Full many years,'neath foreign skies, A stranger have I strayed, I've mingled in their sportive joys, And heard their music played; But still the dearest spot on earth - Which links me to its scene - For cheerful, hearty, guileless mirth, Is an Irish hurling-green. (The Gael, May 1887:705) --
Few issues have engaged sports scholars more than those of race and ethnicity. Today, globalization and migration mean all major sports leagues include players from around the globe, bringing into play a complex mix of racial, ethnic, cultural, political and geographical factors. These complexities have been examined from many angles by historians, sociologists, anthropologists and scientists. This is the first book to offer a comprehensive survey of the full sweep of approaches to the study of sport, race and ethnicity. The Routledge Handbook of Sport, Race and Ethnicity makes a substantial contribution to scholarship, presenting a collection of international case studies that map the most important developments in the field. Multi-disciplinary in its approach, it engages with a wide range of disciplines including history, politics, sociology, philosophy, science and gender studies. It draws upon the latest cutting-edge research to address key issues such as racism, integration, globalisation, development and management. Written by a world-class team of sports scholars, this book is essential reading for all students, researchers and policy-makers with an interest in sports studies. Chapter 18 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
This book examines the development of a nationalist agenda within Irish sport and searches for a definition of nationalism in this context. The question of what Irish nationalism is, and what forces shape it, has stretched the minds of generations of Irish historians and political scientists. For some the answer has been found within the realms of political history, while others have examined how the cultural impact of Irish literature and drama has shaped nationalism. These genres relied on elites, be they political or literary, within Irish society to understand the evolution of nationalist thinking and the operation of nationalism as an ideal. Sport offers a new way of looking at nationalism as it offers mass-consumed low culture as a vehicle. Since the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1884 through to the current popularity of soccer, sporting events have been played by tens of thousand and watched by hundreds of thousands of Irish people both at home and as part of the diaspora. This means that sport has a greater resonance and meaning for the experience of the multitude of the Irish in stark contrast to the operation of Dublin-centred politics and literature. This book defines sporting nationalism through the experience of Gaelic games and soccer as examples of mass spectator sport. The choice of a mass spectator sport which a nation chooses to support will demonstrate the perceived place of that nation within the world and the trends prevalent within its society, thereby intrinsically defining the state of its nationalism.
In this book John Connolly and Paddy Dolan illustrate and explain developments in Gaelic games, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), and Irish society over the course of the last 150 years. The main themes in the book include: advances in the threshold of repugnance towards violence in the playing of Gaelic games, changes in the structure of spectator violence, diminishing displays of superiority towards the competing sports of soccer and rugby, the tension between decentralising and centralising processes, the movement in the balance between amateurism and professionalism, changes in the power balance between ‘elite’ players and administrators, and the difficulties in developing a new hybrid sport. The authors also explain how these developments were connected to various social processes including changes in the structure of Irish society and in the social habitus of people in Ireland.
The decade between the labour conflict (the 'Lockout') of 1913 and the end of the Civil War in 1923 was one of seismic upheaval. How the GAA – a major sporting and national body – both influenced and was influenced by this upheaval is a rich and multifaceted story. Leading writers in the field of modern Irish history and the history of sport explore the impact on 'ordinary' life of major events. They examine the effect of the First World War, the 1916 Rising and its aftermath, the emergence of nationalist Sinn Féin and its triumph over the Irish Parliamentary Party, as well as the War of Independence (1919–21) and the bitter Civil War (1922–23). This is an original and engrossing perspective through the lens of a sporting organisation. Contributors: Eoghan Corry, Mike Cronin, Paul Darby, Páraic Duffy, Diarmaid Ferriter, Dónal McAnallen, James McConnel, Richard McElligott, Cormac Moore, Seán Moran, Ross O'Carroll, Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, Mark Reynolds, Paul Rouse
At the turn of the 20th century, track and field in the U.S. was the domain of the wealthy. While baseball and prize-fighting attracted athletes from the lower orders of society, athletic clubs generally recruited the top sporting graduates from private colleges--except one. New York's Irish-American Athletic Club was founded by and for immigrants. Membership was not exclusively Irish--Jews, African Americans, Scandinavians, Italians, and even a handful of Englishmen joined the club, which dominated local and national athletics for more than a decade. The I-AAC laid claim to the title of best athletic club in the world following the 1908 Olympic Games, bent the rules on amateurism and challenged the ban on Sunday entertainments before succumbing to aftereffects of World War I and Prohibition.
Jerrold Casway coined the phrase "The Emerald Age of Baseball" to describe the 1890s, when so many Irish names dominated teams' rosters. But one can easily agree--and expand--that the period from the mid-1830s well into the first decade of the 20th century and assign the term to American sports in general. This book covers the Irish sportsman from the arrival of James "Deaf" Burke in 1836 through to Jack B. Kelly's rejection by Henley regatta and his subsequent gold medal at the 1920 Olympics. It avoids recounting the various victories and defeats of the Irish sportsman, seeking instead to deal with the complex interaction that he had with alcohol, gambling and Sunday leisure: pleasures that were banned in most of America at some time or other between 1836 and 1920. This book also covers the Irish sportsman's close relations with politicians, his role in labor relations, his violent lifestyle--and by contrast--his participation in bringing respectability to sport. It also deals with native Irish sports in America, the part played by the Irish in "Team USA's" initial international sporting ventures, and in the making and breaking of amateurism within sport.
The origins and evolution of Irish American identity, from colonial times through the twentieth century As millions of Irish immigrants and their descendants created community in the United States over the centuries, they neither remained Irish nor simply became American. Instead, they created a culture and defined an identity that was unique to their circumstances, a new people that they would continually reinvent: Irish Americans. Historian Timothy J. Meagher traces the Irish American experience from the first Irishman to step ashore at Roanoke in 1585 to John F. Kennedy’s election as president in 1960. As he chronicles how Irish American culture evolved, Meagher looks at how various groups adapted and thrived—Protestants and Catholics, immigrants and American born, those located in different geographic corners of the country. He describes how Irish Americans made a living, where they worshiped, and when they married, and how Irish American politicians found particular success, from ward bosses on the streets of New York, Boston, and Chicago to the presidency. In this sweeping history, Meagher reveals how the Irish American identity was forged, how it has transformed, and how it has held lasting influence on American culture.