A Bairner
Biographic Data
| ID | 9053 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Bairner |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Bairner |
| SIGNATURE | BAIRNER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Loughborough University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3867-9728 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 94 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 350 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 94 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Women’s Volleyball and Politics: China’s National Team Victories in 1982 and 1984
In 1982 and 1984, the Chinese national women’s volleyball team secured consecutive titles at two prestigious international tournaments: the FIVB Women’s World Championship and the Summer Olympics. During the subsequent celebrations, the Chinese authorities strategically linked the accomplishments of the 12th CCP National Congress and the state-led aspiration of positioning China as a strong nation to the team’s victories. This article investigate…
The evolution of China's youth sport policies—a systematic analysis based on national policy texts 2013–2023
Youth sports constitute a significant global policy concern, with governments commonly employing policy interventions to guide their development. Understanding how national priorities within youth sport evolve over time is essential for appreciating the broader trajectory of youth development governance. Drawing on incrementalism theory, this study employs bibliometric analysis, content analysis, and social network analysis to examine the evoluti…
‘National Warriors’ and ‘Solo Celebrity’: Gender and Sport Nationalism in Media Representations of Chinese Women’s Volleyball and Li Na
Media play a central role in translating athletic success into national meaning, yet gendered dynamics of sport nationalism remain underexamined. Although women have achieved high visibility in Chinese elite sport, differences in their national representation are insufficiently explored. Drawing on discourse analysis of news headlines and selected national media reports published within one week of major victories, this article examines portrayal…
From the school gym to adulthood: Gendered pathways of physical education and post-divorce physical activity in China
Chinese scholarship underexamines how gender intersects with health and physical education (HPE) curricula and girls’ PE experiences — particularly in shaping physical activity (PA) participation across the lifespan. Western research shows that single mothers exhibit lower PA levels and higher health-risk levels than married mothers do, yet research investigating Chinese single mothers’ PA is particularly sparse despite a surging divorce rate. Th…
The Forty-Three Year History of Taipei Baseball Stadium, 1957–2000
Although baseball has been Taiwan’s national sport since the Japanese colonial period, Taipei Baseball Stadium was the only proper stadium during the post-war baseball development. Nevertheless, Taiwan’s political situation and the authorities’ attitude towards baseball reflected the important and complex relationship between politics and sports on the island. Indeed, the relationship between baseball, government and society has seriously influen…
The redefinition of a Chinese sports hero’s public image: Evidence from the reactions on Chinese social media to Sun Yang’s international trial
This study traces the metamorphosis of Chinese Olympic swimming champion Sun Yang’s public image from a national sports hero to an ordinary individual on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. To explore the interplay between national identity construction and mediated discursive (de-)heroization of athletes, we employ discourse theories and a self-constructed corpus to analyze popular Weibo posts and follow-up comments during and after Sun Yan…
Football, diaspora, and Turkish Cypriot identity in London
This study aims to understand and explain the impact of football on both diaspora formation and the construction/reproduction of ethno-national identities, focusing on constructionist practices in this process. In this context, an ethnographic field study was conducted for six months in an amateur football league established by Turkish Cypriots in London, England. The theoretical framework is modelled on the concept of diaspora proposed by Roger …
Organizational and personal barriers to physical activity: An intersectional analysis of divorced single mothers in China’s IT and Internet industries
Global gender disparities have been identified in physical activity (PA) with women, particularly single mothers, experiencing a higher physical inactivity rate than men, thus facing higher health risks. Recent research discovered that workplace culture produced barriers to women’s PA participation. The pervasive overtime culture, particularly in China’s IT/Internet industries, is reported as a main source of stress for professional women. Divorc…
China, Havelange, and the 1991 Fifa Women’s World Cup
Becoming a Chinese football fan: An examination of the influence of national and local identities on the development of Chinese football fandom
The article explores how national and local identities influence Chinese football fandom. Previous research has failed to provide detailed analysis about how these two social identities influence the process of fans’ self-identification. This study uses fans of Henan Jianye Football Club and Shenzhen Football Club because they can typically represent native and internal immigrant fans in China as examples to fill the knowledge gap. By combining t…
National identities, European identity and cosmopolitanism: The case of female golf fans at the 2019 Solheim Cup
The aim of this paper is to consider the relationship between sport and identity formation by examining testimonies of 24 British women who attended the Solheim Cup golf tournament in 2019 to support a transnational team made up of professional European women players. Relatively little is known about the effects of transnational sports teams on identity formation, not least because such teams are themselves rare. The Solheim Cup, contested by tea…
Citizenship without identity? Instrumentalism, nationalism and naturalization in Chinese men's football
Representing the nation in sports mega events has become a highly contested issue with the acceleration of the transnational movement of athletes. This research has examined Chinese people's attitudes to the naturalization of football players. The article discusses the findings in the context of the qualifying stages for the 2022 FIFA Men's World Cup by presenting and analysing data collected from semi-structured interviews and social media extra…
Didn’t know she could shout that loud’: The performance of fandom among women followers of women’s golf
While a growing body of evidence exists around women fans of men’s sport, less is known about women fans’ perspectives and identities in relation to women’s sport, and what is known tends to focus on homogenous representations of sports fans, rather than a diversity of fan types and follower styles. Building on the authors’ previous appraisals of the Solheim Cup – the biggest event in women’s golf – this paper examines fan performances of women a…
A Beautiful Game: Interpreting Football Videogame Experiences
The purpose of this study is to explore football videogame playing experiences using a videogame esthetic that draws upon the MDA (mechanics–dynamics–esthetics) framework. In accordance with MDA, videogame esthetics comprises eight aspects—sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression, and submission—derived from game-playing experiences. As a means of collecting and interpreting data, semi-structured interviews and …
From Old Tom Morris to Andy Murray: An examination of the Scottishness of Scotland's sporting celebrities
This paper examines the concept of the sports celebrity in the context of Scotland with a specific focus on the impact of localised national discourses on their formation. Relatively few Scottish athletes have become celebrities perhaps because traditional Scottish cultural values have militated against the cultural elevation even of the most successful individuals. Having explained the cultural context, the paper proceeds to consider the role of…
Responder or promoter? investigating the role of nation-state in globalization: The case of China's strategies in the global wushu movement
This study examines how wushu, as a folk sport in China, has been promoted globally by a nation-state. Identifying the Global Wushu Movement (GWM) as an East-to-West diffusion and a political and cultural phenomenon, our analytical framework is based on that of globalization as proposed by Houlihan (1994 , 2016 ) and Held et al. (1999) . Our particular focus is on the 'nation-state', notably its role in activating the GWM and whether it is a resp…
Selling Scotland? Selling women’s golf? The 2019 Solheim Cup in the ‘Home of Golf’
In 2019, Scotland played host to the Solheim Cup, a competition contested by leading women professional golfers representing Europe and the United States. The event was given further political significance by the fact that it took place in the same year as the United Kingdom left the European Union against the wishes of the majority of Scots who had voted in the 2016 referendum on EU membership. This paper examines the significance of the 2019 So…
Women, War and Sport: The Battle of the 2019 Solheim Cup
One of the most significant and/or prevalent symbols of nationhood is to be found in the international (men’s) sporting arena. Sport is often imbued with notions of national identity and war, although the sport of golf is generally devoid of flags and nationalistic tendencies and is thus often considered relatively insignificant in inculcating national sentiments – except in the exceptional cases of team golf events such as the Solheim Cup. This …
Politics and football fandom in post- ‘indyref’ Scotland: Nationalism, unionism and stereotypes of the ‘Old Firm’
Embracing city life: Physical activities and the social integration of the new generation of female migrant workers in urban China
Drawing on empirical data from interviews with young Chinese female rural–urban migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta of China’s Guangdong province, this article explores the ways in which physical activities help to fulfil the ‘urban dream’ of this new generation of female migrant workers and promote their social integration. The article demonstrates that physical activities exert their influence and facilitate the young female migrant worker…
Where extremes meet: Sport, nationalism, and secessionism in Catalonia and Scotland
In this essay, we trace the symbolic conundrums of belonging and of the reconciliation of identities, in the context of Catalan and Scottish sport and politics. Our discussion will commence with a necessarily concise consideration of past academic contentions regarding the national “psyches,” which have been argued to shape contemporary notions of identity and politics in Catalonia and Scotland, before turning our attention to the specific role o…
Managing compliance with the World Anti-Doping Code: China's strategies and their implications
With the problems of doping in sport becoming more serious, the World Anti-Doping Code was drafted by the World Anti-Doping Agency in 2003 and became effective one year later. Since its passage, the Code has been renewed four times, with the fourth and latest version promulgated in January 2015. The Code was intended to tackle the problems of doping in sports through cooperation with governments to ensure fair competition as well as the health of…
Responding to globalisation: The case of elite artistic gymnastics in China
This article presents an exploration of a non-Western nation's responses to globalisation through an in-depth analysis of elite artistic gymnastics in China over a lengthy time span. The concept of globalisation and patterns of 'reach' and 'response' act as the heuristic devices underpinning the analysis. Data were collected from a range of documents and from six semi-structured interviews. The trajectory of Chinese elite artistic gymnastics' res…
Three Lions on Her Shirt: Hot and Banal Nationalism for England's Sportswomen
It has long been claimed that sport plays an important role in the formulation of national identity. Key to understanding this relationship is Michael Billig's concept of banal nationalism, which is used in this article to examine national symbols that act as daily reminders of the nation. Specifically, the article discusses the relationship between Englishness and sport by drawing upon data from interviews with representative English sportswomen…
In from the side: Exile international rugby union players in Britain, blood ties and national identities
This study analyses the experiences of exiles within international rugby union in Britain. The emphasis is on challenging existing sociological assumptions surrounding national identity and sports labour migration. Eight international rugby exiles were invited to take part in semi-structured interviews and several themes emerged. The major findings from the study demonstrate that exiles are subject to an array of cultural attachments and personal…
National sports and national landscapes: In defence of primordialism
This article explores the relationship between landscape, sport and the formation and reproduction of national identities. Central to this discussion is the concept of national sports with evidence being taken from various genres of sports-related literature and from a variety of nations. Just as the landscape provides the context in which national sports are played and watched, it is the playing and watching of these sports which in turn give th…
Sportive Nationalism and Nationalist Politics: A Comparative Analysis of Scotland, the Republic of Ireland, and Sweden
The close relationship between nationalism and sport is an acknowledged fact. Numerous questions can be asked, however, about the precise nature of links between sportive nationalism and nationalist politics. The examples of Scotland, the Republic of Ireland, and Sweden suggest that these links are by no means straightforward. Indeed, these case studies describe very different types of relationships between sport and nationalism, depending on the…
Soccer, Masculinity, and Violence in Northern Ireland: Between Hooliganism and Terrorism
Despite, or arguably because of, the marked decrease in the level of politically motivated violence in Northern Ireland since 1994, greater attention can now be paid to other forms of violence. The article argues that hegemonic masculinity encourages patterned male violence at large and that this was formerly an important element in the persistence of terrorist violence. The latter existed on the same continuum as other manifestations of hegemoni…
Woolmergate: Cricket and the Representation of Islam and Muslims in the British Press
This article illustrates how the media represent Islam and Muslims in the post-9/11 context through an examination of British newspaper coverage of the death of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer at the 2007 Cricket World Cup. The article argues that key elements of the cultural stereotyping of Islam and Muslims identified in Said's Orientalism-namely, violence, irrationality, and backwardness-were reproduced. These ideas stem from, and reinforce, a narr…
Assessing the sociology of sport: On national identity and nationalism
On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, Alan Bairner, one of the most influential scholars to study the socio-cultural relationship between sport and nation, reflects on the dynamics of national identity and nationalism in sport. Because the sociology of sport has too often taken for granted concepts such as nation, nation-state, nationality, national identity and nationalism, an ongoing need has been to engage debates about those concepts …
The Difficult Dialogue: Communism, Nationalism, and Political Propaganda in North Korean Sport
North Korea is arguably the least understood and the most reclusive country in the world. This article discusses the use of sport in the country as a vehicle for political propaganda and, in particular, the role of nationalism within the communist sporting culture. Although most nation states have become increasingly interdependent politically and economically in the so-called global era, relatively few countries have an official relationship wit…
Loyalism, Linfield and the territorial politics of soccer fandom in Northern Ireland
It is generally recognised that sport, and particularly soccer, plays an important role in the construction and reproduction of identities in modern society. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the centrality of sporting spaces in the identity formation and reinforcement of soccer fans. Centred around a geography of socio‐cultural domination and/or resistance in which power relations are spatialised and imagined in distinct and …
Xi Jin-Ping’s World Cup Dreams: From a Major Sports Country to a World Sports Power
Football is among the world’s most popular sports. It is also one which China has sought to develop in the field of global professional sport. Nevertheless, the professionalization of football in China has not to date actually improved China’s Olympic achievement in the sport. In stark contrast to the glory of being the country that won most gold medals at the 2008 Olympics, China’s poor football performance has been troublesome for the country’s…
Back to Basics: Class, Social Theory, and Sport
It is relatively easy to understand why Marxism has been increasingly discredited in recent years both in the sociology of sport and in the social sciences more generally. Guilty by association with the failed attempts to construct communist societies, it has also come under attack from a variety of sources for its economic reductionism and its perceived inability to think beyond class. Even those Marxists such as Gramsci, who are invoked within …
For a Sociology of Sport
This essay focuses on some of the main challenges that currently face the sociology of sport, the challenge from the natural sciences, the challenge from mainstream sociology and the challenge which we have set ourselves and which, requires new intellectual innovations of the type discussed in the final sections of this essay. It is vital that the sociology of sport be defended against the tyranny of the natural sciences. This project, however, m…
The Confucian legacy and its implications for physical education in Taiwan
Through a particular case study, this article seeks to demonstrate the relevance of cultural history to physical activity and physical education. For generations of East Asian people who have lived with the influence of Confucianism, the disposition to engage with sport has commonly been absent. Over a number of centuries, the Chinese constructed a unique wen-version of manhood — in other words, an anti-physical culture, which contrasted sharply …
Representing Taiwan: International sport, ethnicity and national identity in the Republic of China
This article outlines and analyses the political character of Taiwan's relationship with international sport, and in particular with the Olympic movement. In so doing, it seeks to add to the understanding of the links between sport and the formation and reproduction of national identities, with specific reference to the various cultural and ethnic identities of Taiwan, and to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between …
When leisure turns to fear: Fear, mobility, and ethno-sectarianism in Belfast
There has been a considerable amount of academic discussion of the type of constraints that influence the non-use of leisure facilities. These analyses have taken into consideration such factors as gender, social class, age and mobility. At least some of these include the fear of entering certain spaces as an additional constraint. This paper reveals that in Belfast, fear, which may be based either on personal experience or on imaginary scenarios…
Masculinity, Violence and the Irish Peace Process
This paper examines the role of gender in the north of Ireland. This is not to imply that a study of gender relations on its own is adequate to explain recent political developments. Indeed, there is a need to challenge all one-dimensional and reductionist analyses such as those which concentrate solely on ethnicity and including Marxist approaches which are excessively economistic. Whilst giving special attention to gender issues, therefore, the…
Embracing city life: Physical activities and the social integration of the new generation of female migrant workers in urban China
Drawing on empirical data from interviews with young Chinese female rural–urban migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta of China’s Guangdong province, this article explores the ways in which physical activities help to fulfil the ‘urban dream’ of this new generation of female migrant workers and promote their social integration. The article demonstrates that physical activities exert their influence and facilitate the young female migrant worker…
Transcending the borders of Irish identity? Narratives of northern nationalist footballers in Northern Ireland
In light of a growing trend by which Northern Irish-born footballers opt to pledge their sporting allegiance to the Republic of Ireland, the issue of player eligibility has become the subject of much public and political debate across the island of Ireland. In seeking to shed light on this controversial topic, this article examines the myriad factors which are negotiated by northern nationalist footballers when faced with the choice of which 'nat…
Sport, Intellectuals and Public Sociology: Obstacles and Opportunities
This article seeks to explain why it has proved so difficult for sociologists of sport to assume the mantle of public intellectuals even in relation to sport itself. Using a case study relating to sport in Northern Ireland and rooted in personal experience, the article examines alternative ways in which intellectual activity, albeit unconventionally understood, can influence the world of sport. Specifically, the analysis draws upon Antonio Gramsc…
The flâneur and the city: Reading the ‘new’ Belfast's leisure spaces
This article examines Belfast's contemporary leisure spaces by making specific use of the idea of the flâneur as a social scientist. The article contains an assessment of selected representations of the city together with a detailed evaluation of the concept of the flâneur, its genesis, development and analytical value. Using the flâneur's knowledge of the city and powers of observation, the article proceeds to offer a commentary on many of Belfa…
Northern Ireland: The politics of leisure in a divided society
The public provision of leisure services and the impact which this has on the community has become a political issue. Nowhere is this more the case than in Northern Ireland where economic and social problems, together with the Troubles, led to a massive increase in central government's sponsorship of public leisure provision in the 1970s. This was a political gesture made more political in the manner through which district councils and local gove…
Junior Ministers in the UK: The Role of the Minister for Sport
The office of UK Minister for Sport was created in 1964 at a junior level in government and has had 14 post-holders up to 2011. In this period, sport has become increasingly politicised. However, decisions to bid for major events such as the 2012 Olympics are made at Cabinet level from which the Minister for Sport is excluded. If Sports Ministers do not get closely involved in high-level sports policy decisions, what do they actually do? This art…
Urban walking and the pedagogies of the street
Drawing upon the extensive literature on urban walking and also on almost 60 years experience of walking the streets, this article argues that there is a pressing need to re-assert the educational value of going for a walk. After a brief discussion of the social significance of the flâneur, the historic pioneer of urban walking, the article proceeds to a consideration of a variety of ways in which the walker engages with society. These are walkin…
Three Lions on Her Shirt: Hot and Banal Nationalism for England's Sportswomen
It has long been claimed that sport plays an important role in the formulation of national identity. Key to understanding this relationship is Michael Billig's concept of banal nationalism, which is used in this article to examine national symbols that act as daily reminders of the nation. Specifically, the article discusses the relationship between Englishness and sport by drawing upon data from interviews with representative English sportswomen…
England's proxy warriors? Women, war and sport
It has been claimed that the one place Englishness exists is on the sports field, and usually it is men's sport that appears central to creating a sense of English national identity. However, in light of England's sporting success across multiple women's sports (namely cricket, netball, association football and rugby union), there warrants a need to begin to question the place of these female athletes in discussions of the nation. Drawing on exte…
Football and Society in Northern Ireland: Linfield Football Club and the Case of Gerry Morgan
Most work on the socio-political significance of sport in Northern Ireland has tended to focus on the ethno-sectarian divide. A football club such as Linfield, therefore, is customarily viewed in terms of its close relationship to Protestantism and Ulster Unionism. Without attempting to deny the importance of that link, this paper suggests that the relationship between sport and society in Northern Ireland is more complex than superficial reading…
Ma, There’s a Helicopter on the Pitch!” Sport, Leisure, and the State in Northern Ireland
The political crisis in Northern Ireland has been met with a wide range of responses from the British state. Apart from a manifest increase in its coercive powers, in an attempt to maintain hegemonic supremacy there have been state sponsored initiatives directed toward penetrating and influencing various aspects of the Province’s popular culture. Because of the close relationship between sport, leisure, and the separate cultural traditions that u…
Northern Ireland: The politics of leisure in a divided society
The public provision of leisure services and the impact which this has on the community has become a political issue. Nowhere is this more the case than in Northern Ireland where economic and social problems, together with the Troubles, led to a massive increase in central government's sponsorship of public leisure provision in the 1970s. This was a political gesture made more political in the manner through which district councils and local gove…
The battlefield of ideas: The legitimation of political violence in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland has suffered consistently from the effects of political violence since the late 1960s. This article argues that anyone who engages in political violence seeks legitimation for his acts and it assesses the attempts by Republicans and Loyalists in Northern Ireland to legitimate their violence. The legitimation of both Loyalist and Republican violence is shown to consist of arguments drawn from a wide range of theoretical traditions…
Ma, There’s a Helicopter on the Pitch!” Sport, Leisure, and the State in Northern Ireland
The political crisis in Northern Ireland has been met with a wide range of responses from the British state. Apart from a manifest increase in its coercive powers, in an attempt to maintain hegemonic supremacy there have been state sponsored initiatives directed toward penetrating and influencing various aspects of the Province’s popular culture. Because of the close relationship between sport, leisure, and the separate cultural traditions that u…
Sportive Nationalism and Nationalist Politics: A Comparative Analysis of Scotland, the Republic of Ireland, and Sweden
The close relationship between nationalism and sport is an acknowledged fact. Numerous questions can be asked, however, about the precise nature of links between sportive nationalism and nationalist politics. The examples of Scotland, the Republic of Ireland, and Sweden suggest that these links are by no means straightforward. Indeed, these case studies describe very different types of relationships between sport and nationalism, depending on the…
Loyalism, Linfield and the territorial politics of soccer fandom in Northern Ireland
It is generally recognised that sport, and particularly soccer, plays an important role in the construction and reproduction of identities in modern society. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the centrality of sporting spaces in the identity formation and reinforcement of soccer fans. Centred around a geography of socio‐cultural domination and/or resistance in which power relations are spatialised and imagined in distinct and …
Masculinity, Violence and the Irish Peace Process
This paper examines the role of gender in the north of Ireland. This is not to imply that a study of gender relations on its own is adequate to explain recent political developments. Indeed, there is a need to challenge all one-dimensional and reductionist analyses such as those which concentrate solely on ethnicity and including Marxist approaches which are excessively economistic. Whilst giving special attention to gender issues, therefore, the…
Soccer, Masculinity, and Violence in Northern Ireland: Between Hooliganism and Terrorism
Despite, or arguably because of, the marked decrease in the level of politically motivated violence in Northern Ireland since 1994, greater attention can now be paid to other forms of violence. The article argues that hegemonic masculinity encourages patterned male violence at large and that this was formerly an important element in the persistence of terrorist violence. The latter existed on the same continuum as other manifestations of hegemoni…
Sport, Nationalism, and Globalization: European and North American Perspectives
Football and Society in Northern Ireland: Linfield Football Club and the Case of Gerry Morgan
Most work on the socio-political significance of sport in Northern Ireland has tended to focus on the ethno-sectarian divide. A football club such as Linfield, therefore, is customarily viewed in terms of its close relationship to Protestantism and Ulster Unionism. Without attempting to deny the importance of that link, this paper suggests that the relationship between sport and society in Northern Ireland is more complex than superficial reading…
Gender, Class and Nation
The Swedish Model and International Sport: Lennart Johansson and the Governance of World Football
One of the most striking features of the development of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) during the 1990s has been the emergence of a political and economic alliance between the Union des Associations Européennes de Football (UEFA) and the Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF). What is remarkable about this state of affairs is that the relationship between the two confederations has traditionally been characterized…
Political Unionism and Sporting Nationalism: An Examination of the Relationship Between Sport and National Identity Within the Ulster Unionist Tradition
While the close relationship between sport and the nation has been frequently asserted, it can be argued that concepts that are central to our understanding of this relationship remain relatively ill defined. This article seeks to address this problem by looking at a political tradition that is often defined in opposition to concepts such as nation, nationality, and national identity. The discussion centers on the extent to which the nationality,…
When leisure turns to fear: Fear, mobility, and ethno-sectarianism in Belfast
There has been a considerable amount of academic discussion of the type of constraints that influence the non-use of leisure facilities. These analyses have taken into consideration such factors as gender, social class, age and mobility. At least some of these include the fear of entering certain spaces as an additional constraint. This paper reveals that in Belfast, fear, which may be based either on personal experience or on imaginary scenarios…
On Thin Ice: The Odyssey, the Giants, and the Sporting Transformation of Belfast
Sports arenas have played a significant role in urban regeneration in many cities. In Belfast, the spatial character of sectarian division that already affects sport complicates their use for this purpose. This article argues that the Odyssey Arena and the emergence of the Belfast Giants ice hockey franchise have played a positive role in terms of community relations in the city. However, the arena is peripheral to the lives and concerns of most …
Creating a soccer Strategy for Northern Ireland: Reflections on football governance in small European countries
This article examines attempts in Northern Ireland to deal with the crisis in local soccer. Its main immediate focus is on the conclusions of a ministerial advisory committee, of which the author was a member, which sat from October 2000 until its findings were published in December 2001, but the article also reflects on earlier reports on the state of domestic soccer in Northern Ireland. Far from being wholly insular in its concerns, the authors…
Inclusive Soccer—Exclusive Politics? Sports Policy in Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement
This article examines the proposals of a ministerial advisory panel that was set up in 2000 to examine the problems confronting soccer in Northern Ireland, not least of which is that the game has been perceived to be administered by and for Ulster unionists. It is argued that although the panel made the case for a more inclusive soccer culture, which would be welcome to Irish nationalists, this advice is at odds with the central message of the Go…
The flâneur and the city: Reading the ‘new’ Belfast's leisure spaces
This article examines Belfast's contemporary leisure spaces by making specific use of the idea of the flâneur as a social scientist. The article contains an assessment of selected representations of the city together with a detailed evaluation of the concept of the flâneur, its genesis, development and analytical value. Using the flâneur's knowledge of the city and powers of observation, the article proceeds to offer a commentary on many of Belfa…
Titanic Town: Sport, Space and the Re-imag(in)ing of Belfast
This article discusses the extent to which Belfast's sporting spaces are implicated in a process whereby the city has been transformed since the cessation of widespread political violence. The discussion takes readers to the city's traditional sporting venues, comments on the relationship between sporting spaces and urban regeneration and assesses the extent to which, if at all, Belfast can become a "winning city" by virtue of its new and propose…
Nationalism and Sport
The existence of a close relationship between sport and nationalism is widely accepted. This relationship manifests itself in the concept of national sports, in the enduring popularity of international competitions, events, and contests, and in the myriad ways in which politicians and politically motivated groups have sought to harness sport to national causes. On the other hand, questions are increasingly being asked not only about the future of…
Sport, Space and National Identity in Ireland: The GAA, Croke Park and Rule 42
In April 2005, the Gaelic Athletic Association, the largest sporting organisation in Ireland, amended Rule 42, which hitherto banned rugby and soccer matches from being played at Croke Park, the association's headquarters and national stadium. This paper traces the genealogy of the debate that preceded the announcement and examines how and why a decision of seemingly little socio-cultural and political significance became an important issue withi…
Back to Basics: Class, Social Theory, and Sport
It is relatively easy to understand why Marxism has been increasingly discredited in recent years both in the sociology of sport and in the social sciences more generally. Guilty by association with the failed attempts to construct communist societies, it has also come under attack from a variety of sources for its economic reductionism and its perceived inability to think beyond class. Even those Marxists such as Gramsci, who are invoked within …
Rebuttal
City
Cities were a feature of all the great ancient civilizations. Relatively small by modern standards, they nevertheless facilitated a far more diverse range of activities than was possible in other forms of human settlement. The city and the urban way of life that accompanies it, however, inasmuch as they have interested sociologists, are of more recent origin and are closely linked to the rise of industrialism
Fanon, Frantz (1925–61)
Born in Martinique and a psychiatrist by training, Frantz Fanon's sociological legacy lies mainly in the study of “race” and, above all, in the development of postcolonial studies. Having fought for the Free French Army during World War II, Fanon studied medicine and psychiatry in Lyon. In 1952 he began to practice psychiatry in Algeria and thereafter he became associated, particularly in the minds of the political left for whom he became an icon…
Proud to Be Chinese: Little League Baseball and National Identities in Taiwan During the 1970s 1
Defeated by the communists in 1949, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) sought refuge in Taiwan under the conditions of war and aggression that produced strong defensive nationalism and an intensive struggle for national identification. The KMT faced a dual crisis of legitimacy during the 1970s, both domestically and internationally, after being expelled from the United Nations. The urgency of seeking recognition within the boundary by the Taiwan…
Political science (77 works) · Sociology (76 works) · Law (68 works) · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts (65 works) · Sports, Gender, and Society (62 works) · Politics (55 works) · Law (45 works) · Gender Studies (41 works) · Media studies (30 works) · Gender Studies (28 works)