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In recent years the interest in the patterns and policies of South African sport has grown. This book examines the increasingly complex issue of race, class and sport in the context of South African social relations. The author disputes evaluations made purely on the question of race, maintaining that it is important to examine the complex interaction between racial and class dynamics as a background for understanding the South African way of life. The book demonstrates that sport must be understood in the context of the ensemble of social relations characterizing the South African social formation.

This article argues that the role of the public intellectual in sport is desperately needed. The research for the article draws upon key interviews and newspaper reports. The article examines three questions: i) What is the role of the public intellectual in sport? ii) Do we wish to encourage the role of the public intellectual in sport? iii) How does one balance the objective of challenging unseen silences in sport with its potential transformative capacity to produce change (or at least be a resource for hope) in many communities. The challenge is for today's sociologists of sport and others not to accept the narrow job description of the academic but instead to ensure that the social study of sport is one of these very public, visible forms of activity and engagement.

The contribution that sport can make to community has been a contemporary theme within both sociological and political thinking about sport. This paper examines assumptions that are often associated with communitarianism as a basis for thinking about aspects of sport in Scotland. It is argued that it is unrealistic to expect sport to sustain a notion of social capital or civic engagement or communitarianism without addressing the issue of ownership, obligations and stakeholding in Scottish sport. Case-study research is used to substantiate the arguments made about Scottish sport.

This cultural history of sport in China challenges many such ingrained Western assumptions. The authors unpick the relationship of sport to imperialism and revolution and examine its significance in both China and Taiwan at governmental and everyday levels