Convegno AIS, Emozioni e ragioni nella società neoliberista | Lecce, Italy

Event organizer: AIS (Associazione Italiana di Sociologia)

Speakers: Prof. Paolo Diana, Prof. Angela Delli Paoli, Dr. Valentina D’Auria (University of Salerno)

Paper: Sport and disability: domains and networks of expertise in social research

Abstract: 

This contribution focuses on the relationship between sport and disability. The link between these two areas of sociological interest is twofold: on the one hand, sport is considered a form of inclusive social participation (Brittan, 1980); on the other hand, it plays an identity-building role (Williams, 1994), enabling people with disabilities to socialise and negotiate their social identity (Russo, 2013). Given the growing sociological interest in these topics, our study aims to provide a systematic review of research at the intersection of sport and disability, with the dual objective of identifying the main thematic domains addressed and reconstructing the relevant networks of scientific collaboration.

Our contribution is situated within a broader research project, a PRIN entitled “‘dis-ABILITY!’: Challenging the stigma of disability by altering the media representation of the Paralympic Games”, which investigates the media representation of Paralympic athletes. Methodologically, the research process followed the PRISMA framework (Catone et al., 2020). The unit of analysis consists of English-language papers published between 1992 and 2023. During the search phase, we used the keywords sport and disability to retrieve contributions in Scopus and Web of Science. In the selection phase, we adopted inclusion and exclusion criteria aimed at producing a review relevant to the fields and research themes (selecting N = 1144 contributions). The analysis and synthesis phases yielded results showing the great variety of themes through which reflections on the relationship between sport and disability have developed over time, shaped by different collaborative networks.

Keywords: sport; disability; systematic literature review