Assessing the sociology of sport: On sport organizations and neoliberal discourses

Abstract

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, a key figure in the sociology of sport in Norway, Jorid Hovden, assesses research into sport organizations and the pressures of neoliberal discourses. In considering the trajectory of research into non-profit sport organizations, focus is given to the ideological tensions in the field today and how neoliberal management discourses may contribute to weakening the impact of sociological concerns. Key challenges in inquiry are anchored in the contradictory and mutually exclusive paradigms for research into sport organizations, with one stream reliant on management functionalities that are remiss in considering power relations and the other a critical stream that emphasizes diversity and equity. These differences are amplified in the methodological schisms between the two streams, with a bias towards epistemological orthodoxy, positivist logic, and empirical evidence crowding out critical and cultural stocktaking. In the future, sociological inquiry into non-profit sport organizations will be challenged by the dominance of a ‘new managerialism’ that portrays organizations as rational, action-oriented systems, where individual action, competitiveness, and entrepreneurialism are embedded logics. Scholarship using critical paradigms will need to fight effectively to develop alternative knowledge formations to help advance democratic and community-based sport organizations and reduce power differences, exclusion, and inequalities.