In contrast to other disciplines in the sport sciences, the sociological study of risk, pain and injury is quite new. Over the last decade, however, sociologists have begun to show that pain and injury are not solely experienced in physical and medical terms, and an impressive corpus of knowledge is beginning to emerge. To date the breadth and depth of this knowledge has not been brought together in any systematic way. As the second volume in the "Research in the Sociology of Sport" series, "Sporting Bodies, Damaged Selves: Sociological Studies of Sports-Related Injury" attempts to reflect the cutting-edge research in the area from several countries in terms of causes, experiences, and outcomes of sport-related pain and injury.