The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies

This comprehensive, state-of-the-art reference collection fills a long-standing gap in the fields of Olympic studies and sports sociology by applying a critical lens to a wide range of issues and controversies that have surrounded the Olympic movement. Mapping the past, present and future of the Olympic Games and drawing together an impressive line-up of international scholars from across a variety of disciplines, this essential guide provides an authoritative overview of the core debates and key social and political issues related to the most established and influential sporting event in the world.

Divided into five parts - Olympic History, Olympic Case Studies, Olympic Disciplines, Social and Political Issues and the Olympics: For and Against - this substantive reference work includes debates on race, gender, amateurism, the environment, security, sponsorship, housing, Indigenous peoples and the mass media and provides in-depth case studies on individual Olympic Games ranging from the St Louis Games in 1904 to the most recent Games in Beijing in 2008, and discusses the forthcoming Olympics in London and Rio. Global in its perspective and definitive in content, this one-stop volume will be an indispensable reference resource for a wide range of academics, students and researchers in the fields of sociology, sports studies, sports history, Olympic studies, politics, media and communication studies and leisure and tourism studies.

STEPHEN WAGG is Professor in the Carnegie Faculty of Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. He has written widely on the history and sociology of sportand his publications includeKey Concepts in Sports Studies, Cricket andGlobalization, East Plays West: Sport and the Cold War and Mythsand Milestones in the History of Sport.

HELEN LENSKYJ isProfessor Emerita at the University of Toronto, Canada, where she had worked since 1986. A leading academic researcher on the Olympics, she has authored three books on the Games, the most recent of which is Olympic Industry Resistance: Challenging Olympic Power and Propaganda. Her other critiques of the Olympic industryare The Best Olympics Ever? Social Impacts of Sydney 2000 and Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics, and Activism.