Assessing the sociology of sport: On sport and the challenges of post-socialist countries

Abstract

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, one of the most important Eastern European scholars in the sociology of sport, Mojca Doupona Topič, reflects on the character of early engagement with the field by scholars in her region and the more recent challenges that scholars in post-socialist countries have in continued disciplinary dialogue. Doupona Topič notes the essential role that the IRSS played in publishing the work of Eastern bloc scholars in the formative years of the sociology of sport; here studies centred on the positive roles of sport in effective socialization and worker productivity with little focus on critical issues, such as violence, doping or other forms of deviance. More recent work has shifted from assessing the positive social roles of sport to understand sport’s role in national identities, its connection with globalization processes and in facilitating social change. A key challenge for scholars in post-socialist countries will be to recover from the economic crises of recent years so that they may re-engage with broader scholarly communities around the world and advance focus on how sport plays key roles, both positively and negatively, in national identity and development in newly independent countries.