Sociology of Sports

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Sociology of sports is a subfield of sociology that examines sports as part of social life and analyzes its place within society. The area specializes in exploring the interrelations between sport and other aspects of human activity – education, media, health, family life, politics, economy etc – including sport itself. Sociology of sport has well established associations in Japan and South Korea while newer ones are emerging across China and India.

In the 1960s, an emphasis on social problems in athletics combined with increased reading of critical social theory from North America and Europe created a significant critical shift in sociology of sport (as in mainstream sociology) that resulted in interpretive and symbolic approaches being revived to sports.

An important research trend during this era was an increased emphasis on identity and culture, leading to ethnographic studies of sports groups and subcultures as well as qualitative Methods Studies. Feminist criticism of sport also made its mark during this time.

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Up until recently, sports sociology had been an obscure branch within mainstream sociology. This may reflect social scientists’ tendency to give precedence to studies of work over sports-related leisure activities; however, this disciplinary inertia is slowly changing with leisure sports growing increasingly important in our culture.

Initial sociological analyses of sports focused on issues related to team dynamics, socialization into and through sport, and the emergence of professional sports systems. These early analyses were heavily influenced by functionalist and instrumental positivist approaches to sociology (see Loy and Kenyon 1969 and Dunning 1971 for examples).

Recent developments have been marked by an increasingly critical view of sports. Neo-Marxist critics asserted that sport not only passively mirrored society, but helped reproduce dominant social and cultural relationships within it; this eventually lead to Interpretive Research on professional sport subcultures (e.g. Donnelly 2000).

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Sports has evolved into a major social phenomenon, drawing the time, resources and energy of millions of people around the globe. This phenomenon has given rise to departments dedicated to sports studies, cultural studies and physical education and kinesiology; some departments may include sociology while others specialize solely in sport – in fact many sociology of sport scholars also hold affiliations in departments dedicated to physical education and kinesiology.

Sociology of sport research has long been distinguished by diverse theoretical perspectives and methodologies. Early work influenced by functionalist and instrumental positivism emphasized the relationship between sports participation and social problems; similar approaches were taken during socialization research conducted during the 1960s and 70s.

More recently, critical theory and interpretive sociology have had an increasing influence on sport studies, including identity Politics Studies and early production ethnographies. More recently, globalization studies in sociology have led to shifts that combine both local and global approaches in sport studies.

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Sports is one of the world’s most influential cultural phenomena, captivating millions around the globe with their captivating spectacle and energy-consuming activities. They mirror and highlight many aspects of society – globalization, democracy and socialization among them – yet mainstream sociology does not devote much attention to studying them critically – some critics even contending that studying sports amounts to Rodney Dangerfield-ing sociology.

Sociology of sport emerged during the 1960s at a time when physical education departments were searching for legitimacy, and studying sports as a sociological phenomenon was one way of doing this. Since then it has become its own subdiscipline within sociology with its own international conference and journal; early figurational sociologists explored links between sports and civilizing processes such as parliamentarization and sportsization while more recently researchers adopted an interpretive approach focusing on sport subcultures.