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This book examines how social issues shape and influence our engagement with sport, leisure time physical activity, and health-promoting exercise. Connecting the personal with the public, it helps the reader understand how individual exercise, leisure, and sport participation are both facilitated and constrained by their social contexts.
Presenting a series of in-depth descriptions of grassroots sport, urban lifestyle sport, physical activity across the life course, sport for children with special needs, and the development of creative climates in sport, this book seeks to encourage what C. Wright Mills described as the "sociological imagination". Every chapter begins with an individual-level account centred on everyday challenges with accessing sport, partaking in leisure activities, and meeting guidelines for daily exercise before exploring the larger, socially determined patterns in which those experiences are located, establishing a vital template for the social scientific study of sport, leisure, and health.
Touching on key contemporary themes including diversity, inclusion, health inequalities, and physical inactivity, as well as selection and intensification in sports, this book offers new case material and theoretical tools for understanding the relationships between sport, leisure, health, and the wider society. This is an indispensable companion for any course on the sociology of sport, exercise, leisure, or physical activity and health.
List of contents
Introduction
DAVID KAREN AND SINE AGERGAARD
PART I
Social issues in sport and leisure participation
1 Promoting access to sport for adolescents: Equality and equity approaches
RIKKE LAMBERTZ-NILSSEN HJORT
2 Rethinking sport participation for children with special needs: The case of "Happy League"
DORTHE LYSKJÆR NIELSEN, NIELS NYGAARD ROSSING, AND LOTTE STAUSGAARD SKRUBBELTRANG
3 Discrimination in Danish organised grassroots football: Gender, ethnicity, and sexuality
SØREN BENNIKE, NIKOLAJ SCHELDE, AND ADAM B. EVANS
4 Social inclusion and institutionalisation of urban lifestyle sports
LARS DOMINO ØSTERGAARD AND SIGNE HØJBJERRE LARSEN
PART II
Social issues in promoting physical activity and health
5 Moving beyond individual choice of (non-) participation: The significance of social relations
CAMILLA BAKKÆR SIMONSEN
6 Physical inactivity: Understanding the influence of social determinants through adult life
KNUD RYOM AND CAMILLA BAKKÆR
SIMONSEN
7 Understanding disparities in healthy living from an intersectional perspective
VERENA LENNEIS
8 Individual "lifestyle" diseases and the health care system
SIMON THOMSEN
PART III
Social issues in developing sport and society
9 From individual fixing to relational guidance in narrative sport psychology
NIELS NYGAARD ROSSING AND LUDVIG JOHAN TORP RASMUSSEN
10 Selection and de-selection in youth sport
CHRISTIAN M. WRANG
11 Sport for newcomers: Individual and community empowerment
JEPPE KLARSKOV HANSEN
12 Developing creative climates in sports: Vaccination against intensification?
LUDVIG JOHAN TORP RASMUSSEN
About the author
Sine Agergaard is Professor and Head of the Sport and Social Issues Research Group at Aalborg University, Denmark. Sine has pioneered research in sports and migration issues, and she is the current head of the International Network for Research in Sport and Migration Issues. Her previous publications include
Rethinking Sports and Integration (Routledge, 2018) and
Women, Soccer and Transnational Migration (Routledge, 2014).
David Karen is Professor of Sociology at Bryn Mawr College, USA, and Adjunct Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark. His research has focused on access, opportunity, and reproduction within education and within sport. He is the co-author and co-editor of
Sociological Perspectives on Sport: The Games Outside the Games (Routledge, 2015, with Robert Washington) and
The Sport and Society Reader (Routledge, 2009, with Robert Washington).
Summary
This book examines how social issues shape and influence our engagement with sport, leisure time physical activity and health-promoting exercise. Connecting the personal with the public, it helps the reader to develop a deeper understanding of how social contexts and structures create or constrain opportunities for exercise, leisure and sport.
Report
"Social Issues in Sport, Leisure, and Health is a significant and timely contribution to the fields of sport sociology and public health. It is particularly relevant for students, practitioners, and early career researchers in sport sociology, public health, and leisure studies who seek to understand the interplay between individual exercise practices and broader societal structures ... The book's contemporary relevance further underscores its importance. At a time when individualism often takes precedence over collectivism, this volume provides a crucial counterpoint by illustrating how broader social determinants shape health, sport participation, and leisure activities." - Karin Andersson, Malmö University, idrottsforum.org
