Social Risk and the Meaning of Sport

The topic of risk is most often discussed in the literature on environmental, health, and technical hazards. More recently, however, it has become a topic of concern to social scientists who apply risk analysis to social relations and social structure. The concept of risk can be used in analyses of sport as a factor in analytical models and as a component of applied sport sociology. This essay considers definitions of risk, the sociological tradition in risk analysis, and the application of risk to sport studies.