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On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, former IRSS Editor John Sugden, one of the foremost scholars to advance a critical sociology of sport and to apply its tenets to Sport for Development (SDP) programmes, reflects on a key question about how the sociology of sport has and can inform social and political activism that engages sport. Noting a 'new orthodoxy that dominates the SDP sector', there is a pressing need for a more critical sociology of sport in engaging strategies, and understanding the limits, of sport in the service of conflict reduction and peace making in divided societies. Building on the tenets of Wright Mills and his notion of 'the sociological imagination' and the work of Brewer connecting it to the ending of violence, Sugden calls on the sociology of sport community to bring critical engagement to the advancement and refinement of using sport as a mechanism to bring about changes in social relations and in the reduction of conflict in divided societies. While it is noted that sport cannot be a panacea for development and conflict reduction, it can play an important role in practical interventions aided by a critical sociology of sport.

Every four years the Summer Olympic Games fires the imagination of the largest and most diverse sport spectatorship and entices them in their hundreds of thousands to some of the First World's most iconic and crowded cities. In addition, the ideological symbolism associated with the Olympic Games is rooted in Western, liberal democratic values and traditions. For those who do not share these ideals the Olympics represent something to stand against and, in extremity, disrupt and violate. In short, in a post-9/11 world, the Olympics provide a mouth-watering target for terrorists. Using themes of surveillance drawn form from Bentham and Foucault, this article analyses the nature of the terrorist threat and scale of the security operation designed to ensure the safety of the London 2012 Olympic Games. It concludes by considering the consequences of these measures on the city of London, particularly in terms of the civil liberties of its citizenry.

What, if any, is the value of sport to processes of peace and reconciliation? After introducing the largely rhetorical arguments for and against the value of using sport as a vehicle to promote peace building in divided societies, this article makes a more detailed and forensic examination of the evidence based on: the role played by sport in South Africa before and after apartheid; and second, drawing upon the author's own experiences garnered over more than two decades of conducting research and leading sport-based intervention initiatives in Northern Ireland and Israel. The article argues that sport is intrinsically value neutral and under carefully managed circumstances it can make a positive if modest contribution to peace building. The mobilization of an engaged sociological imagination in the context of a broader human rights agenda is central to this contribution. Drawing upon notions of pragmatism, left realism and praxis, the article concludes by presenting a 'ripple effect' model that illustrates the circumstances under which sport can make a difference in the promotion of social justice and human rights in deeply divided societies.

As the official football (soccer) economy has rapidly and globally grown to become one of sports' richest commercial engines, so too has its unofficial, or black, economy expanded. This article provides an insider account of some of the key features of football's black market, with a particular emphasis on ticket touting (scalping), fakery, forgery, and the murky independent travel business. In doing so, it provides a window into the deviant occupational subculture, lives, and lifestyles of the "grafters"—those characters who inhabit and make their living in this underground world. It concludes by locating the "grafters' game" in the wider context of the post-1980s urban-industrial landscape of Britain and theorizes the subculture in terms of classical and contemporary theories of deviance.

Football for Peace (F4P) is a sport-based co-existence project, for Jewish and Arab children, organized by the University of Brighton in partnership with the British Council, which has been running in towns and villages of the Galilee region of northern Israel since 2001. This article examines this initiative, first, by placing it in its broader socio-economic and political context; and, second, by tracing its specific history and development. Third, the article draws upon interviews conducted in the field and records kept by student volunteers to identify some of the key issues that emerge when making sport-based social interventions in complex, divided societies like Israel. The article suggests that if projects such of this are locally grounded, carefully thought out, and professionally managed they can make a modest contribution to wider efforts to promote conflict resolution and peaceful co-existence. The conclusion raises some of the broader socio-political issues and controversies that continue to inform the Project's development.