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The aim of this paper is to provide a complete understanding of the sport policies in South Africa (SA) with regard to mass sport for recreation involvement and the elite sporting system created to develop high performance athletes. In the subsequent sections, various specific contextual factors which may influence the sport policy implementation in SA will first be defined.. Furthermore, a synopsis will be presented on the post-Apartheid sport policies and the imperative emphases outlined in each. A description of the organisation of the stakeholders in both mass and elite sport will be provided, and the sport-funding stream allocations to both portfolios will be illustrated. Lastly, the article ends with a discussion on the emerging issues and concerns of sport policy and sport in SA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There can be little doubt that integrity in the playing and management of sport is becoming one of the critical issues in global sport and its governance. This special issue aims to contribute to the scholarship that is emerging in this important field for policy makers and managers in sport. The articles reveal the breadth of topics that are located within the scope of the term 'integrity', ranging from sport governance, athletes' rights, match-fixing and sports' organisational management practices. The approaches taken to the study of these critical issues by the authors is necessarily multidisciplinary, incorporating ethical theory, empirical studies and historical analysis that encourage an holistic understanding of the problems under investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to preserve their status as legitimate governing bodies of sport, International Sports Associations (ISAs) are to an increasing degree expected by actors in the international community to use their influence to make societal improvements. But how and where should the traditionally neutral ISAs intervene? In considering the question, this paper explores the recommendations offered by the United Nations (UN), the OECD, and the European Commission (EC) to the ISAs on the relation between sporting events and human rights. By conducting a textual analysis of the recommendatory documents the paper concludes that while their intentions are good, the unwillingness among the document authors to engage with the term "human rights" in particular and to suggest ways to enforce them creates a serious obstacle to the implementation of those recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research reveals an unexplored aspect of Argentina's sport policy-making process during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Contrary to the common assumption that little attention was paid to sport by early twentieth-century politicians, several bills proposing institutional support for the promotion and organization of national sport were presented in the Argentinean legislature. In order to support these proposals, many legislators resorted to medical and physiological discourse as the most important legitimizing force. Poverty, poor hygiene, and epidemic diseases, generated by rapid modernization and urbanization, urged some turn-of-the-century Argentine political elites to attempt a degree of social intervention within the general framework of the liberal-conservative order, as a way to counteract these evils and further advance the national progress enjoyed since the nineteenth century. In this context, sport was ardently advocated by some politicians as a means to raise scientifically the physical and moral constitution of the 'Argentinean race'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A democratic national system involves a process by which national leadership is recruited. National leadership has significant authority over the formulation of governmental policies, including those concerned with sports development. Current and historical Indonesian sports policy development illustrates and enables the evaluation of how the democratic process generates national leadership. Indonesian leadership history is divided into the three following orders: (1) The Old Order (1945–1967) (led by President Soekarno), (2) the New Order (1967–1998) (led by President Soeharto), and (3) the Reform Order (1998–present) (led by five presidents, as follows: Habibie, Gus Dur, Megawati, SBY, and Joko Widodo). An assessment of relevant historical facts indicates that the government plays a perennial and strategic role in sports policy development. This study performed an analysis of Indonesian sports legislation and determined that the government supports increased control over local decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1951, Buenos Aires hosted the inaugural Pan-American Games. On February 25 of that year, a Greek athlete carried a flame flown specially from his country onto the stadium where the event's opening ceremonies took place and lit the cauldron. The uncertain character of the Greek flame transported to Buenos Aires alarmed many in Olympic circles. Confused and concerned, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) investigated the matter, which led to a rapid succession of policy changes seeking to regulate the use of flames in regional games. The flame flown from Greece to Buenos Aires for the 1951 Pan-American Games sparked an intense debate about the status of the Olympic flame. The IOC's recognition of the power of the Olympic flame ritual and its preoccupation with protecting it along with other Olympic symbols and terminology reveal the contours of the organization's ideology in this era and its relations with associated entities. The flame debate also illuminates the push by Pan-American Games' officials for autonomy. Clearly, Olympic officials recognized early in the 1950s that the globalization of the Olympic flame ritual required regulation if the IOC was to ensure control of this and its other symbolic resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and Communist Party that ended in 1949 caused a confrontation between the 'Free China' in Taiwan claimed by the Republic of China, the KMT that retreated to Taiwan, and the 'New China' established by the People's Republic of China. The sport policies of the 'Two Chinas' were based on the respective political positions, which were affected greatly by the Cold War. Taiwan, ruled by the KMT affiliating with the camp of the capitalists led by the USA, was the revival base to connect with Chinese in several East and Southeast Asian countries and to connect with other Asian anti-Communist countries. Political and military policies contributed to Taiwan women's basketball development during the Cold War in East Asia and the first national team named Liangyou thus emerged. The Liangyou's life symbolized the beginning and the phased ending of women's basketball development in Taiwan, and skilful players of noble character practised loyal diplomatic missions and publicized the strong body-mind heroine image of Free China. Their healthy and cheerful character along with a passion for basketball provided new ideas of women's roles in post-war Taiwan. Trips for overseas competitions let players experience the outside world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth sport policies are increasingly driven by health concerns and social issues, and focus on broad participation outcomes. Given the significant financial investment in, and critique of, such policies internationally, this study aimed to examine the implementation of Sporting Schools (SS), a $100 million programme intended to increase children's sport participation in Australia. In addressing the limited research in this area in the Australian context, we draw on the notion of policy as process [Penney & Evans, 2005 Policy, power and politics in physical education. In K. Green, & K. Hardman (Eds.), Physical education: Essential issues (pp. 21-38). London: SAGE] and Fullan's [Fullan (2015) The new meaning of educational change (5th ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press] work on educational change. This analysis employed a qualitative methodology. Data collection included interviews with 32 sporting organisation (SO) representatives, coaches, and teachers involved in the implementation of SS. Data were analysed using a combination of inductive and deductive approaches, and the trustworthiness of the findings was supported using several strategies. Findings indicated divergent understandings of the need for the SS programme by stakeholders, as well as a lack of clarity of the policy aims and the means for realising them. There was little indication that SOs, coaches and teachers were engaged in a meaningful, working relationship to accomplish the reform objectives of SS; however, each saw benefit in the programme. Youth sport policy implementation in schools is a complex process. The dynamic interplay among the various factors influencing such policies makes realising their stated intentions nigh on impossible. While working to enhance the enactment of SS as intended is important, we propose that youth sport policies written for enactment in schools need to be viewed as 'soft policies'. The simplicity and limited accountability associated with 'soft policies' can be viewed as an opportunity to recognise the expertise of those who work, learn and move in schools, and trust them to use resources effectively and reconcile tensions based on their unique knowledge of their local school contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 1937, as the Spanish Civil War raged on several fronts, including the battle for international prestige and legitimacy, six Spanish cyclists were racing along the French roads in the Tour de France, clad in purple–red–yellow jerseys, the colours of the endangered Spanish Republic. This sporting episode, laden with political significance, is one of the first (if not the very first) instances of a government attempting to use international sport for propaganda purposes at a time of war. The sporting success of the team (two stage wins) was poorly exploited by the Republican authorities for its propaganda potential, due to flaws that affected the propaganda strategies of the Republicans throughout the war: improvisation, dispersion of initiatives, and lack of coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The weakness of the Ottoman Empire in the Bulgarian territory provided the Bulgarians with the opportunity and courage to reach their ultimate goal, awakening national consciousness for the creation of an autonomous state during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the same period, gymnastics, particularly in the form of gymnastics associations, was used as an important tool in the cultivation and propagation of an incipient Bulgarian national identity. Bulgarian reformers and modernists like Todor Yonchev propagated gymnastics as a platform for transforming the masses, especially Bulgarian young men. In 1898, the union of Bulgarian gymnastics associations was founded in order to train Bulgarian youth for the liberation of the country. Also known as the Yunak (hero) Union, the union consisted of different gymnastics associations from Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia. Although the Yunak movement proved to have detrimental consequences for the Ottoman Empire, the Ottomans' lack of authority and influence in the region as well as Russian support for the Bulgarians prevented them from curbing their actions. In conclusion, the Yunak gymnastics movement played an important role in the efforts of gaining a national consciousness; typical not only for independent state, but in fact for a strong Bulgaria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the eastern part of Europe football has always been in close relationship with the political sphere. As the most popular sport it was always a state affair in this area. In the countries surrounded by enemies and rivals suffering from inferiority complex, politics sometimes tried to use soccer as a means of legitimacy and propaganda. The nationalist political elites tried to exploit the political potentials of football. During the dualistic era (1867–1918) soccer was represented in Hungary as the symbol of cultural superiority especially in contrast to Austria; in the inter-war period it was an expression of symbolizing being European, the wish to belong to Western Europe and an evidence of Hungarians' greatness in opposition to neighbouring countries. In the hands of totalitarian socialist powers, soccer became an even more important political vehicle in order to prove the superiority of socialism above capitalism, to legitimate dictatorship by exploitation football results as the regime's own victories, and it could channel the sentiments and passions of the people. During 'soft dictatorship' of Kádár-era the political control over football remained unchanged, however influence was rather indirect and less drastic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parents are generally considered one of the strongest influences on interscholastic athletes. Unfortunately, empirical research identifying the most salient administrative issues associated with parents is scarce, leaving administrators to use anecdotal or dated information that is uninformed by empirical research. The current study bridged a gap in the literature by using a mixed-method design to identify which parent issues throughout the United States are most prominent to administrators. A national sample of interscholastic administrators (N = 170) from eight geographic regions revealed ten issues that are currently and predicted to be impactful five years into the future. The top three issues were Educating Parents, Keeping Athletics in Perspective, and Treatment of Coaches. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were then conducted with seasoned administrators to provide clarity on how these issues manifest themselves within interscholastic sport. Ultimately, this study offers a foundation from which further research and interscholastic policy can be influenced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the growing body of academic literature on South African sport, there remains room for considering the close relationship between football and apartheid politics during the 1970s. Drawing on archival documentation and contemporary media reports, this analysis constitutes a contribution in this regard. The primary focus is on three high-profile football tournaments that were played within the framework of the apartheid government's multinational sports policy, devised in the early 1970s. Consequently, this represents an exploration of the complex contours of multinational football under apartheid. It will be argued that football was a significant tool for experimentation during the 1970s and a deeper analysis of these ventures is needed in order to gain an improved understanding of sport's complicated – and often paradoxical – relationship with apartheid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 1963, some three months before sports administrators from around the world were to descend on Nairobi for the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) annual session, the meeting was in jeopardy. Government officials in Kenya announced that in protest against white minority rule on the African continent, delegates from Portugal and South Africa were to be denied entry visas. Their decision culminated in the eleventh-hour transfer of the IOC session from Nairobi, Kenya, to Baden-Baden, West Germany. Kenyan politicians, on the cusp of ousting British colonial control, were using the Nairobi IOC gathering of 1963 to advance the anti-colonial resolutions of the newly established Organization of African Unity (OAU) in solidarity with Africa's independent states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a general approach for applying policy capturing to small‐group decision making and demonstrate the approach with the NCAA Selection Committee's rankings of the 68 teams in the three most recent Division I Men's Basketball Tournaments. We develop a linear programming model that minimizes the extent to which the evaluation of a lower‐ranked team exceeds that of a team ranked immediately above it. The result is a set of linear weights that approximates a group decision when the decision itself is demonstrably internally inconsistent in that a group ranks some teams higher than others despite a lower implied evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports and especially football have often become a field for political conflict in several societies around the world. In Cyprus the history of football follows the overwhelming history of the country, since, during the twentieth century and until today, the political events that take place in the island are often depicted within the football fields. Mass media and especially newspapers developed a crucial role and several times this role resulted in the deterioration of the already strained situation. The article examines the history of the Cypriot football in accordance to the political history of the country along the twentieth century, focusing on the turbulent period 1948-1953, as depicted through the newspapers, through Discourse Analysis. The aim of this research is to present the various ways in which football became an important field for political conflict and the role of the press in this situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Visionary E-Journal / Vizyoner Dergisi is the property of Suleyman Demirel University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The relationship between feminism and PCS is complex and an exemplar of the politics of knowledge production. We begin this paper by detailing the evolving relationship between feminism and PCS, and identify two key ways that feminist sport scholars have responded to PCS. Whereas one group has rejected PCS outright, another is reappropriating PCS for their own purposes. Aligning with the latter, in the remainder of the paper we offer one of many possible imaginings of a feminist interpretation of the PCS assemblage. More specifically, we briefly outline how a feminist engagement with some of the key tenets of PCS facilitated new understandings of New Zealand women's embodied experiences of netball, includingMāori women.In so doing, we reveal what a FPCS approach might look like in practice and highlight ways that feminist scholars have, and can continue to, contribute to the PCS agenda through embodied, theoretical, reflexive, political, contextual and culturally-specific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs an approach drawn from the strategic relations approach in an empirical evaluation of the behavior of the participators in the governance of the political sporting system within/beyond the 'Chinese Community'. The paper highlights the significance of political intentions as a key characteristic of the strategic environment which provides the two governments' interests space to pursue 'political actions', and evaluates the responses of the participators in the governance system. Three major conclusions are as follows: first, this case illustrates how local Chinese-Taiwanese sports political nexus being implicated within a global sports system, as a strategic context, which provides a source of influence and power, constrains and/ or facilitates the choices available to the participators; second, it points to evidence that the political intentions of modern states are more likely to pursue their projects by engaging in a complex network of competition or collaboration and the torch relay issue is thus characterized by a diversity of interests, preferences, values and ideas, which individuals or groups seek to promote or protect in such a context; finally, the case portrays how the outcome of one set of struggles (Olympic torch relay issue) sets the strategic context for subsequent governance decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the development of sport policy with regard to community sport in Japan and Great Britain following World War II. The Ministry of Education germinated the idea of the development of community sport as far back as 1946. However, this idea has yet to be realized. In Great Britain, community sport policy developed during five distinct periods. This began in the 1960s with the release of the "Wolfenden Report," supported by the acceleration of the welfare state ideology.

The 1995 ruling of the European Court of Justice in Bosman was a pivotal point in the relationship between the European Union and sport. It has had an immense impact upon professional team sports, most notably football, in terms of liberalising the transfer system and abolishing player quotas. This paper will chart the development of a European sports law policy generally and will specifically discuss two current proposals concerning the reintroduction of playing quotas in football. We will examine the legality of these proposals with reference to Article 45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and will evaluate the political context within which these proposals have been promulgated. It will be suggested that a possible solution, which should end legal uncertainty, could be the adoption of a collective agreement or directive based on the methodology of reflexive labour law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reflects upon how the German Democratic Republic used sport to create a new socialist national identity. Unable to match West German democratic freedom and economic bounty, the East German authorities found it easier to compete in sports. In 1969 the Socialist Unity Party decided to concentrate on individual Olympic disciplines as the most cost-effective way of showcasing its socialist system, especially in comparison to capitalist West Germany. The medals count would be an objective measure of the two systems. Soccer and other team sports lost funding, and East German soccer teams were relegated to second-class status. East Germany’s development of elite Olympic athletes at the expense of soccer – the world’s most popular game – failed to create a loyal citizenry, as the exodus of East Germans after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Internet platforms are increasingly becoming strategic tools for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in international development to collaborate, share information, and gain legitimacy. Drawing on the literature on neoliberalism, sport for development, globalization and networking through communication technologies, this article examines the interpretations of staff working in Canadian and Swiss sport for development and peace (SDP) NGOs on the role of the Platform, while also exploring the challenges and benefits of the Platform for each NGO. Qualitative research methods were utilized, including a content analysis of documents on the Platform and the two NGO websites, along with interviews with staff from both NGOs. The findings revealed, on one hand, that staff for both NGOs were concerned about the Platform’s potential to support collaboration amongst organizations that: a) are frequently in competition with one another – a feature of NGO culture in a neoliberal political environment; and b) commonly adopt divergent approaches to SDP work. On the other hand, both NGOs acknowledged that the Platform and the UN-endorsed International Year of Sport and Physical Education were at times useful for disseminating and legitimizing SDP globally, although the potential of new media technologies has not been realized because of inequalities within and around the NGO community. Implications of the findings along with ideas for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers the first empirical account of the role of County Sport Partnerships (CSPs) in delivering grassroots sport policy in the UK. Current leading academic approaches to policy delivery in the UK suggest that we have witnessed a move from ‘big’ government to governance by and through networks and partnerships. Such a process is said to have led to a dispersal of power among many actors and diminished the ability of the state to control policy. Our empirical study of CSPs – including 10 in-depth interviews with key actors – suggests otherwise: grassroots sport policy delivery does take place via ‘partnerships’, but such arrangements are not to be confused with ‘new governance’. On the contrary, government policy delivery has never been so centrally managed, monitored and controlled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the potential for youth football in Liberia to foster peace-building, rehabilitation, reconciliation, and development. It examines the impact of the Liberian civil conflict of 1989 to 2003 on Liberian youth, particularly commenting on the use of child soldiers. The author relates her experiences of working as a youth football coach in Matadi, a suburb of the capital city of Monrovia, Liberia. She also examines the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), particularly the Don Bosco Catholic Mission.

This is the second in a series of three articles that considers the relationship between sport and furthering international development assistance. The first highlighted a significant growth in this relationship, yet evaluation of sport-for-development was criticized for being insufficient. This article therefore details the current level of evaluation of sport-for-development and highlights the approaches used whilst contextualizing it against the evaluation debate in development studies. The picture that emerges is that considerable evaluation is being conducted, particularly of programmes that have won plaudits. They tend to employ a positivist logical framework either by itself or as part of a blended methodology with some instances of participatory methods also. Concerns expressed about these approaches in the general development literature are traced in sport-for-development evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses sports policies in Brazil. Its objective is to investigate, under article 217 of the Constitution of the Republic - which classifies as a role of the State to stimulate formal and non-formal sport practice as a right of each citizen - and other infraconstitutional legislations concerning the subject, what measures are being taken to assure the promotion of educational sport, high performance sport and leisure sport and if they are effectives, efficients and efficacious. To reach such goal, this article will explore sports policies worldwide and in Brazil, drafting a historical scenario and conceptualizing sport and public policy. Afterwards, the article will recollect actions in sports policies in Brazil and will provide information on the current National Sports Policy, from where it will collect data concerning proposed actions and involved characters, providing an understanding about how the subject is presently being dealt. By the end, it will be possible to assess these actions and put together a critical picture of sports-related social policy in this country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of the article "Sporting Exception in the European Union's Sports Policy" is presented.

While known for training world-class athletes to compete in prestigious international competitions, Cuba is also educating 983 coaches from vulnerable communities in 53 countries at its Escuela Internacional de Educacion Fisica y Deporte (eiefd). These athletes are bound not necessarily for the Olympic podium, but for marginalised communities where they are expected to develop sport and recreation programmes. While Cuba has garnered hard currency by training athletes from other countries, the eiefd is funded entirely by the state under the auspices of South-South co-operation. Why would Cuba, a resource-poor country, commit to training foreign coaches? This paper argues that Cuba's sport internationalism is grounded in complex and historical notions of co-operation with other countries in the global South. Through a critical analysis of state policy, and the goals of current initiatives like the eiefd, it argues that, while nationalism and foreign remuneration are a factor, the commitment to sport and development may be tied to broader goals of counter-hegemonic development. For scholars interested in Sport for Development and Peace Cuba's use of sport is noteworthy as it is not necessarily a means to development as much as a result of international social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the place of sports in the New Labour Party regime and looks at the defeat of the English soccer team during the 2010 World Cup in a political and cultural context. He relates Great Britain's weakened cultural and political identity, the burden of expectation transmitted by the media and the refusal of political parties to address national identity issues contributed to England's loss in the World Cup. He also mentions the role of capital, media and communications technologies which have made sports accessible globally.

Social dialogue refers to discussions, consultations, negotiations and joint actions involving organisations representing the two sides of industry, namely employers and workers. The constitutional basis for social dialogue is located within Articles 153-155 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. In July 2008, a social dialogue committee in European professional football was established. This article assesses the significance of this move and argues that the committee has the long-term potential to transform industrial relations in European football based on the conclusion of binding collective agreements. In the shorter term, the committee performs two functions: first, as a means of effecting a change in governance standards in European football and as a lobbying technique for the social partners in terms of their relationship with the EU; second, as a venue for a negotiated settlement between the rival interests operating within the EU's sports policy subsystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the widespread popularity of football in Zambia, the poor performance of the national soccer (football) team in the mid 1970s triggered protests from fans and a decisive move by President Kenneth Kaunda's United National Independence Party (UNIP) government to control the game. Kaunda was interested in football and his government played a role in the development of the game, but they also feared that their political opponents might use football as a vehicle for expressing dissent. This article examines how Kaunda and his UNIP government contributed to the development of football in post-colonial Zambia, how they attempted to control the game and how Kaunda tried to use football to shore up his popularity. It argues that despite Kaunda's one-party state having authoritarian tendencies and control over most aspects of Zambian society, it never gained total control of football. This was because many ordinary citizens paid close attention to the involvement of authorities in the running of soccer and reacted forcefully whenever they felt that their game was being mismanaged. This further hints at the state's awareness of its vulnerability if popular sentiment were to turn against the incumbent government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores a series of football tours from Britain's colonies in Africa and the Caribbean to Britain between the years 1949 and 1959. It examines the different desired political and diplomatic functions of the visits from a variety of perspectives, as well as considering the importance of sporting performance and football in particular in fulfilling these functions. Utilising academic work on body cultures as well as critical race theory, it interrogates the coverage and analysis of such tours in multiple outlets of the British media, with particular reference to the different racialisations players from these territories were subject to throughout the period, as well as how racial perceptions were projected, solidified and reconstructed through play and the existing technologies of reception in Britain. Finally, it stresses the importance of localised, seemingly innocuous settings (such as the lower league football stadium) in formulating meaning and signifying identity during the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian sports historiography, in privileging Western, reconstructionist approaches to narrating histories of Aboriginal sport, has overlooked Indigenous research methodologies that privilege Aboriginal voices. This paper adopts the Indigenous research methodology of yarning in a collaborative project with former sportswomen from the Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement in Queensland. Yarning, as a culturally respectful way of eliciting memories and valuing expression of Indigenous voices, was used to explore their experiences, memories and meanings of competitive marching, a popular sport for young women in mid‐twentieth century Australia. The yarning sessions revealed insights into sport that are missing from the empirical, archival record, and allowed the exploration of agency and autonomy, acts of resistance, and complex intersections of nostalgia and trauma. This paper offers specific and broader insights on sport in Australian Indigenous communities and on the entanglement of the sporting past with the histories and politics of race and gender in Queensland. In repositioning researcher and researched in Aboriginal sport history, this paper demonstrates the potential of transformative narratives about the experiences of Indigenous Australians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period between 1984 and 1988 was one of considerable change in the Canadian sport system. National sport organizations (NSOs) were subject to institutional pressures from the government agency Sport Canada to dispense with their traditional operating procedures and move to a more professional bureaucratic organizational design. Researchers who have studied this time period have suggested that NSOs were passive receptors of these government pressures and that they acquiesced to the changes promoted by Sport Canada. This paper challenges this idea and suggests that the role of human agents and the choices they made in response to the pressures emanating from the state agency are important aspects of the change dynamic. Using data from a study of 36 NSOs, this paper shows that NSOs demonstrated resistance in the form of pacifying activities and ceremonial conformity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in the political and economic environment of sports organizations are taking place, especially at the levels of state and local government. These changes will impact negatively the nature of the sport-community relationship. The manner in which sports administrators respond to these changes may ultimately determine the viability of many sports organizations. This article suggests that sports administrators must be sensitive to these changes and must adjust their views of the sport-community relationship and their negotiating strategies accordingly. This especially will be important for sports administrators representing organizations that do not have major league status and, therefore, lack power at the negotiating table. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that examining the symbolic dimensions or meanings of spectator sport is a useful approach to understanding its powerful appeal. Spectator sport is analyzed through six categories of symbolicity: recurring life issues, transcendence of human limitations, rebellion against industrialized society, aesthetic unity and completion, religious overtones, and political dimensions. Beyond demonstrating the usefulness of these categories, this theoretical introduction should inspire researchers to look for other meanings which spectator sport carries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article features a discussion on the mythic content of sports. Sport has served several functions in the history of Western cultures: social, political, economic and religious. There is another function which sport serves, one that is camouflaged in sport as myth. The human psyche creates the mythic content of sport to conceal a meaning that is too numinous and preconscious to be expressed in any other way. The study of sport as myth is the study of the development of consciousness. According to Carl Gustav Jung, the structure of the psyche may be viewed phylogenetically or ontogenetically, for the evolutionary process that the human race has undergone will reproduce itself over and over again in the life of the individual.

This article deals with the psychological description of the sports career, including the history of the topic in Russian sport psychology before and during perestroika, two theoretical models of the sports career (synthetic and analytic), and conclusions drawn from the empirical research of sports careers of more than 200 Russian athletes representing different sports specializations and levels of achievement. Seven predictable crises of elite sports careers are considered from the perspective of typical problems and difficulties of athletes in each crisis, general symptoms and possible circumstances that reinforce crisis symptoms, ways to resolve a crisis, the influence of a crisis on sport performance, forms of "payment" for failure to resolve crises, and ways of providing psychological assistance to athletes in crisis periods of the sports career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to research on and theories of the state's role in Canadian sport development by examining factors that led the Alberta government to create the Alberta Sport Council, Canada's only Crown corporation with a sport mandate. The data used were collected from interviews and numerous documentary sources. The corporatism and the attribution of public status to private interest groups. Accordingly, the study identified key individuals, organizational factors, and the unique political and economic characteristics of Alberta that influenced the council's creation. The paper concludes that despite this or organization's uniqueness, it reflects the same contradictory form of sport intervention found in other Canadian governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociology of Sport Journal is the property of Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

During the last 2 years the campaign against apartheid sport has taken a new turn, shifting from the blanket boycott of "no normal sport in an abnormal society" to a more carefully nuanced "two-track" strategy, which attempts to strengthen nonracial sport in South Africa while maintaining the international quarantine of proapartheid establishment sport. These efforts are being mounted within the highly fluid dynamic of a society-wide assault on the structures of racist domination. This paper examines ongoing changes in South African sport, the new strategy and organizations developed by the liberation movement in response to the changes, and the promise and problems of the future. It is argued that the antiapartheid campaign provides an important example of effective human intervention in the sphere of modern sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the ideological relationships between the media and Australian sport are examined from a critical perspective. After outlining the contributions of political economy, structuralism, and cultural studies to the critical paradigm, we argue that the Australian media have two main ideological effects. First, they legitimate masculine hegemony, capitalist rationality, consensus, and militaristic nationalism. Second, they marginalize, trivialize, and fragment alternative ideologies of sport. We conclude by suggesting some worthwhile topics for future research and by affirming that politicizing media representations of sport is an important part of the counter-hegemonic struggle in patriarchal capitalist societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the author's view of sport sociology. He argues that American sociology of sport is in the most unsatisfying state, both intellectually and politically. He remarks that whether or not sport sociology wastes too much energy taking stock of itself, as some would argue, complete reviews of activity in the field cannot easily be written these days in any case. The impression one gets is of a larger number of North American academicians defining themselves, at least in part, as sociologists of sport. Busily at work in a large number of university courses where what is said is largely inaudible to outsiders, they direct graduate students in papers and theses, most of which will not be published, and are published themselves as frequently in out-of-the-way places as in the visible journals of the field. The foundational hypothesis of sport sociology, stated in its simplest form, is that sport is of capital importance in the social life of societies such that of U.S. Yet what is seen when one looks at the sociological landscape of sport today is not confusion, indeed one might well wish for more of it, but a certain unremitting intellectual sameness, a dead hand of competence.

The article argues that there exists a crisis in the state of social philosophy of sport. The field as it stands has almost entirely collapsed into the prevailing view that sport is a social instrument that functions as a tool of the state. The philosophy of sport has become enmeshed in the same late-capitalist, instrumentalist ideology that makes all culture a subsidiary to economic structures. The author argues for a Neo-Marxist philosophy of sport.

The aim of this article is to analyse China's engagement in global sport through an examination of the case of elite football. Although many studies exhibit a quite proper concern with the extent to which the deep structure of culture is affected by sports globalization, they generally fail to give significant consideration to the role of the state, because of excessive emphasis on other aspects of globalization such as commercialization, commodification and cultural homogenization. We attempt, therefore, to refocus on the role of the state and to investigate its relationship with global sport by adopting the theoretical framework of Held et al. (1999) as the main analytical tool for this study. By taking strategic approaches in the economic and cultural/ideological fields, the Chinese government has demonstrated, to some degree, its capacity to find effective ways to manage its relationship with global football. This was demonstrated particularly by the setting up of new governmental commercial agencies, updating sport and football regulations, and strengthening Chinese communist ideological education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on a June 2010 meeting in Bonn, Germany, that dealt with the theme "Integration and Disintegration. Social and Cultural History of East European Sports in International Comparison." Among the topics discussed were soccer in East Germany, the Asian Games, and the role of sport in socialism and nationalism.