Tag: Arve Hjelseth

SSSF, a multidisciplinary social sciences sport studies journal, welcomes articles that deal with sport and social change and social stability in a wide sense, articles about the profound and comprehensive processes affecting sport. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Does responsibility fall on the players or the sporting context? A study of the use of injury-prevention programmes in Swedish elite floorball clubs by Taru Tervo, Andreas Simensen & Staffan Karp (open access).

The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar was the first World Cup to be held in the Middle East, and thus a unique sporting mega‑event. The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar: Global and Local Perspectives, edited by Nikolay Kozhanov, Mahfoud Amara & Mahjoob Zweiri (Routledge) explores its wider significance across political, socio‑cultural, economic, organisational and historical dimensions. Our reviewer, renowned sport and football sociologist Arve Hjelseth is generally appreciative of the analyses offered in the various contributions, albeit not uncritical.

What is the meaning of sport? How is it organized? What are the consequences of the professionalization, digitalization, and technologization of sport? Is sport for everyone, or does it emphasize and reinforce social inequality? Arve Hjelseth’s, Lone Friis Thing’s and Anne Tjønndal’s book Idrettssosiologi (Fagbokforlaget) looks at questions such as these through a sociological lens, and do so, according to Johan Högman, very successfully. A few critical points notwithstanding, our reviewer is very happy with the way the authors apply sociological theory to the phenomenon of sport.

Academics in various disciplines are writing about sport. Sport in Society is a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary forum for academics to discuss the growing relationship of sport to significant areas of modern life. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Coaching by doing: communities of practice at Swedish sport schools in XC skiing since the 1970s by Daniel Svensson (open access).

Mihaly Szerovay and colleagues’ edited collection Football in the Nordic Countries: Practices, Equality and Influence (Routledge) explores football culture, organisation and development in the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Norway. To our reviewer Payam Ansari, the anthology offers a rich, multifaceted exploration of football on national, “glocal”, and global levels, making it a valuable addition to the field of sports sociology and a beacon for future research on football.

Roberts, Whigham, Culvin & Parnell’s edited collection Critical Issues in Football: A Sociological Analysis of the Beautiful Game (Routledge) sheds critical new light on key issues in contemporary football, with each chapter using a different theoretical lens. This leads our reviewer Arve Hjelseth to commending the inclusion of major sociological thinkers, but also to the conclusion that the book, which he considers a useful addition to the critical study of football, is not ‘a sociological analysis’ but rather many analyses. And that’s football for you.

In 2017, the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) decided to offer the men’s and the women’s national teams an equal share of the revenue from the federation’s sponsorship deals. This was regarded as a groundbreaking event in the history of women’s football. This peer review article by Arve Hjelseth and Jorid Hovden examines the process that led to this result by exploring the discourses of gender justice negotiated in the process.

Soccer, a.k.a (association) football is the most popular mass spectator sport in the world. Soccer & Society is the first international journal devoted to the game of soccer, and aims to focus on the game in the context of a more global world. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Zlatan Ibrahimović: a monument and a mirror of his times(b> by Roger Johansson, Per-Markku Ristilammi & Helena Tolvhed (open access).