The Palgrave Handbook Of Olympic Studies

Features

Description

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.

Review: 'The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies authoritatively debunks the myth of the world's greatest mega-event as a benign, universally-shared cultural property and critically exposes how it has always represented a barometer of the shifting political, social, cultural, economic and global constellations of modern and late capitalist sport.

This collection provides a comprehensive assessment of the modern Olympics from its ideologically-driven inception through the recent, global resistance to leadership corruption, sex and drug testing, and the creation ofthe movement's new social media infrastructure. This book is mandatory reading for policy makers, event practitioners, scholars, students and all people interested in understanding the past, present and future of the Olympics.' - Steven Pope, co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Sports History and author of Patritoic Games: Sporting Traditions in the American Imagaination, 1876-1926 'The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies is essential reading for anyone looking for a critical assessment of Olympic history, practice and theory.

It covers the key issues in depth, explores alternatives and refuses to be seduced by orthodoxy or invented tradition. It is a must for any Olympic bookshelf.' - Tony Collins, Director of the International Centre for Sports History and Culture, De Montfort University, UK 'Editors Stephen Wagg and Helen Lenskyj bring together a number of internationally respected scholars each offering a unique and compelling critique of the Olympic movement.

Individual chapters include historical and contemporary analyses of the Olympic and Para-Olympic Games as related to such diverse themes as: national and local imaginings, inequality and human rights, new media, globalization, enviornmentalism and sustainability, neoliberalism, security and fears of terrorism, corruption, and performance enhancing drugs.

As a whole The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies shows that behind the veneer of the Olympic ideal said to promote international peace, understanding and unity is a global commercial spectacle embedded in a web of hierarchical social, political, and economic relations. This provocative anthology should be required reading for anyone interested in a critical understanding of the Olympic movement.' - Mary G.

McDonald, Professor, Miami University, USA, and past president of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport 'At last! An impressive encyclopaedic work covering the good, bad, beautiful and the ugly in Olympism. For athletes and fans, for critics and sceptics, everything is here: de Courbetin's early visio