As mainstream celebrities circulate social justice signifiers, concurrent with a stark global rise in reactionary authoritarian populism, this paper considers how the levers and sites of political struggle are articulated when visibility is cast not as a prerequisite to politics, but politics is cast as a prerequisite to visibility. It critically analyses the emergence of resistance branding, referring to the process by which an individual or corporate entity adopts signifiers of political resistance and moral opposition in pursuit of cultural visibility. I explore the phenomenon of resistance branding through a specific case study: athlete-activist-celebrity Colin Kaepernick. The signature kneeling protest during the National Anthem of a 2015 NFL preseason game catapulted Kaepernick into a branded icon of authentic political resistance, repression, and sacrifice. Kaepernick has since embraced and maneuvered to extend this image, such that the Kaepernick Brand now proliferates across sport, advertising, publishing, merchandise, philanthropic organizations, and commercial sponsorships. Extending Stuart Hall’s work on the commodification of Black subjectivity, I explore Kaepernick’s trajectory to highlight the conjunctural shifts – most notably in regard to spectacularized sport, celebrity politics, and neoliberal recuperation – that rendered Black radical critique a pathway for fame/fortune rather than ostracization and repression. I argue that the Kaepernick Brand emerged within the racial economies of visibility, referring to how Black identity and its (assumed) corollary politics are shaped by buyers, sellers, and middlemen within the digital consumer marketplace. I conclude by assessing resistance branding as a mode of counter-hegemonic struggle within contemporary racial neoliberalism. I argue that, despite its potential material and symbolic benefits, resistance branding individualizes resistance, locates the locus of resistance in the commercial marketplace, and renders us reliant on the benevolence of capitalism’s spectacular winners rather than emphasizing incremental and unglamorous forms of grassroots resistance.

This study explores how social movements and alternative/activist media initiatives tactically mobilize the phenomenon of sport in their digital messaging to frame social critique, expand to greater digital publics, and solicit resources for counterhegemonic endeavors. In doing so, they exhibit the potentials and challenges of adapting a Gramscian and Freirean model of critical pedagogy to the digital age. Through a textual analysis of two digital documents created by Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp, I call attention to the emergence of a digital sporting pedagogy, referring to a project of strategically mobilizing sport for political conscientization across digital media. Know Your Rights Camp is thus a case study of a progressive articulation of sport that presents an alternative to the increasingly conservative and corporatized model of (new) sports media. I conclude by calling for a “bottom-up” approach to sport communication that explores how everyday people and communities are assembling and assigning meaning to sport at a grassroots level.

In critiquing the implementation and efficacy of dominant neoliberal models of sport-for-development for marginalized youth, scholars have identified the lack of programming that encourages youth to collectively question and transform – rather than mold themselves individually to adapt to – the contemporary racial-capitalist status quo. This piece theoretically and empirically extends scholarly efforts to construct a transformative and holistic model of sport-for-development for marginalized youth. We argue that this model should prioritize the development of collective community agency over isolated individual agency. This can be achieved through de-centering the physical and economic/entrepreneurial as the primary registers of youth development, and instead nurturing the social, cultural, and intellectual domains of marginalized communities. Specifically, we contextualize, explain the necessity of, and lay the programmatic groundwork for the role of sport in four development dimensions: 1) intellectual development, 2) political development, 3) cohesive development, and 4) wellness development. Empirically, we draw on our research with Colin Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp (KYRC), which mobilizes the platform, resources, and pedagogical potential of sport to educate urban Black and Brown youth about police injustice, structural racism, and the collective power of community solidarity. In many ways, KYRC illustrates the application of a more transformative and holistic model of sport-for-development that scholars have, to this point, mostly theorized. We thus use KYRC to narrate both the on-the-ground mechanics and structural challenges/limits of administering a more community-centric and humanistic model of transformative sport-for-development.

Abstract: Based on interviews with 15 sneaker customizers immersed in sneaker culture, we outline how participants perceived the digitization of sneaker culture - particularly social media - as spurring a gradual-but-tangible displacement of sneaker culture's original constituents (predominantly urban Black), by a new constituency (predominantly White middle/upper-class) who use sneakers instrumentally to pursue profit, fame, or digital influence. For participants, the sneaker industry's shift to digitally-focused model of production has rationalized the consumption process in ways that produce “hypebeasts” and maximize corporate profit, yet exclude poorer - but “purer” - sneaker consumers. As such, we argue that trajectory of sneaker customization demonstrates the digital architectures that accelerate cultural gentrification in (late) racial capitalism, whereby the creative cultural aesthetics, practices, and symbolic value of marginalized racial groups become professionalized, corporatized, extracted, and expropriated by mainstream commercial forces, resulting in marginalized cultural spaces being increasingly dominated by mainstream U.S. consumer classes.

Abstract: This chapter explores how sport advertising has reacted to the emergence of radical politics within sport, and within society more broadly. I am guided by the following questions. How and through what mechanisms have sporting brands attempted to accommodate the shift toward radical politics? How have sporting advertisers responded to a political culture in which more and more consumers have identified the emptiness of corporate virtue‑signaling? Operating within the “contested racial terrain” (Hartmann, 2003) of sporting representation, what versions of “radicalism” are sold to the public through sport advertising? Through reviewing literature and critically examining some overtly politicized sport advertising campaigns, I argue that sport advertising engages with radical politics within the realm of signification, but not with substance. The campaigns curate an empty signifier of radicalism by using well‑known faces and making implications with radical language, while promoting visions for social change that are ultimately anchored by incremental reformist neoliberalism. They craft a spectacle of social change that is driven not by collectivist social transformation, but by individual consumption. By highlighting what these commercials include and exclude, I consider the impact that these messages have on popular perceptions of sport and wider theories of social progress.

Abstract: This dissertation engages Know Your Rights Camp for Black Liberation (KYRC) – founded and led by athlete-activist Colin Kaepernick – as a case study for critically analyzing the contemporary intersections of sport, race, and grassroots activism. Among other related initiatives, KYRC hosts “camps” across the U.S. designed to facilitate empowerment, solidarity, and critical education about structural racism for Black and Brown youth in marginalized communities. KYRC is illustrative of the recent resurgence of activism connected to sport in the 2010s and early 2020s, in conjunction with the broader Black Lives Matter (BLM) social movement. Not only is Kaepernick a symbolic figure of both athletic protest and Black resistance more generally in this era, but KYRC is representative of how contemporary sporting activism has evolved in more radical, coordinated, and grassroots directions. Because these emerging sporting activist initiatives more closely resemble the character of social movement organizations than traditional sport-for-development or sporting philanthropy initiatives, I propose conceptualizing these grassroots organizations as Sporting Social Movement Organizations (SMOs). Borrowing from social movement frameworks, I examine KYRC as a Sporting SMO, defined as an organization that utilizes its connection to sport or athletes to pursue social, political, or cultural change in a coordinated, strategic, and sustained manner.

While scholars within Physical Cultural Studies and related fields have outlined the historical significance of and public reactions to this resurgence in sporting activism, there remains a considerable lack of theoretically and empirically rigorous research into Sporting SMOs, let alone with data collected in collaboration with organizations that can speak to their inner workings and on-the-ground mechanics. This project fills these gaps. The underlying research question is: in what ways, and within what broader sociopolitical contexts, does Know Your Rights Camp conduct grassroots sporting activism?  First, based on in-depth interviews with KYRC associates, content analysis of KYRC’s social media, and textual analyses of KYRC’s public-facing pedagogical documents, I conduct a micro- and meso-level sociological analysis of KYRC’s mechanics, logics, strategies, messages, tensions, and challenges of KYRC’s model of grassroots activism. Second, based in the methods of radical contextualism and articulation, I conduct a macro-level cultural studies analysis of the social, political, economic, historical, technological, and ideological contexts within which KYRC is situated. Overall, this dissertation contains a precise sociological analysis of what KYRC is and does, as well as a broader cultural studies analysis of what KYRC tells us about sport, race, and politics in contemporary America.

Abstract: This discussion critically examines and questions assumptions about the meanings and motivations of sporting consumption. We argue that the practice of sneaker customization demonstrates the contested terrain of sporting consumption, wherein contemporary consumerism is characterized by a dynamic interplay between top–down structural determination (by mass commercial forces) and bottom–up creative agency (by everyday consumers). Based on in-depth interviews with 15 sneaker consumers, we narrate the complexities of late capitalist consumer culture through three overlapping “tensions” between the commercial sneaker industry and everyday sneaker consumers: (1) Sneakers as a vehicle to express individuality versus to demonstrate conformity; (2) Sneaker customization as a means of artistic expression versus being a commodity rationalized to maximize profit; (3) An affective versus instrumental attachment to sneakers. Overall, the analysis illuminates how the cultural and affective meanings that consumers attach to sneaker consumption operate; sometimes in conjunction with, more often in opposition to, but always in tension with the meanings that the sneaker industry attempts to embed through its ever-expansive means of marketing and advertising.

Abstract: Synthesizing and responding to the arguments made throughout this special issue, we share our perspectives as early-career researchers on how to revive the study of the cultural politics of sport. First, we argue that the malaise of cultural politics work should be attributed to academic and disciplinary structures that have disincentivized a contextual and political study of sport. Second, we suggest that supporting and highlighting studies about nonelite, noncommercialized sporting practices can assist in unveiling the hidden politics that shape our sporting experiences and everyday routines. Third, we propose that transforming the academic structures that have discouraged a study of cultural politics will require scholars to do the unglamorous political work of organizing in their workplaces, institutions, and local communities.

Abstract: As the oppressions of U.S. collegiate sport persist, recent collegiate sport reform efforts have emerged to address the racial injustices and inequalities that remain in contemporary collegiate sport. Because racial justice reform efforts in college sport are intricately linked to broader visions and pursuits of Black liberation, it is necessary for these efforts to acknowledge the diversity of Black political perspectives and explicitly consider precisely which theoretical model underpins their pursuit of racial justice in college sport. The aim of this paper is to outline how racial justice initiatives within collegiate sport have been theoretically and strategically connected to broader Black social movements and the liberatory visions that accompany them. Specifically, I examine how some of the most common theories of Black liberation – Black Liberal Integrationism, Black Nationalism, Black Marxism, and Black Feminism – have shaped the tactical and utopian directions of key movements in the history of collegiate sport activism; such as the boycott efforts led by Dr. Harry Edwards in the late 1960s, the push for HBCU athletics throughout the late 1900s, and the recent University of Missouri football strike in 2015. In effect, I argue that exploring the implicit intra-Black political divergences and tensions of past Black social movements can reveal instructive insights for contemporary collegiate sport reformers that can aid in achieving a more collective, structurally focused, and intersectional vision for transforming collegiate sport.

Abstract: The aim of this chapter is to provide a preliminary examination of FC Barcelona's position within the contemporary US sport market. Utilising an assemblage-oriented, contextual cultural studies approach, the discussion grounds the FC Barcelona phenomenon within the aggregate of determinant forces through which it has come to being as a globally present superclub. This involves an explication of the club's strategic reformation as a transnational sport entertainment corporation in the early twenty-first century, highlighting the commercial and cultural implications of this process. The discussion focuses on the various ways that the club's local identity has been compromised, largely through the influence of its Disneyized commercialised and spectacularised diversification. This process is subsequently explicated within, and through, and examination of FC Barcelona's (re)production in the US, as the corollary of already existing American assemblant forces and relations that have contoured the translated FC Barcelona assemblage's generic and superficial (re)formation within the late capitalist US context. While acknowledging the determinist nature of the analysis, the conclusion points to the sporting implications of the club's forays into the US market, yet also the potential for expressions and experiences of resistance towards the generic banality of the FC Barcelona US’ assemblage.

Abstract: Concerns about safety and property rights have led to seemingly endless expansion of technologies and practices structuring modern surveillance society. While presumably “practiced with a view to enhancing efficiency, productivity, participation, welfare, health or safety” (Lyon, Citation1994, p. 52), we argue the continued function of a “social problems industry” (Pitter & Andrews, Citation1997) in cities like Baltimore, reflect a “colorblind” paternalization of sport-based charitable aid that disguises racialized surveillance under the auspices of educating lower-income Black youth through prescriptive measures to become upwardly mobile citizens. As Simone Browne (Citation2015) reminds us, rather than seeing surveillance as logical outcomes of innovation, we must “factor in how racism and anti-Blackness undergird and sustain the intersecting surveillances of our present order” (p. 8). Beyond CCTV and helicopter reconnaissance, this study situates sport/physical activity programming as yet another context of anti-Black surveillance, and discusses the potential of emergent resistive spaces that empower, rather than discipline.

Abstract: This chapter explores the spatial development of Formula One racetracks, which follows the pattern of confinement and commodification observed by Bale in other sports. The first Grand Prix races were generally held on closed public roads, but tracks dedicated solely to racing began being built as auto racing matured. Since Formula One started in 1950, races have been held on such permanent circuits, on street circuits, or a combination of the two as cities seek to profit from these high-profile events. Within permanent racetracks, the spectacle of auto racing has been confined to defined spaces as events require several kilometres of road, places for spectators, and support facilities. Races on street circuits are held on public roads, often in downtown areas, and close streets for several days before competitors arrive in order to set up the track, temporary stands, and support areas. Civic leaders justify this disruption as events are intended to showcase cities to global audiences. Such large investments of capital and space reflect on the increasing prominence of Formula One racing within the processes of globalization.

Abstract: Epitomized by the athletic sneaker industry's lucrative mining of Black bodies and Black culture, the colonization of the racial “Other” by the forces of Western consumer culture has become a defining feature of late capitalism. However, we propose that contemporary consumer culture also offers possibilities for everyday decolonizing practices, specifically those associated with sneaker customization. Drawing on 15 interviews with racially-marginalized sneaker customizers, we explored how individuals used sneaker customization to initiate critical and creative dialogues with the sneaker industry and other late colonizing forces. We found that participants used sneaker customization to assert their humanity through: signaling their personal/group identity; articulating political subversions and solidarities; and seeking to uplift disadvantaged communities. We conclude by encouraging sport scholars to critically engage the possibilities for decolonizing politics as infused within everyday popular cultural practices.

Abstract: The distinct style of basketball popularly termed “streetball” is inextricably linked to Black bodies, spaces, and forms of expression. Although streetball operates as a Black cultural repertoire constituted in response to historical marginalization, I demonstrate how representations of streetball in mainstream media are underpinned by, and thus reify, harmful racial logics that circulate throughout even purportedly innocuous forms of popular culture in the “colorblind” neoliberal moment. Through a textual analysis of three of the most culturally renowned media representations of streetball—the television show AND1 Mixtape Tour, the video game series NBA Street, and the film Uncle Drew—I argue that streetball is depicted as illustrative of the perceived pathological and inferior nature of Blackness; romanticized and divorced from the structural contexts of its production; and materially and symbolically exploited by corporate commercial entities. I conclude by reflecting on how mediated commodification often participates in reproducing, trivializing, and concealing the effects of structural racism and suggest that critical analyses of the politics of popular culture must inform anti-racist objectives.

Abstract: This discussion centers on a critical textual analysis of 10 episodes of The Shop: Uninterrupted, an HBO television series produced by and starring iconic Black American basketball player LeBron James. The aim is to provide a considered explication of representation activism: the anti-racist strategy keying on collapsing racial hierarchies through accenting positive Black representation, and so advancing greater Black inclusion, within mainstream media (Andrews, 2018; Gilroy, 2000; Godsil and Goodale, 2013). The politics and constructions of Blackness within The Shop exemplify the logical flaws, superficiality, and insipid practical outcomes of representation activism. Though The Shop proclaims to demonstrate Black liberatory representation, this analysis elucidates how The Shop’s centering of the Black celebrity elite as the agents of change falsely universalizes the experiences of everyday Black people; its pursuit of a mythological Black authenticity essentializes and romanticizes Black vernacular and identities; and its mediation through the White racial frame prohibits the articulation of an effective liberatory politics. The discussion concludes by challenging the possibilities of “positive” representation in capitalist media as a credible and sincere tactic of collective Black liberation (Hooks, 1992; Marable, 2015; Spence, 2015; West, 1994); instead, suggesting a grassroots-oriented approach prefigured on targeting the structural roots of racism.

Abstract: As the United States economy shifted to post-Fordist production models in the late twentieth century, the athletic apparel industry (specifically the brands Nike, Adidas, and Reebok) modified its promotional strategies. Whereas the industry traditionally touted the materiality and functionality of its products, the 1980s saw a substantial increase in marketing that aimed to inculcate products with symbolic characteristics and popular cultural associations. In particular, the industry deployed Black culture, and competed to associate their products with Black athletes, styles, and cultural signifiers. While this modification in promotional tactics yielded unprecedented growth for the industry, the images and messages communicated in this marketing served to exploit Black communities and reinforce the rampant biological and cultural racisms of the Reagan era. Engaging primary accounts from newspapers, magazines, interviews, advertisements, archival catalogues, and oral histories, this paper traces the historical shift towards racialized marketing through the athletic apparel industry’s quintessential commodity: the athletic sneaker. Overall, I argue that scholarly analyses of technology must critically engage how goods are promoted and distributed in order to holistically comprehend the social, cultural, and political implications of sporting technology.

Abstract: Physical activity is, and has always been, a series of intertwined social relations-from the bond of teammates and fitness partners, to the shared enthusiasm of a stadium filled with elation for a home-team victory, to the collective anticipation of a nation's Olympic glory. This chapter looks at how various forms of physical culture can be used to produce forms of community, including both the positive and negative aspects of community-building potential, with a specific concern for how, through participation or consumption, individuals might be included or excluded from the community. Our understandings of community range from active body participation to postmodern sign culture-a culture in which people are not only encouraged to attend or view games and cheer with vigor for the home team, but also embrace the signs and meanings corporate interests infuse into goods and services associated with those games and teams. In this chapter, we will look at efforts undertaken by nongovernmental organizations to involve and empower otherwise-disenfranchised groups or countries through physical activity and sport. We approach community from two vantage points: One will focus on representational sport and the other on physical activity as a means for community development.

Abstract: The precarity of the graduate student experience has been exacerbated by the COVID 19 pandemic while illuminating new challenges and opportunities for considering how we interact with the neoliberal university and its constituent elements. Throughout our individual experiences of this ‘new’ reality, we engage with Barad’s (Diffracting diffraction: Cutting together-apart. Parallax, 20(3), 168–187, 2014) idea of “diffraction” to map the similarities and differences of our COVID-shaped pasts, presents, and futures, and “re-turn” to specific moments and memories. These experiences will continue to alter how we understand our position as graduate students, as scholars, and as people invested in helping to enact a better world. The chapter concludes in a brief discussion of how to respond to this uncertain moment by moving beyond written platitudes and enacting the world we wish to see.

Abstract: From the earliest forms of modern sport to the current moment, the access, opportunities, experiences, and perceptions of those participating in sport and physical activity have been explicitly or implicitly shaped by race and racism. Additionally, contemporary physical culture has been a key site for racialization, or the process of an individual or group being ascribed a race and thus granted the characteristics perceived to be associated with that race. Although the opportunities they provide for racial equality and reconciliation are routinely touted, many aspects of sport and physical culture are actually structured by and contribute to damaging racial stereotypes and systemic racial inequities in ways that surreptitiously advance the myth of race. This chapter discusses the influence of race and ethnicity on sport, physical culture, and active bodies. We begin by defining and clarifying what exactly we mean by the terms race and ethnicity. Then, we briefly trace the history of how physical culture has been both a product and producer of race relations. Finally, we outline some contemporary issues regarding the impact of race on sport and active bodies, focusing specifically on the experiences of Black and Indigenous Americans. For both ethnic groups, we explain that, although sport served as a site of pride and empowerment for ethnic communities, it also reassembles and reinforces residual forms of racial exploitation, oppression, and hierarchy.

Abstract: In this chapter we explore the various ways in which politics, power, and culture shape our understanding and experience of the active body. To do so, we begin by first outlining our definition of politics, suggesting that in taking a broad approach to the term we can start to see how the active body is inherently and inescapably ‘political.’ More specifically, we take the nature, distribution, operation, and consequences of power to be the distinguishing feature of politics and political activity. Taking politics as an issue of power allows us to see how politics is a feature of society at a variety of scales and across a variety of sites—many of which challenge our more traditional conceptions of what politics is and where politics takes place. It also provides the starting point by which to understand the politics of the active body because, as we suggest, the active body is formed in, and inescapably linked to, relations of power. 

Abstract: This chapter focuses on the role that social class—the tier of society into which an individual is born—affects what sport and physical activities a person engages in, as well as where and why they do so. In this chapter, we will use major concepts from sociology to gain a better understanding of how members of various social groupings experience sport and physical activity in different ways and with different outcomes. For many people, social class can be a difficult concept to grasp—perhaps in part because Western society does not encourage people to consider social class. However, we propose to readers the following questions: How does access to money, education, social networks, or health care (to name but a few) limit or enable you and others to access gyms or sports facilities? To know what to do in those places? To create meaningful experiences there? We also want you to consider how social class is related to the actual expressions of physical culture—how and why some people seek out fitness and play certain sports. In other words, how does social class become constructed, performed, and reproduced through physical culture and sport?

Abstract: Although the authors cover vastly different topics from a multitude of angles, there are two overarching questions that this book attempts to answer. The first question is, simply: what is the relationship between sport and society? The second question is: what issues exist within sport and physical activity, and in what ways can we improve them?

         The goal of this introductory chapter is to provide you with a foundation for approaching these questions. Moving away from a casual comprehension of sport and physical activity to a more critical and contextual perspetive entails adopting a fresh way of thinking. This chapter aims to offer conceptual frameworks for thinking through these questions, which will help you understand and connect the chapters that follow. First, we define kinesiology, the academic discipline that has studied sport and physical activity the most. Next, we introduce the more inclusive term of physical culture to broaden our perception of experiencing physical activity. Then, we turn our attention to developing a sociological imagination, or a framework that helps us view ourselves and sport/physical activity dialectically, relationally, critically, and theoretically. Finally, we offer a concrete example of how to apply our new approach to analyzing sport and physical activity’s relationship to society.

Abstract: With regard to the centrality of symbolic cultural consumption in late capitalism (Jameson, 1991; Mandel, 1978), this thesis broadly details how consumers negotiate meaning and construct identity through engagement with cultural commodities. I examine this phenomenon through the athletic sneaker: a commodity that’s value largely derives from the cultural meanings it exhibits (Baudrillard, 1983; Miner, 2009; Turner, 2015). Specifically, I analyze sneaker customization, or the act of personal modification of traditional sneakers. Drawing from 15 in-depth interviews with individuals who have experience with sneaker customization, I explicate the various meanings that participants attach to sneaker customization, along with articulating its emergence, current position, implications and significance within its broader sociocultural contexts. This thesis contributes to understandings of how everyday individuals engage with popular cultural practices – such as sneaker customization – to create and define the means of their existence amidst the societal conditions with which they are confronted (Hall, 1996).