Sport and the Body

Abstract

Since the late 1980s, the body has been a central aspect of sport sociological analysis. Examinations of the sporting body have evolved through several theoretical traditions with normalization as the dominant theme for sociologists of sport. For example, inspired by the work of Norbert Elias, several sport sociologists have looked at how the (male) sporting body has become more civilized when molded through different figurations of power over time. This has evolved into further process sociological examinations of the inter‐relationships between the body, power, and identity construction. From a critical cultural studies’ perspective, some scholars have examined how the body has been shaped by the ideological construction of sport and by the dominant groups that maintain the current structure of sport. In addition, researchers using this approach have drawn attention to how different bodily identities – such as gendered bodies, lesbian/gay bodies, disabled bodies, ethnic bodies, and aging bodies – have been constructed within commercialized, globalized sport. More sophisticated theoretical applications such as critical race theory, intersectionality theory, and critical masculinity theory have also emerged to inform the analysis of identity construction as bodily representation.