Summary
Contents
Subject index
This vital new handbook marks the development of sports studies as a major new discipline within the social sciences. Edited by the leading sociologist of sport, Eric Dunning, and author of the best selling textbook on sport in the USA, Jay Coakley, it both reflects and richly endorses this new found status. Key aspects of the Handbook include: an inventory of the principal achievements in the field; a guide to the chief conflicts and difficulties in the theory and research process; a rallying point for researchers who are established or new to the field, which sets the agenda for future developments; a resource book for teachers who wish to establish new curricula and develop courses and programmes in the area of sports s
The Development of Modern Sports
The Development of Modern Sports
Although the descriptions and the paradigmatic explanations of the difference varied, the ‘grand theorists’ of sociology—Comte, Marx, Toennies, Durkheim, Weber, Parsons, and Elias—all shared the conviction that there is a fundamental difference between modern society and the earlier forms of social organization from which modern society evolved. Premodern and modern sports exemplify that difference more clearly than most institutions. Among the ‘grand theorists’, Elias is the only one to have written extensively on sports (Elias and Dunning, 1986). He—like Marx (Wohl, 1973) and Weber (Guttmann, 1978)—has inspired a number of historical analyses of the development of modern sports (Dunning, 1973; Dunning and Rojek, 1992; Dunning and Sheard, 1979; Eichberg, 1978; Guttmann, 1986; Stokvis, 1979).
Historians disagree about ...
- Loading...