The consumption of violence through sport and physical culture

Michael Atkinson

Chapter 16 in Research Handbook on the Sociology of Consumption, 2026, pp 194-204 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Through popular conceptualizations as the behavioral territory of hyper-impassioned and unruly sports enthusiasts, garden-variety violence and aggressive behavior involving parents, friends, and casual observers at the amateur and youth levels has received scant sociological attention. This chapter discusses and interprets field observations from two ethnographic studies on the touchline behavior of aggressive and (at times) violent sports parents, families, and peers. These explore incidents, predilections, and the techniques of neutralization common among spectators of youth (under-13/14) soccer and ice hockey in Canada. In both cases, narrative accounts of parental misconduct on the sidelines are interweaved. The chapter presents this sideline aggression as dually consumptive: the allure of youth sport for connected adults is partly the degree to which they can be both individual and/or collective producers and consumers of aggressive, symbolically violent, and physically combative sports-related behavior.

Keywords: Violence; Sport; Parents; Fans; Mimesis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035310500
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