Sociocultural Examinations of Sports Concussions (Routledge Research in Sport and Exercise Science)

Sport’s "concussion crisis" has been characterized by controversial scientific discoveries, athlete suicides, and high-profile lawsuits involving professional sports leagues, while provoking widespread media coverage, changes to game rules, and debate about the future of many popular sports. Sociocultural Examinations of Sports Concussion is the first edited collection to bring together multiple sociocultural perspectives on sports concussion that interrogate the social, economic, political, and historical forces shaping the cultural impacts of these injuries.

Each of the ten chapters moves beyond biomedical or neuroscientific paradigms to critically examine a specific intersection of sociocultural factors influencing public perceptions about concussion or athlete experiences of brain injury. These include analyses of media and advertising, medical treatment and diagnostic protocols, gender and masculinity, developments in equipment and scientific models, economics and labor politics, understandings of trauma and recovery, public health philosophies, and disciplinary differences in framing the ontologies of concussion.

Drawing from a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches, Sociocultural Examinations of Sports Concussion offers a diverse set of analyses examining brain injuries as cultural and embodied phenomena affecting more than just athletes’ brains, but also embedded within and (re)shaping meanings, identities, and social contexts. It is valuable reading for graduate students and researchers interested in the experience and treatment of sports concussion, sports sociology, and sports technology.

Matt Ventresca is a postdoctoral associate in the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada) where he is affiliated with the Integrated Concussion Research Program. Dr. Ventresca previously completed his PhD at Queen’s University and was postdoctoral fellow in the School of History and Sociology at the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA). Matt’s research concerns the intersections of social inequalities, media, and science in the contexts of sport and health. His current work focuses on the sociocultural implications of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) in sports contexts, centering, specifically, on the processes through which knowledge about TBI gets produced through media representations and scientific research practices. Matt studies the sociocultural dimensions of pain and injury in sports more broadly, as well as the promotional cultures surrounding popular men’s health initiatives.

Mary G. McDonald is the Homer C. Rice Chair in Sports and Society in the School of History and Sociology at the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA). A past president of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, Professor McDonald’s research focuses on American culture and sport including issues of inequality as related to gender, race, class and sexuality. She recently has begun to expand this analysis by engaging Science and Technology Studies theories and methods to critically investigate sporting technologies. As Homer Rice Chair, she is directing the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts initiative, the Sports, Society, and Technology Program.