For more than forty years, scholars of the history and sociology of sport and recreation have studied how, no matter the time or place, sport is always more than just a game. In Playing for Change, leading scholars in the field of sports studies consider that legacy and forge ahead into the discipline’s future. Through essays grouped around the themes of international and North American sport, including the Vancouver and Sochi Olympic Games; access to physical activity in Canadian communities; and the role of activism and the public intellectual in the delivery of sport, the contributors offer a comprehensive examination of the institutional structures of sport, physical activity, and recreation. This book provides wide-ranging examples of cutting-edge research in a vibrant and growing field.

Russell Field is an associate professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management, University of Manitoba. His research explores sport and social justice, with current projects focusing on global sporting events as sites of resistance and protest, as well as the concept of “people’s history.” He is the principal investigator of the SSHRC-funded project A People’s History of Sport in Canada. He is the founder and executive director of the Canadian Sport Film Festival.

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‘This is an enjoyable, well written book…. It is a book worth reading by anyone with a serious interest in sport, the roles that it plays in society and the roles that it could conceivably play.’

Idrottsforum: Nordic Sport Science Forum, 28 September 2016

‘Researchers will find prime reading for sport and physical culture studies and related philosophies of knowledge, and other readers will welcome the history of sport, recreation, and the body.’

BC Studies vol 194:2017