Abstract des Autors

This article considers the nature of the paradigmatic, theoretical and methodological divergences characterizing the field of international sports studies. While historical contextualization is germane to many approaches, distinctive sub-disciplinary boundaries prevail. Specifically, we assess the significance of disciplinary barriers between historical and sociological approaches to the sporting past. While we detail evidence of extensive cross-pollination between the two sub-disciplines, the traditional disciplinary foci of empirical evidence (history) and theory (sociology) and associated differences in methodological traditions continue to constrain closer sub-disciplinary connections. Moreover, we suggest that the recent intellectual turn toward postmodernism and scepticism of realist epistemologies, while on one hand promising to challenge sub-disciplinary boundaries, has also compounded divides between many practitioners within the sociology of sport and sports history.