Assessing the sociology of sport: On theory relevance and action research

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, one of the leading scholars of the study of sport organizations, management, and policy, Laurence Chalip, considers the crucial intersection of the sociology of sport with its applications in the real world. Reflecting on how a 1989 call for the development of an applied sociology of sport by Yiannakis was not well-received by a sociology of sport scholarly community (concerned that political and marketplace imperatives might diminish its interpretive and critical agenda) Chalip outlines pragmatic and moral grounds for needing an applied sociology of sport. Posing that the challenges of the sociology of sport entail both embracing the nexus of application and theory, and the development of new conceptual tools, it is argued that an applied sociology of sport can, counter to conventional wisdom, challenge the status and functioning of privilege and power in sport. A key challenge of servicing clients in consultancies and applications is realizing that applied sociology of sport cannot be a-theoretical, but instead demands being multiply theoretical. Looking to the future, it is noted that the dearth of action research by sport scholars has been noteworthy, and that the simultaneous engagement of theory with practice, which has been inadequately developed, represents an opportunity that should not be missed.