Introduction: Sports, society, and technology

Abstract

This chapter offers an introduction to the critical study of sports, science, and technology intersections in society. To do so we first provide provisional definitions of sport, science, and technology in relation to their associated fields-Sport Studies, and Science and Technology Studies (STS). We next highlight key writings within critical Sport Studies and STS that predate and help to inform this collection. Clarifying past empirical and theoretical approaches assists in charting a course for the emerging themes, issues, theoretical debates, and methodological concerns that continue to shape the interactions between Sport Studies and STS, and are highlighted by each of the Sports, Society, and Technology chapters. Foregrounding the book’s thematic organization, we conclude the chapter with a discussion of these productive collisions before introducing each of the authors’ contributions. An examination of these important exchanges heightens the visibility of science, technology and sporting cultures, their contemporary and historical contexts, their entanglements, and their disciplinary futures.