Over the last decade a great deal of work has examined major sport event legacies and event leverage. Much of this work has involved Olympic studies and this paper seeks to add to the body of knowledge surrounding major sport event legacies by examining the largely overlooked area of the Paralympic Games. The Paralympic Games are the second largest multisport event after the Olympic Games depending upon which parameters are used and since Sydney 2000 there has been an ‘operational partnership’ where bid cities are required to host both Games. Yet, few studies have evaluated the comparative outcomes, legacies and event leverage that Paralympic games have generated. This paper addresses this absence by conducting a thematic analysis of Paralympic legacy research. The thematic analysis used a combination of keywords involving event legacy across 13 major academic databases. Of the 43 articles identified as having Paralympic legacy related content only 13 articles empirically investigated Paralympic legacy. In reviewing the research, it is noted that the bulk of the research has focused on Summer Paralympic Games with little interest in the Winter Paralympic Games. The major findings for legacy-based research include: infrastructure; sport; information education, and awareness; human capital; and managerial changes. However, while these findings may seem congruent with major event legacies frameworks conceptually, an examination of the detailed findings shows that Paralympic legacy research is isomorphic and adds a new component to existing legacy dimensions.

J ockocracy: Queering Masculinity in Sport is a book which is in itself revolutionary and innovative. It is novel because it provides insights into the Queering of male homosocial sporting environments and the relationship to masculinity and the body in sporting contexts. It provides chapters which cover multidimensional under-researched areas of knowledge and highlights particular Queered epistemological challenges. This book considers the relationship that men have with their bodies in homosocial sporting environments and as such acknowledgement is given to the bonds that men make in defining their masculinity; this includes the role of the body and the environment in which this body exists. This book provides chapters which cover specialist areas such as: the origins of masculinity and sport, queer theory, sexuality and masculinity, metrosexulaity, sport and queer theory and finally provides a theory of masculinity in the context of queered sport. It is instrumental in developing the constructs of Masculine Capital in sport and as such this book should have an impact on sports sociology and sports management but also provide significant ideas for gender, masculinity, and sexuality studies courses The book was a monograph of my PhD, which was selected for publication. This was published with my PhD supervisor as co-author, but I led the editing, and publication process of this book.

Disabled sports, whether as leisure activities, rehabilitation or fitness-related exercises, or as competitive entities, have become widely accepted in today’s society, and recently they were universally promoted under the UN human rights umbrella. Indeed, people with disabilities in almost all cultural spheres in the world have become emancipated and as such the disability sports movement has attempted to follow this evolutionary process. In 2003 the International Paralympic Committee began to promote their ‘new vision’ which was ‘to enable Paralympic athletes to achieve sporting excellence and inspire and excite the world’.2 We can agree with this vision but questions need to be raised as to whether the Paralympic movement and the Paralympic Games really contribute to the emancipation and empowerment of people with disabilities. In other words, are the stakeholders of the International Paralympic Committee followers or leaders? And does the Paralympic movement serve the struggle for justice and equal treatment for people with a disability? In this chapter we will question and deconstruct the above issues and ask whether the Paralympic movement is empowering or disempowering the community of people with disabilities.

With an ever-insufficient supply of resources and a deteriorating environmental pollution, the issue of efficiency is a key of both policy makers and transportation enterprises to assess how efficiently an economy transforms its labor, capital, and raw materials into goods and services. This paper examines the trends of technical efficiency in the transportation industries covering the period from 1998 to 2005 in China. The DEA method has been employed to calculate the technical efficiency scores of the transportation industries, and to identify the key determinants of their efficiency scores. Examination of the data adopts two stages: the first stage involves the measurement of technical efficiency effects, under the assumption that those inefficiency effects are identically distributed. The second stage employs a simple linear regression model to identify the determinants affecting the technical efficiency. We conclude that capital expenditures, company size, and human capital were all found to have positive effects on the efficiency of companies in the transportation industries, but ownership has little effect on the efficiency of these companies.

Features of this work include: review mailings to universities and sports & science magazines; presentation at international sports and sociology congresses; and, presentation at the Paralympic Games in China in 2008. Paralympic Games: Empowerment or Side Show? offers insights into the Paralympic Movement which has previously not been alluded to in the academic press. The chapters in this book cover aspects of the organization, development and life worlds of Paralympians, team management and coaches. In particular the book develops the following five themes of the 'Public and Media Perceptions', 'A View inside of the Paralympics', 'Olympism versus Paralympism', 'Cultural Diversity at the Paralympics' and the 'Future Directions for Research' in the Paralympic arena. Inside of these themes several important issues are addressed. They include chapters on Marketing for the Paralympics, Technical aspects of the Paralympic Games, the relationship between Olympism and Paralympism, and the Paralympic Movement in Africa to name a few. Throughout the book the question is asked as to whether the Paralympics empowers individuals with a disability or if the Paralympics are perhaps just a side show to the major Olympic event, human curiosities which don't fit the mainstream sporting interest. This question has been revisited several times throughout the book and it accentuates the major thrust of the writings therein. Principally this book has been put together as a practical and theoretical mix of chapters in order to stimulate further research into the Paralympic Movement. The chapters represent starting positions from where each form of research could develop and take on their own life as a bona fide research area. As such, the text appeals to students, academics and individuals who are inherently interested in disability and Paralympic sport.

Ensuring high quality sport management education is an important step in delivering high quality sport managers, particularly in a time when the management of sport is becoming increasingly global, complex and demanding. The question that emerges is "how do we deliver high quality sport management education?" Frisby (2005) calls for the need to engage critical social science in our teaching. Moreover she suggests we must also be able to reflect on our own knowledge claims if the educative process is to remain fluid and "foster healthy debate, critique and social justice" (p. 8). Others such as Costa (2005) and Chalip (2006) suggest there are inadequate mechanisms to ensure that the teaching of sport management is research evidenced based and therefore the knowledge we acquire is relevant to the environments in which sport managers operate. A broader investigation of the quality of sport management education could include: (1) the background and characteristics of students and of sport management educators; (2) course length and course structures; (3) course content and delivery modes; (4) course assessment and evaluation of procedures; (5) the nature and length of professional experience; and (6) the nature and strength of partnerships among different sport management stakeholders. Although we may debate how we can best deliver high quality sport management education, it is imperative that steps are taken to establish what is meant by quality sport management education.

Striving for Balance: Modernity and Elite Sport from an Islamic perspective explores serious issues related to high performance sport in the Islamic world and the effects of the Western World on individual athlete’s perceptions. The matters explored are not only crucial to the development of elite sport in Islamic countries but are supported by invaluable data gathered at the Malaysian Commonwealth Games. Eash chapter deals with differing issues such as ‘reflection of the past’, ‘religion and culture’, ‘Islamic values’, and the influence of ‘faith’ on the athlete’s behaviour. There is an attempt throughout to review the conflicting cultures, hence the title, and to suggest opportunities for reflecting upon the influences of religion and culture in the Malay context. Finally issues which require resolving are tackeld and suggestions given to rectify some of the problematics.

From the outset of this paper we are forthright in stating that there are misconceptions about the use of critical theory in some academic and sport management circles. These misconceptions are apparently pessimistically grounded in radical critiques of academic society. We argue, however, throughout that critical theory should be seen as profoundly optimistic and of use in the future research traditions of sport management.

This article highlights the theoretical notion of Postmodernism and attempts to place Tourism research into the postmodernism frame of reference. This is achieved by a brief description of the theory and further development in section two which reviews the challenges of postmodernism to research in the tourism field. There is then an endeavour to intertwine the constructs of postmodernist theory and to illustrate how it can relate to the tourism industry and in particular contemporary tourism. Indeed, we argue that even though a number of authors have begun to chart the sociological dimensions of post-modem tourism they have done so without highlighting the definitions and structure of postmodernist theory. Examples are given in order to support the theoretical approach to research which we suggest in this paper and every effort is undertaken in order to argue that postmodernist research in tourism can be beneficial and fruitful tor future directions. Consequently this article attempts to dispel some of the widespread bemusement concerning post-modem theories and post-modern tourism by reviewing some of the recent developments in the area and suggesting further research.