Playing for Change: The Continuing Struggle for Sport and Recreation

For more than forty years, scholars of the history and sociology of sport and recreation have studied how, no matter the time or place, sport is always more than just a game. In Playing for Change, leading scholars in the field of sports studies consider that legacy and forge ahead into the discipline’s future. Through essays grouped around the themes of international and North American sport, including the Vancouver and Sochi Olympic Games; access to physical activity in Canadian communities; and the role of activism and the public intellectual in the delivery of sport, the contributors offer a comprehensive examination of the institutional structures of sport, physical activity, and recreation. This book provides wide-ranging examples of cutting-edge research in a vibrant and growing field.

Table of Contents:
Introduction - For Jets and Country: A Reminder of How Sport Matters Russell Field, University of Manitoba Part I: Global promises: The Contested Terrain of International Sport 1. Sport, Development and the Challenge of Slums Richard Gruneau, Simon Fraser University 2. The New ‘Culture Wars’: The Vancouver 2010 Olympics, Public Protest, and the Politics of Resistance Russell Field, University of Manitoba 3. Sochi 2014: The Russian Oligarchy and Winter Games Funding Hart Cantelon, Professor Emeritus, University of Lethbridge, and James Riordan, Professor Emeritus, University of Surrey 4. The Dialectic of Modern, High-Performance Sport: Returning to Dubin to Move Forward Rob Beamish, Queen’s University Part II: Continental divides: Revisiting the Shaping of Sport in North America 5. The 1904 Chicago-St. Louis Transition and the Social Structuration of the American Olympic Movement John J. MacAloon, The University of Chicago 6. Two-Way Hockey: Selling Canada’s Game in America, 1885-1935 Stephen Hardy, University of New Hampshire 7. Continentalization and America’s Contested Baseball Hegemony: the Postwar Challenge to Major League Baseball in Mexico, Quebec and the Caribbean, 1945-1955 Colin Howell, Saint Mary’s University Part III: Local contours: Debating Access to Physical Activity in Canadian Communities 8. Change Rooms and Change Agents: The Struggle against Barriers to Opportunities for Physical Activity and Sport in Ethnocultural Communities in Toronto Parissa Safai, York University 9. Political Ecology, Discourse and Shared-use Trail Development in Nova Scotia: Braking for or Breaking the Environment? Robert Pitter and Glyn Bissix, Acadia University 10. Intertwining Histories, Enhancing Strengths: Sport and Recreation Services in the Northwest Territories, 1962-2000 Victoria Paraschak, University of Windsor Part IV: Shifting Ground: Reconsidering the Role of the Public Intellectual in Sport 11. ‘Can you do this for my neighbourhood?’: Public Sport History, the Environment, and Community in an Industrial City Nancy B. Bouchier and Ken Cruikshank, McMaster University 12. Where History meets Biography: Toward a Public Sociology of Sport Peter Donnelly and Michael Atkinson, University of Toronto 13. ‘Shadow Disciplines’ or A Place for ‘Post-Disciplinary Liaisons’ in the North American Research University: What are we to do with Physical Cultural Studies? Patricia Vertinsky, University of British Columbia 14. Bruce Kidd, Sport History, and Social Emancipation Douglas Booth, University of Otago

About the Author :
Russell Field is an associate professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management at the University of Manitoba.

Review :
‘This is an enjoyable, well written book…. It is a book worth reading by anyone with a serious interest in sport, the roles that it plays in society and the roles that it could conceivably play.’ - Alan Bairner (Idrottsforum: Nordic Sport Science Forum, 28 September 2016) ‘Researchers will find prime reading for sport and physical culture studies and related philosophies of knowledge, and other readers will welcome the history of sport, recreation, and the body.’ - PearlAnn Reichwein (BC Studies vol 194:2017)