The Cultural Politics of the Paralympic Movement: Through an Anthropological Lens

Here is a solid contribution to the successful Routledge Critical Studies in Sportseries from an author uniquely qualified to write in this field. As the Paralympic Games mirrors the development of the mainstream Olympics and now constitutes a commercially successful sporting festival, this book questions the Games' development as a positive one and whether or not it is justified to describe the Games as a vehicle for empowerment of the disabled community.Using cutting-edge ethnographic research methods, David Howe investigates the economic, social and political processes shaping the Paralympic movement on a local and global scale, and develops a new theory of the relationship between sport, the body and the culture of disability. This book also addresses a range of topics that are central to the study of contemporary sport in general, such as the use of technology, commercialism and professionalisation, the international politics of sport, and the use and abuse of power.By critiquing contemporary attitudes to disability within sport and within society more generally, and by challenging the orthodox view of the Paralympics as a vehicle for empowerment, this book raises important questions and debates crucial to the study of sociology and sports studies.

P. David Howe is Lecturer in the Sociology of Sport at Loughborough University. He is also a four-time Paralympian and former Athlete's Representative to the International Paralympic Committee