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Introduction: Sport, Meaning and Gender

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A Performative Feel for the Game

Part of the book series: Cultural Sociology ((CULTSOC))

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Abstract

How does the meaning of sport intersect with gender? Critical theorists have answered this question in plenty. They hold that gender is about inequality, conflict, and the rational pursuit for power. Sports mirror this social reality, they say. Yet, sport is also about cultural mastery, of belonging, and emotional impact. Sports carve out worlds filled with magic, drama, and irrational significances. This introduction sets out to theorize how inequalities and solidarities, social gender differences and beliefs about justice and equality intersect in sport. A cultural sociology of performance allows a study of how culture structures mediate the social worlds that enter sports. The result is a deeply interpretive study of how actors and audiences read sporting genders. In this process, fiction and media blend into real life in ways that cannot be plausibly retold solely through the lens of gender as a universal category of inequality. This does not mean that gender is irrelevant. It means that a performative feel for the game joins gender, folkloric inputs, and civil project with the actors’ playful enactment and readings of game rules and regulations.

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    Trygve B. Broch

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Broch, T.B. (2020). Introduction: Sport, Meaning and Gender. In: A Performative Feel for the Game. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35129-8_1

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