The Routledge Critical Studies in Sport series aims to lead the way in developing the multi-disciplinary field of Sport Studies by producing books that are interrogative, interventionist and innovative. By providing theoretically sophisticated and empirically grounded texts, the series will make sense of the changes and challenges facing sport globally. The series aspires to maintain the commitment and promise of the critical paradigm by contributing to a more inclusive and less exploitative culture of sport.
Edited
By Noelle K. Brigden, Katie Rose Hejtmanek, Melissa M. Forbis
May 05, 2023
This book explores strength sports as a site of political contestation and a platform for insurgent gender practices. It contributes to our understanding of key themes in the study of sport, such as feminism, power, the body and identity. Drawing together interdisciplinary work spanning ...
By Jörg Krieger
January 09, 2023
This book provides the first detailed history of one of the most powerful international sport organisations, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), since 2019 known as World Athletics. The book critically assesses the internal power relations within the IAAF by focusing on ...
By Belinda Wheaton, Holly Thorpe
November 05, 2021
Based on a decade of research by two leading action sports scholars, this book maps the relationship between action sports and the Olympic Movement, from the inclusion of the first action sports to those featuring for the first time in the Tokyo Olympic Games and beyond. In an effort to ...
Edited
By Aarti Ratna, Samaya F. Samie
June 10, 2019
The experiences of ethnic ‘Other’ females have – until recently – been widely overlooked in the study of sport. There continues to be a need to produce critical scholarship about ethnic 'Other' girls and women in sport and physical culture, in order to represent their complex, multifarious and ...
By Heather Sykes
June 08, 2018
This challenging new study examines gender and sexuality in relation to the ‘roving colonialism’ of sport mega-events. Built around four case studies in postcolonial and settler colonial contexts—the Olympics in Vancouver, London and Sochi and soccer fans in the Egyptian revolution—the book ...
Edited
By Natalie Koch
March 26, 2018
Sport is a geographic phenomenon. The physical and organizational infrastructure of sport occupies a prominent place in our society. This important book takes an explicitly spatial approach to sport, bringing together research in geography, sport studies and related disciplines to articulate a ...
By Jacqueline Kennelly
May 24, 2017
Olympic Games are sold to host city populations on the basis of legacy commitments that incorporate aid for the young and the poor. Yet little is known about the realities of marginalized young people living in host cities. Do they benefit from social housing and employment opportunities? Or do ...
By Mariann Vaczi
November 15, 2016
Spanish soccer is on top of the world, at international and club level, with the best teams and a seemingly endless supply of exciting and stylish players. While the Spanish economy struggles, its soccer flourishes, deeply embedded throughout Spanish social and cultural life. But the relationship ...
By Jules Boykoff
June 23, 2014
The Olympic Games have become the world’s greatest media and marketing event—a global celebration of exceptional athletics gilded with corporate cash. Huge corporations vie for association with the "Olympic Image" in the hope of gaining a worldwide marketing audience of billions. In this ...
By Belinda Wheaton
July 23, 2013
This important new study examines the changing place and meaning of lifestyle sports – parkour, surfing, skateboarding, kite-surfing and others – and asks whether they continue to pose a challenge to the dominant meanings and experience of ‘sport’ and physical culture. Drawing on a series of ...
By Caroline Symons
May 01, 2012
The Gay Games is an important piece of new social history, examining one of the largest sporting, cultural and human rights events in the world. Since their inception in 1980, the Gay Games have developed into a multi-million dollar mega-event, engaging people from all continents, while the ...
By Gary Armstrong, Jon P. Mitchell
September 03, 2009
What can the history of a nation's football reveal about that nation's wider political and socio-cultural identity? How can the study of local football culture help us to understand the powerful international forces at play within the modern game? Based on long-term and detailed ethnographic ...
