The public sphere provides a domain of social life in which public opinion is expressed by means of rational discourse and debate. Habermas linked its historical development to the coffee houses and journals in England, Parisian salons and German reading clubs. He described it as a bourgeois public sphere, where private people come together and where they turn from a politically disempowered bourgeoisie into an effective political agent - the public intellectual. With communication networks being diversified and expanded over time, the worldwide web has put pressure on traditional public...

The call for sport organizations and organizers to take up social responsibilities is reflected in a wide variety of sport-related practices. This book critically examines sport-related social interventions in different cultural settings, such as promoting local community-building by sport. Social constructions of peace, integration and managing diversity are studied from the perspective of sport and play, and the power position of global sport organizations with corporate features is discussed from the perspectives of good governance, legal issues and fair trade. Referring to Foucault's...