Streakers in Sport

This book presents the first comprehensive sociological analysis of streakers and streaking culture in elite sport, examining how these transgressors disrupt and affect sporting events. Streakers are difficult to ignore, bursting into stadiums and arenas naked, sparsely clothed or in disguise and bringing competitions to an abrupt halt by transgressing boundaries in factual, temporal, spatial and social terms. This book employs a rigorous sociological methodology to move beyond interpretations offered by psychiatrists, journalists, security officials and lawyers to explore the "how" and "why" of this curious behaviour. The authors address two key questions: What does observing streakers reveal about elite sport? And what does analysing elite sport reveal about the social figure of the streaker? Through this lens, sporting competitions can be seen as socially constructed scenarios of controlled crises, where streakers act as parasitic second-order troublemakers, adding a secondary layer of chaos to events already centred on the strategic conflict between opponents. Written for a broad audience, this book will appeal to students, academics and researchers in sociology, sports studies, cultural anthropology, ethnology and social psychology.

Karl-Heinrich Bette is Professor Emeritus of Sport Sociology at the Institute of Sport Science of the Technical University of Darmstadt. He is the author of numerous books and articles on doping, extreme sports, sport heroism and passion for sports, as well as textbooks on sports sociology and sociological systems theory. He is considered one of the most renowned German sociologists of sports and the body. Some of his monographs were translated in Japanese, Korean and traditional Chinese. Felix Kühnle is Professor of Sport Sociology at the Institute of Sport Science of the Technical University of Darmstadt. His research focuses on a variety of social issues and problems of elite sport, such as whistleblowing and doping prevention. His monograph on depression in elite sports was awarded the DOSB (German Olympic Sports Confederation) Prize in Gold (2019/20), which is considered the most prestigious scientific award in German-language sports science.

Introduction 1 Nudity and Shamelessness 2 Violation and Contamination 3 Suddenness and Surprise 4 From Perception to Action 5 Individualization and Distinction 6 Rhetorics of Legitimization 7 Homage and Sanctioning 8 Con Men, Photo Bombers, Pranksters Conclusions