Globalizing Cricket

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Globalizing Cricket examines the global role of the sport - how it developed and spread around the world. The book explores the origins of cricket in the eighteenth century, its establishment as England's national game in the nineteenth, the successful (Caribbean) and unsuccessful (American) diffusion of cricket as part of the development of the British Empire and its role in structuring contemporary identities amongst and between the English, the British and postcolonial communities. Whilst empirically focused on the sport itself, the book addresses broader issues such as social development, imperialism, race, diaspora and national identities. Tracing the beginnings of cricket as a 'folk game' through to the present, it draws together these different strands to examine the meaning and social significance of the modern game. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the role of sport in both colonial and post-colonial periods; the history and peculiarities of English national identity; or simply intrigued by the game and its history

Durkheim and sociological method: historical sociology, sports history and the role of comparison

This article provides sociological reflections on the use of research methods in the history of sport. In light of the convergence of social scientific approaches and social research methods in recent years, it draws upon Durkheim’s reflections on the principles of sociology to explore the potential of the discipline to provide a distinctive methodological orientation to the study of sport. It subsequently uses this framework to assess the tendency in sports history to present interview data in non-anonymized form, and to advocate the value of particular kinds of comparative analysis for forwarding our understanding of the social world

Globalizing Cricket

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Globalizing Cricket examines the global role of the sport - how it developed and spread around the world. The book explores the origins of cricket in the eighteenth century, its establishment as England's national game in the nineteenth, the successful (Caribbean) and unsuccessful (American) diffusion of cricket as part of the development of the British Empire and its role in structuring contemporary identities amongst and between the English, the British and postcolonial communities. Whilst empirically focused on the sport itself, the book addresses broader issues such as social development, imperialism, race, diaspora and national identities. Tracing the beginnings of cricket as a 'folk game' through to the present, it draws together these different strands to examine the meaning and social significance of the modern game. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the role of sport in both colonial and post-colonial periods; the history and peculiarities of English national identity; or simply intrigued by the game and its history

Concussion in sport: Public, professional and critical sociologies

This article explores the emerging agenda in relation to concussion in sport to illustrate the threats and opportunities currently faced by the sociology of sport as an academic sub-discipline. The article begins by delineating aspects of the “crisis” in sociology, Burawoy’s (2005) call for an enhanced public sociology as a (part) solution, and responses to these ideas within the sociology of sport. It then identifies how the engagement of sociologists in this terrain must be understood in relation to the recent medicalization of sports-related concussion, and illustrates the impact of this on sociologists of sport through an examination of recent social scientific scholarship in relation to concussion. It argues that a successful public sociology of sport should be predicated on the subdiscipline’s distinctive contribution to the production of knowledge. To this end, the article concludes by reporting the findings of an empirical study of concussion in English professional football, to outline a framework for sport-related health research, and thus the basis on which a socially influential sociology of concussion in sport could develop

Medical uncertainty and clinician-athlete relations: the management of concussion injuries in rugby union

This article addresses clinical practice in sport medicine. Combining notions of medical uncertainty with a figurational sociological emphasis on interdependence, the article illustrates how uncertainty characterizes the medical understanding, clinical treatment, and patient experience of concussion. Faced with uncertainty, the clinician’s desire for recognition and validation through athletes’ dependence on them enables medically based diagnostic and treatment guidelines to be replaced by the understanding and definition of concussion dominant in the sport subculture. Clinicians further invoke strategies that protect their professional status and therefore secure their interdependence with others in the sport club figuration. The study advances our understanding by illuminating the basis on which clinicians and athletes negotiate treatment and the impact of these experiences on clinicians’ actions and beliefs

The social construction of the sociology of sport: a professional project

This paper presents a historical sociological analysis of the sociology of sport. It draws on theoretical insights from the sociology of professions to examine ‘state-of-the-field’ reviews written by sociologists of sport. The paper argues that in establishing why the sociology of sport emerged, how people identified its earliest manifestations, and how the subdiscipline’s boundaries were drawn, the political dynamics and consequences of the social construction of the field become apparent. This social construction is conceived of as a ‘professional project’ through which a knowledge domain, and this group’s authoritative status, was established. Sociologists of sport sought to validate their professional project through appeals to the sociological ‘mainstream’ and the correlative distancing from physical education. These reviews consistently obscure this professional project and portray a lineage that is logical, inevitable and consensual

Learning from history and acting politically: the threats and opportunities facing the sociology of sport community

Learning from history and acting politically: the threats and opportunities facing the sociology of sport communit

Confidentiality in sports medicine

This article synthesizes existing literature to provide a comprehensive summary of the ethical issues related to patient confidentiality in sport. It consists of four parts. The first outlines the medical ethical principle of confidentiality and identifies cross-cultural ethico-legal variations which shape its implementation. The second explores four factors specific to the context of sport which shape the application of patient confidentiality, namely: clinicians multiple obligations, physical environment and practice and policy context. The third reviews research detailing real life experiences of maintaining patient confidentiality in sport, and the fourth summarizes the many policy recommendations that have been made for enabling and enhancing compliance with this ethical principle. It is argued that the context of sport exacerbates pressures on clinicians to break patient confidentiality, breaches therefore occur relatively regularly, and interventions are required to enhance ethical compliance in sports medicine

The Quest for Exciting Knowledge: Developments in Figurational Sociological Research on Sport and Leisure.

This paper provides a thematic and developmental review of figurational sociological research on sport and leisure. It demonstrates how Elias’s main theoretical principles have been incorporated in this work and it uses ideas from Norbert Elias’s sociology of knowledge to explain how the emphasis on these principles has changed over time. Specifically, the paper identifies three overlapping stages in the construction of this body of knowledge and argues that a focus on violence has gradually diminished. The paper argues that this trend is both a consequence of the increasing availability of a broader range of Elias’s texts, but also due to social relations in the field, as latter generations of researchers find emotional gratification in expanding into new research agendas. The paper concludes by demonstrating the potential applicability of Elias’s theoretical principles to some of the most significant social issues of the twenty first century.This paper provides a thematic and developmental review of figurational sociological research on sport and leisure. It demonstrates how Elias’s main theoretical principles have been incorporated in this work and it uses ideas from Norbert Elias’s sociology of knowledge to explain how the emphasis on these principles has changed over time. Specifically, the paper identifies three overlapping stages in the construction of this body of knowledge and argues that a focus on violence has gradually diminished. The paper argues that this trend is both a consequence of the increasing availability of a broader range of Elias’s texts, but also due to social relations in the field, as latter generations of researchers find emotional gratification in expanding into new research agendas. The paper concludes by demonstrating the potential applicability of Elias’s theoretical principles to some of the most significant social issues of the twenty first century

‘Involved in every step’: how working practices shape the influence of physiotherapists in elite sport

This paper examines how the medical and non-medical skills of physiotherapists enable members of the profession to become central agents in the multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) which dominate sports health care. Drawing on empirical data derived from interviews with sports physiotherapists and doctors working in UK Olympic sport MDTs, this article argues that the role and influence of physiotherapy in elite sports health care can be explained in relation to physiotherapy’s working practice traditions and the degree to which these traditions correspond to their specific patients’ demands. Drawing on concepts such as medical dominance and relative practice autonomy drawn from the sociology of medicine, the paper argues that extended time, close physical contact and opportunities for experiential learning foster physiotherapist–patient mutuality, locate the physiotherapist as an inherent part of the recovery process and lead to trusting and collaborative health care relations. The practice traditions of physiotherapy enable these practitioners to respond flexibly to the particular demands of elite sports clients, intertwining athletes’ performance orientation with physiotherapists’ treatment through blurring the boundary between health care and sports training. Physiotherapists thus become seen as ‘useful’ in the eyes of the clients who shape the demand for health care delivery in elite sport