Reading Lists

As time passes, this page will be updated with various reading lists compiled by our members. These should provide ideas for syllabus construction as Anthropology of Sport courses are increasingly set up in universities around the world.

Anthropology of Sport Ethnographies

Klein, A. M. (1993). Little big men: bodybuilding subculture and gender construction. State University of New York Press. http://capitadiscovery.co.uk/brighton-ac/items/271678
Carter, T. F. (2011). In foreign fields: the politics and experiences of transnational sport migration. Pluto.
Brownell, S. (2008). Beijing’s Games: What the Olympics Mean to China. Rowan and Littlefield Publishers.
Sehlikoglu, S. (2020). Working Out Desire: Women, Sport, and Self-Making in Istanbul. Syracuse University Press.
Wacquant, L. (2004). Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. Oxford University Press, Inc.
Swyers, H. (2010). Wrigley Regulars: Finding Community in the Bleachers. University of Illinois Press.
Sands, R. R. (2002). Sport Ethnography. Human Kinetics.
Klein, A. (1997). Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos. Princeton University Press.
Dyck, N. (2012). Fields of Play: An Ethnography of Children’s Sports. University of Toronto Press.
Dyck, N. (Ed.). (2000). Games, Sports and Cultures. Berg.
Blanchard, K. (1995). The Anthropology of Sport: An Introduction: Vol. Revised Edition. Bergin and Garvey.
Rana, J. (2022). Punching Back: Gender, Religion and Beloninging in Women-Only Kickboxing. Berghahn Books.
Sands, R. R. (Ed.). (1999). Anthropology, Sport, and Culture. Bergin and Garvey.
Sands, R. R. (1995). Instant Acceleration: Living in the Fast Lane: The Cultural Identity of Speed. University Press of America.
Laviolette, P. (2011). Extreme Landscapes of Leisure: Not a Hap-Hazard Sport. Ashgate.
Sands, R. R., & Sands, L. R. (Eds.). (2010). The Anthropology of Sport and Human Movement: A Biocultural Perspective. Lexington Books.
Kovač, U. (2022). The Precarity of Masculinity: Football, Pentecostalism, and Transnational Aspirations in Cameroon. Berghahn Books.
Guttmann, A. (1978). From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports. Columbia University Press.
Grasmuck, S. (2005). Protecting Home: Class, Race, and Masculinity in Boys’ Baseball. Rutgers University Press.
Gmelch, G., & Weiner, J. J. (2006). In the Ballpark: The Working Lives of Baseball People (Illustrated edition). BISON BOOKS.
Downey, G. (2005). Learning Capoeira: Lessons in Cunning from an Afro-Brazilian Art. Oxford University Press.
Carter, T. F. (2008). The Quality of Home Runs: The Passion, Politics, and Language of Cuban Baseball. Duke University Press.
Brownell, S. (1995). Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People’s Republic. University of Chicago Press.
Besnier, N., Calabrò, D. G., & Guinness, D. (Eds.). (2021). Sport, Migration, and Gender in the Neoliberal Age. Routledge.
Besnier, N., Brownell, S., & Carter, T. F. (2018). The Anthropology of Sport: Bodies, Borders, Biopolitics. University of California Press.
Dyck, N., & Archetti, E. P. (Eds.). (2003). Sport, Dance and Embodied Identities. Berg.
Carter, T. F. (2018). On Running and Becoming Human: An Anthropological Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan.
Thangaraj, S. I. (2015). Desi hoop dreams: pickup basketball and the making of Asian American masculinity. New York University Press.