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Palgrave Macmillan

The Palgrave Handbook of Sport, Politics and Harm

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Editors:
  1. Stephen Wagg

    1. International Centre for Sport History and Culture, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Allyson M. Pollock

    1. Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • First interdisciplinary exploration of sporting injury and harm Draws out intersecting issues to do with sporting harm and gender, race, policy, democracy and capitalism Has most relevance in the US, but contains a global spread of chapter authors and highlights a range of international cases

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Table of contents (30 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxxi
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  3. The NFL: Politics, Injury, and American National Identity

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 113-113
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    2. Inflaming the Civic Temper: Progress, Violence, and Concussion in Early American Football

      • Emily A. Harrison
      Pages 115-139

    3. A Problem that Cries Out for Standards: Football Helmets, Conceptions of Risk, and the National Commission on Product Safety, 1961–1970

      • Kathleen Bachynski
      Pages 141-155

    4. Lights Out: Concussion Research, the National Football League, and Employer Duty of Care

      • Lucia Trimbur
      Pages 157-171

    5. Race and Injury in American Football

      • Peter Benson, José Figueroa-López, Richard Kuehn, Andrew Whitaker, Adam Rugg
      Pages 173-184

  4. Sporting Females, Sexuality, and the Politics of Injury

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 185-185
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    2. Injury at the Extreme: Alison Hargreaves, Mountaineering and Motherhood

      • Carol A. Osborne
      Pages 187-206

    3. Gendered Bodies, Gendered Injuries

      • Kath Woodward
      Pages 207-222

    4. The Not So Glamorous World of Women’s Wrestling

      • Karen Corteen
      Pages 223-243

    5. Pride, Prejudice and Death: The Emile Griffith Story

      • Ruby Finklestein
      Pages 245-263

  5. Sport as Transport: Horse, Cycle, and Motor Racing and the Politics of Safety

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 265-265
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    2. Runners, Riders and Risk: Safety Issues in the History of Horseracing

      • Patrick Sharman
      Pages 267-291

    3. ‘Dishing Out the Pain’ in Professional Cycling

      • Peter Bramham
      Pages 293-307

    4. It Was Ironic that He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death and the Politics of Safety in the History of Motor Racing

      • Stephen Wagg
      Pages 309-327
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Keywords

About this book

This book looks historically at the harm that has been inflicted in the practice of sport and at some of the issues, debates and controversies that have arisen as a result. Written by experts in history, sociology, sport journalism and public health, the book considers sport and injury in relation to matters of social class; gender; ethnicity and race; sexuality; political ideology and national identity; health and wellbeing; childhood; animal rights; and popular culture. These matters are, in turn, variously related to a range of sports, including ancient, pre- and early industrial sports; American football; boxing; wrestling and other combat sports; mountaineering; horseracing; cycling; motor racing; rugby football; cricket; association football; baseball; basketball; Crossfit; ice hockey; Olympic sports; Mixed Martial Arts; and sport in an imagined dystopian future.

Reviews

​“This book offers an impressive and thoughtful collection of essays written by top scholars each interrogating the different ways in which diverse sporting cultures produce athlete pain, injury, and bodily damage. As such, this collection is essential reading for those interested in understanding how sport is not simply about the celebration of achievement and victory, but also about the social, material, and political agony of suffering and trauma.” (Mary G. McDonald, Professor and Homer C. Rice Chair of Sport and Society, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)

“As an increasing number of sports are subjected to medical and legal scrutiny for their short- and long-term outcomes, this timely volume rams home the point that sports might not be so good for players afterall. Offering an impressive spread of pain-injury snapshots across the social sciences, public health and social policy disciplines, it proves what we have long suspected – pain and injury in sport do not only result from the nature of the game, but from the ways that sports are organized, managed and policed. In questioning the institutional innocence of sport, the volume crosses the explanatory bridge from sport studies to victimology and underlines the complexity of the central concept of consent in sports harm.” (Kevin Young, Professor of Sociology, University of Calgary, Canada)


“This is an essential guide to some of the most important questions facing sport today. It brings together a wide range of experts who interrogate harm, injury and physical abuse in sport from a variety of insightful perspectives. This is a groundbreaking and timely book that should be on the shelves of every sports historian, sociologist and policy-maker.” (Tony Collins, Emeritus Professor of History, De Montfort University, UK)

Editors and Affiliations

  • International Centre for Sport History and Culture, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

    Stephen Wagg

  • Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

    Allyson M. Pollock

About the editors

Stephen Wagg retired as Professor of Sport and Society at Leeds Beckett University in the UK in 2019. He is currently an Honorary Fellow in the International Centre for Sport History and Culture at de Montfort University, Leicester, and Visiting Professor at Newcastle University, both in the UK.


Allyson M. Pollock is Clinical Professor of Public Health in the Population Health Sciences Institute at Newcastle University in the UK and Co-Director Newcastle University Centre of Excellence in Regulatory Science.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Palgrave Handbook of Sport, Politics and Harm

  • Editors: Stephen Wagg, Allyson M. Pollock

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72826-7

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-72825-0Published: 16 December 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-72828-1Published: 17 December 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-72826-7Published: 01 January 2022

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXXI, 629

  • Number of Illustrations: 26 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Sociology of Sport and Leisure, Sports Medicine, Political Sociology, Sociology of Racism, Medical Sociology, Public Health

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