A Companion to Sport brings together writing by leading sports theorists and social and cultural thinkers, to explore sport as a central element of contemporary culture. Positions sport as a crucial subject for critical analysis, as one of the most significant forms of popular cultureIncludes both well-known social and cultural theorists whose work lends itself to an interrogation of sport, and leading theorists of sport itselfOffers a comprehensive examination of sport as a social and cultural practice and institution.

Edition statement from running title area. Environmental Discourses and Promotional Culture: Examples from the Global Forum for Sports and the Environment.

Cover; Title page; Copyright page; Contents; Notes on Contributors; Introduction: Sport as Escape, Struggle, and Art; Introduction: Anti-sport/Pro-sport; What Is Sport? Some Definitional Observations; Sports Matter: A Companion to Sport; References; Further Reading; Part One: Sporting Structures and Historical Formations; Introduction; Further Reading; 1: Constructing Knowledge: Histories of Modern Sport; Introduction; Questions (and Unstable Answers); Origins and causes; Diffusion; Reception; Epistemologies (and Floating Truths); Objective knowledge; Contextualized knowledge; Conclusion. AcknowledgmentsReferences; Further Reading; 2: Sport and Globalization; Introduction; The Historical Aspects of Global Sport: Six Phases; Germinal phase (1400-1750s); Incipient phase (1750s-1870s); Take-off phase (1870s-1920s); Struggle-for-hegemony phase (1920s-late 1960s); Uncertainty phase (late 1960s-2000); Millennial phase (from 2001); The Sociocultural Aspects of Global Sport; Universalism, particularism, and relativization; Homogenization and heterogenization; Glocalization; Cosmopolitanism; Political-economic Aspects of Globalization; Nation state and globalization. Sport and the global economic systemThe Emerging Global Civil Society and Sport; Conclusions: Globalization, Sport, and "Active Glocalism"; References; Further Reading; 3: The Sport/Media Complex: Formation, Flowering, and Future; Introduction: Three Decades in a Complex Life; Complex Prehistory; Television Complex; Complex Today; Conclusion: Future Complex; Acknowledgments; References; Further Reading; 4: Political Theories of Social Class, Sport, and the Body; Introduction; Sport, Industrial Capitalism, and Revolution; Sport and Social Class: A Critical Sociology; Structural functionalism. FigurationalismNeo-Marxism; Jockraker activism; The cultural turn; Bourdieu's neo-Weberian approach; Emergent paradigms; Conclusion: Social Class, the Sporting Body, and Neoliberalism; References; Further Reading; 5: Gender, Feminist Theory, and Sport; Introduction; Liberal Feminism; Radical Feminism; Marxist/Socialist Feminism; Black Feminism; The Impact of Poststructuralism, Queer Theory, and Postcolonialism; New Avenues and New Questions for Sport Feminism: Middle Ground Theorizing and Intersectional Analysis; Conclusion: Revisiting "Old" Questions in the Twenty-First Century; References. Further Reading6: Sports Medicine, Health, and the Politics of Risk; Introduction; Locating Sport in the Risk Society; Expect the Unexpected: Selling Safety; Anxiety, Assurance, and the Risk-Caution Citizenship Project; High Performance Sport and Health within the Risk Society; Conclusion; References; Further Reading; 7: Sport, Ecological Modernization, and the Environment; Environmental Issues and the Sociology of Sport: The "Early" Years; Sport, Sociology and the Environment: Contemporary Themes; Sport, the Environment, and Neoliberalism; Ecological Modernization and Environmental Sociology.