The academic study of sport has proliferated in recent years. Not only have there been developments of the various sports-studies programmes, but sport has also featured more strongly in other academic disciplines. In a number of traditional areas of study, sport has been providing a rich and dynamic area for excavation. This has led to the development of specialist literature in book form and more recently journals.
Sports history has key journals such as the International Journal of the History of Sport and has emerged as a discipline in its own right. The sociology of sport is well established, and even newer areas in seemingly conservative disciplines, such as sport and the law, are beginning to flourish.
The latter is a real growth area: as sport has developed commercially, the interaction with legal regulation has become more obvious and the need for academic analysis more pressing. An important progression is to draw together diverse threads that exist within host domains.
It is from this background, and by drawing upon that diversity, that Culture, Sport, Society emanates. It is the first journal of its type to encourage a dialogue that is cross-disciplinary. A strong international editorial board is testament to this diversity. As the editor writes, the journal "offers all academics interested in any aspect of sport in the world's cultures and societies the opportunity to pen their thoughts, present their arguments and evidence and, most important of all, share them with others to the advantage of all".
The coverage thus far has been broad and varied, including a themed issue on the World Cup in 1998, with individual issues covering topics as diverse as sports discrimination and the UK law, cricket and Barbadian identity, gender and body building, and surfing technology and culture.
The establishment of Culture, Sport, Society indicates not only the growing importance of the study of sport across disciplines, but also the need to connect such studies. Sport is an increasingly significant part of modern culture, and the study of sport requires a thorough contextual analysis.
The study of sport needs to be placed in a wider dimension to avoid marginalisation within individual areas of study. This journal makes a worthy and positive contribution to this project and will be a useful tool across a number of subject areas.
Steve Greenfield and Guy Osborn work at the centre for the study of law, society and popular culture, University of Westminster.
Culture, Sport, Society: 3 times a year - www.frankcass.com/jnls/index
Editor - J. A. Mangan
ISBN - ISSN 1461 0981
Publisher - Frank Cass
Price - £95.00 (instits); £28.00 (indivs)
