Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body

To commemorate the Winter Olympic Games, this week's review takes a theoretical approach to sport and physical activity

Posted on February 7, 2022 in Reviews of the Month

Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body: Materialisms, Technologies, Ecologies

ed. by Joshua I. Newman, Holly Thorpe, and David L. Andrews Rutgers, 2020
370p index, 9780813591827 $120.00, 9780813591810 $34.95, 9780813591858 $34.95

Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body: Materialisms, Technologies, Ecologies book cover

This anthology offers readers a dense and intense foray into the theoretical approach of new materialism as applied to sport and sporting practice, technologies, and ecologies. The 15 chapters, most contributed by sport studies scholars, particularly sport sociologists, cover topics as varied as Bondi Beach (Doug Booth), the 2016 Olympics in Brazil (Mary McDonald and Jennifer Sterling), protein shakes (Samantha King), and fitness trackers (Mary Louise Adams). Additionally, the book includes a separately authored foreword, introduction, and afterword orienting the reader to the work of the roughly 26 different scholars involved. The unifying theme of the whole volume is theoretical examination of sporting equipment, events, and related places. Many theorists are cited, but these authors primarily use the works of French scholars such as Bruno Latour, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, as well as works of contemporary US scholar Karen Barad. Although sport and its accoutrements are the focus of all the authors, the primary purpose of the anthology is actually engagement with the theories in order to better understand sport. This anthology may introduce readers to a variety of theorists and approaches, but it is not an introductory work on sport theory. For serious sport theorists, though, it is a smorgasbord.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students through faculty.
Reviewer: S. K. Fields, University of Colorado-Denver
Subject: Science & Technology – Sports & Recreation
Choice Issue: Sep 2020

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