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The Olympic Games: Meeting New Global Challenges
As the World’s greatest sporting event, the Olympic Games has always commanded intrigue, analysis and comment in equal measure. This book looks to celebrate the significance of the Olympics, their historical impact, controversies that presently surround them and their possible future direction. It begins with a detailed, if controversial, analysis of the scale of the modern Summer Olympics and considers whether in fact the Games have simply become too big? Thereafter considerable coverage is afforded the often contentious bidding process, required of successful host cities wishing to attract the Games, and asks why some cities are successful and others are not. This book also reflects on the growing security measures that surround the Olympics and considers their full impact on the civil liberties of those impacted by them. For scholars of the Olympic movement this book represents essential reading to understand further the Olympic Games, their significance and effect, as the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro draw ever closer. This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.
Soccer in Brazil
No other national stereotype in the world is so closely tied with a sport, as Brazil is with football. The five-time world champions have constructed their national identity around this sport. Perhaps for this reason it’s no wonder that there are many Brazilian social scientists doing research on this theme. The first part of this volume is dedicated to the history of Brazilian football. The main question is how did football become so popular in the country? It also looks at other interesting historical developments in Brazilian football history up to this day. The second part considers current phenomena, especially the place of Brazilian football in a globalized world: What are the conseq...
The Containment of Soccer in Australia
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, outdoor soccer was the second most popular organized sport for Australian children after swimming. It far outstripped the popularity of the three other football codes that are played in Australia – rugby league, rugby union and Australian Rules football. Yet the soccer participation phenomenon in Australia is matched neither by the media coverage of the game in these countries, nor by the academic interest in the game. With a few notable exceptions in academic sports history, the game of soccer remains understudied in comparison with the other football codes. And, apart from some interest that is generated by World Cup campaigns, the media coverage of soccer is largely marginalized, and becomes most emphasized when reporting on aspects of ‘hooligan’ crowd behaviour. This book investigates some of the ways that soccer has been maintained as marginal to Australian identity, and why the sport remains vitally important to some marginalized groups within these communities. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.
Sport in the City
Sport is seen as an increasingly important aspect of urban and regional planning. Related programmes have moved to the forefront of agendas for cities of the present and future. This has occurred as the barriers between so-called ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture continue to disintegrate. Sport is now a key component within strategies for the cultural regeneration of cities and regions, a tendency with mixed outcomes - at times fostering genuinely democratic arrangements, at others pseudo-democratic arrangements, whereby political, business and cultural elites manipulate a sense of sameness and unity among their fellow citizens to smooth the path for the pursuit of what are actually veste...
Global Sport Business
Global Sport Business: The Community Impact of Commercial Sport involves a range of pressing issues that come with the arrival of sport as a commodity in the world economy. It can be argued that, throughout the past two centuries, sport has always been recognized as both a frivolous pursuit of spending leisure time with friends and family, and as an activity that has substantial commercial value to be mined by entrepreneurs. However, only during the most recent wave of globalization, spurred by technological advancements that have led to achieving global reach in regard to potential customers, has sport entered a global marketplace that offers tremendous financial rewards for those who manag...
South Africa and the Global Game
Firmly situating South African teams, players, and associations in the international framework in which they have to compete, South Africa and the Global Game: Football, Apartheid, and Beyond presents an interdisciplinary analysis of how and why South Africa underwent a remarkable transformation from a pariah in world sport to the first African host of a World Cup in 2010. Written by an eminent team of scholars, this special issue and book aims to examine the importance of football in South African society, revealing how the black oppression transformed a colonial game into a force for political, cultural and social liberation. It explores how the hosting of the 2010 World Cup aims to enhanc...
Forty Years of Sport and Social Change, 1968-2008
1968 was a year of protest in civil society (Prague, Paris, Chicago) and a year of protest in sport. After a world-wide campaign, the anti-apartheid movement succeeded in barring South Africa from the Olympic Games, while US athletes from the Olympic Project for Human Rights used the medals podium to decry the racism of North America. Meanwhile, students in Mexico demonstrated against social priorities in Mexico, the host of the 1968 Games. These events contributed significantly to the rejection of the idea that sports are apolitical, and stimulated the scholarly study of sport across the social sciences. Leading up to the Beijing Olympic Games, similar dynamics were played out across the gl...
The Politics of Sport
Sport is an essential part of community structure, membership and identity. Whether on the field of play, in stadia, or on the streets, sport has consistently brought together disparate individuals to share culture, values and memories. Nowadays these relationships are being rewritten through the effects of global socio-economic practices, the interventions of government, the impact of cultural imperialism and, at the local level, through the actions of individuals and new constituencies that are emerging in response. Furthermore, this generates discourse on matters of regional and national identity. This themed issue presents a range of essays that examine the relationship between sport and...
Documenting the Beijing Olympics
This book focuses on the processes of documenting the Beijing Olympics – ranging from the visual (television and film) to radio and the written word – and the meanings generated by such representations. What were the ‘key’ stories and how were they chosen? What was dramatised? Who were the heroes? Which ‘clashes’ were highlighted and how? What sorts of stories did the notion of ‘human interest’ generate? Did politics take a backseat or was the topic highlighted repeatedly? Thus, the focus was not on the success or failure of this event, but on the ways in which the Olympics Games, as international and historic events, are memorialised by observers. The key question that this book addresses is: How far would the Olympic coverage fall into the patterns of representation that have come to dominate Olympic reporting and what would China, as a discursive subject, bring to these patterns? This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.
Women's Football in the UK
This book examines the complex ways in which girls and women experience football cultures in Britain. It extends current debate surrounding women and football (namely, how gender has functioned to shape women’s experiences of playing the game), by focusing on organisational, administrative and coaching practices, alongside the particular issues surrounding sexuality, ethnicity and disability (not only gender). The book analyses football and gender to reveal the subtle forms of discrimination that persist. It is important to highlight the many challenges and transformations made by girls and women but more importantly to consider the ways power continues to operate to devalue and undermine girls and women involved in the game. The UK-based authors make use of their recent research findings to offer critical debate on girls’ and women’s current experiences of British football cultures. Overall the book reveals the present day complexities of marginalisation and exclusion. This book was published as a special issue of Sport and Society.
