Search results for ""author michael atkinson""

At a time when the public discussion of mental illness in society is reaching a high point, athletes and other sports insiders remain curiously silent about their private battles with a range of mental illnesses. While a series of professional athletes have exposed the deep, dark secret related to the pervasiveness of mental illness in high performance sport, relatively little is known, sociologically, about what mental illness culturally means inside sport. This edited collection showcases research on how sport, as a social institution, may actually produce dangerous cultural practices and contexts that foster the development of mental illness within athlete groups. Further, chapters also illustrate how sport, when organized with sensitivity and care, may serve to help manage mental illnesses. Rather than analyzing mental illness as an individual phenomenon, contributors to this volume equally attest to how mental illness is socially developed, constructed, managed, and culturally understood within sport settings. The book highlights the relevance of a range of theories pertinent to the social study of mental illness including dramaturgy, cultural studies, learning theory, symbolic interaction, existentialism, and total pain theory. Chapters range from the discussion of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, drug addiction, epilepsy, mental trauma, stigma, the mass mediation of mental illness, and the promise of sport as a vehicle for personal and collective recovery.

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For many, Blue Velvet is David Lynch's masterpiece. It represents a unique act of cinema: an 80s Hollywood studio film as radical, visionary and cabalistic as anything found in the avant-garde; a mysteriously symbolic and subterranean 'cult' movie that nevertheless has recognisable stars and was broadly distributed; a genre piece with the ambience of a fearsome, hyper-composed nightmare; an American 'art film' by Hollywood's only reputable 'art film' director. Michael Atkinson’s intricate and layered reading of the film shows how crystallises many of Lynch’s chief preoccupations: the evil and violence underlying the surface of suburbia, the seedy by-ways of sexuality, the frightening appearance of the adult world to a child's eyes, presenting it as the definitive expression of the traumatized innocence which characterizes Lynch's work. In his afterword to this new edition, Atkinson situates Blue Velvet within a culture that has changed drastically in the 35 years since its release, and in doing so, he considers the film's lasting significance as it slowly turns from contemporary phenomenon to an interpretable artifact.

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Traceable as far back as the work of the path-breaking Chicago School of Sociology in the 1920s and 1930s, subculture and counterculture have long been conceptual staples of the discipline. Implemented originally to designate and describe smaller, often deviant or delinquent, groups within larger social communities, the terms gained pace in their use in mid-twentieth century criminological research, and especially with the development of Cultural Studies in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, where they became widely used to describe processes of social class-based opposition, resistance and protest. More recently, sociologists have moved beyond a strict conformity-resistance model in accounting for the behaviour of sub-communities that coalesce around particular values, behaviours, or preferences.Indeed, contemporary sociological research has raised the possibility that the term subculture in particular may have entirely outgrown its usefulness. While the term counterculture has also languished, there is no doubt that the sorts of social groups to which these terms have historically referred are more extensive and colourful than ever. Certainly this is the case in sport. Put simply, all societies are replete with their own versions of Tribal Play which encompass and represent wider social patterns, processes, and struggles.This volume is a collection of 16 readings on aspects of sub-community life in sport that showcases the breadth and depth of sport subcultural research by a group of international scholars representing varied theoretical and methodological orientations. Some of the sport communities examined include soccer hooligans, endurance athletes, disabled athletes, environmentally conscious surfers, and X-Games participants.This fourth volume in the "Research in the Sociology of Sport" series is edited by two sociologists whose academic training, research and teaching span three of the subdisciplines in which the concepts of subculture and counterculture have been most avidly used and critically tested (Criminology/Youth/Sport), and whose subcultural ventures both in sport and as sociologists are extensive. Michael Atkinson is Senior Lecturer in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Loughborough University in the UK, and Kevin Young is Professor of Sociology at the University of Calgary, Canada.

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GOLFLAND describes each one of Scotland's golf courses. It is the detailed, definitive guide to the country's courses. It's the first book of its kind in more than a decade, an ambitious celebration of Scotland's embarrassment of golfing riches. Useful and informative, it is a practical reference work. Beautifully designed, with stunning photography by David Cannon, it is also a highly desirable gift. GOLFLAND is an appropriate name for a book about the courses of Scotland, the country recognised as the birthplace of the game. Scotland is a mecca for golf tourists worldwide, who come to play its most celebrated courses, such as Carnoustie, Muirfield and the historic links of St Andrews. Yet for all of Scotland's most distinguished courses, like those which host The Open, there are hundreds of others, some known to aficionados, some so far-flung as to be familiar to only a few. GOLFLAND records and celebrates them all. If you are planning a trip to Scotland or simply want to explore the richness of the country's golfing landscape, GOLFLAND is essential. For dreaming about some future game, or else remembering one played long ago, it is equally invaluable. GOLFLAND will answer almost all the questions you might have about Scottish golf courses. GOLFLAND is also the answer to a commonly asked question: what is the perfect gift for the golfer in my life?

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This volume takes a fresh approach to qualitative research on sport and physical culture by presenting "student friendly" engaging chapters that clearly articulate the significance and practice of qualitative and/or critical methods in plain and convincing language. It outlines contemporary, cutting-edge approaches in qualitative research methods that students in undergraduate programs in sociology and sociology of sport, as well as, for instance, sport, exercise, kinesiology, or health, can understand clearly. Chapters revolve around one principal method in qualitative methodology, and look at why certain methodological choices were made, what problems were faced, and how these were overcome. Classic issues in methodology, contemporary issues in research methods and innovative trends in qualitative research are addressed through case study examples from emerging and exciting areas of research in sport studies. Topics covered include: historical methods; ethnography; auto-ethnography; embodied methods; interviewing; narratives; participatory action methods; interpretative phenomenological analysis; media analysis; and visual methods.

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