This article draws upon the authors' work on the global politics of world football and related studies of other sports and methodological issues, in order to argue for the retrieval of the investigative mode of sociological inquiry. In the context of a general critical interpretative framework, the gonzo style of Hunter S. Thompson and the investigative epistemology of Jack Douglas are evaluated and synthesized in a framework that challenges the assumptions of the standpoint epistemology position. Citing their unique fieldwork experiences researching FIFA (the governing body of world football), particularly in South Africa and France, they demonstrate the importance and persisting value of an investigative framework for any critical sociology of sport.
Bairner, A. and Sugden, J., eds (1998) Sport in Divided Societies.Aachen: Meyer & Meyer.
2.
Coakley, J. and Donnelly, P., eds (1999) Inside Sports.London: Routledge.
3.
Douglas, J. (1976) Investigative Social Research: Individual and Team Field Research.Beverley Hills: Sage.
4.
Giddens, A. (1989) Sociology.Cambridge: Polity Press.
5.
Goffman, E. (1989) `On Fieldwork', Journal of Contemporary Ethnography18(2): 123-132.
6.
Gouldner, A.W. (1973) For Sociology: Renewal and Critique in Sociology Today.London: Allen Lane.
7.
Jennings, A. (1994) Address to the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, Savannah, GA, Nov.
8.
Jennings, A. (1996) The New Lords of the Rings: Olympic Corruption and How to Buy Gold Medals.London: Simon & Schuster.
9.
Kaplan, J. (1975) Lincoln Steffens: A biography.London: Jonathan Cape.
10.
Klein, A.M. (1991) Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream.New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press.
11.
Klein, A.M. (1993) Little Big Men: Bodybuilding Subculture and Gender Construction.Albany: State University of New York Press.
12.
MacAloon, J. (1992) `The Ethnographic Imperative in Comparative Olympic Research', Sociology of Sport Journal9(2): 104-130.
13.
Marx, K. (1979) `The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte' (1852), in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works. Vol. 2: Marx and Engels 1851-1853.London: Lawrence & Wishart.
14.
Mills, C.W. (1959) The Sociological Imagination.Harmondsworth: Penguin.
15.
Simson, V. and Jennings, A. (1992) The Lords of the Rings: Power, Money and Drugs in the Modern Olympics.London: Simon & Schuster.
16.
Sugden, J. (1996) Boxing and Society: An International Analysis.Manchester: Manchester University Press.
17.
Sugden, J. and Tomlinson, A. (eds) (1994) Hosts and Champions: Soccer Cultures, National Identities and the USA World Cup.Aldershot: Avebury/Ashgate.
18.
Sugden, J. and Tomlinson, A. (1995) `Hustling in Havana: Ethnographic Notes on Everyday Life and Mutual Exploitation between Locals and Tourists in a Socialist Economy under Siege', in G. McFee, W. Murphy and G. Whannel (eds) Leisure Cultures: Values, Genders, Lifestyles (LSA Publication 54). Brighton: Leisure Studies Association.
19.
Sugden, J. and Tomlinson, A. (1998) FIFA and the Contest for World Football: Who Rules the Peoples' Game?Cambridge: Polity Press.
20.
Sugden, J. , Tomlinson, A. and McCartan, E. (1990) `The Making and Remaking of White Lightning in Cuba: Politics, Sport and Physical Education Thirty Years After the Revolution', Arena Review14(1): 101-109.
21.
Thompson, H.S. (1967) Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motor Cycle Gangs.Harmondsworth: Penguin.
22.
Thompson, H.S. (1972) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.London: Paladin.
23.
Thompson, H.S. (1980) The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time.London: Picador.
24.
Tomlinson, A. (1984) `The Sociological Imagination, the New Journalism and Sport', in N. Theberge and P. Donnelly (eds) Sport and the Sociological Imagination.Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press (also in The Game's Up: Essays in the Cultural Analysis of Sport, Leisure and Popular Culture.Aldershot: Ashgate/Arena, 1999).
25.
Wacquant, L.J.D. (1993) `Positivism', in W. Outhwaite and T. Bottomore (eds) The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Social Thought.Oxford: Blackwell.
26.
Ward, S. (1997) `Being Objective about Objectivity: The Ironies of Standpoint Epistemological Critiques of Science', Sociology31(4): 773-791.
27.
Willis, P. (1977) Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs.Farnborough: Saxon House.
28.
Wolfe, T. (1968) The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.New York: Bantam Books.
