Douglas Booth
BSc(Hons)(Melb), MSocSci(Natal), PhD(Macquarie)
Email doug.booth@otago.ac.nz
Background
Professor Douglas Booth began his academic career in the mid-1980s in the Development Studies Unit at the University of Natal (Durban, South Africa) as a postgraduate student and researcher. During the course of his research into politics of economic underdevelopment under apartheid, Douglas became interested in the sports boycott of South Africa which led him to research the social meaning of sports. In 1993 Professor Booth completed his PhD in the Politics Department at Macquarie University (Sydney) under the supervision of Colin Tatz, which traced the history of the sports boycott in South Africa. Douglas began lecturing the social history of sports at University of Otago’s School of Physical Education in 1994, where he worked with John Loy, before moving to the University of Waikato as a Professor of Sport and Leisure Studies in 2004. In mid-2006 Douglas was appointed Chair of the Sport and Leisure Studies Department at Waikato until November 2007, when he returned to Otago University to take up the position as Dean of the School of Physical Education.
Research Interests
Professor Booth’s research primarily focuses on political and cultural aspects of sport. Within this broad framework he has examined racism in South African sport, the politics of the olympic movement, the cultures of surfing and surf lifesaving, and the nature of extreme sport. In recent years he has turned his attention to the historiography of sport history.
Douglas is an executive member of the Australian Society for Sports History and serves on the editorial boards of Rethinking History, Journal of Sport History, Sport History Review and Sporting Traditions. He is also an Australasian Book Reviews Editor for the International Journal of the History of Sport. Professor Booth has co-edited two special editions of Sporting Traditions, “The End of Sports History?” (vol 16, no 1, 1999, with Annemarie Jutel) and “The Cultural Turn in Sport History” (vol 27, no 2, 2010, with Murray Phillips).
Douglas has contributed to numerous encyclopedias including Encyclopedia Britannica and the Encyclopedia of World Sport. He is co-editor of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Extreme Sports (Great Barrington, MA: 2007) with Holly Thorpe. Dr Thorpe and Professor Booth also co-edit the Greenwood Press series on Extreme Sports; Douglas’s contribution, Surfing: The Ultimate Guide,launched the series in 2011.
Major Works
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Douglas Booth, The Race Game: Politics and Sport in South Africa (London, Frank Cass, 1998). |
Douglas Booth and Colin Tatz, One-Eyed: A View of Australian Sport (Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 2000). |
Douglas Booth, Australian Beach Cultures: The History of Sun, Sand and Surf (London, Frank Cass, 2002). |
Douglas Booth, The Field: Truth and Fiction in Sport History (London, Routledge, 2005). |
Selected Recent Publications
Douglas Booth, History, Race, Sport: From Objective Knowledge to Socially-responsible Narratives, in Daryl Adair (ed.), Sport, ‘Race’ and Ethnicity: Narratives of Diversity and Difference (Morgantown: Fitness Information Technology, 2011), pp. 13-39.
Douglas Booth, Beyond History: Racial Emancipation and Ethics in Apartheid Sport, Rethinking History, 14, 4 (2010), pp. 461-81.
Douglas Booth, Sport History and the Seeds of a Postmodern Discourse, Rethinking History, 13, 2 (2009), pp. 153–174.
Douglas Booth, In-Between the Flags: Reflections on a Narrative of Surf Lifesaving Australia, Rethinking History, 12, 2 (2008), pp. 165-87.
Douglas Booth, (Re)reading The Surfers’ Bible: The Affects of Tracks, Continuum, 22, 1 (2008), pp. 17-35.
PhD Supervision
Current Students
- Fiona McLachlan, Designs (Dis)order and Dead Water: Cultural Dimensions of Public Swimming Pools
Graduates
- Katie Fitzpatrick, Stop Playing Up! Youth, Class, Ethnicity, Gender, Health and Physical Education (2010).
- Geoff Kohe, Making it Ordinary: An Unexceptional History of the New Zealand Olympic Council and Sporting Ideals in the Dominion, c.1892-1936 (2010).
- Holly Thorpe, Boarders, Babes and Bad Asses: Theories of Female Physical Youth Cultures (2007).
- Brendan Hokowhitu, Te Mana Maori – Te Tatari I Nga Korero Parau (2002).
- Annemarie Jutel, Visions of Vice: Appearance and Policy in Feminine Body Image (2000).
Click thumbnail to see full image below
SUP sequence, July 2010, Feb 2011, St Clair. Mark Stevenson, Positive Pics,
http://www.findapic.co.nz/gallery2/main.php/v/positivepics/surfing/
Dawn patrol, December 2011. Derek Morrison, Dunedin Light,
http://www.dunedinlight.com/
To see details of postgraduate students this staff member may be supervising please visit the Postgraduate Profiles section of our website.
Last Updated 24 Jan 2012
