From Mental Game to Cultural Praxis: A Cultural Studies Model's Implications for the Future of Sport Psychology

Abstract

This paper explores the implications of a cultural studies as praxis heuristic “model” for transforming sport psychology. It provides a brief introduction to both cultural studies and sport psychology and discusses a cultural studies intersection with sport studies and sport psychology. Cultural studies, it asserts, provides one of several interrelated trajectories for future work in sport psychology. Issues such as sociocultural identity/identifi cation, agency, equity and justice, and interdisciplinarity—that are marginal if not completely eschewed in traditional sport psychology—are explicitly engaged as central concerns. Taken up through the cultural studies model, sport psychology evolves from an individual focused, quantitative, “apolitical” single discipline into a multiple identifi cation focused, difference sensitive, qualitative friendly and social justice based interdisciplinary praxis.