Crafting Patriotism for Global Dominance
Crafting Patriotism for Global Dominance

Author: Mark Dyreson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-18

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 131796926X

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In 2008 China plans to use the Olympic Games to remake its national identity in the global marketplace. In so doing China treads the path blazed by the United States. For more than a century the U.S. has used the Olympic Games to construct national identity, create communal memory, and craft patriotic mythology. From opening parades where the American team refuses to dip its flag in order to signal American exceptionalism to the closing ceremonies where the U.S. media trumpet that their team owes its medals not to superior athleticism but to the nation’s peerless social and political systems, Olympic Games have served as sites to bolster American nationalism. More than any other nation, the United States has politicized its Olympic participation. In the process a host of myths about American superiority in global encounters has emerged through the Olympics. In memorializing and mythologizing their Olympic teams Americans have revealed the contours of the racial, gender, and class dynamics that animate their peculiar nationhood. These essays explore the history of expressions of American national identity in Olympic arenas. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Success and Failure of Countries at the Olympic Games
Success and Failure of Countries at the Olympic Games

Author: Danyel Reiche

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-07-01

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 131763277X

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The Olympic Games is undoubtedly the greatest sporting event in the world, with over 200 countries competing for success. This important new study of the Olympics investigates why some countries are more successful than others. Which factors determine their failure or success? What is the relationship between these factors? And how can these factors be manipulated to influence a country’s performance in sport? This book addresses these questions and discusses the theoretical concepts that explain why national sporting success has become a policy priority around the globe. Danyel Reiche reassesses our understanding of success in sport and challenges the conventional explanations that population size and economic strength are the main determinants for a country’s Olympic achievements. He presents a theory of countries’ success and failure, based on detailed investigations of the relationships between a wide variety of factors that influence a country’s position in the Olympic medals table, including geography, ideology, policies such as focusing on medal promising sports, home advantage and the promotion of women. This book fills a long-standing gap in literature on the Olympics and will provide valuable insights for all students, scholars, policy makers and journalists interested in the Olympic Games and the wider relationship between sport, politics, and nationalism.

Rule Britannia: Nationalism, Identity and the Modern Olympic Games
Rule Britannia: Nationalism, Identity and the Modern Olympic Games

Author: Matthew Llewellyn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-11

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1317979753

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On 6 July 2005, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2012 summer Olympic Games to the city of London, opening a new chapter in Great Britain’s rich Olympic history. Despite the prospect of hosting the summer Games for the third time since Pierre de Coubertin’s 1894 revival of the Olympic movement, the historical roots of British Olympism have received limited scholarly attention. With the conclusion of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the passing of the baton to London, Rule Britannia remedies that oversight. This book uncovers Britain’s early Olympic involvement, revealing how the British public, media, and leading governmental officials were strongly opposed to international Olympic competition. It explores how the British Olympic Association focused on three main factors in the midst of widespread national opposition: it embraced early Olympian spectacles as a platform for maintaining a sporting union with Ireland, it fostered a greater sense of imperial identity with Britain’s white dominions, and it undertook an ambitious policy of athletic specialization designed to reverse the nation’s waning fortunes in international sport. This book was previously published as a special issue of International Journal of the History of Sport.

The Athlete as National Symbol
The Athlete as National Symbol

Author: Nicholas Villanueva, Jr.

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2020-01-17

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1476638357

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 Examining the phenomenon of nationalism in the world of sport, this collection of new essays identifies moments when athletes became national symbols through their actions on and off the field. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and related global events of the 1980s and 1990s, scholars have explored how race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality shape and are shaped by nationalism and national participation. Topics include: race, golf and the struggle for social justice in South Africa; sport as a battleground within the Israel/Palestine conflict; multiculturalism and the Olympic Games; and white privilege in sport. These case studies explore the strength (and fragility) associated with national identity, and how athletes become icons for their nations.

The Oxford Handbook of Sports History
The Oxford Handbook of Sports History

Author: Robert Edelman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-04-06

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0199858926

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Orwell was wrong. Sports are not "war without the shooting", nor are they "war by other means." To be sure sports have generated animosity throughout human history, but they also require rules to which the participants agree to abide before the contest. Among other things, those rules are supposed to limit violence, even death. More than anything else, sports have been a significant part of a historical "civilizing process." They are the opposite of war. As the historical profession has taken its cultural turn over the last few decades, scholars have turned their attention to subject once seen as marginal. As researchers have come to understand the centrality of the human body in human history, they have come to study this most corporeal of human activities. Taking early cues from physical educators and kinesiologists, historians have been exploring sports in all their forms in order to help us answer the most fundamental questions to which scholars have devoted their lives. We have now seen a veritable explosion excellent work on this subject, just as sports have assumed an even greater share of a globalizing world's cultural, political and economic space. Practiced by millions and watched by billions, sports provide an enormous share of content on the Internet. This volume combines the efforts of sports historians with essays by historians whose careers have been devoted to more traditional topics. We want to show how sports have evolved from ancient societies to the world we inhabit today. Our goal is to introduce those from outside this sub-field to this burgeoning body of scholarship. At the same time, we hope here to show those who may want to study sport with rigor and nuance how to embark on a rewarding journey and tackle profound matters that have affected and will affect all of humankind.

Women in Sports
Women in Sports

Author: Adrienne N. Milner

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13:

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Covering a breadth of topics surrounding the current state of women in sports, this two-volume collection taps current events, sociological and feminist theory, and recent research to contextualize women's experiences in sports within a patriarchal society and highlight areas for improvement. Women are continuing to break barriers in all aspects of sports, and a growing number of people are beginning to recognize sex disparities in sports as a social problem. Additionally, women's inclusion and exclusion in sports—and their equitable and inequitable treatment on the playing field—have large-scale social, legal, health, and economic consequences. Women in Sports: Breaking Barriers, Facing Obstacles comprehensively examines the state of women in sports by considering current events, controversies, and trends as well as qualitative and quantitative research. The contributors to this volume take a sociological approach to discussing women in sports by questioning dominant assumptions surrounding notions of women's biological athletic inferiority and by examining other social constructs that affect women's experiences in sports, such as race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation. The book offers a complete and up-to-date account of women's experiences in sports through coverage of the history of women's participation in sports (with a focus on exceptional female athletes) and of the increasing number of women who are competing in traditionally male sports, such as football, baseball, and mixed martial arts. Readers will come away with a greater appreciation for the issues of equity that women face, both within the world of sports and in society in general.

Sport and Nationalism in Asia
Sport and Nationalism in Asia

Author: Fan Hong

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-14

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 131757401X

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Written by a team of international scholars, Sport and Nationalism in Asia - Power, Politics, and Identity is a collection of original research which addresses a number of issues central to notions of nationalism and identity in sport including: how the Olympics and other international and regional sports events have fostered an active interweaving of sport, politics and nationalism; the role of traditional sport in the building of national consciousness and national identity; the way modern sport creates and reflects nationalism, thereby giving it a voice and a focus. The book covers eight case studies on countries/regions across West Asia, Central Asia and East Asia. It is one of the few works that examines the relationships between sport, politics and nationalism from Asian perspective. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Global Sport Leaders
Global Sport Leaders

Author: Emmanuel Bayle

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-04-10

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 3319767534

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This book analyses the careers, governance and management practices of some of the institutional sports leaders who have had the greatest impact on global sport in the 120 years since Baron Pierre de Coubertin revived the Olympic Games. Through their positions in major sports organisations, their influence, the examples they set, their successes and failures, and their ability to bring about change, these notable individuals controlled and continue to control the development of Olympic and international sport. The portraits included within this collection provide a critical analysis of these leaders’ careers by examining sports management from a biographical perspective, and allowing readers to understand the challenges and obstacles faced by international sport’s top administrators. The contributors explore the interactions between these leaders’ career paths and their strategies, both within their organisations and in the overall sporting context. Global Sport Leaders will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including sports management, sociology, politics, history and international relations.

Football and Community in the Global Context
Football and Community in the Global Context

Author: Adam Brown

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-31

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1317969057

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Football clubs across the world continue to embody many of the collective symbols, identifications and processes of connectivity which have long been associated with the notion of ‘community’. In recent years, however, the very term ‘community’ has become the focus of renewed interest within popular discourse and amongst academics, politicians and policy makers. It has become something of a ‘buzz’ word, wheeled out as both a lament to more certain times and as an appeal to a better future: a term imbued with all the richness associated with human interaction. ‘Community’ has also been employed increasingly within football, for instrumental reasons concerned with policy and stadium redevelopment, and in broader rhetoric about clubs, their localities and fans. This book brings together a range of key debates around contemporary understandings of ‘community’ in world football. Split into four sections, it considers political and theoretical debates around football and its connection with community; different national and ethnic football communities; instrumental uses of football to bridge gaps within and between groups; future directions in the football and community debate. This book was published as a special issue of Soccer & Society.

The Politics of the Male Body in Global Sport
The Politics of the Male Body in Global Sport

Author: Hans Bonde

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-18

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1317966023

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Danish sport has been associated with Europe and the World; not least through I.P. Muller and Niels Bukh and the Danish Gymnastics revolution with its emphasis on male aesthetics and hygiene in the first half of the twentieth century. At the same time, Denmark has stood apart from Europe in the early moments of its history of sport with the rural revolution of the farming communities as a statement of political independence and assertion. However, during the German occupation of Denmark, Danish sport was part of a European collaboration which characterized a number of the occupied countries not least in the Nordic area. After the Second World War, Denmark embraced international body cultures with other European nations in particular Eastern martial arts. Denmark too, as part of trends in the European region and the world, became caught up in sport as a powerful contemporary political statement. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.