Brad Millington
Biographic Data
| ID | 3620132 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brad Millington |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brad |
| FAMILY NAME | Millington |
| SIGNATURE | MILLINGTON B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bath |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0530-1860 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 172 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1930 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
It is an Incredibly Painstaking, Time-Taking Domain to Work in”
This article utilizes empirical insight to critically reflect on the employment and life experiences of data workers in a high-performance environment. The context under study is that of elite sport and the role of performance analyst – a specialist field comprising the use of technology and data in the process of improving sport performance outcomes. Using in-depth semi-structured interviews, the social and organizational environment encompassin…
Prometheus on the tee
Sport and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the capacity to deliver generative, complex, and powerful functions and decisions. Sport offers a unique site for AI development and implementation, yet the sociological significance of AI in sport remains understudied. We consider sport-based AI applications en route to describing the promise of AI in sport in four ways: (a) the promise of supercharged data parsing at scale, (b) the promise of supercharged precis…
What Is Lost so That Other Things Can Be Sustained
This article introduces sociological conceptions of loss to literature on sport to assess the “life” and “death” of golf courses—as well as the “afterlife” of golf terrain once golf courses close. As indicated by the quotation from Rebecca Elliott’s writing (2018) in our title, a loss framing differs from the concept of sustainability by considering practices that might be discarded to serve better environmental futures. We consider loss vis-à-vi…
Bicycles and the Potential of Unstructured Sport for Development and Peace
Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) continues to grow, both in research and practice. Recently, researchers have considered the merits of unstructured sport as a way of realizing sport's benefits while circumnavigating its perceived problematic elements. This article reports findings from research on 'Bicycles for Development' (BFD) – a movement that trades on bicycle access as a way of achieving development objectives. We draw from interviews …
The bike breaks down. What are they going to do?' Actor-networks and the Bicycles for Development movement
This article reports on an empirical study of 'Bicycles for Development' (BFD) - a nascent movement whereby used bicycles are collected (often in the global North) and distributed in development contexts (often in the global South) with the aim of achieving a range of positive social outcomes (e.g. access to education). Drawing from interviews ( n = 32) with participants from 19 BFD organizations, and informed by actor-network theory (ANT), the a…
Re-thinking Leisure in a Digital Age
Fitness, Technology and Society
The fitness industry is experiencing a new boom characterized by the proliferation of interactive and customizable technology, from exercise-themed video games to smartphone apps to wearable fitness trackers. This new technology presents the possibility of boundless self-tracking, generating highly personalized data for self-assessment and for sharing among friends. While this may be beneficial – for example, in encouraging physical activity – th…
Health
An introduction is presented for an article in the issue on a social network analysis of financial relationships connected to the development of health and fitness mobile apps
Contested terrain and terrain that contests
This article focuses on the case of Trump International Golf Links, Scotland (TIGLS), a golf course in Aberdeenshire that opened in 2012 after a lengthy and contentious application and development phase. Herein, we draw from a larger study of golf and the environment with the aim of assessing both the TIGLS case in itself and its implications for the study of sport/physical culture in general. The TIGLS case on the one hand provides an empirical …
Media research
In this chapter we critically examine the practice of studying sport and exercise media. We do so by first asking what (sport) media research is in the first place – an important question in a time of proliferating technologies for representing sporting experience. We then ask why one would study sport and exercise media. This is a complex question too, and one that we answer by pointing to the role of media in shaping social norms and impacting …
Ecological Modernization and the Olympics
Ecological modernization refers to the idea that capitalist-driven scientific and technological advancements can not only attend to the world’s pending environmental crises, but even lead to ecological improvement, thus allowing sustainability and consumption to continue in concert. In this paper, we examine ecological modernization at the confluence of environmentalism, international development and global sport. Through an analysis of golf and …
Video games and the political and cultural economies of health-entertainment
Focusing mainly on the company Nintendo, this paper examines the political economic and cultural forces underpinning the video game industry's recent interest in merging entertainment and health promotion. This is a trend best exemplified in sexagenarian actress Helen Mirren's endorsement of Nintendo's fitness-themed game Wii Fit Plus. In one sense, 'health-entertainment' is deemed a product of the coercive laws of competition that impress the ne…
(Re-)thinking digital leisure
Re-)Thinking Digitised Leisure4D ibabyscans, wearable baby gro's/monitors incorporating movement based technologies and provide real-time video on your iPhone while your baby sleeps, speak to a dazzling assemblage of digital technologies, products, commodities, platforms, materialities and virtualities that enculturate, envelop, and are embodied on/in the contemporary corporeality of young people, almost from conception.Play-commodified in the fo…
Fit for prosumption
This article advances the claim that a new ‘fitness boom’ has arrived, one marked by the proliferation of devices such as wearable fitness trackers. The first fitness boom of the 1970s/1980s was characterized by the heightened availability of fitness ‘tools’ and the supposition that pursuing a ‘fit’ lifestyle was tantamount to responsible living. The new era in fitness intensifies foregoing fitness trends, rather than departing from them complete…
An unexceptional exception
This paper features a critical examination of recent legislation banning cosmetic pesticide applications in the province of Ontario, Canada. It focuses in particular on the exemption of golf courses from the province's Cosmetic Pesticides Ban Act of 2009. Drawing from a wide range of materials, the authors first contextualize Ontario's recent law through an overview of the historical development of pre- and post-market pesticide regulation in Can…
Sport and Environmentalism
This chapter examines the perspectives and activities of a relatively new and extremely influential &s;breed&s; of environmentalist: sport management environmentalist (SME). It discusses some of the environmental strategies privileged and practiced by SMEs and the seldom mentioned but very real problems with these practices. The chapter aims to define the term ‘post-politics’ and explains why this term is helpful for describing how SMEs have resp…
Quantify the Invisible’
This paper contributes to the literature on the phenomenon termed mHealth through a critical examination of wearable posture-tracking technologies. The paper specifically reports on a qualitative document analysis of promotional materials for three devices, carried out with the aim of assessing their mode of operation, the logic underpinning their development and their purported benefits for users. Findings initially highlight how Lumo Lift and L…
Exergaming in retirement centres and the integration of media and physical literacies
The Datafication of Everything’
This paper explores the articulations of sport and ‘Big Data’—an important though to date understudied topic. That we have arrived at an ‘Age of Big Data’ is an increasingly accepted premise: the proliferation of tracking technologies, combined with the desire to record/monitor human activity, has radically amplified the volume and variety of data in circulation, as well as the velocity at which data move. Herein, we take initial steps toward add…
Golf and the environmental politics of modernization
Amusing Ourselves to Life
Against the common perception that media consumption engenders inactivity, in recent years the technology sector has developed an extensive catalogue of games for bodily and cognitive exercise. Despite their popularity, however, and despite their potential ability to affect perceptions and experiences of health and fitness, there remains a shortage of academic research on video games of this kind. Drawing from earlier studies, the central contrib…
Super Intentions
This article examines the golf industry's evolving responses to environment-related problems since the mid-1960s. Drawing from an analysis of golf superintendent trade publications, the article shows how golf industry members initially denied that their work could have negative impacts, but eventually acknowledged potential golf-related environmental problems—and ultimately positioned themselves as environmental leaders through various forms of p…
Use it or lose it
This paper reports findings from a qualitative study of promotional websites for three prominent ‘brain games’ – that is, consumer technologies designed to train and improve the brain through challenging cognitive exercises. The study was specifically designed to critically examine how brain training is promoted as a viable endeavour and how brain games are made to intervene in cognitive functioning. The analysis of online promotion revealed thre…
Renovating ethnic identity onRestaurant Makeover
Food can be a novel way of understanding and explaining some of the pointed paradoxes of multiculturalism and the ‘management’ of ethnicity. Many studies of culinary culture are attentive to the exoticization of ethnicity in and through food media, which now includes a vertiginous array of cookbooks, travel literature, magazines and, most important for our purposes here, television series. Among various programs is Restaurant Makeover, a popular …
(Re-)thinking digital leisure
Re-)Thinking Digitised Leisure4D ibabyscans, wearable baby gro's/monitors incorporating movement based technologies and provide real-time video on your iPhone while your baby sleeps, speak to a dazzling assemblage of digital technologies, products, commodities, platforms, materialities and virtualities that enculturate, envelop, and are embodied on/in the contemporary corporeality of young people, almost from conception.Play-commodified in the fo…
The Datafication of Everything’
This paper explores the articulations of sport and ‘Big Data’—an important though to date understudied topic. That we have arrived at an ‘Age of Big Data’ is an increasingly accepted premise: the proliferation of tracking technologies, combined with the desire to record/monitor human activity, has radically amplified the volume and variety of data in circulation, as well as the velocity at which data move. Herein, we take initial steps toward add…
Wii has never been modern
This article considers the role of 'active' video games — specifically the Nintendo 'Wii' — as technologies that foster control over corporeality. New media scholars have examined the politics of embodiment and hybridity as they relate to video games, yet have paid limited attention to the ways in which new gaming technologies might contribute to contemporary systems of 'government', or what Foucault calls the 'conduct of conduct'. Borrowing from…
Representing the Female Pugilist
Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby won five Academy Awards but also came under attack from female boxers and disability activists. Ostensibly a drama about a tenacious woman’s quest to become a professional fighter and the male coach who assists her, Million Dollar Baby appears to insert a radical portrayal of femininity, female athleticism, and power into the male-dominated genre of boxing films and, more generally, a media that has been large…
Ecological Modernization and the Olympics
Ecological modernization refers to the idea that capitalist-driven scientific and technological advancements can not only attend to the world’s pending environmental crises, but even lead to ecological improvement, thus allowing sustainability and consumption to continue in concert. In this paper, we examine ecological modernization at the confluence of environmentalism, international development and global sport. Through an analysis of golf and …
Amusing Ourselves to Life
Against the common perception that media consumption engenders inactivity, in recent years the technology sector has developed an extensive catalogue of games for bodily and cognitive exercise. Despite their popularity, however, and despite their potential ability to affect perceptions and experiences of health and fitness, there remains a shortage of academic research on video games of this kind. Drawing from earlier studies, the central contrib…
Media Consumption and the Contexts of Physical Culture
In this paper we argue that sport media research would be enhanced by: (a) engagement with the audience research tradition, including “third generation” audience studies that emphasize relationships between viewer interpretations of media and everyday social practices; and (b) the adoption of multimethod research approaches that are sensitive to contradictions and complexities that exist in media consumption. To support this argument, we reflect …
Fit for prosumption
This article advances the claim that a new ‘fitness boom’ has arrived, one marked by the proliferation of devices such as wearable fitness trackers. The first fitness boom of the 1970s/1980s was characterized by the heightened availability of fitness ‘tools’ and the supposition that pursuing a ‘fit’ lifestyle was tantamount to responsible living. The new era in fitness intensifies foregoing fitness trends, rather than departing from them complete…
Contested terrain and terrain that contests
This article focuses on the case of Trump International Golf Links, Scotland (TIGLS), a golf course in Aberdeenshire that opened in 2012 after a lengthy and contentious application and development phase. Herein, we draw from a larger study of golf and the environment with the aim of assessing both the TIGLS case in itself and its implications for the study of sport/physical culture in general. The TIGLS case on the one hand provides an empirical …
An unexceptional exception
This paper features a critical examination of recent legislation banning cosmetic pesticide applications in the province of Ontario, Canada. It focuses in particular on the exemption of golf courses from the province's Cosmetic Pesticides Ban Act of 2009. Drawing from a wide range of materials, the authors first contextualize Ontario's recent law through an overview of the historical development of pre- and post-market pesticide regulation in Can…
Use it or lose it
This paper reports findings from a qualitative study of promotional websites for three prominent ‘brain games’ – that is, consumer technologies designed to train and improve the brain through challenging cognitive exercises. The study was specifically designed to critically examine how brain training is promoted as a viable endeavour and how brain games are made to intervene in cognitive functioning. The analysis of online promotion revealed thre…
The bike breaks down. What are they going to do?' Actor-networks and the Bicycles for Development movement
This article reports on an empirical study of 'Bicycles for Development' (BFD) - a nascent movement whereby used bicycles are collected (often in the global North) and distributed in development contexts (often in the global South) with the aim of achieving a range of positive social outcomes (e.g. access to education). Drawing from interviews ( n = 32) with participants from 19 BFD organizations, and informed by actor-network theory (ANT), the a…
Video games and the political and cultural economies of health-entertainment
Focusing mainly on the company Nintendo, this paper examines the political economic and cultural forces underpinning the video game industry's recent interest in merging entertainment and health promotion. This is a trend best exemplified in sexagenarian actress Helen Mirren's endorsement of Nintendo's fitness-themed game Wii Fit Plus. In one sense, 'health-entertainment' is deemed a product of the coercive laws of competition that impress the ne…
Golf and the environmental politics of modernization
Making Chinese-Canadian masculinities in Vancouver's physical education curriculum
Our paper illustrates how males of Chinese descent in British Columbia (BC) have historically been victims of overt and subtle forms of discrimination, and describes how racism is and was integrally linked to notions of class, gender and the body. Highlighted in our historical overview are issues around race and masculinity for Chinese males as they existed (and still exist) in the BC educational system, especially in sport-related and physical e…
What Is Lost so That Other Things Can Be Sustained
This article introduces sociological conceptions of loss to literature on sport to assess the “life” and “death” of golf courses—as well as the “afterlife” of golf terrain once golf courses close. As indicated by the quotation from Rebecca Elliott’s writing (2018) in our title, a loss framing differs from the concept of sustainability by considering practices that might be discarded to serve better environmental futures. We consider loss vis-à-vi…
Bicycles and the Potential of Unstructured Sport for Development and Peace
Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) continues to grow, both in research and practice. Recently, researchers have considered the merits of unstructured sport as a way of realizing sport's benefits while circumnavigating its perceived problematic elements. This article reports findings from research on 'Bicycles for Development' (BFD) – a movement that trades on bicycle access as a way of achieving development objectives. We draw from interviews …
Exergaming in retirement centres and the integration of media and physical literacies
Renovating ethnic identity onRestaurant Makeover
Food can be a novel way of understanding and explaining some of the pointed paradoxes of multiculturalism and the ‘management’ of ethnicity. Many studies of culinary culture are attentive to the exoticization of ethnicity in and through food media, which now includes a vertiginous array of cookbooks, travel literature, magazines and, most important for our purposes here, television series. Among various programs is Restaurant Makeover, a popular …
Sport and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the capacity to deliver generative, complex, and powerful functions and decisions. Sport offers a unique site for AI development and implementation, yet the sociological significance of AI in sport remains understudied. We consider sport-based AI applications en route to describing the promise of AI in sport in four ways: (a) the promise of supercharged data parsing at scale, (b) the promise of supercharged precis…
Health
An introduction is presented for an article in the issue on a social network analysis of financial relationships connected to the development of health and fitness mobile apps
Context Masculinities
This article reports findings from a qualitative case study undertaken at a Vancouver high school designed to examine the role of media and physical education (PE) in shaping how young males ( n = 36) understand and practice gender. The authors were specifically concerned with developing a nuanced understanding of how interpretations of masculinity relate to performances of masculinity and how interpretations and performances vary depending on so…
Glacial Topography and Agriculture in Central Massachusetts
T nH IS paper is the result of horticultural studies made in the town of Stow, Massachussetts, in the summers of 1928 and 1929. The region is more or less typical of the drumlin area of the middle eastern part of the State. The reaction of agriculture to physiographic background is about as marked as will be found in any part of the region. This is most clearly exemplified in the neighborhood of Birch Hill, about one mile south of Stow Center and…
Representing the Female Pugilist
Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby won five Academy Awards but also came under attack from female boxers and disability activists. Ostensibly a drama about a tenacious woman’s quest to become a professional fighter and the male coach who assists her, Million Dollar Baby appears to insert a radical portrayal of femininity, female athleticism, and power into the male-dominated genre of boxing films and, more generally, a media that has been large…
Making Chinese-Canadian masculinities in Vancouver's physical education curriculum
Our paper illustrates how males of Chinese descent in British Columbia (BC) have historically been victims of overt and subtle forms of discrimination, and describes how racism is and was integrally linked to notions of class, gender and the body. Highlighted in our historical overview are issues around race and masculinity for Chinese males as they existed (and still exist) in the BC educational system, especially in sport-related and physical e…
Wii has never been modern
This article considers the role of 'active' video games — specifically the Nintendo 'Wii' — as technologies that foster control over corporeality. New media scholars have examined the politics of embodiment and hybridity as they relate to video games, yet have paid limited attention to the ways in which new gaming technologies might contribute to contemporary systems of 'government', or what Foucault calls the 'conduct of conduct'. Borrowing from…
Media Consumption and the Contexts of Physical Culture
In this paper we argue that sport media research would be enhanced by: (a) engagement with the audience research tradition, including “third generation” audience studies that emphasize relationships between viewer interpretations of media and everyday social practices; and (b) the adoption of multimethod research approaches that are sensitive to contradictions and complexities that exist in media consumption. To support this argument, we reflect …
Context Masculinities
This article reports findings from a qualitative case study undertaken at a Vancouver high school designed to examine the role of media and physical education (PE) in shaping how young males ( n = 36) understand and practice gender. The authors were specifically concerned with developing a nuanced understanding of how interpretations of masculinity relate to performances of masculinity and how interpretations and performances vary depending on so…
Renovating ethnic identity onRestaurant Makeover
Food can be a novel way of understanding and explaining some of the pointed paradoxes of multiculturalism and the ‘management’ of ethnicity. Many studies of culinary culture are attentive to the exoticization of ethnicity in and through food media, which now includes a vertiginous array of cookbooks, travel literature, magazines and, most important for our purposes here, television series. Among various programs is Restaurant Makeover, a popular …
Use it or lose it
This paper reports findings from a qualitative study of promotional websites for three prominent ‘brain games’ – that is, consumer technologies designed to train and improve the brain through challenging cognitive exercises. The study was specifically designed to critically examine how brain training is promoted as a viable endeavour and how brain games are made to intervene in cognitive functioning. The analysis of online promotion revealed thre…
Super Intentions
This article examines the golf industry's evolving responses to environment-related problems since the mid-1960s. Drawing from an analysis of golf superintendent trade publications, the article shows how golf industry members initially denied that their work could have negative impacts, but eventually acknowledged potential golf-related environmental problems—and ultimately positioned themselves as environmental leaders through various forms of p…
Amusing Ourselves to Life
Against the common perception that media consumption engenders inactivity, in recent years the technology sector has developed an extensive catalogue of games for bodily and cognitive exercise. Despite their popularity, however, and despite their potential ability to affect perceptions and experiences of health and fitness, there remains a shortage of academic research on video games of this kind. Drawing from earlier studies, the central contrib…
Sport and Environmentalism
This chapter examines the perspectives and activities of a relatively new and extremely influential &s;breed&s; of environmentalist: sport management environmentalist (SME). It discusses some of the environmental strategies privileged and practiced by SMEs and the seldom mentioned but very real problems with these practices. The chapter aims to define the term ‘post-politics’ and explains why this term is helpful for describing how SMEs have resp…
Quantify the Invisible’
This paper contributes to the literature on the phenomenon termed mHealth through a critical examination of wearable posture-tracking technologies. The paper specifically reports on a qualitative document analysis of promotional materials for three devices, carried out with the aim of assessing their mode of operation, the logic underpinning their development and their purported benefits for users. Findings initially highlight how Lumo Lift and L…
Exergaming in retirement centres and the integration of media and physical literacies
The Datafication of Everything’
This paper explores the articulations of sport and ‘Big Data’—an important though to date understudied topic. That we have arrived at an ‘Age of Big Data’ is an increasingly accepted premise: the proliferation of tracking technologies, combined with the desire to record/monitor human activity, has radically amplified the volume and variety of data in circulation, as well as the velocity at which data move. Herein, we take initial steps toward add…
Golf and the environmental politics of modernization
Media research
In this chapter we critically examine the practice of studying sport and exercise media. We do so by first asking what (sport) media research is in the first place – an important question in a time of proliferating technologies for representing sporting experience. We then ask why one would study sport and exercise media. This is a complex question too, and one that we answer by pointing to the role of media in shaping social norms and impacting …
Ecological Modernization and the Olympics
Ecological modernization refers to the idea that capitalist-driven scientific and technological advancements can not only attend to the world’s pending environmental crises, but even lead to ecological improvement, thus allowing sustainability and consumption to continue in concert. In this paper, we examine ecological modernization at the confluence of environmentalism, international development and global sport. Through an analysis of golf and …
Video games and the political and cultural economies of health-entertainment
Focusing mainly on the company Nintendo, this paper examines the political economic and cultural forces underpinning the video game industry's recent interest in merging entertainment and health promotion. This is a trend best exemplified in sexagenarian actress Helen Mirren's endorsement of Nintendo's fitness-themed game Wii Fit Plus. In one sense, 'health-entertainment' is deemed a product of the coercive laws of competition that impress the ne…
(Re-)thinking digital leisure
Re-)Thinking Digitised Leisure4D ibabyscans, wearable baby gro's/monitors incorporating movement based technologies and provide real-time video on your iPhone while your baby sleeps, speak to a dazzling assemblage of digital technologies, products, commodities, platforms, materialities and virtualities that enculturate, envelop, and are embodied on/in the contemporary corporeality of young people, almost from conception.Play-commodified in the fo…
Fit for prosumption
This article advances the claim that a new ‘fitness boom’ has arrived, one marked by the proliferation of devices such as wearable fitness trackers. The first fitness boom of the 1970s/1980s was characterized by the heightened availability of fitness ‘tools’ and the supposition that pursuing a ‘fit’ lifestyle was tantamount to responsible living. The new era in fitness intensifies foregoing fitness trends, rather than departing from them complete…
An unexceptional exception
This paper features a critical examination of recent legislation banning cosmetic pesticide applications in the province of Ontario, Canada. It focuses in particular on the exemption of golf courses from the province's Cosmetic Pesticides Ban Act of 2009. Drawing from a wide range of materials, the authors first contextualize Ontario's recent law through an overview of the historical development of pre- and post-market pesticide regulation in Can…
Fitness, Technology and Society
The fitness industry is experiencing a new boom characterized by the proliferation of interactive and customizable technology, from exercise-themed video games to smartphone apps to wearable fitness trackers. This new technology presents the possibility of boundless self-tracking, generating highly personalized data for self-assessment and for sharing among friends. While this may be beneficial – for example, in encouraging physical activity – th…
Health
An introduction is presented for an article in the issue on a social network analysis of financial relationships connected to the development of health and fitness mobile apps
Contested terrain and terrain that contests
This article focuses on the case of Trump International Golf Links, Scotland (TIGLS), a golf course in Aberdeenshire that opened in 2012 after a lengthy and contentious application and development phase. Herein, we draw from a larger study of golf and the environment with the aim of assessing both the TIGLS case in itself and its implications for the study of sport/physical culture in general. The TIGLS case on the one hand provides an empirical …
Re-thinking Leisure in a Digital Age
Sociology (24 works) · Political science (21 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (13 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts (11 works) · Public relations (10 works) · Sports, Gender, and Society (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Social science (8 works)