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Part sport, part performance art, professional wrestling's appeal crosses national, racial and gender boundaries--in large part by playing to national, racial and gender stereotypes that resonate with audiences. Scholars who study competitive sports tend to dismiss wrestling, with its scripted outcomes, as "fake," yet fail to recognize a key similarity: both present athletic displays for maximized profit through live events, television viewership and merchandise sales. This collection of new essays contributes to the literature on pro wrestling with a broad exploration of identity in the sport. Topics include cultural appropriation in the ring, gender non-comformity, national stereotypes, and wrestling as transmission of cultural values.
"In time for Brazil's hosting of the 2014 World Cup, this book uses the stories of star players and other key figures (based on over 40 interviews) to create a contemporary history of Brazilian soccer from the 1950s to the present. It also explores race and class tensions in Brazil and shows how soccer is central to the country's dramatic trajectory toward modernity and economic power"--
Over the past fifty years Brazil’s evangelical community has increased from five to twenty-five percent of the population. This volume’s authors use statistical overview, historical narrative, personal anecdote, social-scientific analysis, and theological inquiry to map out this emerging landscape. The book’s thematic center pivots on the question of how Brazilian evangelicals are exerting their presence and effecting change in the public life of the nation. Rather than fixing its focus on the interior life of Brazilian evangelicals and their congregations, the book’s attention is directed toward social expression: the ways in which Brazilian evangelicals are present and active in the common life of the nation.
This book explores various social, cultural, political and economic issues through the lenses of various sport mega-events in the twenty-first century, including the Olympic Games, and the World Cup and European Championships in football. In a time where sport mega-events are closely followed by controversies, legacy discourses and questions of their governance, the chapters within this book showcase why sport mega-events continue to ignite important questions for scholars, commentators, fans and sport and political authorities. By covering various topics emerging around sport mega-events such as physical activity, legacies, rhetoric, media coverage, environmental impacts, diplomacy and spec...
The Olympic Games are a phenomenon of unparalleled global proportions. This book examines the rich and complex involvement of Latin America and the Caribbean peoples with the Olympic Movement, serving as an effective medium to explore the making of this region. The nine essays here investigate the influence, struggles, and contributions of Latin American and Caribbean societies to the Olympic Movement. By delving into nationalist political movements, post-revolutionary diplomacy, decolonization struggles, gender and disability discourses, and more, they define how the nations of this region have shaped and been shaped by the Olympic Movement.
South America is a region that enjoys an unusually high profile as the origin of some of the world’s greatest writers and most celebrated footballers. This is the first book to undertake a systematic study of the relationship between football and literature across South America. Beginning with the first football poem published in 1899, it surveys a range of texts that address key issues in the region’s social and political history. Drawing on a substantial corpus of short stories, novels and poems, each chapter considers the shifting relationship between football and literature in South America across more than a century of writing. The way in which authors combine football and literature to challenge the dominant narratives of their time suggests that this sport can be seen as a recurring theme through which matters of identity, nationhood, race, gender, violence, politics and aesthetics are played out. This book is fascinating reading for any student, scholar or serious fan of football, as well as for all those interested in the relationship between sports history, literature and society.
Michael Staack’s multi-year ethnography is the first and only comprehensive social-scientific analysis of the combat sport ‘Mixed Martial Arts’. Based on systematic training observations, the author meticulously analyses how Mixed Martial Arts practitioners conjointly create and immerse themselves into their own world of ultimate bodily combat. With his examination of concentrative technique demonstrations, cooperative technique train-ings, and chaotic sparring practices, Staack not only provides a sociological illumination of Mixed Martial Arts culture’s defining theme – the quest of ‘Fighting As Real As It Gets’. Rather further-more, he provides a compelling cultural-sociological case study on practical social constructions of ‘authenticity’.
“Beautifully researched and engagingly told, this book captures the bitter conflicts and surprising continuities that marked the emergence of a national style in Brazil as it tells the story of the men and women who, despite their many differences, together created ‘the beautiful game.’”—Roger Kittleson, author of The Country of Football: Soccer and the Making of Modern Brazil “Compellingly shows how each segment of Brazilian society—players, club owners, and spectators, especially the usually neglected female fans—was touched by the sport that it eventually came to proudly embrace as its own.”—Amy Chazkel, coeditor of The Rio de Janeiro Reader: History, Culture, Politics...
Ao apresentar os processos e eventos que compõem a história da educação física e dos esportes, tanto no contexto nacional quanto internacional, esta obra apresenta fontes históricas de extrema relevância e relata como os esportes e as práticas esportivas se desenvolveram ao longo do tempo, abordando desde as práticas físicas antigas, dos gregos e romanos, até os jogos olímpicos na contemporaneidade.
Esta coletânea reúne trabalhos produzidos por alguns dos principais pesquisadores e pesquisadoras da área de Comunicação e Esporte no Brasil nos últimos anos e tem o objetivo de ser uma introdução ao "estado da arte" de questões importantes nesse campo. O livro abarca desde temas mais centrais da agenda de pesquisa da área, como as crônicas esportivas, até outros emergentes, como as discussões de gênero.