David L. Andrews

Kinesiology's Inconvenient Truth and the Physical Cultural Studies Imperative

This article explicates the inconvenient truth that is at the core of the crisis currently facing the field of kinesiology. Namely, the instantiation of an epistemological hierarchy that privileges positivist over postpositivist, quantitative over qualitative, and predictive over interpretive ways of knowing. The discussion outlines the political, economic, and cultural forces responsible for kinesiologys putative scientific hegemony and speaks to its corollary: the very demise of the field caused by intensified subdisciplinary specialization and fragmentation and fundamental lack of comprehensiveness. The article outlines a potential corrective to kinesiologys blinkered epistemological and empirical vision, currently being developed at the University of Maryland. Physical Cultural Studies (PCS) is introduced as a synthesis of empirical, theoretical, and methodological influences (drawn from, among other sources, the sociology and history of sport and physical activity, the sociology of the body, and cultural studies) that are focused on the critical analysis of active bodies and specifically the manner in which they become organized, represented, and experienced in relation to the operations of social power. Thus, PCS is offered as an important contribution toward realizing the truly integrative and comprehensive kinesiology to which we as kinesiologists—and regardless of our empirical, theoretical, or epistemological proclivities—should aspire.

Beyond a boundary? Sport, transnational advertising, and the reimagining of national culture.

The penetration of local cultures by the economics and imagery of global capitalism represents the latest and most sophisticated attempt by transnational corporations to command the widest possible market base and thereby accrue the benefits derived from the realization of colossal economies of scale. Rather than attempting to neuter cultural difference through a strategic global uniformity, many corporations have acknowledged that securing a profitable global presence necessitates negotiating within the language of the local. This article outlines some of the ways that sport—as a de facto cultural shorthand—has been appropriated within and through the advertising campaigns of transnational corporations as a means of contributing toward the constitution and experiencing of national cultures. As such, this article examines the role played by transnational corporations and their promotional armatures in reimagining national cultures, introduces the concept of cultural Toyotism as a means of understanding the manner in which transnational entities negotiate the global-local nexus, and explicates empirical examples of the contrasting processes whereby sport has been used as a means of constituting the nation within the advertising discourses of transnational corporate entities.

Coming to Terms with Cultural Studies

This article represents an abbreviated call to intellectual specificity in response to the growing, if somewhat nebulous, presence of cultural studies within the sociology of sport. Without acknowledged boundaries, cultural studies is liable to lose its political, empirical, and theoretical impetus, resulting in a slide into the morass of intellectual incomprehensibility and disregard; discussions pertaining to boundary recognition, let alone maintenance, thus being an absolute necessity. Therefore, the author hopes to encourage the development of an approach that more closely engages the primary tenets and practices of the broader cultural studies project, while furthering the understanding of contemporary sport culture. Through recourse to Stuart Hall’s Marxism without guarantees and Lawrence Grossberg’s radical contextualism, this discussion advances an approach premised on, and seeking to both excavate and theorize, the contingent relations, structure, and effects of sport forms, an approach that could be characterized as a sport without guarantees.

Contingent intellectual amateurism, or, the problem with evidence-based research.

Given the amalgam of neo-liberal, neo-scientist and neo-conservative forces that frame higher education_safeguarding science and medicine at the expense of arts, humanities and the social sciences_the very existence and continuance of the sociology of sport is imperiled perhaps more than ever. In this moment, and not surprisingly, the epistemological corroborator of these forces is once again championed; there has been an aggressive push towards _science_ defined by evidence based programmes, policies and practices (EBR) as the sole and legitimate avenue for academic survival. Heralded as the _gold_ standard of academic research, and forged through university-industry-government partnerships, the evidence based research mantra emphasizes a shift towards corporate principles of efficiency, accountability and profit maximization. As such, within this paper, we discuss the creeping EBR-based epistemological orthodoxy that is seeping into the critical sociological study of sport, arguing that it threatens to neuter the political and critical potentialities of our field. We propose that pandering to EBR, compromises everything that critical sporting intellectuals strive for and believe in; it is a powerful virus of sorts that speaks against our ontological, axiological, epistemological, methodological and political approaches and offers nothing but collusion with, and explicit support for, existing regimes of power.

Michel Foucault: Studies of Power and Sport

As a historian of the present, Michel Foucault sought to undermine modern vernaculars by disrupting the certainties that govern contemporary ways of thinking. Foucault’s interventions encourage us to detach from established knowledge, ask fresh questions, make new connections, and understand why it is important to do so. Given Foucault’s generative role in intellectual thought — evidenced most especially by extensive citation and frequent discussion of his work — serious scholars of sport cannot avoid Foucault’s formulations. Indeed, an increasing number of academics studying sport have turned to Foucault to “think through” sport’s relevance on the one hand, and for rethinking what is relevant to their work on the other. Correlatively, scholars who once imagined sport to be distinct and distant from their domain of study are, because of Foucauldian styles of thinking, now sensitive to sport’s significance to their own work.

Feminizing Olympic reality: Preliminary dispatches from Baudrillard's Atlanta.

This paper appropriates elements of Jean Baudrillards provocative contemporary cultural theorizing as a suggestive framework for examining the nature, and influence, of the mass mediated spectacles that dominate American sporting culture. Concentrating on the National Broadcasting Corporations coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, this discussion highlights the ways in which the network manufactured a simulated model of Olympic reality that was explicitly designed to seduce female television viewers. More specifically, this paper explicates how NBC consciously mobilized traditionally feminine codes within, and through, the content and structure of its prime time televisual discourse. The paper concludes by advancing the notion that, rather than challenging them, NBCs feminization of Olympic reality merely accentuated the essentialist and hierarchically ordered notions of gender identities, practices, and experiences, which reside all too comfortably within the popular imaginary.

Sport and the Transnationalizing Media Corporation

This article contributes to the understanding of how transnational media corporations enter, operate, and are structured in different national contexts. Specifically, it provides a detailed examination of News Corporations use of sport as an instrument for successfully penetrating national television markets within the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The discussion is divided into 3 sections, focused on (a) the cultural and economic rationales underpinning News Corporations use of sport as a core aspect of transnational television market entry strategies, (b) examples of News Corporations use of sport programming to enter and manage local media markets, and (c) the changes wrought in News Corporations organizational structure and focus resulting from its transnational sporting orientation.

British Cultural Studies and Sport: Past Encounters and Future Possibilities

The primary purpose of this essay is to address the linkage between the emergence and development of cultural studies on the one hand, and the study of sport as a cultural practice on the other. Specifically, this linkage is examined in a fourfold manner: first, an overview of the implicit political commitments associated with cultural studies as a critical intellectual pursuit; second, a genealogy of an overlooked dimension of cultural studies, namely, the sport-related analyses conducted by researchers affiliated with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Study at the University of Birmingham; third, an examination of the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of Stuart Halls (1986a) “Marxism without guarantees” as an innovative and incisive response to the cultural studies problematic; and fourth, a discussion of the relevance of Halls conjunctural approach for critically interpreting the significance of sport in the production and experiencing of contemporary national cultures.

The built sport spectacle and the opacity of democracy

In 2004, city leaders in Washington, DC approved the construction of Nationals Park, in order to encourage Major League Baseball to relocate the Montreal Expos to the city. With public funding of the stadium exceeding

Disneyization, Debord, and the Integrated NBA Spectacle

611 million, this became the most generous stadium subsidy in the United States at that time (Sports Facilities Reports, 2008). In this revealing action, city leaders clearly demonstrated their priorities by funding a project that primarily benefits visitors and corporate interests over the pressing needs of the city’s residents. Nationals Park is, thus, a spectacle, which, in David Harvey’s (2001b) terms helps to mask Washington’s ‘rot beneath the glitter’ (p. 140). Furthermore, and given the idiosyncratic political governance operating within Washington DC, this article utilizes a combination of Debordian and Lefebvrean theorizing in identifying and examining Nationals Park as a sporting edifice whose symbolic and aesthetic presence is rooted in the city’s pseudo-democratic aura, but whose socio-structural derivation and effects actively perpetuate Washington’s constitutional disenfranchisement and the locally iniquitous status quo.