Global Aspects of Sociology and Sport

Catalog description

Sport, a fundamentally social phenomenon, reveals regular and recurrent patterns. Globally, sport has become highly organized, institutionalized, bureaucratized, and commercialized. Technology has standardized sport, created new sports, increased spectator interest and access, and produced new levels of excellence in sport. Sport, a prominent influence in socializing children around the world, allows study of positive aspects of human behavior (e.g., leadership, cooperation and tolerance) and also negative issues (e.g., sexism, racism and violence. This course explores the debate about sport and globalization from a sociological perspective through an analysis of different aspects and dimensions of both phenomenons as vehicles for critically evaluating the tensions between the amateur and the professional, the national and the international, tradition and modernity, community and individualism. Case studies will focus on non-Western cultures,