Why history matters for gender balance in political representation

Why does the gender balance among politicians vary so substantially across different locations? Drawing on a new study, Moa Frödin Gruneau illustrates that the historical persistence of traditional family structures has a clear relationship with the number of women in politics today

Assessing the sociology of sport: On sports mega-events and capitalist modernity

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, one of the leading international scholars on sport and consumer culture, John Horne, considers the trajectory and challenges of research on sports mega-events and their place in capitalist modernity. In anchoring work on this topic in Roche’s definition of mega-events, Horne notes that sports mega-events are important symbolic, economic, and political elements in the orientation of nations to stake their place in global society. Fundamental issues about the concept of ‘mega-event’ pose challenges for scholars as questions remain over what qualifies as a sports mega-event and how ‘lived experience’ with such events transacts with media spectacularization and characterization. The essay closes by posing broader questions for further investigation about the economic, political, and social risks and benefits of sports mega-events and how these events may portend and relate to changing relations of economic and political power on a global scale

IRT analyses of the Swedish Dark Triad Dirty Dozen

Background: The Dark Triad (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) can be captured quickly with 12 items using the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen (Jonason and Webster, 2010). Previous Item Response Theory (IRT) analyses of the original English Dark Triad Dirty Dozen have shown that all three subscales adequately tap into the dark domains of personality. The aim of the present study was to analyze the Swedish version of the Method: 570 individuals (nmales = 326, nfemales = 242, and 2 unreported), including university students and white-collar workers with an age range between 19 and 65 years, responded to the Swedish version of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen (Garcia et al., 2017a,b).Results: Contrary to previous research, we found that the narcissism scale provided most information, followed by psychopathy, and finally Machiavellianism. Moreover, the psychopathy scale required a higher level of the latent trait for endorsement of its items than the narcissism and Machiavellianism scales. Overall, all items provided reasonable amounts of information and are thus effective for discriminating between individuals. The mean item discriminations (alphas) were 1.92 for Machiavellianism, 2.31 for narcissism, and 1.99 for psychopathy.Conclusion: This is the first study to provide IRT analyses of the Swedish version of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen. Our findings add to a growing literature on the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen scale in different cultures and highlight psychometric characteristics, which can be used for comparative studies. Items tapping into psychopathy showed higher thresholds for endorsement than the other two scales. Importantly, the narcissism scale seems to provide more information about a lack of narcissism, perhaps mirroring cultural conditions.</p

Sexual harassment and abuse in sport: The research context

This special issue of the Journal of Sexual Aggression draws on the contributions to a Symposium on ‘Sexual Harassment in Sport – Challenges for Sport Psychology in the New Millennium’, held at the Xth Congress of the International Society for Sport Psychology, Skiathos, Greece from May 28th to June 2nd 2001. The symposium, which was organised by the authors of this editorial, was intended to move forward the international research agenda on sexual harassment and abuse in sport and to examine professional practice issues for sport psychologists. It was clear from the attendance of over 60 delegates at that symposium that international interest in this subject is growing. Further evidence of this came from the attendance of 26 members states – from Azerbaijan to Sweden - at a Council of Europe seminar on The Protection of Children, Young People and Women in Sport, held in Helsinki in September 2001

Bulgarian sport policy 1945-1989: A strategic relation perspective

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games have stimulated discussions about the success of different sport systems and the Chinese model in particular. Revisiting explanations of sport in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe during the Cold War seems timely, as the current Chinese model of sport was largely designed after the Soviet example established in this period. This paper examines Bulgarian sport policy between 1945 and 1989. It employs a Strategic Relation approach (Jessop, 1990) to analyse sport policy making as a strategic relation closely linked to the dominant state project of building a new stateness. It goes beyond ideological interpretations and argues that the state represents a strategic terrain where these relations have to be established in struggles, the outcomes of which are always uncertain. Furthermore, past and present struggles and their outcomes create various socio-political environments that presuppose the forms of state selectivity and intervention in sport. The process of constructing sport policy was influenced by two main categories of strategic relations: intra-state, including political, organisational and personal relations between the Party, state apparatus and various sport and non-sport organisations and their managers, and transnational, concerning ideological, political, economic and organisational relations with both communist and western countries and international sport organisations

Representations of sport in the revolutionary socialist press in Britain, 1988–2012

This paper considers how sport presents a dualism to those on the far left of the political spectrum. A long-standing, passionate debate has existed on the contradictory role played by sport, polarised between those who reject it as a bourgeois capitalist plague and those who argue for its reclamation and reformation. A case study is offered of a political party that has consistently used revolutionary Marxism as the basis for its activity and how this party, the largest in Britain, addresses sport in its publications. The study draws on empirical data to illustrate this debate by reporting findings from three socialist publications. When sport did feature it was often in relation to high profile sporting events with a critical tone adopted and typically focused on issues of commodification, exploitation and alienation of athletes and supporters. However, readers’ letters, printed in the same publications, revealed how this interpretation was not universally accepted, thus illustrating the contradictory nature of sport for those on the far left

“It's only sport” - the symbolic neutralization of “violence”

Within the commodified world of professional ice hockey, athletes sell their bodily performances in return for a salary. A central feature of this transaction is the very real risk of physical injury – a risk inherent within most contact sports, but particularly so within those that feature seemingly ‘violent’ confrontations between competitors, as ice hockey is widely reputed to do. Yet within the spectacle of sport, where physicality can be constructed as playful and unserious, it is possible for the consequences of such action to be concealed behind a symbolic, ludic veneer. Within this paper we explore this process with a particular focus on ice hockey spectators, for whom notions of sport violence as in some important way ‘mimetic’ of the ‘real’ enabled their propensity to both enjoy, and find moral validation through, potentially deleterious behaviours among athletes

Sport, social change and the public intellectual

This article argues that the role of the public intellectual in sport is desperately needed. The research for the article draws upon key interviews and newspaper reports. The paper examines three questions: (i) What is the role of the public intellectual in sport? (ii) Do we wish to encourage the role of the public intellectual in sport? (iii) How does one balance the objective of challenging unseen silences in sport with its potential transformative capacity to produce change (or at least be a resource for hope) in many communities. The challenge is for today’s sociologists of sport and others not to accept the narrow job description of the academic but instead to ensure that the social study of sport is one of these very public, visible forms of activity and engagement

Constructing the digitalized sporting body: black and white masculinity in NBA/NHL internet memes

In this article, I examine the ways sport fans construct and circulate discourses of race and masculinity in cyberspace. I do this through an examination of a set of Internet memes that juxtapose the bodies of National Hockey League players with National Basketball Association players in one single image. I argue these memes celebrate White masculinity, while at the same time constructing African American athletes as individualistic, selfish, and unwilling to sacrifice their bodies for the greater good of the team. More so, I argue that these memes construct a form of racial ideology that is representative of White backlash politics