What do you think?
Rate this book
Planet Sport
Sport generates some of the most intense feelings and levels of commitment. It is big business globally, but also the source of the most powerful personal identifications and individual and collective pleasures. Sporting events are routine and embodied, whether in the gym, on the field or at the training ground, and they are also spectacular, for example in mega events at the stadium or, for followers at a distance, through the media of television, radio and the Internet. Large numbers of people are caught up in personal and collective investment and public engagement with sport. Why does it matter so much?
In this book, Woodward demonstrates why sport matters and how, arguing that we should take sport seriously, and explore what is social about it. Sport is not just another domain to which social theories can be applied; it is also distinctive and generates new ways of thinking about social issues and debates. Sport is affected by the global economy and social, political and cultural processes – but it also shapes the wider social terrain of which it is part. Sport reproduces inequalities as well as offering opportunities. It is not always a level playing field. Sport is more than play.
Planet Sport is an engaging and concise introduction to some of the big issues in contemporary debates about sport in globalised societies, and will appeal to students, academics and general readers alike.
In this book, Woodward demonstrates why sport matters and how, arguing that we should take sport seriously, and explore what is social about it. Sport is not just another domain to which social theories can be applied; it is also distinctive and generates new ways of thinking about social issues and debates. Sport is affected by the global economy and social, political and cultural processes – but it also shapes the wider social terrain of which it is part. Sport reproduces inequalities as well as offering opportunities. It is not always a level playing field. Sport is more than play.
Planet Sport is an engaging and concise introduction to some of the big issues in contemporary debates about sport in globalised societies, and will appeal to students, academics and general readers alike.
112 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 16, 2018
A slim overview of academic sport theory that would have benefitted from a stronger editor. Some sentences are powerfully confusing, such as "Gender inequalities play out in the Premiership and Football Association (FA) and FIFA illustrate gender inequalities particularly clearly (...)" (39); some information is incompletely delivered (her assertion that "When the Pennsylvania State University coach was dismissed for allegedly committing acts of sexual assault (...) the riot it provoked was due more to the coach's dismissal than moral outrage (...) (41) is a mess - he was assistant coach of the football team, not the coach of the University; he was convicted, so there's nothing "alleged" about it; and it just isn't true that, outside of some blinkered Penn diehards, there was more outrage over the firing than the systematic assaults); and there's also the occasional spelling error (golf "put" instead of 'putt' (38)). These add up to make for a difficult read. There are foundational sports theory ideas throughout, clearly explained, but for a theoretical overview a more thorough bibliography rather than a list of references would have been appreciated.
May 8, 2022
The blurb promises "an engaging and concise introduction". Neither of those adjectives are accurate.
May 15, 2014
Do we live on Planet Sport? Woodward’s closing chapter title in this short (84 page) essay draws together an argument about why sport matters as a social practice and as a field of study. The essay is sharp, healthily demanding and a rewarding introduction to a big issue – exactly what the series is all about (little books on big issues, according to the tag line).
All too often sociological and cultural discussions or explorations of sport shift between fairly abstract theorising (I admit guilt there) and mundane, mainstream, day-to-day cases without exploring the relations that audiences and participants build between these aspects. It is uncommon to find fans and players who don’t recognise the cultural, economic and social significance of their pastime/hobby/obsession, but who bypass those big picture things because for them sport is all about the fun and friendship of playing the game. Equally, all too often we as analysts do not make clear the associations and links that demarcate professional a big business sport and the everyday pleasures and experiences of playing in the park. We certainly claim they are different but all too often we do not sufficiently mark how they are different.
After having laid the basis for understanding what sport is and why it matters, Woodward delves into several of the key big picture issues in sport and a social practice. Although questions of race, ethnicity, gender, embodiment and other central issues in sociological discussions pervade the text, these are not Woodward’s framing devices. Instead she discusses the global and the local, sport as economic practice – both fairly common in the literature – but then she looks at the problem of certainty in sex/gender, in scoring and technology and in bodies. This is an area where sociology, anthropology and philosophy are engaged in a dynamic and exciting set of discussions even when they spend much of the time talking past one another.
It is the final two substantive chapters that really sparkle for me. In the first she takes us into the debates about the everyday to link fandom, phenomenology and banal embodied practices. This chapter, no more than 6-7000 words, incudes a critique of phenomenology’s tendency to describe rather than theorise while also linking fandom to practice and sports participation (I would have liked her to have hinted at the wider debates about whether sports fandom is like other forms of popular cultural fandom, but we can’t have everything….). This shows the sophistication of the text and Woodward’s writing skills.
The next, penultimate, chapter shifts the focus to consider spectacle and the spectacular in sporting contexts so we get mega-events and celebrity as aspects of the process of spectacularisation in sport (and by implication, wider cultural) settings along with (and I really appreciate this) a marking of ‘hero’ from celebrity/idol.
Aside from its brevity and richness, the book has two major strengths; it is a fine introduction, a taste for current debates in the field (and could have done with a reading list/pointers – the reference list is good but it does necessarily direct readers to ways to extend themselves); it is not fettered by the dominant modes and motifs of sociological presentation but (re)packages some of the major issues in contemporary sport-as-culture to challenge complacency in understanding.
A fine exploration of the complexities of everyday sport engagements and critique of the simple binaries of winning and losing that often frame those everyday discussions. This is useful, provocative, accessible; it is just the thing for my final year students to disrupt the dominant framing of their studies so far.
All too often sociological and cultural discussions or explorations of sport shift between fairly abstract theorising (I admit guilt there) and mundane, mainstream, day-to-day cases without exploring the relations that audiences and participants build between these aspects. It is uncommon to find fans and players who don’t recognise the cultural, economic and social significance of their pastime/hobby/obsession, but who bypass those big picture things because for them sport is all about the fun and friendship of playing the game. Equally, all too often we as analysts do not make clear the associations and links that demarcate professional a big business sport and the everyday pleasures and experiences of playing in the park. We certainly claim they are different but all too often we do not sufficiently mark how they are different.
After having laid the basis for understanding what sport is and why it matters, Woodward delves into several of the key big picture issues in sport and a social practice. Although questions of race, ethnicity, gender, embodiment and other central issues in sociological discussions pervade the text, these are not Woodward’s framing devices. Instead she discusses the global and the local, sport as economic practice – both fairly common in the literature – but then she looks at the problem of certainty in sex/gender, in scoring and technology and in bodies. This is an area where sociology, anthropology and philosophy are engaged in a dynamic and exciting set of discussions even when they spend much of the time talking past one another.
It is the final two substantive chapters that really sparkle for me. In the first she takes us into the debates about the everyday to link fandom, phenomenology and banal embodied practices. This chapter, no more than 6-7000 words, incudes a critique of phenomenology’s tendency to describe rather than theorise while also linking fandom to practice and sports participation (I would have liked her to have hinted at the wider debates about whether sports fandom is like other forms of popular cultural fandom, but we can’t have everything….). This shows the sophistication of the text and Woodward’s writing skills.
The next, penultimate, chapter shifts the focus to consider spectacle and the spectacular in sporting contexts so we get mega-events and celebrity as aspects of the process of spectacularisation in sport (and by implication, wider cultural) settings along with (and I really appreciate this) a marking of ‘hero’ from celebrity/idol.
Aside from its brevity and richness, the book has two major strengths; it is a fine introduction, a taste for current debates in the field (and could have done with a reading list/pointers – the reference list is good but it does necessarily direct readers to ways to extend themselves); it is not fettered by the dominant modes and motifs of sociological presentation but (re)packages some of the major issues in contemporary sport-as-culture to challenge complacency in understanding.
A fine exploration of the complexities of everyday sport engagements and critique of the simple binaries of winning and losing that often frame those everyday discussions. This is useful, provocative, accessible; it is just the thing for my final year students to disrupt the dominant framing of their studies so far.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews