its most profound uncertainties and anxieties about gender, and about the sport itself and the manner in which it should be undertaken. This paper explores these anxieties within the social context of second wave feminism and related shifts in gender norms, and the sporting context of British amateur rowing in the late 1960s and the early 1970s.