Sport and the Social Significance of Pleasure (Routledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society)

This innovative text's critical examination foregrounds the prime reason why so many people participate in or watch sport – pleasure. Although there has been a "turn" to emotions and affect within academia over the last two decades, it has been somewhat remiss that pleasure, as an integral aspect of human life, has not received greater attention from sociologists of sport, exercise and physical education. This book addresses this issue via an unabashed examination of sport and the moving body via a "pleasure lens." It provides new insights about the production of various identities, power relations and social issues, and the dialectical links between the socio-cultural and the body. Taking a wide-sweeping view of pleasure - dignified and debauched, distinguished and mundane – it examines topics as diverse as aging, health, fandom, running, extreme sports, biopolitics, consumerism, feminism, sex and sexuality. In drawing from diverse theoretical approaches and original empirical research, the text reveals the social and political significance of pleasure and provides a more rounded, dynamic and sensual account of sport.

Richard Pringle is an Associate Professor in the School of Curriculum and Pedagogy in the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland.

Robert E. Rinehart is Associate Professor in Sport and Leisure Studies at the University of Waikato.

Jayne Caudwell is Reader in Sport, Gender and Sexualities at the University of Brighton.