The British Influence in the Birth of Spanish Sport

Sports started to gain relevance in Spain around the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century as a leisure and health option of the upper classes imported from Britain. Its early development was intertwined with the spread of other kinds of physical activities with much more tradition on the continent: gymnastics and physical education. First played by the ruling classes – aristocracy and high bourgeoisie – sports permeated towards petty bourgeoisie and middle classes in urban areas such as Madrid, Barcelona, San Sebastián and Santander. This pattern meant that the expansion of sports was unavoidably tied to the degree of industrialisation and cultural modernisation of the country. Since 1910, and mainly during the 1920s, sport grew in popularity as a spectacle and, toa much lesser degree, as a practice among the Spanish population

The Emergence and Development of Association Football: Influential Sociocultural Factors in Victorian Birmingham

This article explores the interdependent, complex sociocultural factors that facilitated the emergence and diffusion of football in Birmingham. The focus is the development of football in the city, against the backdrop of the numerous social changes in Victorian Birmingham. The aim is to fill a gap in the existing literature which seemingly overlooked Birmingham as a significant footballing centre, and the ‘ordinary and everyday’ aspects of the game’s early progression. Among other aspects, particular heed is paid to the working classes’ involvement in football, as previous literature has often focused on the middle classes and their influence on and participation in organized sport. As the agency of the working classes along with their mass participation and central role in the game’s development is unfolded, it is argued that far from being passive cultural beings, the working classes, from the beginnings, actively negotiated the development of their own emergent football culture

Ethos and Politics in the Youth Hostels Association (YHA) in the 1930s

The Youth Hostels Association (YHA) was a formally non-political organization founded to provide cheap accommodation for walkers and cyclists. However, the YHA drew on, and was influenced by, values and ideas which both attracted a particular kind of member and informed its domestic political interventions. The article specifically examines the connections between the YHA and other organizations, aspects of the politics of membership relating to the concepts of respectability and class and the political interventions of the YHA in the areas of unemployment and the access movement

Shades of green, fields of gold: Representations, discourse and the politics of golf in Singapore

10.1080/0142639022000023952Landscape Research274397-41

Leisure, Religion and the (Infra)Secular City: The Manchester and Salford Whit Walks

Drawing on the Manchester and Salford Whit Walks, a Church of England Whitsuntide procession, this research adopts della Dora’s concept of the infrasecular to interpret the interstitiality of the religious or civic nature of leisure experiences in the urban context. Processional walking at Whitsuntide originated as a pre-industrial custom that was simultaneously a religious and a leisure practice. However, with the decline of religion the meanings the Whit Walks have changed in a number of dimensions. Using the lens of infrasecular geography, this research explored the ways in which these Walks have remade sacred space in the secular city through an historical account of their evolution, interviews with participants and observation. The research re-emphasises the continuing importance of custom to contemporary leisure practice and through the infrasecular lens enables new insights into the dynamics of the historical spaces of leisure practice. The study concludes that religion remains an important influence on leisure and that the concept of the infrasecular merits further investigation in leisure practices