Nama : Kelvin Hani Zulfan

NIM : 23060484094
Kelas : 2023 C

Assessing the sociology of sport: On critical sport sociology

and sport management

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, Annelies Knoppers, one of the leading scholars in
understanding the culture of sport in organizational settings, considers how the critical lens of
sociology can enhance and mesh with research on sport management. Knoppers argues that there
have been lost opportunities and understandings from the little overlap between scholars publishing
in journals in the sociology of sport and sport management. Using the topic of gender and
leadership, she describes the benefits that might result from using a sociological lens and a ‘critical
reflexivity’ to study power and social inequalities in sport management and organizations.
Consideration is given to how critical understandings about gender can enhance organizational
effectiveness by valuing ‘hybridity’ in leadership styles. The essay closes with arguments for a critical
intersectional approach to the study of sport management with recognition that ‘disciplinary’
practices shape the wielding of leadership power within organizations.

Collinson (2014) suggests that critical research on leaders should focus on how ‘situated power
relations and identity dynamics through which leadership discursive practices are socially
constructed, [are] frequently rationalized, sometimes resisted and occasionally transformed’ (p. 37).
Relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to how leaders in sport organizations use or
challenge common managerial modes of control and their regulatory practices and how managers
strengthen and produce relations of power that privilege some and marginalize or exclude others.

The use of critical sociological perspectives requires researchers to question assumptions and
definitions. Such questions should pay attention to both content and context. For example, little is
known about how discourses about sport and organizations inform the ways sport management is
practiced and is defined. Being a leader in a sport organization may mean taking on values
embedded in popular discourses about sport and about corporate life. The constructions of these
values inform how problems are defined, which questions are asked about leadership and how
theories about managers and management are constructed. How those in positions of leadership
assign content to work in the context of sport organizations has primarily received critical attention
with respect to gender. For example, Hovden (2010) and Claringbould and Knoppers (2013) show
how criteria used to select board members and leaders of sport organizations favoured those
individuals who demonstrated qualities and processes that were associated with and produced
‘successful’ men.
Critical sociology should also be used to explore how knowledge about leaders/managers is
constructed, produced and how it acts on those who are the focus of this research. Bendl et al.
(2008) plead for a queering of managerial work and research. They contend that the constructions of
categories used in much of the language, practices and research in the study and practice of
management of diversity have an underlying subtext that reproduces heteronormativity. They
propose the use of an intersectional approach that assumes that identities are fluid and that places
the queering of heteronormativity at the centre of such research. Given the history of homophobia
in sport and the focus on sexual identities common in much sociological research, this emphasis is
not misplaced (Eng, 2008; King, 2008).

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1012690214538862

Assessing the sociology of sport: On cultural sensibilities

and the great sport myth

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, Jay Coakley, a foundational scholar in the development
of the sociology of sport, reflects on the lasting power of the Great Sport Myth (GSM) to shape
cultural understandings of sport. Situated in an unshakable belief about the inherent purity and
goodness of sport, it is argued that the GSM has shaped uncountable decisions to embrace and
sponsor sports despite their costs and what they may preclude in the way of other private and public
choices. In assessing the challenges of the field, the author points to the influence of the GSM in
masking and enabling personal power that has enabled ruling elites to appropriate public money for
private gain. In looking ahead to future sociology of sport inquiry, scholars are encouraged to
recognize how the GSM continues to undermine critical discussions and research on the culture and
organization of sports and engage that understanding in more effective tactics for disseminating
research that can facilitate social change and activism.

After four decades of studying sports in society, I remain awed by the pervasive and nearly
unshakable belief in the inherent purity and goodness of sport. Despite evidence to the contrary,
many people combine this belief with two others: (a) the purity and goodness of sport is transmitted
to those who participate in or consume it; and (b) sport inevitably leads to individual and community
development. Over the years, I have described the combination of these three beliefs as the Great
Sport Myth, as depicted in Figure 1. During the past 150 years, the great sport myth (GSM) has
shaped uncountable individual and collective decisions to embrace and sponsor sports, despite their
costs and what they may preclude in the way of other private and public choices.

Research in the sociology of sport indicates that faith in the GSM does not emerge and grow in a
vacuum. Well-positioned and powerful people foster and prey on that faith as they use the GSM to
camouflage personal interests related to projects in which sport is presented as a tool for solving
problems and contributing to individual and collective development. It’s as if ruling elites had read
Gramsci and concluded that sport, more than other civil institutions today, appeals to popular tastes
in ways that make people gullible and subject to political manipulation and control.

Overall, the GSM consistently undermines critical discussions and research on the culture and social
organization of sports. As a result, the sociology of sport remains on the margins of sociology,
physical education and sports studies. This is not always a bad place to be, but being positioned in
this way calls on those of us in the field to engage in concerted, sustained and strategic efforts to
discredit the GSM and replace it with a discourse informed by sound research that enables people to
make informed decisions about sports in their lives and their communities. The pervasiveness of the
GSM and the way it is strategically nurtured by selfinterested political and economic elites
constitutes a significant challenge to the sociology of sport. Although we in the field feel comfortable
presenting our critical research at ISSA conferences and publishing it in the IRSS and related journals,
there remains a need for us to publicly disrupt GSM-based assumptions underlying policy-making,
program funding and implementation, much sports science research, and everyday discussions
about sports in society.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1012690214538864

Sports review: A content analysis of the International

Review for the Sociology of Sport, the Journal of Sport and
Social Issues and the Sociology of Sport Journal across 25
years

The International Review for the Sociology of Sport, the Journal of Sport and Social Issues and
Sociology of Sport Journal have individually and collectively been subject to a systematic content
analysis. By focusing on substantive research papers published in these three journals over a 25‐year
time period it is possible to identify the topics that have featured within the sociology of sport. The
purpose of the study was to identify the dominant themes, sports, countries, methodological
frameworks and theoretical perspectives that have appeared in the research papers published in
these three journals. Using the terms, identified by the author(s), that appear in the paper’s title,
abstract and/or listed as a key word, subject term or geographical term, a baseline is established to
reflect on the development of the sub‐discipline as represented by the content of these three
journals. It is suggested that the findings illustrate what many of the more experienced practitioners
in the field may have felt subjectively. On the basis of this systematic, empirical study it is now
possible to identify those areas have received extensive coverage and those which are under‐
researched within the sociology of sport. The findings are used to inform a discussion of the role of
academic journals and the recent contributions made by Michael Silk, David Andrews, Michael
Atkinson and Dominic Malcolm on the past, present and future of the ‘sociology of sport’.

The expansion of higher education and the profits generated from journal publications have
significantly increased the number of academic journals (Altbach and Rapple, 2012). The sociology of
sport can, arguably, be seen as an inclusive discipline that is open to a plurality of positions in terms
of method and theory found therein. It has served as a major feeder discipline for a large number of
university sports degree courses and is linked to a wide range of disciplines, including education,
cultural studies, history, media studies, politics, philosophy and economics. Consequently, those
seeking to publish research on sport from a sociological standpoint can chose from a wide range of
journals. In addition to the three journals reviewed here, mainstream sociology journals are
increasingly willing to receive sports‐themed papers; equally, there are many other less sociological‐
focused journals that explore the relationship between sport and education, culture, history, media,
the body, psychology, management and policy.ii ‘Sociology’ appears in the titles of the IRSS and the
SSJ, and is implicit within the JSSI. Given the growing range of possible outlets, the rationale for this
study was to select leading, international journals whose remit centred on the sociology of sport.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1012690212465736