Contested epistemology: theory and method of international sport studies

Abstract

This article considers the nature of the paradigmatic, theoretical and methodological divergences characterizing the field of international sports studies. While historical contextualization is germane to many approaches, distinctive sub-disciplinary boundaries prevail. Specifically, we assess the significance of disciplinary barriers between historical and sociological approaches to the sporting past. While we detail evidence of extensive cross-pollination between the two sub-disciplines, the traditional disciplinary foci of empirical evidence (history) and theory (sociology) and associated differences in methodological traditions continue to constrain closer sub-disciplinary connections. Moreover, we suggest that the recent intellectual turn toward postmodernism and scepticism of realist epistemologies, while on one hand promising to challenge sub-disciplinary boundaries, has also compounded divides between many practitioners within the sociology of sport and sports history.

Notes

1. Readers should be aware of geographical and institutional variations in, and influences on, the development of the two fields. The influence of the University of Massachusetts has been the subject of some recent reflections (Barney and Segrave 2013; Birrell 2012).

2. Loy and Kenyon’s (1969) landmark Sport, Culture, Society is widely accepted as a key text in the emergence of the sociology of sport field. As Loy, Kenyon, and McPherson (1980) later note, antecedents of a recognized sociology of sport date from the nineteenth century. Thorstein Veblen’s The Leisure Class (1899) is a prominent example. Similarly, antecedents of sport history include Betts (1953) and Dulles (1940).

3. Whether functionalism actually achieved the status of a dominant paradigm in sport sociology is the subject of debate (Loy and Booth 2000).

4. The exception is figurational sociology which – although there is some variation amongst advocates – undergirded by Norbert Elias’s approach diasavows an explict political intent on the basis of the potential problematics of ‘unintended consequences’.

5. While Gruneau (1983, 17) accused Brohm of ‘left-wing elitism’, he ignored the latter’s calls for political action. This form of disregard contributed to disconnecting the sociology of sport from political activism.

6. Malcolm (2012) cites journals such as Football Studies, Sport in Society, Soccer & Society and Olympika as examples.

7. Calhoun (2013) has recently identified Pierre Bourdieu as an historical sociologist. Given Bourdieu’s influence in sport history (e.g. Booth and Loy 1998) and sport sociology (e.g. Falcous and McLeod 2012) we offer his work as a potential template for greater integration of history and sociology in sports studies.

8. Interestingly, neither sociologists nor historians of sport have engaged Morgan’s critique. As of April 2013, Google scholar listed just three citations of the article; none appeared in sport sociology or sport history journals.