SOC 3061 - Sociology of Sports

This course explores the ways in which sports are entangled in social, cultural, political, and economic forces operating at many different levels, from the social psychological levels to the global level. On one hand the course deals with the multiple ways in which individuals can participate in sports, including our participation in sport for purposes of recreation and leisure, sports participation as self-expression and person fulfillment, participation as spectators of sports and consumers of sports and sports organizations as particular representation of social organizations in general that can be analyzed in terms of goals and norms, social roles, manifest and latent functions, and replete with all the complex social dynamics that characterize other social organizations, such as stratification (e.g., by race, class, and gender). The course will also deal with the political economy of big time sports, including major university and professional sports and their contradictory relationships to their institutional settings (e.g., in institutions of higher learning and in communities).