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Traceable as far back as the work of the path-breaking Chicago School of Sociology in the 1920s and 1930s, subculture and counterculture have long been conceptual staples of the discipline. This collection includes 16 readings on aspects of sub-community life in sport that showcases the breadth and depth of sport subcultural research.
Whereas once young women’s feminist activism could be easily identified, today this resistance seems obscure, transitory, and disorganized. In Next Wave Cultures, established and emerging scholars provide an interdisciplinary examination of young women’s multilayered lives. This collection demonstrates that young women have new ways of taking on politics and culture that may not be recognizable under more traditional paradigms, but deserve to be identified as socially engaged and potentially transformative nonetheless. Exploring the ways in which girls' various cultural pursuits are tied to identity formation and relate to issues of class, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, ability, and, gender, Next Wave Cultures highlights both the limitations and opportunities afforded by globalization of youth consumer culture. This valuable collection is a necessary read across disciplines—especially to those in the fields of education, gender and cultural studies, sociology, and psychology.
Events of all shapes and sizes play an important part in all of our lives. They are fun, frivolous, and often allow us to escape from our everyday lives – and they are also fascinating to study and examine in a more serious way, to understand what they mean and what they do for us – individually and collectively. Events in Society, therefore, explores the social impact and sociological implications of designing, planning, and delivering events – cultural events like the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; sporting events like the Olympic and Paralympic Games and FIFA World Cup; to music festivals like Glastonbury. Thirty carefully selected contributions feature, written by global experts in a s...
Ethnographies about transgressing social expectations of the body
In the increasingly popular sport of parkour, athletes run, jump, climb, flip, and vault through city streetscapes, resembling urban gymnasts to passersby and awestruck spectators. In Parkour and the City, cultural sociologist Jeffrey L. Kidder examines the ways in which this sport involves a creative appropriation of urban spaces as well as a method of everyday risk-taking by a youth culture that valorizes individuals who successfully manage danger. Parkour’s modern development has been tied closely to the growth of the internet. The sport is inevitably a YouTube phenomenon, making it exemplary of new forms of globalized communication. Parkour’s dangerous stunts resonate, too, Kidder contends, with a neoliberal ideology that is ambivalent about risk. Moreover, as a male-dominated sport, parkour, with its glorification of strength and daring, reflects contemporary Western notions of masculinity. At the same time, Kidder writes, most athletes (known as “traceurs” or “freerunners”) reject a “daredevil” label, preferring a deliberate, reasoned hedging of bets with their own safety—rather than a “pushing the edge” ethos normally associated with extreme sports.
"Intellectually deft and lively to read, Skate Life is an important addition to the literature on youth cultures, contemporary masculinity, and the role of media in identity formation." ---Janice A. Radway, Northwestern University, author of Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature "With her elegant research design and sophisticated array of anthropological and media studies approaches, Emily Chivers Yochim has produced one of the best books about race, gender, and class that I have read in the last ten years. In a moment where celebratory studies of youth, youth subcultures, and their relationship to media abound, this book stands as a brilliantly argued analysis of th...
Analyzes the politics around military deployments in the Sahel since 2012 from a critical geopolitics perspective.
Butterworth argues that baseball cannot be viewed as an innocent diversion or escape and that by promoting myths of citizenship and purity, post-9/11 discourse concerning baseball ironically threatens the health of the democratic system. Instead, he highlights how the game on the field reflects a more complex and diverse worldview, and he makes a plea for the game's recovery, both as a national pastime and as a site for celebrating the best of who we are and who we can be. --Book Jacket.
"Few activities bring together physicality, emotions, politics, money, and morality as dramatically as sport. In Brazil's stadiums or parks in China, on Cuba's baseball diamonds or rugby fields in Fiji, human beings test their physical limits, invest emotional energy, bet money, perform witchcraft, and ingest substances, making sport a microcosm of what life is about. The Anthropology of Sport explores not only what anthropological thinking tells us about sports, but also what sports tell us about the ways in which the sporting body is shaped by and shapes the social, cultural, political, and historical contexts in which we live. Core themes discussed in this book include the body, modernity, nationalism, the state, citizenship, transnationalism, globalization, and gender and sexuality"--Provided by publisher.
In The Means to Grow Up, Robert Halpern describes the pedagogical importance of "apprenticeship"—a growing movement based in schools, youth-serving organizations, and arts, civic, and other cultural institutions. This movement aims to re-engage youth through in-depth learning and unique experiences under the guidance of skilled professionals. Employing a "pedagogy of apprenticeship," these experiences combine specific, visceral, and sometimes messy work with opportunity for self-expression, increasing responsibility, and exposure to the adult world. Grounded in ethnographic studies, The Means to Grow Up illustrates how students work in unique ways around these meaningful activities and pro...