The International Review on Sport and Violence is a multidisciplinary scientific journal to be published six-monthly in English and French and published as “open access journal”.  It will be looking at the close links between sport and violence, viewed primarily from two angles, that of sport as a generator of violence and, in contrast, that of sport as a means of keeping violence under control.  These are areas where a gap – and a blind spot – exist in sport research.  The three approaches taken are those of explanation, understanding and evaluation.

In such a project, the definition of violence can only be a wide-ranging one.  Limiting violence to that which is visible, such as hooliganism, would not, in practice, enable knowledge to be built up about more subtle, diffuse or symbolic violence, and nor would it allow violence to be viewed as a process.  For the slightest little act, or a few rude words, can provoke a spiral of violence.  Violence is what Garfinkel (1967) would have called a "practical accomplishment", the culmination of a long process of subtle and complex social interaction among various spectators or practitioners of sport.  And too little scope would remain if a restrictive definition were adopted.  Differences in interpretation, analysis, observation, fields, methods and scope are so many assets in the effort to understand what goes on in different sports.  In practice, for the aggressors or the victims, for the stronger party or the weaker, whether their country is at peace or at war, whether they live on a difficult housing estate or in a chic neighbourhood, whether they are male or female, young or old, and whether or not it is their first experience of violence, it differs for each and every one, to the point at which we can say that it may be either objective or subjective.

Articles submitted to the journal will be anonymously scrutinised by an international scientific committee.

Each issue will comprise:

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