Battleground Sports

Mega-events like the Olympics, the World Cup of soccer, the World Series of baseball, cycling's Tour de France, and the Super Bowl draw our attention to the deep cultural significance of sport and its role in fostering social bonds. Yet when it comes to sport, there is no shortage of debate: stereotypes regarding sexuality, race, gender, and children have been hotly contested by critics for over 40 years. Even today, sport is one of the very few socially accepted sites of violence, intense competition and controlled' forms of social disorder. Battleground: Sports presents the 100 most contentious public and private controversies of the sports world. Highlighted throughout are debates surrounding ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social identity, sports fan behavior, as well as the role of governments and corporations.

Michael Atkinson is Senior Lecturer in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK. A noted expert in sports deviance and physical cultural studies, Michael conducts publishes on such subjects as sports crime, violence against athletes, asceticism in sports cultures, terrorism in sport, and youth sport counter-cultures. He is the author ofTattooed: The Sociogenesis of a Body Art (2003), co-author of Deviance and Social Control in Sport (2008) and co-editor ofTribal Play: Subcultural Journeys Through Sport (2008).