Introduction.- Section 1: Bodily Damage and Pre- and Early Industrial Sport, Chapter 1 Honor, Injury, and Death in the Athletics of the Ancient World, Michael B. Poliakof.- Chapter 2. ‘Beastly fury and extreme violence’: pain, injury and death in pre-industrial British and Irish football, Ariel Hessayon.- Chapter 3 Violence, injury and the politics of the evolving football codes, Liam O’Callaghan.- Chapter 4 “Though he was evidently suffering great pain, he bore it well:” Early Twentieth Century Attitudes Toward Injury in North American Combat Sports, Nathan Hatton.- Section 2 The NFL: Politics, Injury and American National Identity, Chapter 5 Inflaming the Civic Temper: Head Injury and Violence Debates in Early U.S. American Football, Emily Harrison.- Chapter 6 A Problem That Cries Out For Standards: Football Helmets, Conceptions of Risk, and the National Commission on Product Safety, 1967-1970, Kathleen Bachynski.- Chapter 7 ‘Lights Out: The National Football League, Concussion Research, and the Suppression of Evidence’, Lucia Trimbur.- Chapter 8 Injuries as Usual: The Football Problem(s) in American Society, Peter Benson and Adam Rugg.- Section 3 Sporting Females and the Politics of Injury.- Chapter 9 Injury at the Extreme: Alison Hargreaves, mountaineering and motherhood, Carol Osborne.- Chapter 10 Gendered Bodies, Gendered Injuries, Kath Woodward.- Chapter 11 The Not So Glamorous World of Women’s Wrestling, Karen Corteen.- Section 4 Sport as Transport: Horse, Cycle and Motor Racing and the Politics of Safety.- Chapter 12 Fallers: Politics, Injury and Death in Horseracing, Patrick Sharman.- Chapter 13 “Dishing out the pain” in professional cycling, Peter Bramham.- Chapter 14. Flapping His Elbows and Making Chicken Noises at Me: The Politics of Driver and Spectator Safety in Formula One Motor Racing, Stephen Wagg.- Section 5: Sport, Injury and the Culture of Late Capitalism.- Chapter 15 McDonaldization and Sporting Bodies: The Irrationality of Sport Rationalization, David Andrews.- Chapter 16 The ‘Concussion Crisis’ and the Gift Economy: Athletes’ Brain Donation and the Political Economy of Dissection, Sean Brayton and Michelle Helstein.- Chapter 17 The Collegiate Arms Race: Aspiration, Injury and the Inner City Black Male in US Basketball, Scott Brooks.- Chapter 18 Consenting to Violence: The Politics of Sports Injury, Jill Weinberg.- Chapter 19 Forging Elite Fitness? Crossfit, Injury and the Politics of Risk, Shaun Edmonds.- Chapter 20 Medical Care as Self-Defence: Mixed Martial Arts, Sports Medics and the Politics of Injury, Alex Channon, Christopher R. Matthews and Mathew Hillier.- Chapter 21, Colour Blind and Ready to Play: Sport, Labour, and Whiteness in The Hunger Games Film Series, Nicholas Rickards.- Section 6: Sport and Injury – Case Studies, Chapter 22 Injury and Olympic Politics, 1896-1988 , Helen Jefferson Lenskyj and Lee Hill.- Chapter 23 ‘Fits and starts’: Re-examining the Mystery of Brazilian Footballer Ronaldo and the 1998 World Cup Final, John Sugden.- Chapter 24 The Cricket Pitch as ‘Unsafe Workplace’: Sports Culture and the Death of Phillip Hughes, David Rowe.- Chapter 25 Muhammad Ali, Sport Celebrity and Perceptions of Parkinson’s Disease, Nicole Eugene and Jenny Nelson.- Chapter 26 Contextualizing Jordan McNair: Injurious Practices, Disposable Black Bodies, and Regressive Nationalism, Physical Cultural Studies Research Group, University of Maryland.- Chapter 27 ‘Snipers Stop Play’ The Israeli Defence Force and the Shooting of Palestinian Footballers, Jon Dart.- Section 7: Sport, Harm and the Politics of Wellbeing, Chapter 28 Sport and Abuse of the Young, Melanie Lang.- Chapter 29 Side-lined: Boys, Sport, and Depression, Michael Atkinson and Kristina Smith.- Chapter 30 Deny, Conceal, Confuse, Conflate: Responses to Safety Suggestions in Schools’ Rugby, Allyson Pollock and Graham Kirkwood.- Conclusion
Stephen Wagg retired as Professor of Sport and Society at Leeds Beckett University in the UK in 2019. He is currently an Honorary Fellow in the International Centre for Sport History and Culture at de Montfort University, Leicester, and Visiting Professor at Newcastle University, both in the UK.
Allyson M. Pollock is Clinical Professor of Public Health in the Population Health Sciences Institute at Newcastle University in the UK and Co-Director Newcastle University Centre of Excellence in Regulatory Science.
This book looks historically at the harm that has been inflicted in the practice of sport and at some of the issues, debates and controversies that have arisen as a result. Written by experts in history, sociology, sport journalism and public health, the book considers sport and injury in relation to matters of social class; gender; ethnicity and race; sexuality; political ideology and national identity; health and wellbeing; childhood; animal rights; and popular culture. These matters are, in turn, variously related to a range of sports, including ancient, pre- and early industrial sports; American football; boxing; wrestling and other combat sports; mountaineering; horseracing; cycling; motor racing; rugby football; cricket; association football; baseball; basketball; Crossfit; ice hockey; Olympic sports; Mixed Martial Arts; and sport in an imagined dystopian future.