Pub Date : 2022-06-15DOI: 10.1177/10126902221107322
Shawn D. Forde
This article offers an analysis of FIFA’s Football for Hope (FFH) movement with a particular focus on the 20 Centres for 2010 Campaign that was connected to the 2010 World Cup, and the FFH Festivals held during the 2010 and 2014 World Cups. Using document analysis and observations made during the FFH Festival at the 2014 World Cup and drawing on Levitas’ ( 2013) Utopia as Method, this article analyzes claims made by FIFA that football can bring hope and build a better future. Ultimately, the hope that FIFA promotes, and their imagined future is one that is essentially predetermined and is based on the current status quo. However, FFH through their documents and their festival, also present glimpses of potentially transformative alternatives.
{"title":"FIFA’s utopia: An analysis of FIFA’s football for hope movement","authors":"Shawn D. Forde","doi":"10.1177/10126902221107322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221107322","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers an analysis of FIFA’s Football for Hope (FFH) movement with a particular focus on the 20 Centres for 2010 Campaign that was connected to the 2010 World Cup, and the FFH Festivals held during the 2010 and 2014 World Cups. Using document analysis and observations made during the FFH Festival at the 2014 World Cup and drawing on Levitas’ ( 2013) Utopia as Method, this article analyzes claims made by FIFA that football can bring hope and build a better future. Ultimately, the hope that FIFA promotes, and their imagined future is one that is essentially predetermined and is based on the current status quo. However, FFH through their documents and their festival, also present glimpses of potentially transformative alternatives.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"411 - 427"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44448590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-06DOI: 10.1177/10126902221103106
Holger Ihle
Gender inequalities in sports media are well-documented. This study focuses on sports news composition and how gender influences the prominence of sports news stories. The news-factors approach offers a causal explanation for the lower prominence (i.e. newsworthiness) of women's sports in TV sports reporting. Following this theory's perspective, athletes’ gender is supposed to work as a moderating variable on news values of news factors in sports reports. The content analysis of seven German sports news programs reveals whether the same news factors are treated unequally with regard to women's and men's sports in TV news coverage. The results show that women's sports are presented as less newsworthy than men's sports, although news factors do not differ significantly by gender. However, the moderation effect of gender does not cause lower newsworthiness. That means, e.g., sports women's successes are equally emphasized as the success of male athletes in sports news on TV, and gender does not lower the credits female athlete's success receive in any given news stories. Instead, the results suggest that gender works as a news factor of its own, reducing not the news value of certain news factors but the overall newsworthiness of women's sports in TV coverage. Thus, the results demonstrate that gender inequality in sports media does not necessarily come from journalists perceiving female athletes’ performance as inferior but from presenting women's sports less often and in a far less prominent way than men's sports.
{"title":"How gender affects the newsworthiness of sports news on German TV: An application of the news-factors approach to understanding gender-biased sports news presentation","authors":"Holger Ihle","doi":"10.1177/10126902221103106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221103106","url":null,"abstract":"Gender inequalities in sports media are well-documented. This study focuses on sports news composition and how gender influences the prominence of sports news stories. The news-factors approach offers a causal explanation for the lower prominence (i.e. newsworthiness) of women's sports in TV sports reporting. Following this theory's perspective, athletes’ gender is supposed to work as a moderating variable on news values of news factors in sports reports. The content analysis of seven German sports news programs reveals whether the same news factors are treated unequally with regard to women's and men's sports in TV news coverage. The results show that women's sports are presented as less newsworthy than men's sports, although news factors do not differ significantly by gender. However, the moderation effect of gender does not cause lower newsworthiness. That means, e.g., sports women's successes are equally emphasized as the success of male athletes in sports news on TV, and gender does not lower the credits female athlete's success receive in any given news stories. Instead, the results suggest that gender works as a news factor of its own, reducing not the news value of certain news factors but the overall newsworthiness of women's sports in TV coverage. Thus, the results demonstrate that gender inequality in sports media does not necessarily come from journalists perceiving female athletes’ performance as inferior but from presenting women's sports less often and in a far less prominent way than men's sports.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"253 - 277"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45096880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-05DOI: 10.1177/10126902221104956
E. LaRocque, Nicolas Moreau
In the 1970s, the concept of sport addiction appeared in scientific literature, warning of the addictive properties of exercise when taken to extremes. Appearing in over 6500 peer-reviewed articles in Google Scholar from 1979 to 2017, this construct is of interest to the fields of mental health and sport sociology as it provides a heuristic case to consider the conditions which allow for a category-in-the-making to gain meaning despite its absence from leading classification systems. Using Hacking's framework of ecological niches, this review of literature provides a critical examination of “sport addiction” and aims to investigate the driving forces and the means by which social actors from the scientific community negotiate the landscape and boundaries of this emerging disorder. The results highlight the prominence of psychology in the diffusion of the construct and the reticence of the medical world to legitimize it as a mental health category.
{"title":"When sport is taken to extremes: A sociohistorical analysis of sport addiction","authors":"E. LaRocque, Nicolas Moreau","doi":"10.1177/10126902221104956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221104956","url":null,"abstract":"In the 1970s, the concept of sport addiction appeared in scientific literature, warning of the addictive properties of exercise when taken to extremes. Appearing in over 6500 peer-reviewed articles in Google Scholar from 1979 to 2017, this construct is of interest to the fields of mental health and sport sociology as it provides a heuristic case to consider the conditions which allow for a category-in-the-making to gain meaning despite its absence from leading classification systems. Using Hacking's framework of ecological niches, this review of literature provides a critical examination of “sport addiction” and aims to investigate the driving forces and the means by which social actors from the scientific community negotiate the landscape and boundaries of this emerging disorder. The results highlight the prominence of psychology in the diffusion of the construct and the reticence of the medical world to legitimize it as a mental health category.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"368 - 391"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41843257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-22DOI: 10.1177/10126902221101993
Honglu Zhang, D. Powell
The Chinese government views the Olympic Games as a critical platform to present national pride on a global scale. Olympic education also has an important role to play for China, as it is a requirement for any Olympic host country. In the context or preparations for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, this original ethnographic research examines the governance of Olympic education, with a focus on how relationships between China's government and a range of stakeholders (e.g. private sectors, academics, and individual teachers) ‘worked’ to shape the implementation of Olympic education in two Beijing primary schools. Utilising Foucault's notion of governmentality, we demonstrate that Olympic education was a significant tactic for Chinese government to realise their ambition of the great rejuvenation of China. Here, the state employed two technologies of government: policy announcements and outsourcing. In tension with common assumptions about China – and Chinese education – being purely authoritarian, our research illuminates how hybrid socialist-neoliberal rationalities worked to shape Olympic education in schools.
{"title":"Governing Olympic education: Technologies of policy announcements and outsourcing","authors":"Honglu Zhang, D. Powell","doi":"10.1177/10126902221101993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221101993","url":null,"abstract":"The Chinese government views the Olympic Games as a critical platform to present national pride on a global scale. Olympic education also has an important role to play for China, as it is a requirement for any Olympic host country. In the context or preparations for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, this original ethnographic research examines the governance of Olympic education, with a focus on how relationships between China's government and a range of stakeholders (e.g. private sectors, academics, and individual teachers) ‘worked’ to shape the implementation of Olympic education in two Beijing primary schools. Utilising Foucault's notion of governmentality, we demonstrate that Olympic education was a significant tactic for Chinese government to realise their ambition of the great rejuvenation of China. Here, the state employed two technologies of government: policy announcements and outsourcing. In tension with common assumptions about China – and Chinese education – being purely authoritarian, our research illuminates how hybrid socialist-neoliberal rationalities worked to shape Olympic education in schools.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"349 - 367"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47254248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-22DOI: 10.1177/10126902221096235
Philippe Longchamp, Marion Braizaz, Amal Tawfik, Kevin Toffel
Most of the scientific literature concerning former high-level athletes is devoted to their professional retraining. There are comparatively few empirical studies dealing with their body representations and practices. Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, this article presents the results of an interview survey with 30 former high-level athletes. It shows that their relationships with their bodies result from their specific body trajectories, marked by family socialization and social background, sports socialization, injuries, and the possession of different forms of capital. In contrast to mondains, who have relatively stable body trajectories, oblates are marked by less homogeneous socialization and see their body trajectories divided between a form of personal dissatisfaction on the one hand and a feeling of saturation with their sport on the other.
{"title":"Mondains and oblates. Body trajectories in high-level sport","authors":"Philippe Longchamp, Marion Braizaz, Amal Tawfik, Kevin Toffel","doi":"10.1177/10126902221096235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221096235","url":null,"abstract":"Most of the scientific literature concerning former high-level athletes is devoted to their professional retraining. There are comparatively few empirical studies dealing with their body representations and practices. Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, this article presents the results of an interview survey with 30 former high-level athletes. It shows that their relationships with their bodies result from their specific body trajectories, marked by family socialization and social background, sports socialization, injuries, and the possession of different forms of capital. In contrast to mondains, who have relatively stable body trajectories, oblates are marked by less homogeneous socialization and see their body trajectories divided between a form of personal dissatisfaction on the one hand and a feeling of saturation with their sport on the other.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"146 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44249071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-17DOI: 10.1177/10126902221096947
Chien-Chun Tzeng, Tien-Chin Tan, A. Bairner
This study examines how wushu, as a folk sport in China, has been promoted globally by a nation-state. Identifying the Global Wushu Movement (GWM) as an East-to-West diffusion and a political and cultural phenomenon, our analytical framework is based on that of globalization as proposed by Houlihan (1994, 2016) and Held et al. (1999). Our particular focus is on the ‘nation-state’, notably its role in activating the GWM and whether it is a responder to or a promoter of global sporting culture. Data was collected from both documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews involving a total of twenty key stakeholders. Findings reveal that some of China's strategies prove that it is a responder to the Olympic Movement. Other strategies demonstrate that China, as the promoter of the GWM, has its own agenda to influence the international sporting realm. More specifically, the state is indeed affected by globalization which can also be managed by the state. This is because, to some extent, while China accepted the Olympic value, it has also transformed a part of its own traditional culture (wushu) and exported it via the International Wushu Federation (IWUF) as the façade. Conceptually, the duality of China's strategies in the case of GWM implies the emergence of reverse globalization.
{"title":"Responder or promoter? investigating the role of nation-state in globalization: The case of China’s strategies in the global wushu movement","authors":"Chien-Chun Tzeng, Tien-Chin Tan, A. Bairner","doi":"10.1177/10126902221096947","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221096947","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines how wushu, as a folk sport in China, has been promoted globally by a nation-state. Identifying the Global Wushu Movement (GWM) as an East-to-West diffusion and a political and cultural phenomenon, our analytical framework is based on that of globalization as proposed by Houlihan (1994, 2016) and Held et al. (1999). Our particular focus is on the ‘nation-state’, notably its role in activating the GWM and whether it is a responder to or a promoter of global sporting culture. Data was collected from both documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews involving a total of twenty key stakeholders. Findings reveal that some of China's strategies prove that it is a responder to the Olympic Movement. Other strategies demonstrate that China, as the promoter of the GWM, has its own agenda to influence the international sporting realm. More specifically, the state is indeed affected by globalization which can also be managed by the state. This is because, to some extent, while China accepted the Olympic value, it has also transformed a part of its own traditional culture (wushu) and exported it via the International Wushu Federation (IWUF) as the façade. Conceptually, the duality of China's strategies in the case of GWM implies the emergence of reverse globalization.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"308 - 327"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44273163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-16DOI: 10.1177/10126902221097824
Philippa Velija, Catherine Phipps
In this article we apply theoretical tools from the work of Elias and Connell to critically discuss the ways in which gender relations on Higher Education sport courses are manifested and experienced by students. Drawing on data from an analysis of curriculum, as well as interviews, surveys and workshops with students across a range of sport courses at one university, we explore curriculum design and the ways in which knowledge is presented which both marginalises and compartmentalises issues of gender, as well as presenting knowledge as gender neutral. This article provides a critical understanding of how knowledge about gender and women's sport features and is taught in UK Higher Education sport courses, alongside how students experiences in the classroom to provide an understanding which reinforces existing gender regimes and gender relations.
{"title":"“That's where you start to think like, does anyone actually listen to or watch women's sport?” Gender Regimes and Students Experiences on Higher Education Sport Courses","authors":"Philippa Velija, Catherine Phipps","doi":"10.1177/10126902221097824","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221097824","url":null,"abstract":"In this article we apply theoretical tools from the work of Elias and Connell to critically discuss the ways in which gender relations on Higher Education sport courses are manifested and experienced by students. Drawing on data from an analysis of curriculum, as well as interviews, surveys and workshops with students across a range of sport courses at one university, we explore curriculum design and the ways in which knowledge is presented which both marginalises and compartmentalises issues of gender, as well as presenting knowledge as gender neutral. This article provides a critical understanding of how knowledge about gender and women's sport features and is taught in UK Higher Education sport courses, alongside how students experiences in the classroom to provide an understanding which reinforces existing gender regimes and gender relations.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"233 - 252"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43897036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-11DOI: 10.1177/10126902221095686
Dunja Antunovic, Sunčica Bartoluci
Researchers have documented patterns in sports media coverage across a variety of geographical and media contexts extensively, but relatively few studies focus on the Central and Eastern European region. This study examines the agenda diversity of European public service media in Hungary, Croatia, and Slovenia on their sport-related Facebook accounts during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. A content analysis identified featured sports, gender balance, and the role of national interest in the events and athletes represented. Sports agenda diversity was driven by the hegemony of men's football and national success at the Olympics. Gender imbalance in media coverage persists in the region even on public service broadcasters’ social media accounts. Women received coverage only when representing the home nation at an Olympic event. The hegemony of men's football is a transnational phenomenon, while Olympic coverage emphasizes sports that share historical associations with national identity. Sports agenda diversity in the three countries is heterogeneous and regionally distinct. In practice, broadcasters might temporarily minimize gender imbalance in Olympic coverage, but in ways that routinizes the national focus. Theoretical developments in agenda setting in coverage of international events should account both for transnational patterns in public service media in the region and local particularities.
{"title":"Sport, gender, and national interest during the Olympics: A comparative analysis of media representations in Central and Eastern Europe","authors":"Dunja Antunovic, Sunčica Bartoluci","doi":"10.1177/10126902221095686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221095686","url":null,"abstract":"Researchers have documented patterns in sports media coverage across a variety of geographical and media contexts extensively, but relatively few studies focus on the Central and Eastern European region. This study examines the agenda diversity of European public service media in Hungary, Croatia, and Slovenia on their sport-related Facebook accounts during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. A content analysis identified featured sports, gender balance, and the role of national interest in the events and athletes represented. Sports agenda diversity was driven by the hegemony of men's football and national success at the Olympics. Gender imbalance in media coverage persists in the region even on public service broadcasters’ social media accounts. Women received coverage only when representing the home nation at an Olympic event. The hegemony of men's football is a transnational phenomenon, while Olympic coverage emphasizes sports that share historical associations with national identity. Sports agenda diversity in the three countries is heterogeneous and regionally distinct. In practice, broadcasters might temporarily minimize gender imbalance in Olympic coverage, but in ways that routinizes the national focus. Theoretical developments in agenda setting in coverage of international events should account both for transnational patterns in public service media in the region and local particularities.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"167 - 187"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45663696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-09DOI: 10.1177/10126902221096233
Y. Zuo, Qihang Qiu, T. Hu, J. Zhang
This study explores complex relationships between the formation and development of traditional sports and games (TSGs) and the natural environment by adopting a mixed method of two studies. First, taking 1356 TSGs as cases, Study 1 uses spatial analysis to explore the representation, connotation, and source of the relationship between TSGs and natural environment factors. Second, Study 2 uses grounded theory to analyze 149 official declaration documents of TSGs and extracts 36 initial concepts, 12 subcategories, and 4 core categories, from which a theoretical framework of the formation process model of TSGs is constructed. The findings illustrate that the formation and development of TSGs are not completely determined by the natural environment but are derived from a combination of factors such as survival values, beliefs, attitudes, and the natural environment. On one hand, when the natural environment is considered an external factor of society, TSGs are directly affected by it. On the other hand, when the natural environment is considered an internal factor of society, it can only interact with people's beliefs and attitudes and indirectly accelerate or delay TSG formation and development. Research results provide both theoretical and practice implications in the safeguarding of TSGs.
{"title":"How natural environments influence traditional sports and games: A mixed methods study from China","authors":"Y. Zuo, Qihang Qiu, T. Hu, J. Zhang","doi":"10.1177/10126902221096233","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221096233","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores complex relationships between the formation and development of traditional sports and games (TSGs) and the natural environment by adopting a mixed method of two studies. First, taking 1356 TSGs as cases, Study 1 uses spatial analysis to explore the representation, connotation, and source of the relationship between TSGs and natural environment factors. Second, Study 2 uses grounded theory to analyze 149 official declaration documents of TSGs and extracts 36 initial concepts, 12 subcategories, and 4 core categories, from which a theoretical framework of the formation process model of TSGs is constructed. The findings illustrate that the formation and development of TSGs are not completely determined by the natural environment but are derived from a combination of factors such as survival values, beliefs, attitudes, and the natural environment. On one hand, when the natural environment is considered an external factor of society, TSGs are directly affected by it. On the other hand, when the natural environment is considered an internal factor of society, it can only interact with people's beliefs and attitudes and indirectly accelerate or delay TSG formation and development. Research results provide both theoretical and practice implications in the safeguarding of TSGs.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"328 - 348"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45577453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-03DOI: 10.1177/10126902221095688
Chien-Chun Tzeng, F. Ohl
This study aims to examine the very fabrics of underground sport betting system that is associated with match-fixing. Mafia, syndicates, and bookmakers are the three levels of actors in the hierarchy. Having grassroots bookmakers as our particular focus, we examine their roles and networks, what regulates the system, and how the system functions. Thanks to our academic links with the mafia, we had access to bookmakers to carry out observations and 25 interviews. We rely on the social capital model in which structural, relational and cognitive dimensions are identified. Findings reveal that actors are empowered by their social capital to streamline their underground business. Far from the stereotype of a competitive market under the control and coercion of very powerful mafia, our observations of bookmakers, mainly women, show that they cooperate, trust each other, and have great autonomy in their activities. Because of their strong shared culture and networks, betting activities are considered acceptable in their own small community.
{"title":"Examining the fabrics of match-fixing: The underground sport betting system","authors":"Chien-Chun Tzeng, F. Ohl","doi":"10.1177/10126902221095688","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221095688","url":null,"abstract":"This study aims to examine the very fabrics of underground sport betting system that is associated with match-fixing. Mafia, syndicates, and bookmakers are the three levels of actors in the hierarchy. Having grassroots bookmakers as our particular focus, we examine their roles and networks, what regulates the system, and how the system functions. Thanks to our academic links with the mafia, we had access to bookmakers to carry out observations and 25 interviews. We rely on the social capital model in which structural, relational and cognitive dimensions are identified. Findings reveal that actors are empowered by their social capital to streamline their underground business. Far from the stereotype of a competitive market under the control and coercion of very powerful mafia, our observations of bookmakers, mainly women, show that they cooperate, trust each other, and have great autonomy in their activities. Because of their strong shared culture and networks, betting activities are considered acceptable in their own small community.","PeriodicalId":47968,"journal":{"name":"International Review for the Sociology of Sport","volume":"58 1","pages":"188 - 207"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43130571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}