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Dr. Robert Rinehart
is an associate professor in sport management at Washington State University and an internationally recognized expert on “extreme” sports. Prior to coming to WSU, he was a professor at California State University, San Bernardino, and at Idaho State University. He received his Ph.D. in kinesiology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, an M.S. in physical education at the University of Arizona, and he also holds an M.A. in English from CSU, Sacramento. His research combines the seemingly divergent areas of English and physical activity in a critical theory/cultural studies approach to contemporary forms of physical activity. He has a book, Players All: Performances in Contemporary Sport, and has been published in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues, the Sociology of Sport Journal, and the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, among others. He serves as a reviewer for qualitative methodology and sport sociology journals, and is the book review editor for the Sociology of Sport Journal.
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Educational Leadership and Counseling Psychology
Robert Rinehart
“Action” Sport and Activity for
Equity and Understanding
Download a printable pdf
The new and exciting sub-field of the study of “extreme” or “action” sports, more broadly known as alternative sports, focuses on how non-mainstream sports come into being, what they come to mean in a highly commoditized culture, how they are appropriated and utilized, and how they reflect and amplify cultural mores, attitudes, and ideologies. In short, sports are seen as cultural performances, but they are also potential sites for social change. In this light, sports are a way of looking at what we, as a collective of societies, value and portray to the world, and how we may strive for social justice through the vehicle of sport.
An understanding of new sport forms—action sports—gives new insight to the place of sport in a global economy, the roles of capitalism and democracy in ideological role-formation, citizenship, socialization of youth and adults, and lived patterns of social justice. Primarily using ethnographic research techniques, Dr. Rinehart has examined such key elements of new sport forms as the roles of youth participants and fans/spectators; transnational corporate involvement in action sports; performative aspects of participants; disaffected and at-risk aspects of youth involvement (deviant behavior); alternate possibilities (e.g., eastern “sport” philosophies); and gender, race, and class aspects of contemporary sports. His publication, To the Extreme: Alternative Sports, Inside and Out with Synthia Sydnor, used an innovative methodology in order to give “voice” to participants: in paired chapters, academics and athletes wrote about key elements of their specific sport (e.g., skateboarding, in-line skating, “extreme” skiing, rock climbing).
Dr. Rinehart’s research emphasizes how subjects give meaning to their lives. A humanities-driven methodology is appropriate for this person-centered approach; thus, his continuing interest in the sport/art dynamic, and in sports-persons as performative others is cutting-edge. He has written of such modernist (and postmodernist) concerns as kitsch, avant-garde, living statuary, and the study of body culture.
Contact Information
Robert Rinehart, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Educational Leadership and Counseling Psychology
PO Box 642136
Pullman, WA 99164-2136
Telephone: 509-335-7720
E-mail: rerine@wsu.edu |
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