2026/01/01 by Satoshi Miyashita, Justen O’Connor, Ruth Jeanes
paper · doi:10.1123/ssj.2025-0204
The current understanding of how urban spaces are governed in the context of informal sport participation, despite often being framed as spontaneous, self-organized activities, indicates participants need to negotiate regulations and norms privileging groups like sport clubs and adults. To better understand how social institutions governing informal sport are also negotiated through the practices of public authorities, we introduce the theoretical lens of institutional bricolage. Using a case study of a Japanese municipal project that reconfigured park rules for informal ball sport, we highlight informal sport as a dynamic patchwork of institutions reproduced, negotiated, and improvised from existing societal resources. This approach offers a nuanced framework for analyzing how broader actors negotiate sporting opportunities, making different sporting forms unevenly institutionalized.