PLAY UP

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Abstract
Over the past three decades, a substantial body of critical literature has emerged in the sociology of sport. Its main critical impulse has been to overcome the sociological neglect of sport and popular culture, and to undermine the predominantly functionalist analytical foundation of the sports sociology that did exist. Sport has, therefore, been subjected to orthodox sociological critique of class, gender, and racial/ethnic inequality of unquestionable force and value. However, the sociology of sport, like the general discipline, is required to confront current challenges to its founding assumptions, categories, and procedures. This article seeks to assess the state of the critical sociology of sport, arguing that, although its principal concerns with social power and the conditions of resistance to it must endure, there is an urgent need for new and perhaps unorthodox theoretical and empirical work that will allow that critical edge to be maintained.

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