Dr Jon Dart

In April 2012 Trenton Oldfield, an Australian man in his mid-30s, disrupted the annual Boat Race between Cambridge and Oxford Universities by going for a swim in the River Thames. For some, Oldfield’s timely swim in a public space was an imaginative and well-executed act of peaceful, civil disobedience which achieved maximum exposure and caused minimal damage. Live television coverage of the event and his use of social media allowed him to promote his manifesto ‘Elitism leads to Tyranny’ with Oldfield’s actions an example of individual, autonomous political activity. This chapter considers the opportunities that a large sport event, here the Boat Race, offers to such individual autonomist protesters and how new forms of digital web-based media are changing the dynamic between sport, media and protest. The discussion focuses on response to Oldfield’s protest by sections of the English media and the UK government who, upset to see their sporting pleasures disrupted, sought to deport him from the UK.

Protestors have long used sports events as a platform to protest. Activity can take place during, or surrounding, live events and so, securing sports events against unwanted intrusion has become increasingly important. The neophyte, lone ...

On the 30th January 2016, the news agency Reuters carried a story about a Greek second division football match between AEL Larissa and Acharnaikos in the Thessalian city of Larissa. The match was about to begin when all 22 players sat down on the pitch. They, along with the two clubs’ coaches and substitute players, remained seated while the following announcement was read out over the public address system: ‘The administration of AEL, the coaches and the players will observe two minutes of silence just after the start of the match in memory of the hundreds of children who continue to lose their lives every day in the Aegean due to the brutal indifference of the EU and Turkey. The players of AEL will protest by sitting down for two minutes in an effort to drive the authorities to mobilise all those who seem to have been desensitised to the heinous crimes that are being perpetrated in the Aegean’ (Reuters 2016). This incident suggests at least two things: first, that, even in the postmodern twenty-first-century sports, people can recognize that there are more important things in the world than sport and, second, that sport remains—indeed, given the vast swathes of mass media now given over to sport, it is perhaps more than ever—a significant forum for political protest. Some of this protest, as on that day in Greece, uses sport as a platform upon which to highlight an issue outside of the immediate purview of sport. Equally, some protest is levelled at the institutions of sport itself and the governance thereof.

Using data from 15 semi-structured interviews with UK-based early/mid-career academics, this paper offers an empirically informed assessment of how lecturers teaching/researching the sociology of sport are managing their careers in a changing higher education landscape. Those interviewed were involved in the delivery of sociological content to a range of sports-themed courses with the interviews focusing on the changing fashions in studying sport (including a rapid increase in enrolment on certain sports-themed courses), and on the nature of the relationships with colleagues working in the same area (i.e. sport), but who teach/research it from a different discipline. The paper draws upon the processes of individualisation which lay at the root of reflexive modernisation to better understand the lived experiences of those interviewed. Using the metaphors of tribes, doors and boundaries, I assess the extent to which those interviewed felt there were opportunities for an interdisciplinary pedagogic approach to ‘sport’. The paper explores the relationship between the sociology of sport and its parent discipline (i.e. sociology) and where it might feature in a future (post-disciplinary?) landscape.

Soccer and Society was the first, and remains the only, international academic journal that is focused on a single sport. In anticipation of the vicennial volume, I offer here a snapshot of this journal’s content over its first twenty years. This commentary is part-audit and part-personal observation of the main themes, countries, tournaments, leagues and clubs that have featured, and on the gender of those who have written for the journal. The aim here is to offer a timely reflection on those elements within football that have been well served and those which have been under-represented. After briefly outlining the purpose of academic journals, I present the findings of this audit and conclude with some questions on the next twenty years.

Those working in the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) sector often claim that sport can, and does, make a difference. This article assesses this claim in the context of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. Attention is given to the ‘peace’ component within the SDP initialism and on what ‘peace’ means in this conflict. An assessment is made of the work of thirteen organisations engaged in peacebuilding in this region. The article identifies that many of the sport-for-peace schemes involve Israelis and Palestinians/Arabs within Israel with few schemes seeking to involve Palestinians who live in the West Bank, in Gaza or in refugee camps in neighbouring countries. It is concluded that sport is not an appropriate vehicle for peacebuilding between Israelis and Palestinians because there is no peace – a necessary precursor for reconciliation. Realpolitik, in the form of Israeli territorial expansion and the Palestinian struggle for basic human rights, leaves sport-for-peace schemes attempting to build a bridge too far.

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This article explores the motivations of activists involved in pro-Palestinian sports-based campaigns. The activists’ intention is to bring pressure to bear upon Israel until it complies with international law and supports the rights of Palestinian people under the universal principles of human rights. In response to expressions of pro-Palestinian solidarity, the Israeli state and its supporters are interpreting such activity as a ‘new’ manifestation of ‘old’ antisemitism. In seeking to assess whether such activity is informed by antisemitism, 10 semi-structured interviews were conducted with activists to examine their motives. Their political biographies were explored as were their views on the use of sport as platform to express support for the Palestinian people and/or their displeasure at Israeli participation in international sport. One central theme was the activists’ responses to the suggestion that they were motivated by antisemitism. A qualitative content analysis of the interview transcripts revealed a shared observation that the accusation of antisemitism was a ‘shameless tactic’ employed by those seeking to cover up the ongoing injustices experienced by the Palestinian people. Sport was seen as a legitimate platform for political activity, to raise public awareness and to put pressure on the Israeli state. The findings contribute to a better understanding of activist motivations, the use of sport as a political platform and the challenges facing sport and its governing bodies.

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. National and international sporting competitions have become important sites in establishing, maintaining and celebrating expressions of national identity and nationhood. Research question: This article aims to show how sport and national identity are manifest in Palestinian football, the difficulties faced by Palestinian footballers, and how football is being used to draw attention to the Palestinian struggle for a homeland. It begins with a brief outline of the origins of the Israel/Palestine conflict and of Palestinian national identity. A brief summary of the literature on sport, football and national identity is given before outlining the history of Palestinian football. Results / Findings: The article then discusses contemporary issues within Palestinian society, before examining the actions of the Israeli state in limiting the development of Palestinian football. Support for Palestinians from non-Palestinians is noted before concluding with the suggestion that football represents a promising opportunity to promote Palestine on an international stage. The intention is to stimulate a discussion on the role of football for a people under occupation.

Until relatively recently, the state of Israel was preoccupied with its military security and paid little attention to cultural politics. However, the emergence of other ‘battlegrounds’ has seen a shift to ‘soft power’ in an attempt to generate a more benevolent global image. This paper spotlights an international sporting event which ordinarily attracts very limited interest from the mainstream media. However, when held in Israel, it created much greater interest. The paper identifies the UEFA’s Men’s U-21 tournament, held in Israel in 2013, to assess how different groups responded to the event: celebratory by the host nation and its supporters, the Israeli Football Association and UEFA; critical amongst Palestinians and their supporters in the international community. The paper identifies how the Israeli state is using ‘hasbara’ in an attempt to arrest its deteriorating international image and shows how the concept is empirically operationalized (‘hasbara in action’).

This book contains original work from key scholars across the globe, including those working outside the Leisure Studies mainstream.

This article discusses the role that journals and their editors have played in the growth of sports sociology as an academic discipline. It is suggested that journals are not neutral spaces in which academics share their research but, rather, they and their editors occupy a powerful position within academic life and are thus worthy of critical examination. Using data from interviews with several previous editors of leading sports sociology journals, examination is made of their motivation to take on the role, their positioning of the journal, their experiences of working with peer reviewers and attracting papers and why they relinquished the role. The article explores the opportunities presented by the recent evolution of scholarly publication, specifically the “open access” platform, and the challenges this presents to sports sociology journals.

The range of paid work carried out within the home suggests that a growing number of home-working individuals will find themselves in distinctive positions in relation to the flows and interconnections of the space-time compression. This has potentially significant consequences for their experience of leisure. This article discusses how space and place within the home are contested issues that manifest in different ways across time. Consideration is made on the fluid nature of the spatial boundaries within the home environment and the impact this has upon the notion of the home as a site of, and for, leisure. The article explores how the home represents a physical setting and a matrix of social relationships, and discusses how this matrix proves especially complex for individuals engaged in home-based work, particularly when aligned with notions of leisure choices and constraints. © 2006 Taylor & Francis.

This paper describes the introduction of a teaching and learning strategy devised to increase student attendance and contribution in a first year module. The concerns that prompted the intervention are discussed, as are the implementation and outcomes. The planned intervention involved introducing group presentations, formative assessment and feedback, with the ‘action research cycle’ guiding and monitoring the intervention. The article concludes by identifying increased student attendance, higher levels of commitment and a greater responsibility for their own learning and contribution to the module’s success.

Recent years have seen the publication of a number of books written by former football hooligans in which they describe their violent activities during the 1960s through to the 1980s when British football hooliganism was at its peak. This essay reviews the background to the auto/biographical ‘hoolie‐lit’ publishing genre and considers the value of these accounts when researching hooliganism, together with an exploration of their themes and common trends. The essay sifts and sorts through these memory‐based auto/biographical accounts and concludes that very few offer any meaningful insight or merit in the study of football hooliganism. A small number of books are recommended as making a significant contribution whilst the vast majority are found wanting due to the clichéd written style, formulaic structure and thoroughly narcissistic tone.

This paper focuses on ten travelogues written by football fans during four FIFA World Cup tournaments (1994–2006), and explores how attendance at the World Cup Finals is represented in popular literary form. Outlining the history of travel writing and the lack of attention given to it by historians, this paper situates the book-format football travelogue in its literary and historic context. Relevant to the historian, ethnographer, literary scholar and sociologist, these football travelogues provide an opportunity to scrutinize the fans’ perspective of the world's largest single sporting event. The paper reviews the written styles and content and identifies five common themes. A historic and literary analysis is undertaken to reveal both commonalities and divergence, and ways of seeing that typically resulted in the presentation of cultural stereotypes. It is concluded that travelogues, written by fans, offer opportunities to both construct and extend a literary discourse on football fandom.

The International Review for the Sociology of Sport, the Journal of Sport and Social Issues and Sociology of Sport Journal have individually and collectively been subject to a systematic content analysis. By focusing on substantive research papers published in these three journals over a 25-year time period it is possible to identify the topics that have featured within the sociology of sport. The purpose of the study was to identify the dominant themes, sports, countries, methodological frameworks and theoretical perspectives that have appeared in the research papers published in these three journals. Using the terms, identified by the author(s), that appear in the paper’s title, abstract and/or listed as a key word, subject term or geographical term, a baseline is established to reflect on the development of the sub-discipline as represented by the content of these three journals. It is suggested that the findings illustrate what many of the more experienced practitioners in the field may have felt subjectively. On the basis of this systematic, empirical study it is now possible to identify those areas have received extensive coverage and those which are under-researched within the sociology of sport. The findings are used to inform a discussion of the role of academic journals and the recent contributions made by Michael Silk, David Andrews, Michael Atkinson and Dominic Malcolm on the past, present and future of the ‘sociology of sport’.

New media technologies are seen to be changing the production, delivery and consumption of professional sports and creating a new dynamic between sports fans, athletes, clubs, governing bodies and the mainstream media. However, as Bellamy and McChesney (2011) have pointed out, advances in digital technologies are taking place within social, political, and economic contexts that are strongly conditioning the course and shape of this communication revolution. This essay assesses the first wave of research on professional sport and new media technologies and concludes that early trends indicate the continuation of existing neoliberal capitalist tendencies within professional sport. Using the concept of political economy, the essay explores issues of ownership, structure, production and delivery of sport. Discussion focuses on the opportunities sports fans now have available to them and how sports organization and media corporations shifted from an initial position of uncertainty, that bordered on hostility, to one which has seen them embrace new media technologies as powerful marketing tools. The essay concludes by stating as fundamental the issues of ownership and control and advocates that greater cognizance be accorded to underlying economic structures and the enduring, all-pervasive power of neoliberal capitalism and its impact in professional sport.

This study focuses on the use of new technologies by the sports-media complex, looking specifically at the 2006 FIFA World Cup Finals. Combining the world's single largest sports media event with one of the most current, complex forms of Web-based communication, this article explores extent to which football fans embedded in Germany used the Internet to blog their World Cup experiences. Various categories of blog sites were identified, including independent bloggers, bloggers using football-themed Web sites, and blogs hosted on corporate-sponsored platforms. The study shows that the anticipated "democratizing potential" of blogging was not evident during Germany 2006. Instead, blogging acted as a platform for corporations, which, employing professional journalists, told the fans' World Cup stories. © 2009 Human Kinetics, inc.

The paper identifies and summarises the debates that surround the place of Israel in international sport and assesses how that place is increasingly being contested. The long-standing conflict between Israel and Palestine has begun to manifest in the world of sport with the paper sketching the debates of those calling for, and those opposed to, sport sanctions/boycott of Israel until the ‘Palestinian Question’ is resolved. Five related tasks are addressed: first, to summarise the call for sanctions/boycott emanating from the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement. Second, to explore how this call is establishing itself in the world of sport. The responses of those opposed to any form of sanction/boycott are then considered. The confusion that surrounds the term antisemitism is addressed and the relationship between (anti-) Zionism and antisemitism unpacked. The discussion concludes with an assessment of the claim made by the Israeli state, and its supporters, that any action against the country’s participation in international sport would be an act of antisemitism. Offering a timely, integrated summary of the heated debates that surround the Israel/Palestine conflict, the paper contributes to a wider discussion on the relationship between sport and politics.

This paper considers how sport presents a dualism to those on the far left of the political spectrum. A long-standing, passionate debate has existed on the contradictory role played by sport, polarised between those who reject it as a bourgeois capitalist plague and those who argue for its reclamation and reformation. A case study is offered of a political party that has consistently used revolutionary Marxism as the basis for its activity and how this party, the largest in Britain, addresses sport in its publications. The study draws on empirical data to illustrate this debate by reporting findings from three socialist publications. When sport did feature it was often in relation to high profile sporting events with a critical tone adopted and typically focused on issues of commodification, exploitation and alienation of athletes and supporters. However, readers’ letters, printed in the same publications, revealed how this interpretation was not universally accepted, thus illustrating the contradictory nature of sport for those on the far left.

This article examines the relationship between sport and Jewish identity. The experiences of Jewish people have rarely been considered in previous sport-related research which has typically focused on ‘Black’ and South Asian individuals, sports clubs, and organisations. Drawing on data generated from interviews ( n = 20) and focus groups ( n = 2) with individuals based in one British city, this article explores how their Jewish identity was informed, and shaped by, different sports activities and spaces. This study’s participants were quick to correct the idea that sport was alien to Jewish culture and did not accept the stereotype that ‘Jews don’t play sport’. The limited historical research on sport and Jewish people and the ongoing debates around Jewish identity are noted before exploring the role of religion and the suggestion that Jewish participation in sport is affected by the Shabbat (sabbath). Participants discussed how sports clubs acted as spaces for the expression and re/affirmation of their Jewish identity, before they reflected on the threats posed to the wider Jewish community by secularism, assimilation, and antisemitism. The article concludes by discussing how the sporting experiences of the study’s British Jewish participants compare with the experiences of individuals from other ethnic minority communities.

In recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in both awareness of and engagement with the issue of sport and social justice. While research has been conducted on social justice in relation to university students enrolled on physical education (PE) courses, there has been little exploration of how the concept is understood and taught on sport-orientated courses (such as sport development, sport management/business, and sport coaching). Using a narrative, qualitative case study approach, this study draws on in-depth qualitative data generated from 14 semi-structured interviews with university lecturers, working in different English universities, responsible for teaching students on courses that were centred around sport. The intention is to explore how lecturers viewed the connection between theoretical knowledge and practical actions (praxis) in promoting social justice values. The work of Freire (1970) and intersectional theory are used to explore how those interviewed reflected on their teaching practices and informed their teaching and learning for inclusion, equity, and social justice outcomes. The interview transcripts were thematically analysed to identify the lecturers’ understandings, experiences, and teachings of sport and social justice. The findings show how the lecturers’ positionality was informed by a Freirean pedagogy (including the ideas of praxis and conscientização) which shaped their teaching and demonstrated a relationship between teaching, sport, social justice and activism. Based on the findings discussed here, it is proposed that social justice needs to be featured in all sports-orientated courses and not be treated as an optional extra.

Purpose The purpose of this article is to offer a conceptual assessment of a contemporary consumer boycott of a global sports brand. A critical commentary is offered of the “Boycott PUMA” campaign with an examination of the positions and motivations of the different parties involved, specifically PUMA, the “Boycott PUMA” campaign, the Israeli Football Association and UEFA/FIFA. Design/methodology/approach This article is a position and conceptual paper, designed to generate a discussion on what is an emotive consumer boycott campaign. A distinction is made between political boycotts and consumer boycotts, whether it is possible to separate sport from politics, and if PUMA's claimed position of neutrality in this conflict can be achieved. Findings The focus here is on PUMA's corporate social responsibility statement in which they claim that sport and politics do not mix, with their response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 undermining this claim. PUMA's commitment to social justice is being used by the “Boycott PUMA” activists to expose the disconnect between PUMA's stated vision and its actions. Practical implications PUMA's brand has been built on creating a particular type of brand image, with a positive image and brand awareness essential for this sports apparel company. If the company finds itself in a media spotlight their brand equity can become damaged. Originality/value With very little research available on the Israel/Palestine from a sport sponsorship and marketing perspective, this article offers an original and much needed assessment of a potentially significant campaign.

What really goes on in most people's homes remains a mystery, an intriguing and frustrating mystery.

In 2021 Yorkshire County Cricket Club found itself at the centre of international media attention when a former player, Azeem Rafiq, spoke about the racism he had endured at the Club. When an investigation verified Rafiq’s account, all the Club’s sponsors, including Leeds Beckett University, ended their partnerships. Racism in sport is not new, nor is racism in higher education, nor is racism in Yorkshire; what this incident does is to bring these dimensions of racism together and ask important questions about the ways in which they overlap. Two themes emerged from interviews with individuals connected, in different ways, to the University. The first is the University’s muted response to this incident, a silence that was mirrored across other Leeds-based academic and sporting institutions. A second emergent theme is the absence of academic staff from minority ethnic backgrounds working in university sports departments and researching racism in sport.

This chapter discusses the extent to which the Israeli state is using violence to deliberately suppress Palestinian football and curtail the emergence of a successful league structure and national football team. As US sport journalist Dave Zirin has suggested, if members of Spain’s World Cup team had been jailed, shot or killed by another country or the prospective youth players for Brazil were shot in the feet by the military of another nation huge international media outrage would ensue. Imagine if. However, these events have received little attention on the sports page or beyond. The chapter begins with an outline of the origins of the Israel/Palestine conflict. This is followed by a brief summary of Palestinian football. The chapter then explores the claim that the Israeli military, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), has deliberately targeted Palestinian footballers in an attempt to curtail the development of Palestinian men’s soccer.

FIFA has infuriated the Palestinian FA by refusing to make a decision on Israeli teams from the Occupied Territories playing in their official leagues

The Class of ’92 is a documentary film featuring six Manchester United F.C. players who recount their time during a pivotal period for the club, English football and English society. The documentary claims to offer a commentary on Britain in the 1990s, but appears, without acknowledging the fact, to be a promotional vehicle to establish the six men as a brand labeled the Class of ’92 (CO92). Creating this brand necessarily involved presenting a selective account of their time and places with the film being little more than an advertisement, masquerading as an observational documentary. The film draws freely upon the symbolic capital held by the club and the city of Manchester and uses the Busby Babes/Munich chapter and the more recent “Madchester scene” to forge the Class of ’92 brand by editing out those elements that did not accord with this project. The article argues that a more complete representation of ’90s Britain, while disrupting the intended narrative, would acknowledge the significant structural and commercial changes experienced by the club, the sport, and the city in the last decade of the 20th century. We suggest that the Class of ’92 invites the viewer to consider how the documentary film genre can contribute to brand development and promotion.

Look Inside Chapter Sport, Protest and Globalisation Part of the series Global Culture and Sport Series pp 1-16 Date: 09 November 2016 Introduction: Sport and Protest Jon Dart, Stephen Wagg Abstract On the 30th January 2016, the news agency Reuters carried a story about a Greek second division football match between AEL Larissa and Acharnaikos in the Thessalian city of Larissa. The match was about to begin when all 22 players sat down on the pitch. They, along with the two clubs’ coaches and substitute players, remained seated while the following announcement was read out over the public address system: ‘The administration of AEL, the coaches and the players will observe two minutes of silence just after the start of the match in memory of the hundreds of children who continue to lose their lives every day in the Aegean due to the brutal indifference of the EU and Turkey. The players of AEL will protest by sitting down for two minutes in an effort to drive the authorities to mobilise all those who seem to have been desensitised to the heinous crimes that are being perpetrated in the Aegean’ (Reuters 2016). This incident suggests at least two things: first, that, even in the postmodern twenty-first-century sports, people can recognize that there are more important things in the world than sport and, second, that sport remains—indeed, given the vast swathes of mass media now given over to sport, it is perhaps more than ever—a significant forum for political protest. Some of this protest, as on that day in Greece, uses sport as a platform upon which to highlight an issue outside of the immediate purview of sport. Equally, some protest is levelled at the institutions of sport itself and the governance thereof.

This chapter focuses on events since 2005 and the growing international concern over the plight of the Palestinians, be they living in Israel, the Occupied Territories, as refugees in neighbouring countries or those displaced to further afield. The chapter begins by outlining the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions (BDS) movement that emerged in 2005 and the subsequent responses of the Israeli state and its supporters. It focuses on how UEFAs (Men’s) U21 Tournament, held in Israel in 2013, which offered a platform for both supporters and critics of the Israeli state to advance their agendas and expose the relationship between sport and politics. An assessment is made of the claim that those who opposed Israel’s hosting of the football tournament were guilty of antisemitism and concludes by discussing the importance of distinguishing between antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

In June 2020, Black Lives Matter UK (BLM-UK) posted a series of tweets in which they endorsed the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Calling for ‘targeted sanctions in line with international law against Israel’s colonial, apartheid regime,’ one tweet claimed that ‘mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism’. The tweets were seen by some to be antisemitic and resulted in the English Premier League, the BBC and Sky Sports, which had hitherto been supportive of the Black Lives Matter protests, distance themselves from the Black Lives Matter movement. One month later, during the BLM protests in the USA, Black NFL player DeSean Jackson posted material to his Instagram story that was also viewed as antisemitic. This article unpacks, via these two sports-based incidents, the relationship between anti-racism, antisemitism, and anti-Zionism. I discuss how these tensions are not new, but a clear echo of the tensions that existed in the 1960s and 1970s during the height of the Civil Rights Movement; these tensions continue because the foundational issues remain unchanged. These two incidents raise important questions about how sports organisations operate in a world where sport is seen as ‘apolitical’ and strive for ‘neutrality’ but fail to recognise sport is political and that a position of neutrality cannot be successfully achieved. The article assesses the challenges that arise when sports organisations, and their athletes, choose to engage in a certain kind of sport politics.

While advocating the adoption of qualitative approaches to evaluation, it is important to reflect on the practice. This paper draws on the work of a diversionary project to involve young people at risk in leisure and sporting activities using one to one mentors. The approach adopted was one that was designed to address potentially sensitive issues and place the experience of the key players central to the enquiry. Hence, the intention was that the young people and their mentors should be treated as knowers and actors rather than the objects of the research. The approach discussed here stops short of treating them as 'partners' in the research as discussed previously in this journal, arguing instead for an approach in which skilled researchers actively engage all parties. Such an approach can offer insights inaccessible to more conventional evaluation techniques.

This paper examines the nature and extent of antisemitism in community sporting environments in one British city. Drawing on interviews (n = 20) and focus groups (n = 2), we explore with participants their Anglo-Jewish identity in sports-related activities and settings. So as not to inflate the salience of antisemitism, we approach the issue obliquely through questions relating to their engagement in sport and identity. We consider the stereotype of the non-sporting Jew and find it is without foundation. Participants described limited but significant instances of antisemitism in sport and a decline in terms of the frequency and severity of antisemitic abuse encountered. We discuss the different responses of our participants when they encountered antisemitism and how sporting organisations were seemingly unaware of the Shabbat and the main Jewish holidays. Participants called for better education and awareness raising on what constituted antisemitic abuse.