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A sweeping analysis of sport culture's global, national, and local impact.
First Published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Understanding Sport introduces students to the central elements of a sociological and cultural analysis of sport. It specifically examines sport in modern British society.
World football is in crisis. The corruption scandal engulfing FIFA is arguably the biggest story in the history of modern sport and a watershed for sport governance. More than a decade ago, John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson laid the foundations for subsequent investigations with the publication of Badfellas, a groundbreaking work of critical sport sociology that exposed the systematic corruption at the heart of world football. It was a book that FIFA and Sepp Blatter tried to ban. Now re-issued to combine the original contents of Badfellas with new chapters covering the current crisis, this book points to the ways in which FIFA’s new administration can learn from the Blatter story. The prequel traces the course of Sugden and Tomlinson’s game-changing investigation into FIFA, while the sequel updates the FIFA story from 2002 onwards and provides a chronology of crises and scandals within the FIFA narrative. Demonstrating the vital importance of critical investigative methods in sport studies, Football, Corruption and Lies: Revisiting Badfellas, the book FIFA tried to ban is essential reading for anybody looking to understand Blatter’s rise and fall.
Founded in 1904 by representatives of the sporting organisations of six European nations then expanding into the Americas, Asia and Africa FIFA has developed to become one of the most high profile and lucrative businesses in the global consumer and cultural industry. Recent years however have been characterised by a series of crises leaving the organisation open to critique and exposure, and creating a soap operatic narrative of increasing interest to the global media. In this critical new account of one of the world’s most important sporting institutions, Professor Alan Tomlinson investigates the history of FIFA and the underlying political dynamics characterising its growth. The book exp...
The governance of international sport is dominated by the SINGOs (sporting international non-governmental organisations). The IOC, FIFA, IAAF and the FIA wield global influence, but how exactly do such complex organisations operate? This important book examines the rise of the SINGOs, their structures, organisational behaviour and their power in the context of modern sport and international politics. Written by two world-leading experts, the book sheds new light on the relationship between these SINGOs and the sports which they govern. It provides a close critical analysis of the policies and practices of the most important international sport organisations, from their historical origins to ...
This topical book provides unprecedented analysis of football's place in post-war and post-reunification Germany. The expert team of German and British contributors offers wide-ranging perspectives on the significance of football in German sporting and cultural life, showing how it has emerged as a focus for an expression of German national identity and pride in the post-war era. Some of the themes examined include: footballing expressions of local, regional and national identity ethnic dynamics, migrant populations and Europeanization German football’s commercial economy women’s football. Key moments in the history of German football are also explored, such as the victories in 1954, 1972 and 1990, the founding of the Bundesliga, and the winning bid for the 2006 World Cup.
National Identity and Global Sports Events looks at the significance of international sporting events and why they generate enormous audiences worldwide. Focusing on the Olympic Games and the men's football (soccer) World Cup, the contributors examine the political, cultural, economic, and ideological influences that frame these events. Selected case studies include the 1936 Nazi Olympics in Berlin, the 1934 World Cup Finals in Italy, the unique case of the 1972 Munich Games, the transformative 1984 Games in Los Angeles, and the 2002 Asian World Cup Finals, among others. The case studies show how the Olympics and the World Cup Finals provide a basis for the articulation of entrenched and dominant political ideologies, encourage persisting senses of national identity, and act as barometers for the changing ideological climate of the modern and increasingly globalized contemporary world. Through rigorous scholarly analyses, the book's contributors help to illuminate the increasing significance of large-scale sporting events on the international stage.
Explores the Olympic spectacle, from the multi-media bidding process and the branding and imaging of the Games, to security, surveillance and control of the Olympic product across all of its levels. Contributors argue that the process of commercialization, directed by the IOC itself, has enabled audiences to interpret its traditional objects in non-reverential ways and to develop oppositional interpretations of Olympism. The Olympics have become multi-voiced and many themed, and the spectacle of the contemporary Games raises important questions about institutionalization, the doctrine of individualism, the advance of market capitalism, performance, consumption and the consolidation of global society. With particular focus on the London Games in 2012, the book casts a critical eye over the bidding process, Olympic finance, promises of legacy and development, and the consequences of hosting the Games for the civil rights and liberties of those living in their shadow. --From publisher description.
Critical and radical perspectives have been central to the emergence of the sociology of sport as a discipline in its own right. This ground-breaking new book is the first to offer a comprehensive theory and method for a critical sociology of sport. It argues that class, political economy, hegemony and other concepts central to the radical tradition are essential for framing, understanding and changing social and political relations within sport and between sport and society. The book draws upon the disciplines of politics, sociology, history and philosophy to provide a critical analysis of power relations throughout the world of sport, while offering important new case studies from such div...