Sociology of Sport: India

This chapter is a collation and review of literature that can be considered to form the terrain of sports studies in India. It attempts two broad tasks: firstly, to aggregate these studies, and secondly, to predict the very possibility of a sociology of sport in India. To this end, this chapter is classified into three separate yet intertwined themes: modernity and nationalism; sub-nationalisms or regional nationalisms; and gender, masculinities, and culture. The first section looks at questions of modernity and nationalism within the Indian context through a close reading of studies on sports like field hockey and cricket. The second section is a critical look at the role of sub-nationalisms in complicating the notion of a singular nationalism, as played out in the domain of football in India. Lastly, the chapter examines questions of gender, especially masculinities, as a consistent yet plural presence in all of these literatures. These themes are neither exclusive nor all encompassing, and the chapter produces them in continuity as well as in rupture with one another. It concludes by speculating upon the possibilities and challenges for a sociology of sport in India, with suggestions for possible methodological interventions. [ Sociology of Sport: India is a chapter in Kevin Young (ed.) Sociology of Sport: A Global Subdiscipline in Review (Research in the Sociology of Sport, Volume 9) Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.37 - 57