Ebook: Child's play: sport in kids' worlds

"Child's Play collects state-of-the-art research on sport in children's worlds, studies that illuminate scholarly questions in the burgeoning sociological and interdisciplinary fields of children and youth, bodies and health, and intersectional analyses of social inequality. At the heart of Child's Play is a critical scholarly engagement with the question of how, when, and under what conditions sport is good for kids. The chapters in the first half of the book illuminate with broad brush-strokes what we know about kids and youth sports, and they ask probing questions about the role of sport in schools, health policy, race and gender relations, and social mobility. Together, these chapters critically assess the ways in which organizations, corporations and the state target kids with sport-related policies and marketing schemes. The second half of the book consists of interview-based, participant-observation and ethnographic studies by scholars who have entered into children's worlds to explore how youth make meanings, shape identities and relationships in sport; how sport participation connects with other things kids do in their daily lives (including school, family life, peer groups, adult mentors, health and violence, etc.). Throughout the text, Child's Play is attentive to differences and inequalities among kids: how different sport opportunities and experiences shape gender for boys, girls, Muslim immigrant girls and transgender kids, and the ways that race/ethnicity and social class differently constrain and enable kids' access to and experiences with youth sport"--;Surveying youth sports in America : what we know and what it means for public policy / Don Sabo and Philip Veliz -- Kids of color in the American sporting landscape : limited, concentrated, and controlled / Douglas Hartmann and Alex Manning -- Girls and the racialization of female bodies in sport contexts / Cheryl Cooky and Lauren Rauscher -- Sport and the childhood obesity epidemic / Toben F. Nelson -- The children are our future : the NFL, corporate social responsibility, and the production of "avid fans" / Jeffrey Montez de Oca, Jeffrey Scholes, and Brandon Meyer -- Athletes in the pool, girls and boys on deck : the contextual construction of gender in coed youth swimming / Michela Musto -- The voices of boys on sport, health, and physical activity : the beginning of life through a gendered lens / Murray J. N. Drummond -- "A right to the gym" : physical activity experiences of East African immigrant girls / Chelsey M. Thul, Nicole M. LaVoi, Torrie F. Hazelwood, and Fatimah Hussein -- Transgender and gender-nonconforming kids and the binary requirements of sport participation in North America / Ann Travers -- Examining boys, bodies, and PE locker room spaces : "I don't ever set foot in that locker room" / Michael Kehler -- Park "rats" to park "daddies" : community heads creating future mentors / A. James McKeever -- Afterword : Kids, sport research, and sport policy / William A. Corsaro.