Hoop Dreams on Wheels

The strength of this work is Berger’s embrace of complexity. In eschewing common dichotomies, Berger reveals the multifaceted lived experiences of wheelchair athletes with special attention to how they have forged their identities and understandings in particular historical, cultural and structural contexts. In so doing, he demonstrates the powerful interplay between human agency and social structure and between intended and unintended consequences. This informative, engaging and accessible book represents a welcome addition to the literatures on sport, gender, disability and identity. Tom Gerschick, Sociology and Anthropology, Illinois State University

Hoop Dreams on Wheels is aimed at a broad readership which includes: students and scholars in the sociology of disability, sociology of sports and sociology of the body; life-history researchers; professionals in the fields of therapeutic recreation and rehabilitative counselling; and members of the general public. This monograph is an exploration of the social meanings of disability and disability sport within North American society, as experienced and understood by members of a collegiate wheelchair basketball programme.

Throughout this book, the stakeholders of UWW wheelchair basketball (players and coaching staff) are placed at the forefront. Their stories are a significant resource as they allow us to learn more about the journeys individuals have taken in reaching and interacting within the cultural context of wheelchair basketball in North America. In the telling and analysis of life histories of sportspeople the author walks a precarious path, traversing individual agency and social structure. Berger reiterates the concept of agency and structure when handling athletes’ stories, arguably in an endeavour to avoid perpetuating the supercrip phenomenon. The athletes’ life-stories often emphasize what they achieved through their individual agency and as such may be seen akin to promoting the supercrip ideology. Indeed, some may call for more attention to be paid to the attitudinal, behavioural and structural context in which athletes’ stories are couched and which enabled and constrained these individuals’ life choices and achievements. At the same time, however, the athletes’ life histories contain within them varying perspectives on the social meanings and effects of impairment, as well as providing the potential to motivate and inspire others to take up disability sport. By focusing on the athletes themselves, rather than the organizational structures in which individuals are situated, Hoop Dreams on Wheels makes wheelchair basketball personable and carries with it the capacity to enthuse members of the intended broad readership about disability sport. The life stories have the potential to stimulate within all of us, irrespective of our own subjectivity, questions regarding our own cognitions and experiences of wheelchair basketball, more over disability sport in general. Significantly, Hoop Dreams on Wheels unconsciously calls on readers to examine their own life-history in such a manner as to allow the reexamination of social meanings surrounding disability, sport and society out of which wheelchair basketball is given form and meaning.David Purdue, Loughborough University