scholarly journals The social patterning of sport: Regular sports participation and stratification in Canada

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Gemar

The participation in different forms of leisure has often been ascribed the power to reflect and reproduce social inequalities. While some came before, this intellectual endeavor increased substantially with the seminal work of Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction. While Bourdieu’s writings on culture did not neglect sports, sport is often neglected in subsequent studies of culture. Most of the subsequent theoretical and empirical work on culture has focused upon music and the arts, many also arguing that Bourdieu’s work is now dated. This paper seeks to provide an updated and comprehensive re-examining of sports participation. For these investigations, I use large-scale survey data and various statistical methods to test the relevance of the Pierre Bourdieu’s foundational theories and explain these patterns. The findings show direct sports participation relying primarily on dispositions towards the body which are stratified by education and income, especially for the most elite sports. These results therefore highlight the contemporary relevance of Bourdieu’s theories of the relationship between sports, social class, and the stratification thereof.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Gemar

The consumption of culture has often been ascribed the power to reflect and reproduce social inequalities. However, most work in this area has focused upon music and the arts. Sport is an important element of culture that can and should be studied in a similar fashion as others (Bourdieu, 1978). This thesis thus seeks to bring the theoretical frameworks and analytical tools of sociologies of culture further into the realm of sport. Substantively, this thesis provides an updated and comprehensive re-examining of the relationship between direct sports participation and social stratification in the relatively unexplored national context of Canada. I also innovatively provide an examination of the relationship between social stratification and professional sports consumption. Finally, this thesis fills a gap in the literature by analysing where the consumption of sport fits within broader cultural lifestyles. For these investigations, I use large-scale survey data and various statistical methods to test the foundational theories of Pierre Bourdieu, the ‘omnivore’ thesis, and individualisation arguments of social action to explain these patterns. The findings show direct sports participation relying primarily on dispositions towards the body which are stratified by education and income, especially for the most elite sports. They also show the two most selective omnivorous profiles for professional sport, rather than the most omnivorous, with the highest levels of education and income. This thesis thus sheds doubt on the omnivore thesis within sport, while also showing elements of individualisation regarding age and sex differentiation in consumption. Sports consumption in Canada thus cuts across all three theories of the relation between socio-economic position and sport. These more delimitated consumption profiles contrast with the general adherence to the omnivore thesis within broader cultural lifestyles. This therefore suggests that sport may be a cultural domain where general omnivores practise more distinctive consumption.


2002 ◽  
Vol 50 (2_suppl) ◽  
pp. 10-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Shilling

The sociology of emotions is an established specialism within the discipline and its products have become increasingly visible parts of the sociological landscape since the late 1970s. This specialism has also demonstrated, at least to its own satisfaction, the importance of emotions for social action and order, and for those related moral issues concerned with self-determined and other-oriented action. Paradoxically, however, the relationship between the sociology of emotions and mainstream sociology remains relatively cool. Emotional issues are still portrayed in many general accounts of the discipline as a luxurious curiosity that properly resides on the outer reaches of the sociological imagination. Just as unfortunately, certain sociologists of emotions have accused the foundations of the discipline of neglecting emotional issues, and have sometimes excluded classical theorists from their discussions. This chapter argues that emotional phenomena occupy an important place in sociology's heritage which has yet to be explicated fully by the sub-discipline. The subject of emotions, like the closely related subject of the body, may fade from various classical writings. Nevertheless, the major traditions of sociological theory developed particular orientations towards the social and moral dimensions of emotional phenomena. I begin by examining the relevance of emotions to the context out of which the discipline emerged, and then focus on how the major theorists of order (Comte and Durkheim) and (inter)action (Simmel and Weber) conceptualized emotional phenomena. The chapter concludes with a brief assessment of Parsons's contribution, and suggests that his analysis of the religious foundations of instrumental activism provides a provocative account of the relationship between values, emotions and personality that can usefully be built on.


Author(s):  
Amal Adel Abdrabo

There is a new trend taking place in Egypt over the last decades that is attempting to establish a new culture of development arguing for a knowledge-based development of Egyptian society. Consequently, Egyptian society has begun to witness the emergence of different policies, national strategies, and mega development projects that try to translate these policies into reality. But the question that remains is what type of knowledge, and in which context, should be developed? In this vein, this research serves two purposes. First, it contests the notion of knowledge while using a new method of inquiry that creates an opening for an alternative-more-humanized sociology that opposes the dominant sociological perspective that studies people as quantitative objects. The research uses institutional ethnography to provide new-actor-related insights and interpretations while exploring the social momentum within Egyptian society. Second, the research seeks to investigate the relationship between the desire to transform Egypt into a knowledge-based society through the knowledge precincts projects, following the global agenda, and the creation of a political, social, and cultural environment that allows knowledge to thrive, leading to more social justice and equity. In the end, the research asks: What is the definition of ‘knowledge' provided by the Egyptian government through its different developmental policies? How does it function inside the knowledge precincts projects? It also asks: Does Egypt's commitment to large scale programs through knowledge precincts reveal an authoritarian inclination?


Author(s):  
Richard Swedberg

This chapter examines the role of imagination and the arts in helping social scientists to theorize well. However deep one's basic knowledge of social theory is, and however many concepts, mechanisms, and theories one knows, unless this knowledge is used in an imaginative way, the result will be dull and noncreative. A good research topic should among other things operate as an analogon—that is, it should be able to set off the theoretical imagination of the social scientist. Then, when a social scientist writes, he or she may want to write in such a way that the reader's theoretical imagination is stirred. Besides imagination, the chapter also discusses the relationship of social theory to art. There are a number of reason for this, including the fact that in modern society, art is perceived as the height of imagination and creativity.


2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 68-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J Roulet

Previous research has found that a positive relationship exists between favourable perception of a firm and employees’ job satisfaction: the more positively an organization is perceived, the happier are its workers. However, the current literature has overlooked the consequences of a negative corporate image or disapproval of organizations. Building on the concept of organizational identification and the social identity literature, we fill in this gap and counterintuitively argue that employees are more likely to identify and align with their organizations when it faces illegitimate criticism. We test our hypotheses on a large-scale survey collected in France and find that perception of disapproval of an organization has indeed an adverse effect on job satisfaction. However, if employees perceive criticism as illegitimate, job satisfaction is positively impacted. This study suggests the existence of micro-level social identity reactions in case of unjustified disapprobation: employees stick together and hold the line against criticism, strengthening the collective identity and adding positive emotional value to the work experience.


2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 470-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter McNamara ◽  
Federica Pazzaglia ◽  
Karan Sonpar

We examine the resource mobilization efforts undertaken by a social venture to organize the 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games and bring about a change in social attitudes towards the cause of learning and intellectual disabilities. In contrast to previously advanced views of social ventures as powerless actors, we find instead that they are able to leverage the visibility afforded by large-scale events to create positions of mutual dependence, which allow them to access broad support bases and assert themselves in relationships with external parties. Specifically, we find that resource mobilization involves six distinct tactics rooted in the softer forms of power, namely, attraction and inducement. The use of these soft-power tactics depends upon the social venture’s goal at different moments of the relationship with its partners and the level of support available from each external party. Our elaborated theory highlights both the role and limitations of soft power in mobilizing resources and managing relationships.


2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Pawlowski ◽  
Ute Schüttoff ◽  
Paul Downward ◽  
Michael Lechner

In contrast to the popular policy claim that sport might serve as vehicle to meet the Millennium Development Goals, empirical evidence based on large-scale survey data is largely missing. We use panel data based on a cohort of children and employ propensity score matching to identify the effects of sports participation on child development in Peru. Our findings suggest that participation in a sports group has positive impacts on subjective health and a measure of social capital. However, and in contrast to developed countries, we find no statistically significant effects on well-being and human capital formation.


Nirmana ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 106-120
Author(s):  
Natalia Widiasari

Advertising plays an important role in narrating the social side of a company which is often referred to as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Corporate social campaigns are often seen as dubious, however, audiences as individuals interpret advertisements based on their values and experiences. TBSI (The Body Shop Indonesia) advertisements were conceptualized and analyzed using narrative transportation. Interviews are conducted with nine informants from various backgrounds. The results of the study are described in themes, namely (1) insight, (2) the relationship between CSR messages and the participant's value system, and (3) narrative responses to CSR advertisements. The result of the study states that advertising does not necessarily make the value from a social issue to be embedded or instilled in someone. Narrative and commitment to these values depend on the individual, person by person.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Lardy ◽  

This article proposes to reflect on models of documentary staging of sensory disability in open and closed environments. Based on an anthropology of the sensitive, the analysis will focus on the works of Frederick Wiseman and Werner Herzog in particular. The analysis tools of visual anthropology will allow us to examine the scenic biases and the singularity of the authors’ views on disability as well as the variety of learning methods used by the people filmed. We will focus on the description of the body in a situation of disability, on the relationship between the able-bodied and the disabled, as well as on the significant function that the social, medical and educational context can have in the situations described.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Guenther Carlos Feitosa De Almeida

The body becomes the object of intense study and investigations with the modernity. But he was not the object of indifference. Even with the denial of the bodily pleasures that the average age undertook, the body was object of attention and normalization, being understood in a double meaning, the sacred and the profane. The relation body and nature gains different contours with the birth of modern science, giving rise to new dualities, between matter and spirit or psyche. Such dualities have produced enduring and persistent meanings in bodily practices and body conceptions. Physical Education as an area of knowledge and intervention that has in the body culture its privileged object, inherits and re-signifies such conceptions, reproducing or breaking with dualistic practices and understandings of the relation body and nature. This essay seeks to discuss the relationships between body and nature as well as its implications for the formation of the academic and professional field of Physical Education. We seek to reflect on the social-historical constructions on the body, especially those centered on biological aspects. We understand that the relationship body nature is an important point of understanding the uniqueness and continuities on the conceptions of body. In this way we undertake a qualitative, historical and sociological analysis centered on authors who elucidate these questions, such as: Corbin, Courtine e Vigarello (2010), Gélis (2010), Suassuna et al. (2005), Vaz (1999), Csordas (2008) and Le Breton (2003). Based on the elements discussed by the authors, we identify ruptures and continuities in relation to conceptions and practices with the body, remaining a desire for the split between body and spirit/mind.


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