Sites of Sport Space, Place and Experience

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.

Patricia Vertinsky is Professor of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia and Senior fellow of Green College. She is a social and cultural historian with a particular focus upon gender, space and physical activity.John Bale is Professor of Sports Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark and Professor of Sports Geography at Keele University, UK. He has pioneered the geographical study of sport and is the author of Running Cultures: Racing Time and Space,