History and Development of the Sociology of Sport in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The subdiscipline of the sociology of sport heralded its arrival on the international scene with an agreement in Geneva in 1964 to establish an International Committee for Sport Sociology (ICSS), and the setting up of this committee took place in Warsaw the following year. Over the past 50 years the subdiscipline has grown significantly and New Zealand has certainly featured prominently. In this article, we (a) provide a general overview of some of the early scholarly writing on sport that pre-dated the subdiscipline, (b) discuss how the field emerged within and between physical education and sociology, (c) highlight the social significance of sport in Aotearoa New Zealand, before (d) tracing the past and present state of the sociology of sport in this country, and finally (e) consider the future challenges facing the field both globally and locally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]