1st Edition

Methodology in Sports History

Edited By Wray Vamplew, Dave Day Copyright 2018
    204 Pages
    by Routledge

    204 Pages
    by Routledge

    The process of converting the ‘past’ into ‘history’ involves engagement with a multitude of different sources and methods, and sports historians inevitably participate in the same debates over approaches and methodologies as their counterparts in other historical disciplines. At its heart, history remains a genre of empirical knowledge that is based upon the remains of the past, and without suitable evidence, there can be no sports history. A burgeoning range of sources has stimulated new ways of thinking and a significant expansion in the sports historian’s evidentiary base, as textual sources have been supplemented by photos, films and cartoons, uniforms, architecture, maps and landscapes, and material culture more generally.





    This book deals with some of these innovations. It is divided into two sections, the first offering chapter-length studies of particular methodologies, and the second, brief responses from experts in their fields to the question ‘what can sports historians learn from other disciplines?’

    1. Introduction: Sports History Methodology: Old and New



    Dave Day and Wray Vamplew





    2. A Bird’s-Eye View of the Past: Digital History, Distant Reading and Sport History



    Murray G. Phillips, Gary Osmond and Stephen Townsend





    3. Diplomatic and International History: Athletes and Ambassadors



    Heather L. Dichter





    4. Still Playing Together(?): A Recall to Physical Education and Sport History Intersections



    Geoffery Z. Kohe





    5. Towards a Critical Dialogue between the History of Sport, Management History, and Sport Management/Organization Studies in Research and Teaching



    Matthew L. McDowell





    6. Geography and the Methodological Ballpark: Putting Place into Sports History



    Chris Perkins





    7. Methodology in Sports History: Learning from Legal Scholarship?



    Jack Anderson





    8. Parallel Fields: Labour History and Sports History



    Matthew Taylor





    9. Economics and (Modern) Sports History



    Stefan Szymanski





    10. The Development of Sport in Museums



    J. Reilly





    11. Archives and Historians of Sport



    Martin Johnes





    12. Ways of Seeing, Ways of Telling: From Art History to Sport History



    John Hughson





    13. The Philosophy of Sport



    Andrew Edgar





    14. Durkheim and Sociological Method: Historical Sociology, Sports History, and the Role of Comparison



    Dominic Malcolm





    15. The Visual in Sport History: Approaches, Methodologies and Sources



    Mike Huggins





    16. Complexity, Critique, and Close Reading: Sport History and Literary Studies



    Shannon R. Smith





    17. In Praise of Numbers: Quantitative Spo

    Biography

    Wray Vamplew is Emeritus Professor of Sports History at the University of Stirling, UK, and Visiting Research Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. His research has gained awards from the North American Society for Sport History and the Australian Sports Commission. He is currently working on an international economic history of sport.





    Dave Day is Professor of Sports History at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He has a particular interest in the history of sports training and coaching, cross-cultural exchanges of sporting knowledge, the development of Victorian swimming communities, and the lives of working-class sportsmen and women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.