Reading Lists

As time passes, this page will be updated with various reading lists compiled by our members. These should provide ideas for syllabus construction as Anthropology of Sport courses are increasingly set up in universities around the world.

Anthropology of Sport Ethnographies

Besnier, N. (2011). On the edge of the global: modern anxieties in a Pacific island nation. Stanford University Press.
Besnier, N., Brownell, S., & Carter, T. F. (2018). The Anthropology of Sport: Bodies, Borders, Biopolitics. University of California Press.
Besnier, N., Calabrò, D. G., & Guinness, D. (Eds.). (2021). Sport, Migration, and Gender in the Neoliberal Age. Routledge.
Blanchard, K. (1995). The Anthropology of Sport: An Introduction: Vol. Revised Edition. Bergin and Garvey.
Brownell, S. (1995). Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People’s Republic. University of Chicago Press.
Brownell, S. (2008). Beijing’s Games: What the Olympics Mean to China. Rowan and Littlefield Publishers.
Canada, T. (2025). Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football (1st ed.).
Carter, T. F. (2008). The Quality of Home Runs: The Passion, Politics, and Language of Cuban Baseball. Duke University Press.
Carter, T. F. (2018). On Running and Becoming Human: An Anthropological Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan.
Carter, T. F. (2011). In foreign fields: the politics and experiences of transnational sport migration. Pluto.
Crawley, M. J. (2020). Out of Thin Air: Running Wisdom and Magic from Above the Clouds in Ethiopia. Bloomsbury Sport.
Downey, G. (2005). Learning Capoeira: Lessons in Cunning from an Afro-Brazilian Art. Oxford University Press.
Dyck, N. (Ed.). (2000). Games, Sports and Cultures. Berg.
Dyck, N. (2012). Fields of Play: An Ethnography of Children’s Sports. University of Toronto Press.
Dyck, N., & Archetti, E. P. (Eds.). (2003). Sport, Dance and Embodied Identities. Berg.
Fanoli, F. (2022). Arene di lotta. Corpi, mascolinità e invisibile nel «làmb» a Dakar. Meltemi.
Gmelch, G., & Weiner, J. J. (2006). In the Ballpark: The Working Lives of Baseball People (Illustrated edition). BISON BOOKS.
Grasmuck, S. (2005). Protecting Home: Class, Race, and Masculinity in Boys’ Baseball. Rutgers University Press.
Guttmann, A. (1978). From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports. Columbia University Press.
Klein, A. (1997). Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos. Princeton University Press.
Klein, A. M. (1993). Little big men: bodybuilding subculture and gender construction. State University of New York Press.
Kovač, U. (2022). The Precarity of Masculinity: Football, Pentecostalism, and Transnational Aspirations in Cameroon. Berghahn Books.
Laviolette, P. (2011). Extreme Landscapes of Leisure: Not a Hap-Hazard Sport. Ashgate.
Nardini, D. (2023). Il Calcio Storico Fiorentino: La rievocazione tra patrimonio e identità. Olschki.
Nardini, D. (2022). Surfers Paradise: Un’etnografia del surf sulla Gold Coast australiana. Ledizioni.
Rana, J. (2022). Punching Back: Gender, Religion and Beloninging in Women-Only Kickboxing. Berghahn Books.
Sands, R. R. (1995). Instant Acceleration: Living in the Fast Lane: The Cultural Identity of Speed. University Press of America.
Sands, R. R. (Ed.). (1999). Anthropology, Sport, and Culture. Bergin and Garvey.
Sands, R. R. (2002). Sport Ethnography. Human Kinetics.
Sands, R. R., & Sands, L. R. (Eds.). (2010). The Anthropology of Sport and Human Movement: A Biocultural Perspective. Lexington Books.
Sehlikoglu, S. (2020). Working Out Desire: Women, Sport, and Self-Making in Istanbul. Syracuse University Press.
Swyers, H. (2010). Wrigley Regulars: Finding Community in the Bleachers. University of Illinois Press.
Thangaraj, S. I. (2015). Desi hoop dreams: pickup basketball and the making of Asian American masculinity. New York University Press.
Vaczi, M. (2023). Catalonia’s Human Towers: Castells, Cultural Politics, and the Struggle toward the Heights. Indiana University Press.
Wacquant, L. (2004). Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. Oxford University Press, Inc.