Gender studies

Public health

Sociology

Medical sociology

Content analysis

Globalization

Sociology of sport

Social science

Politics

Nursing

Sociology of culture

Sociology of leisure

Political science

Football

Media studies

Medicine

Race (biology)

European Journal for Sport and Society

What is and was the sociology of sports all about? Through the method of topic modelling, I will investigate the content of all articles (full text, N = 1923) from what has historically been the three leading sociology of sport journals – Sociology of Sport Journal, International Review for the Sociology of Sport and Journal of Sport and Social Issues – from 1984 to 2014. The study extracts 20 dominant topics: from the vague but central topic of Culture via Organization & Politics, Gender, Race, and Body to the less central, but more specific, topic of Football, Nationalism and Globalization. Additionally, I look at how the three journals have their strongholds in these topics, and how the topics have fluctuated over time. The results are discussed against the background of previous reviews and studies in the sociology of sports.

Topics and trends: 30 years of sociology of sport