"Sports. . . help define moral and political community," noted MacClancy. He goes on to say, "Sport is not a 'reflection' of some postulated essence of society, but an integral part of society and one, moreover, which may be used as means of reflecting on society" (1996). From these statements, questions arise. Do lower socioeconomic classes emphasize sports as a "way out," as opposed to the upper class that might view sport as strictly recreation? Do these opinions on sport vary from class to cl

Salminen, S., & Liukkonen, J. (1996) Coach-athlete relationship and coaching behavior

A recent article entitled, "What Has Happened to the White Athlete?" in the December 6, 1997 issue of Sports Illustrated displayed some of the same attitudes as in the previous studies. Although the focus of the article was mostly racial, Price couldn't help but find the importance of socioeconomic factors. William Ellerbee, a high school basketball coach in Philadelphia, noted, "Suburban kids tend to play for the fun of it. Inner-city kids look at basketball as a matter of life or death." Price also interviewed Brent Barry, a basketball player in the NBA who became the first white player to win the Slam Dunk contest. Barry is the son of Hall of Fame basketball player Rick Barry, and grew up in an upper-middle class neighborhood in Northern California. In this excerpt from the article Barry states, "If we drove to our high school [gym], it would be locked up. But if we drove downtown, we knew garbage cans would be holding the doors open, and guys would be playing." Barry went on to say, "It almost takes more effort to get out of a situation where you could sit back and be comfortable. If you're struggling, you could say, 'I don't need to do this anymore. My parents have great jobs, I could go to any college I want.' It's much different set of social barriers; the pressure on you to perform isn't so great. If you're the white kid and you've got glee club after school, the ski trip on the holidays and Stratomatic baseball in the spring, well, that's what you're going to do."

Kidd, B. (1995) "Inequality in sport, the corporation, and the state." Journal of Sport &

Conversely, men from lower status backgrounds were found to have the attitude that success in sport was their only hope of achieving public masculinity. This, despite the fact, as in the Bell study, these schools had to do without adequate gymnasiums and weight rooms, had to take public transportation to get to games, used shabby equipment, had fewer and less well-paid coaches, and had to raise money through donations, car washes, and profits from candy and soda machines. Messner also found that it was with their low socioeconomic environment, the fact that there was an anti-education peer sentiment, the poor quality of the public schools, or the attitudes of teachers and coaches, that sport was the only outlet to display their place in society. So, it is with these differential value orientations and the amount of opportunity to participate, that offers the greatest impact in how people see sport (Edwards, 1973).

Some common words found in the essay are:
Japanese Japanese, Review Theories, Dominicans Klein's, Coakley White, Northern California, Sugarball Dominican, Social Issues, Dominican Republic, Conduct Baseball, Sport Journal, socioeconomic factors, journal sport, lower socioeconomic, journal sport social, sport social issues, social issues, sport social, sociology sport, sociology sport journal, status backgrounds, sport journal, messner found, lower status, journal 1986 3, lower socioeconomic classes,
Approximate Word count = 2427
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)