Sites of Sport

The study of built environments such as gymnasiums, football stadiums, swimmimg pools and skating rinks provides unique information about the historical enclosure of the gendered and sexualised body, the body’s capabilities, needs and desires. It illuminates the tensions between the globalising tendencies of sport and the importance of local culture and a sense of place.
This collection uses spatial concepts and examples to examine the nature and development of sporting practices. At a time when the importance of spacial theories and spacial metaphors to sport is being increasingly recognised, this pioneering work on the changing landscape of sporting life will appeal to students of the history, sociology and management of sport.

Locating a “Sense of Place” – Space, Place and Gender in the Gymnasium
Patricia Vertinsky

Sensing the Stadium
Chris Gaffney and John Bale

Educative Pools – Water, School and Space in 20th-Century France
Thierry Terret

Freezing Social Relations – Ice, Rinks, and the Development of Figure Skating
Mary Louise Adams

Just Another Classroom? Observations of Primary School Playgrounds
Sarah Thomson

Putting Bodies on the Line – Marching Spaces in Cold War Culture
Charlotte MacDonald

Homebush – Site of the Clean/sed and Natural Australian Athlete
Tara Magdalinski

Surf Lifesavers and Surfers – Cultural and Spatial Conflict on the Australian Beach
Douglas Booth

Playing with Gravity – Mountains and Mountaineering
Peter Donnelly

The Homoerotic Space of Sport in Pornography
Brian Pronger

The Space that (in)Difference Makes – (Re)Producing Subjectivities in/through Abjection – A Locker Room Case Study
Caroline Fusco

For Pleasure? Or Profit? Or Personal Health? – College Gymnasia as Contested Terrain
Roberta Park