SPMT 1312: Sport in Society

1. Sport + social aspect

Example: Volleyball AND gender

"Professional soccer" AND social change

2. Sport + Context or Level + social aspect

Examples: Sports AND college AND women

Tennis AND professional AND racism

3. Role/Identity + sport/context

Examples: Fans AND football

Parents AND youth sports

Tips

• Experiment with broad terms ("sports," "gender, "social change") and more specific ("Division 1 athletes," "body dysmorphia")
• Avoid proper nouns (specific people, places, things, unless they have been the subject of extensive academic study)
• Use quotation marks around phrases

Sociological terms from Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World

Social categories: A collection of individuals who have at least one attribute in common but otherwise do not necessarily interact.

• Examples: women, Asian Americans, Christians, etc.

Social Institutions:  A component of broader social structures, social institutions are patterns of beliefs and behavior that help a society meet its basic needs, often in a systematic way.

• Nuclear family, capitalism; democracy, Islam, public school, western medicine.

Social Norms: Cultural standards and expectations for behaving

For this class, you may also want to be especially attentive to social phenomena (collective behavior, social movements), systematic stratification, social control, deviance, social class, race and ethnicity, sex and gender, power and authority, social change.