A Companion to Sport E-Book
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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies
- Sprache: Englisch
A Companion to Sport brings together writing by leading sports theorists and social and cultural thinkers, to explore sport as a central element of contemporary culture.
- Positions sport as a crucial subject for critical analysis, as one of the most significant forms of popular culture
- Includes both well-known social and cultural theorists whose work lends itself to an interrogation of sport, and leading theorists of sport itself
- Offers a comprehensive examination of sport as a social and cultural practice and institution
- Explores sport in relation to modernity, postcolonial theory, gender, violence, race, disability and politics
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Seitenzahl: 1978
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Table of Contents
Wiley Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies
Title page
Copyright page
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Sport as Escape, Struggle, and Art
Introduction: Anti-sport/Pro-sport
What Is Sport? Some Definitional Observations
Sports Matter: A Companion to Sport
Part One: Sporting Structures and Historical Formations
Introduction
1: Constructing Knowledge: Histories of Modern Sport
Introduction
Questions (and Unstable Answers)
Epistemologies (and Floating Truths)
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
2: Sport and Globalization
Introduction
The Historical Aspects of Global Sport: Six Phases
The Sociocultural Aspects of Global Sport
Political-economic Aspects of Globalization
The Emerging Global Civil Society and Sport
Conclusions: Globalization, Sport, and “Active Glocalism”
3: The Sport/Media Complex: Formation, Flowering, and Future
Introduction: Three Decades in a Complex Life
Complex Prehistory
Television Complex
Complex Today
Conclusion: Future Complex
Acknowledgments
4: Political Theories of Social Class, Sport, and the Body
Introduction
Sport, Industrial Capitalism, and Revolution
Sport and Social Class: A Critical Sociology
Conclusion: Social Class, the Sporting Body, and Neoliberalism
5: Gender, Feminist Theory, and Sport
Introduction
Liberal Feminism
Radical Feminism
Marxist/Socialist Feminism
Black Feminism
The Impact of Poststructuralism, Queer Theory, and Postcolonialism
New Avenues and New Questions for Sport Feminism: Middle Ground Theorizing and Intersectional Analysis
Conclusion: Revisiting “Old” Questions in the Twenty-First Century
6: Sports Medicine, Health, and the Politics of Risk
Introduction
Locating Sport in the Risk Society
Expect the Unexpected: Selling Safety
Anxiety, Assurance, and the Risk–Caution Citizenship Project
High Performance Sport and Health within the Risk Society
Conclusion
7: Sport, Ecological Modernization, and the Environment
Environmental Issues and the Sociology of Sport: The “Early” Years
Sport, Sociology and the Environment: Contemporary Themes
Sport, the Environment, and Neoliberalism
Ecological Modernization and Environmental Sociology
Environmental Discourses and Promotional Culture: Examples from the Global Forum for Sports and the Environment
Conclusion
Part Two: Bodies and Identities
Introduction
8: Paradox of Privilege: Sport, Masculinities, and the Commodified Body
Introduction
Theoretical Perspectives on Sport and Masculinity
Media, Nation, and Race
Commodity Relations of the New Man and the New Lad
Conclusion
9: Racism, Body Politics, and Football
Introduction
The Body Politic and Race
Citizenship and Race
Globalized Anti-Black Racism
Black Athletes and Racial Politics
Incidents in Western Europe
Incidents in Eastern Europe
Conclusion
10: Physical Culture, Pedagogies of Health, and the Gendered Body
Introduction
Obesity, Health, and Girlhood
Healthy Girls, Healthy Futures
Sculpted Lean Femininity
The Healthification of Sport and Physical Activity
Affect, Body Pedagogies, and Gender Differentiation
From Postergirls to Looters: Physical Culture and Consumption Practices
Conclusion
11: Gay Male Athletes and Shifting Masculine Identities
Introduction
The Presence of Gay Men in Sport
Theoretical Underpinnings into Masculinity and Homophobia
Coming Out in Sport
Heterosexual Team Sport Athletes
Accepting Gay Athletes in the Heart of America
Conclusion
12: Sport, the Body, and the Technologies of Disability
Introduction
Marginal Bodies
Managing Classified Bodies
Technology
Supercrips, Cyborgs, and Les Autres
Conclusion
Part Three: Contested Space and Politics
Introduction
13: US Imperialism, Sport, and “the Most Famous Soldier in the War”
Professional Sports and the NICL
Ideological Ramifications – Tillman Time
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
14: The Realities of Fantasy: Politics and Sports Fandom in the Twenty-first Century
Introduction
False Sports Consciousness
Owning the Fantasy
Conclusion
15: Sport, Palestine, and Israel
Introduction
Sport in Zionism and the Palestinian National Movement
Palestinian Sports under Jordanian and Lebanese Rule
Sports and Arab–Jewish Relations in Israel
Modernity and Sport: Muting the Protest
Palestinian Athletes in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
Sport and Reconciliation?
16: Cities and the Cultural Politics of Sterile Sporting Space
Introduction
Sporting the Late Capitalist Tourist Bubble
The Model of Urban Renaissance?
Conclusion: Learning from Baltimore
17: Swimming Pools, Civic Life, and Social Capital
Introduction
Swimming Pools and Civic Life in Industrial America
Swimming Pools and the Social Transformation of Civic Life between the World Wars
Swimming Pools and the Segmenting of American Society after 1945
Conclusion
Part Four: Cultures, Subcultures, and (Post)Sport
Introduction
18: Sports Fandom
Introduction
What Is a Sports Fan?
On the Supply of Sports Available for Fans: The Historical Trajectories of Sports Cultures
Why Does Someone Become a Sports Fan?
The Rise of Player Fans
Conclusion
19: Sporting Violence and Deviant Bodies
Introduction: Is “Deviance” Still Relevant?
The Social Control of Deviant Bodies in Sport
Violence and Aggression Theories
Subculture Theories
Identity Politics Theories
Victimology Theories
Why is Sports Deviance Wanted?
Conclusion
20: Dissecting Action Sports Studies: Past, Present, and Beyond
Introduction
Understanding the Politics of Action Sports Cultures: From Symbolic Resistance to Social Movements
A “Politics of Hope” for Action Sports Studies: Notes from the Field
Conclusion
21: Heidegger, Parkour, Post-sport, and the Essence of Being
Introduction
Transhumanism and the Sociology of Sport
Parkour, Heidegger, and Post-Sport Physical Culture
Transcendence and the Pursuit of Dasein
Conclusion
22: Race-ing Men: Cars, Identity, and Performativity
Introduction
Methods
The Boys at Freedom High
Imports versus American Muscle
Risky Business: Boys Who Race
The Need for Speed: Masculinity and Performance Vehicles
American Muscle and Talking Trash
Conclusion: Masculine Distinctions in a Changing World
23: Chess as Art, Science, and Sport
Introduction
Chess as Art
Chess as Science
Chess as Sport
Conclusion
Part Five: Sport, Mega-events, and Spectacle
Introduction
24: Sport Mega-events as Political Mega-projects: A Critical Analysis of the 2010 FIFA World Cup
Introduction
The Politics of Sport Mega-events in the Global South
South Africa's 2010 FIFA World Cup
Conclusion
25: Sporting Mega-events, Urban Modernity, and Architecture
Introduction: Cities and Sporting Spectacles
Architecture and the Production of the Material Infrastructure of Cities
Stadium Architecture and Urban Sport Spectacles
The Leading Firms in Sports Architecture
The Spatial and Political Impact of Architects
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
26: Sports, the Beijing Olympics, and Global Media Spectacles
Introduction
Defining the Sports Spectacle
The Global Sports Spectacle: From the 2006 World Cup to the 2008 Beijing Olympics
The 2008 Opening Ceremony
Liu Xiang and Lang Ping: Gendered Spectacles of Nationalism and Transnationalism at the Beijing Olympics
Conclusion
27: Always Already Excluded: The Gendered Facts of Anti-Blackness and Brazil's Male Seleção
Introduction
Brazilian Football Success and the Gendered Facts of Blackness
The Years 1950 and 1958 as the Pendulum's High Points
“We Are Mutts Again”: The Persisting Racial Complex
The 2007 Pan American Games: Foretelling the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics
Conclusion: Black Revolt?
28: To Be Like Everyone Else, Only Better: The US Men's Football Team and the World Cup
Introduction
A Song for Alex and Michael
Form
Go in Search of Trouble
Conclusion
Acknowledgment
29: Sport, Spectacle, and the Political Economy of Mega-events: The Case of the Indian Premier League
Introduction
Historical Backdrop: The IPL Is Just Not Cricket!
The IPL as Corporate Sport
Seasons 1 to 4: The Story So Far
Conclusion
Part Six: Sporting Celebrities/Cultural Icons
Introduction
30: Global Sporting Icons: Consuming Signs of Economic and Cultural Transformation
Introduction: Fame from Games, Ancient and Modern
Icons: Heroes, Stars, and Celebrities
Global Sporting Icons
Tendulkar and Indian Cricket
Basketball Icons: From Qiao Dan to Yao Ming
Athens 2004: Reebok's Classical Simulation
Iconic Global Sporting Brands
Consuming Iconic Signs
Acknowledgments
31: Embodying American Democracy: Performing the Female Sporting Icon
Introduction
What the Other Superpower Looks Like: Tamara Press and the Communist Athlete
Our Girls/Their Deviants: Suburban Tranquility Under Fire
Our Girls/Our Deviants? Marion Jones, Caster Semenya, and National Fantasies
Conclusion: Re-enchanting America
Acknowledgment
32: Monty Panesar and the New (Sporting) Asian Britishness
Introduction: Nagpur and the Emergence of the “Sikh of Tweak”
Preparing the Wicket: The Emergence of British Asian (Sporting) Communities
Monty Mania: Hero Worship or Modern Day Minstrelsy?
Monty Panesar and the “Crisis” of Multiculturalism?
Conclusion: Monty Panesar and the Ephemeral Nature of (Sporting) Celebrity
Acknowledgements
33: Earl's Loins – Or, Inventing Tiger Woods
Introduction
The Chosen One(s)
Hello World/Hello Earl
The Master and the Masters, 1997
Creating Earl Woods
Kindergarten “Nigger”?
Resurrecting Earl
34: Deleuze and the Disabled Sports Star
Introduction
Deleuzian Deterritorializations: The Arborescent Model of Thought
The Arborescent Thought of Sport Disability Studies: The Medical Model, the Social Model, and the Narrative Model
Renegotiating Identity: The Poststructuralist/Postmodern Model of Disability
Becoming Minority: The Body without Organs
Further Connection: Collection of Empirical Material
Connecting: Particular Instantiations of Ability
Conjugations: Multiplicity and Continual Becoming
Conclusion: Finding Localized Connections
Acknowledgments
Index
Wiley Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies
Advisory editor: David Theo Goldberg, University of California, Irvine
This series provides theoretically ambitious but accessible volumes devoted to the major fields and subfields within cultural studies, whether as single disciplines (film studies) inspired and reconfigured by interventionist cultural studies approaches or from broad interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives (gender studies, race and ethnic studies, postcolonial studies). Each volume sets out to ground and orientate the student through a broad range of specially commissioned articles and also to provide the more experienced scholar and teacher with a convenient and comprehensive overview of the latest trends and critical directions. An overarching Companion to Cultural Studies will map the territory as a whole.
This edition first published 2013
© 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell's publishing program has been merged with Wiley's global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to sport / edited by David L. Andrews and Ben Carrington.
pages, cm – (Blackwell companions in cultural studies ; 15)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-9160-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Sports–Anthropological aspects. 2. Sports–Sociological aspects. 3. Sports and society. I. Andrews, David L., 1962– II. Carrington, Ben, 1972–
GV706.2.C66 2013
306.483–dc23
2012048373
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover design: Nicki Averill Design and Illustration
Cover illustration: Tennis, c.1933, linocut by Cyril Power © Osborne Samuel Ltd, London / The Bridgeman Art Library
Notes on Contributors
Edwin Amenta is a professor of sociology, political science, and history at the University of California, Irvine. His most recent books are Professor Baseball: Searching for Redemption and the Perfect Lineup on the Softball Diamonds of New York (2007) and When Movements Matter: The Townsend Plan and the Rise of Social Security (2008), and he is coeditor (with Kate Nash and Alan Scott) of the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology (2012).
Eric Anderson is a professor of sport, masculinities, and sexualities at the University of Winchester, UK. He is recognized as an academician of the British Academy of Social Sciences and a fellow of the International Association of Sex Researchers. His research on sport, masculinities, and sexualities shows an increasingly positive relationship between gay male athletes and sport as well as a growing movement of young heterosexual men’s masculinity becoming softer and more inclusive. He also researches matters related to men’s monogamy and the positive function of relationship cheating, men’s improving recognition of bisexuality, and the increased acceptance of young heterosexual men kissing. He has written 12 books and is regularly featured across the media.
David L. Andrews is Professor of Physical Cultural Studies in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland at College Park, an affiliate faculty member of the departments of American Studies and Sociology, and a visiting professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Bath. He is an assistant editor of the Journal of Sport & Social Issues, and an editorial board member of the Sociology of Sport Journal, the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, and Kinesiological Review. He is coeditor (with Michael L. Silk) of Sport and Neoliberalism: Politics, Consumption, and Culture (2012).
Michael Atkinson is an associate professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto, where he teaches physical cultural studies and is director of the Sport Legacies Research Collaborative. His central areas of interest (both teaching and research) pertain to alternative physical cultures, biopedagogical practices in sport, and issues in bioethics within global and local sport cultures. He is author/editor of seven books, including Battleground Sport (2008), Deviance and Social Control in Sport (with Kevin Young, 2008), and Deconstructing Men and Masculinities (2010).
Michael Bérubé is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature and Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University. In 2012 he served as the president of the Modern Language Association. His most recent book is The Left at War (2009), and he is currently working on a book about cognitive disability and narrative theory.
Amy L. Best is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University. Her research focuses on the study of youth, culture, and social inequalities, with a particular interest in how gender, ethnicity, sexuality, race, and class differently shape the social experiences of contemporary American youth. She is interested in qualitative and feminist approaches to social research. She is author of Prom Night Youth, Schools and Popular Culture (2000), selected for the 2002 American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice Award, and Fast Cars, Cool Rides: The Accelerating World of Youth and Their Cars (2006), and editor of Representing Youth: Methodological Issues in Critical Youth Studies (2007).
Douglas Booth is Professor of Sport and Leisure Studies and Dean of the School of Physical Education at the University of Otago. His research interests include historiography, extreme sport, and the politics of sport. He is the author of The Race Game (1998), Australian Beach Cultures (2001), and The Field (2005). He serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals, including Rethinking History, Journal of Sport History, and Sport History Review, and is an executive member of the Australian Society for Sport History.
Daniel Burdsey is Principal Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Brighton. He has written and published widely on sport and popular culture within British Asian communities. He is the author of British Asians and Football: Culture, Identity and Exclusion (2007) and the editor of Race, Ethnicity and Football: Persisting Debates and Emergent Issues (2011). He is also the editor (with Stanley Thangaraj and Rajinder Dudrah) of a special issue of South Asian Popular Culture on “Sport and South Asian diasporas” (2013).
Ben Carrington teaches sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and is a Carnegie Research Fellow at Leeds Metropolitan University. He is author of Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora (2010) and editor (with Ian McDonald) of Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport (2009).
C.L. Cole is a professor of gender and women's studies, sociology, and communications research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she teaches courses in feminist cultural studies, critical sexuality and race studies, and body studies. She is the author/editor of four books, including the forthcoming Good Sports? The Boundaries of American Democracy. She is the editor of the Journal of Sport & Social Issues, and serves on the editorial boards of Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, Qualitative Research in Sport & Exercise Science, and the New York University Press book series Biopolitics: Medicine, Technoscience, and Health in the 21st Century.
Scarlett Cornelissen is Professor of Political Science at Stellenbosch University. Her research includes topics on sport and international relations and the politics of sport mega-events. She most recently published Africa and International Relations in the 21st Century (2012, co-edited with Fantu Cheru and Timothy M. Shaw) and Sport Past and Present in South Africa: (Trans)forming the Nation (2012, co-edited with Albert Grundlingh).
João H. Costa Vargas teaches black studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His publications include Catching Hell in the City Of Angels: Life and Meanings of Blackness in South Central Los Angeles (2006) and Never Meant to Survive : Genocide and Utopias in Black Diaspora Communities (2008).
John Evans is Professor of Sociology of Education and Physical Education in the School of Sport, Exercise, and Health Sciences at Loughborough University; Visiting Adjunct Professor, University of Queensland, Australia, and founding editor of the international journal, Sport, Education and Society. He teaches and writes on issues of equity, education policy, pedagogy, identity, and processes of schooling. He has authored and edited many papers, book chapters, and books in the sociology of education and physical education including Education, Disordered Eating and Obesity Discourse (2008, coauthored with Emma Rich, Rachel Allwood, and Brian Davies).
Mark Falcous is Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of Sport at the University of Otago. His research focuses on intersections of sport, globalization, national identity, and media. His work has appeared in Sociology of Sport Journal, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Journal of Sport & Social Issues, Media and Cultural Politics, and Sites. He coedited (with Joseph Maguire) Sport and Migration: Borders, Boundaries and Crossings (2011).
Grant Farred teaches at Cornell University. His works include What's My Name? Black Vernacular Intellectuals (2003), Phantom Calls: Race and the Globalization of the NBA (2006), Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football (2008), and In Motion, At Rest: The Event of the Athletic Body (forthcoming) and Conciliation (forthcoming).
Gary Alan Fine is John Evans Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University and a former John Simon Guggenheim fellow. Over the course of his career he has published theoretical and ethnographic accounts of several leisure worlds, including little league baseball, fantasy role-play gaming, mushroom collecting, high-school debate, and art collecting. His current research examines the cultures of competitive chess.
Anne Flintoff is Professor of Physical Education and Sport and Head of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Research Center in the Carnegie Faculty of Sport and Education, Leeds Metropolitan University. Her teaching, research, and consultancy center on issues of equity and social inclusion in physical education and sport, with a particular focus on gender. She publishes regularly in both academic and professional journals, and in key readers and textbooks. She is a member of the advisory board of the journal Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy (PESP), and is an active member in the British Educational Research Association PESP special interest group.
Michael D. Giardina is a professor of physical cultural studies in the Department of Sport Management at Florida State University. He is the author/editor of 12 books, including Sport, Spectacle, and NASCAR Nation: Consumption and the Cultural Politics of Neoliberalism (2011, with Joshua I. Newman) and Sporting Pedagogies: Performing Culture & Identity in the Global Arena (2005), which received the 2006 Outstanding Book award from the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport. He is the associate editor of the Sociology of Sport Journal and Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, and the associate director of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.
Richard Giulianotti is Professor of Sociology at Loughborough University and a visiting professor at Telemark University College, Norway. His current research interests are in the fields of sport, globalization, development and peace, and mega-events. He is author of Football: A Sociology of the Global Game (1999) and Sport: A Critical Sociology (2005), and he has coauthored Globalization and Football (2009, with Roland Robertson) and Ethics, Money and Sport (2007, with Adrian Walsh). He has recently acted as guest coeditor of special issues of Global Networks (2007), Urban Studies (2011), and British Journal of Sociology (2012).
Cory Charles Gooding is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of the paper “Roots, rhythm and religion: The politics of context, identity and culture among Afro-Caribbeans in New York and Los Angeles” (2011).
John Horne is author of Sport in Consumer Culture (2006), co-author (with Garry Whannel) of Understanding the Olympics (2011) and (with Alan Tomlinson, Garry Whannel and Kath Woodward) Understanding Sport (2013), and coeditor (with Wolfram Manzenreiter) of Japan, Korea and the 2002 World Cup (2002), FootballGoes East: Business, Culture and the People's Game in China, Japan andKorea (2004), and Sports Mega-Events (2006).
Davis W. Houck is Professor of Communication in the School of Communication at Florida State University. The author and editor of nine books, Houck is presently at work on a book project on Tiger Woods.
P. David Howe is Senior Lecturer in the Anthropology of Sport in the School of Sport, Exercise, and Health Sciences as well as the Centre for Olympic Studies and Research at Loughborough University. He trained as a medical anthropologist and is author of Sport, Professionalism and Pain: Ethnographies of Injury and Risk (2004) and The Cultural Politics of the Paralympic Movement: Through the Anthropological Lens (2008).
Douglas Kellner is George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles and is author of many books on social theory, politics, history, and culture, including Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism (1984), Media Spectacle (2003), and a trilogy of books on postmodern theory (1991–2001, with Steve Best). Kellner is presently editing the collected papers of Herbert Marcuse, four volumes of which have already appeared. His latest books are Cinema Wars: Hollywood Film and Politics in the Bush/Cheney Era (2010) and Media Spectacle and Insurrection, 2011: From the Arab Uprisings to Occupy Everywhere (2012).
Pirkko Markula is a professor of sociocultural studies of physical activity at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her research interests include social analyses of dance, exercise, and sport in which she has employed several theoretical lenses ranging from critical and cultural studies research to Foucault and Deleuze. While her work is based on qualitative research methods (textual analysis, participant-observation, interviewing, ethnography), she is also interested in methodological experimentation including autoethnography and performance ethnography. Among her many published works are Foucault, Sport and Exercise: Power, Knowledge and Transforming the Self (2006, with Richard Pringle), Qualitative Research for Physical Culture (2011, with Michael L. Silk), as editor, Olympic Women and the Media: International Perspectives (2009), and as coeditor (2011, with Eileen Kennedy), Women and Exercise: The Body, Health and Consumerism.
Ian McDonald teaches sociology, politics and documentary practice at the University of Brighton. He coedited (with Ben Carrington) Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport (2009) and directed Algorithms (2012), a feature-length documentary about blind chess players in India.
Toby Miller is Distinguished Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside. His latest books are Greening the Media (2012, with Richard Maxwell) and Blow Up the Humanities (2012). You can follow his adventures at www.tobymiller.org.
Brad Millington is a lecturer in the department of education at the University of Bath. His research interests include sport and the environment, fitness technologies, and audience perceptions of popular media. His work appears in a range of academic journals such as New Media & Society, Social Identities, American Behavioral Scientist, and Sociology of Sport Journal.
Natasha Miric is a graduate student in sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Her interests are in globalization, social movements, and the sociology of sports. She is currently working on a project examining the process of state-making and the role played by linkages to the international community in this process, specifically looking at international soccer.
Jeffrey Montez de Oca is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs with broad research interests in sociological theory, sport, media, identity and inequality, and US imperialism. One of his specialisms is theoretically oriented research on sport during the cultural Cold War. He is author of Discipline & Indulgence: College Football, Media, and the American Way of Life During the Cold War (2013) and has been published in Signs, American Studies, Sociology of Sport Journal, American Behavioral Scientist, and Journal of Historical Sociology.
Abilash Nalapat is based in Mumbai, where he pursues his passion for independent sport research. He has been a full-time sports researcher and sport journalist and is currently employed as a commercial executive in the sport media industry. Publications include a chapter in Cricketing Cultures in Conflict: World Cup 2003 (ed. Majumdar and Mangan, 2004), and “Sport, celebrity and popular culture” (2005, with Andrew Parker).
Joshua I. Newman is Associate Professor of Sport, Media, and Culture at Florida State University. His research interests focus on the cultural politics of sport, critical body pedagogies, and physical cultural studies. He is the author of Embodying Dixie (2010) and Sport, Spectacle, and NASCAR Nation (2011, with Michael Giardina ). His research has also been published in Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of Sport & Social Issues, and Sociology of Sport Journal.
Antony Puddephatt is Associate Professor of Sociology at Lakehead University in Canada. His research interests include the sociology of knowledge, science and technology studies, pragmatism and symbolic interactionism, ethnographic research methods, sports and leisure, and the sociology of higher education. His work has appeared in Symbolic Interaction, Sociological Quarterly, Canadian Sociological Review, Social Epistemology, Sociological Focus, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, and American Sociologist. He is coeditor of Ethnographies Revisited (2009).
Emma Rich is a senior lecturer in the Department of Education, University of Bath. Her work draws upon the sociology of education, pedagogy, the body, and physical culture. Her major publications include The Medicalization of Cyberspace (2008, with Andy Miah), Education, Disordered Eating and Obesity Discourse: Fat Fabrications (2008, with John Evans), and Debating Obesity: Critical Perspectives (2011, with L.F. Monaghan and L. Aphramor).
Roland Robertson is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh; emeritus professor of sociology and global society at the University of Aberdeen; and honorary professor of cultural studies at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is the author of many books, articles, and chapters in the fields of globalization and glocalization, religion and culture, sport, and social and cultural theory. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages. He has won a number of prestigious awards, including a Distinguished Career Award from the Global and Transnational Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.
David Rowe is Professor of Cultural Research in the Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney. Professor Rowe's principal current research interests are in the sociocultural analysis of mediated sport, popular journalism, cultural policy, and urban leisure. His books include Sport, Culture and the Media: The Unruly Trinity (2004), Global Media Sport: Flows, Forms and Futures (2011), and Sport Beyond Television: The Internet, Digital Media and the Rise of Networked Media Sport (2012, with Brett Hutchins).
Parissa Safai is an associate professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science in the Faculty of Health at York University. Her research interests focus on the critical study of sport at the intersection of risk, health, and healthcare. Her most recent book is The Social Organization of Sports Medicine: Critical Socio-Cultural Perspectives (2012, with Dominic Malcolm).
Mark Q. Sawyer is a professor of political science, chair of the Afro-American Studies Inter-Departmental Program, and director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Politics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba (2006).
Sheila Scraton is an emeritus professor at Leeds Metropolitan University. She represented the sociology of sport on the national research assessment panel for RAE2001 and was vice-chair of RAE2008, and pro-vice-chancellor for research at Leeds Metropolitan. She continues advisory board work and supervises postgraduate students. Her interests and commitment remain with women and sport and critical social analysis that challenges inequalities. She has published extensively in the areas of gender and physical education, sport, and leisure.
Michael L. Silk is a reader and director of the Sport, Physical Activity, and Culture Group (@pcsbath) at the University of Bath. His research and scholarship centers on the relationships between sport and physical activity, the governance of bodies, cultural pedagogies, and identity politics within the context of neoliberalism. He has published extensively on issues concerning the sport media, mega-sporting events, identity, the physically active body, and popular culture.
Barry Smart is Professor of Sociology in the School of Social, Historical, and Literary Studies at the University of Portsmouth. He is the author of many books and articles in the field of social theory. Relevant publications include The Sport Star: Modern Sport and the Cultural Economy of Sporting Celebrity (2005) and Consumer Society: Critical Issues and Environmental Consequences (2010). He is editor of the four-volume reference work Post-Industrial Society (2011) and has coedited the four-volume reference work Observation Methods (2013).
Tamir Sorek is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, Criminology, and Law and the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. His scholarly interests focus on the processes in which ethnic and national identities are produced, reproduced, and undermined, integrating quantitative and qualitative methods to explore sociohistorical dynamics, power relations, and the juncture of culture and politics. He has published extensively about these subjects in the context of Israel, Palestine, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, including Arab Soccer in a Jewish State: The Integrative Enclave (2007).
Holly Thorpe is a senior lecturer with the Department of Sport and Leisure Studies, University of Waikato. Her research interests include social theory, gender, physical youth cultures, and action sports. She is coeditor with Douglas Booth of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Extreme Sports (2007) and the Greenwood Guides to Extreme Sports, and recently published her first monograph, Snowboarding Bodies in Theory and Practice (2011).
Belinda Wheaton is a senior research fellow with the Centre of Sport Research at the Chelsea School of Sport, University of Brighton. Her research interests include lifestyle sport cultures, the body, identity and difference, sport and transnationalism, sport and environmentalism, and qualitative research methods. She has published widely on lifestyle sport, gender identity, and consumer culture, and is the editor of Understanding Lifestyle Sports: Consumption, Identity and Difference (2004).
Brian Wilson is a professor in the School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia. He is author of Fight, Flight or Chill: Subcultures, Youth and Rave into the Twenty-First Century (2006) and Sport and Peace: A Sociological Perspective (2012) as well as articles on sport, social inequality, environmental issues, mass media, social movements, and youth culture. His most recent work focuses on environmentalist practices in the Canadian golf industry and on ways that the sport of running is used for peace promotion in Kenya.
Jeff Wiltse is Associate Professor of History at the University of Montana, Missoula. He authored the book Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America (2007), named one of the best books of that year by the American Association of University Presses.
Kevin Young is a professor of sociology at the University of Calgary. His research interests bridge criminology and the sociology of sport, and his most recent books include Sport, Violence and Society (2012), Qualitative Research on Sport and Physical Culture (2012, with Michael Atkinson), and Deviance and Social Control in Sport (2008, with Michael Atkinson).
Hui Zhang currently teaches as an assistant professor at the East China Normal University at the Institute of Anthropology. With teaching and research activities mostly based in Shanghai, his recent research projects focus on newly emergent forms of urban culture, on the issues of cinematic representations of body and desire, and on the technology of self and governmentality. His interdisciplinary and multi-methodological research approach tries to bring together ethnography, analysis of media representations, and critique of state cultural policy discourses.
Introduction
Sport as Escape, Struggle, and Art
Ben Carrington and David L. Andrews
Introduction: Anti-sport/Pro-sport
In 2010, the writer Christopher Hitchens published an article in the American weekly political magazine Newsweek entitled “Fool's gold.” Hitchens, regarded by many as one of the greatest essayists of his generation by the time he died in 2011, sought to debunk a number of popular myths concerning sport. He opens his essay with a list of shameful sports stories that had recently dominated the news media: the attack on the Togolese football (soccer) team during the 2010 African Cup of Nations in Cabinda, Angola, that resulted in the death of the team's assistant coach, its press officer, and the driver of the team bus; the costly overruns of the new stadiums, alleged corruption, and the general disruption caused by that summer's FIFA World Cup finals in South Africa; heightened political tensions between India and Pakistan caused when owners of cricket teams in the Indian Premier League chose not to sign any Pakistani cricketers from the auction list of the world's top players (despite the fact that at the time Pakistan were the world Twenty20 cricket champions); complaints from various nations about the limited opportunities to practice ahead of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, while Canadian Olympians were allegedly given privileged access to the courses; and the civil unrest and violence that erupted in November 2009 after Algeria had beaten Egypt 1–0 in a football World Cup qualifier, thereby denying Egypt a place in the following year's finals, leading to political and diplomatic tensions between the two countries. Hitchens' view of sport was emphatic and clear:
Whether it's the exacerbation of national rivalries that you want – as in Africa this year – or the exhibition of the most depressing traits of the human personality (guns in locker rooms, golf clubs wielded in the home, dogs maimed and tortured at stars' homes to make them fight, dope and steroids everywhere), you need only look to the wide world of sports for the most rank and vivid examples. As George Orwell wrote in his 1945 essay “The Sporting Spirit,” after yet another outbreak of combined mayhem and chauvinism on the international soccer field, “sport is an unfailing cause of ill-will.”
(Hitchens, 2010)
Hitchens continues in his Newsweek essay to lament the effects of sports metaphors on political discourse, with “lame and vapid and cheery expressions like ‘bottom of the ninth’, ‘goal line’, and who knows what other tripe,” the absurdity of allowing famous athletes (he calls them “thugs and mediocrities”) to become role models, as well as the disruption to “serious programming” on television that results from overrunning sports events. Even the print media is not safe from the spread of sports.
I can't count the number of times that I have picked up the newspaper at a time of crisis and found whole swaths of the front page given over either to the already known result of some other dull game or to the moral or criminal depredations of some overpaid steroid swallower. Listen: the paper has a whole separate Part devoted to people who want to degrade the act of reading by staring enthusiastically at the outcomes of sporting events that occurred the previous day. These avid consumers also have tons of dedicated channels and publications that are lovingly contoured to their special needs. All I ask is that they keep out of the grown-up parts of the paper.
(Hitchens, 2010)
Hitchens' invective for sport is as much directed at sports fans as at the structures and institutions of sports (he notes the connection to the word “fanatic,” suggesting as it does an irrational devotion towards an object or belief). Hitchens describes the typical sports bar scene filled with “the pathetic faces of men, and even some women, trying to keep up with the pack by professing devoted loyalty to some other pack on the screen” (Hitchens, 2010). He concludes by suggesting that civilized societies, and a robust political culture, are ultimately threatened by the march of sport across cultural and social boundaries: “the emphasis on sports has a steadily reducing effect on the lowest common denominator, in its own field and in every other one that allows itself to be infected by it” (Hitchens, 2010).
Later that same year, Terry Eagleton, the respected literary theorist and expert on Marxist theory and ideology, wrote an “op-ed” piece for the British newspaper the Guardian. In the wake of the 2010 FIFA men's World Cup finals held in South Africa, Eagleton described what he saw as the deleterious effects of sports in general, and football in particular, on working-class consciousness. Although to the political left of Hitchens (Hitchens was regarded as left-wing for much of his career but due to his unequivocal support of the “War on Terror” and the United States-led attack on Iraq in 2003, as well as his public endorsement of George W. Bush, he was seen to have moved to the political right), Eagleton nevertheless comes to similar conclusions regarding the damage sport does to political discourse. Football (soccer), according to Eagleton, pacifies the masses and infantilizes them, allowing the ruling elite to dictate the conditions of everyday existence for ordinary people unopposed. Eagleton (unlike Hitchens) is keen to acknowledge the skill and craft of professional football players, describing their “sublime artistry” and “dazzling individual talent.” Eagleton recognizes the power of the sports spectacle to attract millions of devoted fans to its bright lights. Drawing comparisons with the literary form, Eagleton notes that “Football offers its followers beauty, drama, conflict, liturgy, carnival and the odd spot of tragedy.” Despite this, and perhaps because of it, football functions as a form of popular entertainment and distraction, a perfect tool for keeping the working class in its lowly place: “If every rightwing thinktank came up with a scheme to distract the populace from political injustice and compensate them for lives of hard labour, the solution in each case would be the same: football” (Eagleton, 2010). True, Eagleton concedes, there are sometimes protests and fan demonstrations, with football in particular often the site for such struggles. But this, Eagleton argues, is really much ado about nothing. Sports politics is not real politics, but merely the flickering of misdirected discontent. Eagleton suggests that the problem for progressive politics is not just that it is held back by football but that progressives must confront the “people's game” directly if any socialist future is to be achieved. Invoking Karl Marx's famous dictum that religion is the opiate of the masses – that is, a social drug that inhibits peoples' ability to understand and change their material conditions with the promise of a better life after death – Eagleton concludes:
There can be outbreaks of angry populism, as supporters revolt against the corporate fat cats who muscle in on their clubs; but for the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished.
(Eagleton, 2010)
These two essays by well-known, if controversial, public intellectuals are worth considering for both the starkness of their arguments and the fact that they encapsulate (albeit in colorful and polemical language) a view of sports that is quite widely held among the general population and particularly amongst academics, intellectuals, and what is sometimes referred to as the “literary class.” Both arguments rest on a series of assumptions that position sport as an inherently and intrinsically regressive social force. Sport is regarded as not worthy of serious contemplation (beyond denouncement) as it is a useless activity that at best takes time away from discussing the important political matters of the day (Hitchens), blocks the development of true working-class consciousness (Eagleton), or worse, leads to heightened political tension, increased sectarian feelings with nationalistic if not fascistic undertones, and ultimately violence and death (Hitchens) and the perpetuation of capitalism (Eagleton). Those who follow sports are not fully developed adults (sports are, after all, “just games”), thus sports fans' child-like interests produce immature citizens unable to appreciate more meaningful and challenging forms of culture. Sport, in short, is superficial, irrelevant, infantile and, like an infectious disease, destructive to a healthy democratic civil society, whether defined as a liberal public sphere (Hitchens) or a socialist alternative to capitalism (Eagleton).
The essays by Hitchens and Eagleton did not go uncontested at the time. The sports journalist and commentator Dave Zirin charged that Hitchens had merely replaced one exaggerated claim – that sport is always a force for good – with its opposite – that sport is fundamentally bad for society. Hitchens failed to understand, in other words, the fact that sport is what we might call a “contested terrain,” a site where politics is at play, where destructive and damaging influences reside, but where we also find moments of political resistance, creativity, and the human emotions of joy, hope, and excitement. Writing in The Nation in an article entitled “Christopher Hitchens: Sporting fool,” Zirin countered Hitchens' central thesis that sport is only a domain for regressive politics and immoral behavior:
When racism, sexism, and homophobia have been challenged through struggle in the streets, it has ricocheted with electric results in the world of athletics. This is why we associate Jackie Robinson with the Civil Rights movement or Billie Jean King with the women's liberation struggles of the 1970s. And lest we forget, the most famous draft resister in world history is a boxer, Muhammad Ali. On a far more grass roots level, sports are where many people – particularly young people – find confidence, friendship, and a sense of self. For many it's where the deeply segregated dynamics of our society are broken down. This is not true in every case of course. For every story of sports-as-savior, there are 100 gym class horror stories. Yes, it is absolute truth that sports can bring out the worst in athletes, fans, parents, and coaches. But it can also bring out the best.
(Zirin, 2010a)
Zirin was also on hand to denounce Eagleton's article as “elitist hogwash” in The Guardian (Zirin, 2010b). Zirin again conceded that the “dark side” of footballing cultures is worthy of critique and admonishment. Yet, Zirin argued, football, and sport in general, is more complex than the caricature painted by Eagleton. Sports are also a space for human creativity and bonding, a physical and competitive art form that shows what the human body – and therefore humanity as a whole – is capable of. It is a space from which a broader humanistic politics might be built that expands rather than diminishes a progressive consciousness.
We don't love sport because we are like babies suckling at the teat of constant distraction. We love it because it's exciting, interesting and at its best, rises to the level of art. … By rejecting football, Eagleton also rejects what is both human and remarkable in physical feats of competition. We can stand in awe of the pyramids while understanding the slave labour and misery that comprised its construction. We can stir our soul with gospel music even while we understand that its existence owes itself to pain as much as hope. … Sports is as human an act as music, dance, or organising resistance. While sports may in a vacuum have no “significance”, the passion we invest transforms it. Sport morphs into something well beyond escape or a vessel for backward ideas and becomes a meaningful part in the fabric of our lives. Just as sports such as football reflect our society, they also reflect struggle.
(Zirin, 2010b)
Let us reflect for a moment on some of the issues that arise from these exchanges and the ways in which sport is understood and conceptualized. It is worth noting that it would be unacceptable for a serious public intellectual to denounce any other cultural practice in the way that Hitchens and Eagleton do. Such diatribes would likely not be published in any august journal, newspaper, or magazine on the basis that the writings were simply one-sided and ill-informed. Further, an article that dismissed an entire cultural form, say music for example, would likely be regarded as over-the-top ramblings and the author's own standing and credibility would be brought into question. Neither Hitchens nor Eagleton sought to reference the voluminous social scientific literature on sports that has been developed in a systematic manner since the mid-1960s (Dunning, 1971; Ingham and Donnelly, 1997; Coakley and Dunning, 2000), nor to cite any empirical research to support their arguments. In fact, despite their vast oeuvre, neither writer had written significantly on sports before – Eagleton's commentary on sports reduced to a passing mention or paragraph (e.g., Eagleton, 2000: 70; 2008: 26) and Hitchens even less. As Jason Cowley, the editor of the New Statesman, one of Britain's leading political magazines, noted in a remembrance, “Hitchens was an accomplished and prolific writer, but an even better speaker: his perfect sentences cascaded and tumbled, unstoppably. He was one of our greatest contemporary debaters, taking on all-comers on all subjects, except sport, in which he professed to have no interest at all” (Cowley, 2011). A professed and almost celebrated lack of interest in and knowledge about sports, at least among the literary classes, elevates the status of such a learned person as an anti-populist “man of letters” rather than being seen as a sign of ignorance. This fact, in and of itself, is worthy of sociological consideration in terms of what it may tell us, not about the quality and importance of sports studies scholarship, but rather about the place and intellectual status of sport as an aspect of popular culture within wider society.
Hitchens' argument should be understood as operating from within a long tradition of disdain and moral outrage towards the leisure pursuits of the working classes. With the advent of commercialized forms of leisure in mid- to late nineteenth-century Europe, the middle and upper classes became increasingly concerned about a perceived breakdown of the moral order and the related challenge to the authority of ruling elites (including the church) as cultural and social boundaries were usurped. What become known in Britain as the “rational recreation” movement was an attempt by Victorian moralists to instill better (meaning middle-class) values and mores into the working classes, by the provision of morally improving leisure activities that eschewed the often violent behavior of the sports crowd, the lewdness of the music hall, and the associated “sins” of gambling and drinking (see Bailey, 1978; Walvin, 1978; Clarke and Critcher, 1985; Holt, 1989: 136–148; Waters, 1990).
By the early to mid-twentieth century, these “new” forms of commercialized leisure were seen as birthing a “mass culture” that was disconnected from any organic relationship to traditional forms of folkloric culture, which although looked down upon by the bourgeois elites was still seen to be “authentic” and a natural part of the hierarchical structures of society. Especially in the years following World War II, European cultural elites feared the emerging consumer revolution and what they saw as the “Americanization” of European culture as American films, music, and celebrities saturated Europe. Young people in Europe in particular eagerly embraced the new products (such as jeans and Coca-Cola) and styles of the United States and in so doing disrupted Europe's historically entrenched class-based distinctions. Nothing better illustrated Europe's decreasing authority than the emergence of a global consumer society that was dominated by American (and not European) corporations and commodities, and the related ideals of individualism and “consumer choice” driven by elaborate marketing strategies and the entrepreneurial strength of American companies and finance capital (Judt, 2005; de Grazia, 2006). This new mass culture was viewed by many intellectuals across the political spectrum and on both sides of the Atlantic as amoral and vulgar, appealing to people's base instincts, lacking artistic merit, intellectual depth, or true aesthetic quality, its very popularity a marker of its lowly status and questionable social relevance. As the journalist and cultural critic Dwight Macdonald argued in his essay “A theory of mass culture” (1957), folk art was the culture of the common people, “a spontaneous, autochthonous expression of the people, shaped by themselves, pretty much without the benefit of High Culture, to suit their own needs” (p. 60). But the advent of commercially manufactured mass culture “imposed from above,” Macdonald claimed, had destroyed these boundaries and reduced the working classes to “passive consumers” (p. 60) of the “spreading ooze” (p. 73) of a debased and trivial (mass) culture rather than being active producers of their own (folk) culture.
Similarly, Eagleton's position is a modern version of earlier leftist concerns regarding the perceived depoliticizing effects of popular culture on the critical consciousness of the masses and the role of commercial entertainment, or the cultural industries as Theodor Adorno (2001) phrased it, as a form of social control (Lazere, 1987). Whereas conservative “bourgeois idealists” (Holt, 1989: 136) saw the emergence of mass culture and the decline of folk culture as a threat to the social order and class distinctions (and therefore the basis for their own authority and privileged standing), socialist leaders saw the commercial provision of leisure, of which sport was a central part, as a capitalist ploy to deaden the revolutionary spirit by promoting blind allegiance to non-class identities, be they the local factory or town, regional, or even national identifications. For late nineteenth-century socialists, the leisure industries, notes Chris Waters,
exploited workers who provided entertainment for the masses; it directly threatened the livelihood of those who produced leisure activities in less commercial ways; it encouraged homogeneity; it threatened older, radical ways of organizing leisure; it fostered a dependence on its products, thereby blocking the development of socialist cultural alternatives; and, finally, it began to redefine recreation as a mere purchasable commodity.
(Waters, 1990: 29)
Worse, sport's very logic – that celebrated individual success over collective endeavor, competition over solidarity, and violence and aggression over contemplation and reflection – was seen as capitalist ideology made manifest. As Karl Kautsky, one the most influential late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Marxist theorists, argued, the English working class rejected revolutionary struggle as their class emancipation “appears to them as a foolish dream. Consequently, it is foot-ball, boxing, horse racing and opportunities for gambling which move them the deepest and to which their entire leisure time, their individual powers, and their material means are devoted” (1902: 102). Rather than being a realm of freedom, sport, the French intellectual Jean-Marie Brohm (1976) famously claimed, is a prison of measured time that leads to alienation of the sporting body, as athletes come to view their own bodies as tools, a place where sports crowds are turned into fascistic cheering machines, and the creative spirit of play transformed into another corporatized and commodified mode of highly rationalized production for capital accumulation and profit maximization (see also Perelman, 2012).
Those familiar with sports studies would also recognize that Dave Zirin's counter-argument to Eagleton and Hitchens is well established within the extant literature. Indeed, the idea of understanding popular culture as a site of struggle, as a contested terrain wherein dominant ideologies are found but also resisted, and where ordinary people in their daily lives can still create alternative ways of being and meaning-making that challenge capitalist logics and neoliberal ideologies, is the starting point for cultural studies as an intellectual project (see Miller, 2001); and indeed the rationale for the Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies book series, of which this present volume is a part. Particularly as associated with the British cultural studies tradition (Carrington, 2001; Hartley, 2003; Turner, 2003), though not exclusive to it, the imperative to read and understand the politics of popular culture in non-reductionist ways; to center but not privilege class analysis and questions of political economy; to theorize power and ideology; and to take seriously the issue of intersectionality – the ways in which various social identities are shaped by each other and “intersect” – has been axiomatic to cultural studies scholars for over half a century. During the 1980s numerous scholars such as Jennifer A. Hargreaves (1982), Richard Gruneau (1983), Garry Whannel (1983), John E. Hargreaves (1986), and Stephen Jones (1988), among others, developed historically grounded and complex theorizations of the ways in which sports are sites for the play of power, ideology, and politics where agency and resistance, constraints and domination, can be found, often simultaneously. As Toby Miller has pointed out (2009: 190), “Sport is a key site of pleasure and domination, via a complex dialectic that does not always produce a clear synthesis from the clash of opposing camps. It involves both the imposition of authority from above and the joy of autonomy from below. It exemplifies the exploitation of the labor process, even as it delivers autotelic pleasures.”
It is often the case, as Hitchens notes, that sport (and more often football) is the catalyst for public protests that sometimes result in violence. On February 1, 2012, for example, 74 people died and scores more were seriously injured when fighting broke out between rival fans during a football game between Port Said's Al-Masry and Cairo's Al-Ahly clubs. As a direct result of this tragedy, the entire Egyptian Premier League football season was eventually cancelled. In January 2013, 21 Al-Masry fans (though not any officials) were found guilty and sentenced to death. The sentences provoked jubilation in Cairo among Al-Ahly supporters and further violent clashes in Port Said between Al-Masry fans and the police, prompting Egypt's new President, Mohammed Morsi, to declare a state of emergency in three cities along the Suez Canal. To the uninformed, casual observer it is easy to draw the conclusion that football “caused” the violence. Certainly few other cultural forms and leisure activities seem to invoke the level of passion and commitment that we associate with competitive sports events. There have been few riots or uprisings in recent years associated with the opening of a new musical show on Broadway in New York City or London's Shaftesbury Avenue, or deaths following a disagreement between two authors at one of the many literary and cultural festivals now found across the globe. While it is true that music concerts and nightclub events have occasionally resulted in the tragic deaths of music fans, these tend to be the result of accidents, freak weather storms, collapsing seating, or fires rather than directly caused by the actions of the music-goers themselves. A more complex and complete analysis however would have to look at the specificity of the historical, cultural, economic, and political context of any violent outbreak rather than lazily making a causal argument regarding sport's power to produce violence, as if such events occurred in a social vacuum.
To briefly take the above case as an example, the violence at the Port Said stadium in Egypt was undoubtedly related to the after-effects of the “Arab Spring” that in 2011 led to populist uprisings against many of the authoritarian regimes of the Middle East and North Africa, including that of the subsequently deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Some reports suggested that the Egyptian military and authorities had either colluded with some of the fans, or helped to orchestrate the violence (Knell, 2012). In other words, any serious analysis would have to situate the football violence in the wider context of Egypt's ongoing and incremental transition from a military dictatorship that was previously supported by Western countries, towards a nascent independent democratic republic. We would want to consider too the broader question of Egyptian nationalism and the role of political Islam, the place of anticolonial struggles and their aftermath, and national identity in the context of neoliberal globalization that threatens national traditions and customs, as well as the reaction against these destabilizing economic, militaristic, political, and cultural flows that have affected Egypt and the surrounding region (Amar, 2012). This broader sociopolitical context, within which the football game took place, also requires an analysis of the geopolitical and cultural influences resulting from globalization (see chapter 2), US imperialism (chapter 13), and mass media, social networking, and mobile and wireless communication technologies (chapters 3and14). Further, we would have to consider why other countries and cultures, with similar social dynamics, have not seen sports used as a platform for protest and violence in quite the same way, even when we might expect that this would be the case, as in Israel for example in the context of the Palestinian struggle for statehood. Sociologically informed empirical research actually shows that sport can have a depoliticizing effect as regards political violence and protest (see chapter 15), suggesting that there are no universal laws regarding the relationship between sport and political violence. Similarly, we would want to enquire further into the gendered nature of violence, perpetrated as it was in this case overwhelmingly by (and against) men at a men's sports event, and to consider the links between masculinity, sports, status, pride, and violence (see chapters 5and8). We would have to enquire also why thisparticular match (and theseparticular sets of fans) became the catalyst for the violence by understanding the dynamics of crowd behavior and related questions of identity as well as the group loyalty displayed by the Al-Ahly fans, known as “The Ultras,” and those of the other side (see chapter 18) and the important role that football supporters play in Egyptian politics more generally (Zirin, 2013). In the end such a multidimensional reading, moving from the macro-analysis of the structural and historical conditions to a micro-analysis of chance, agency, and intent, would not necessarily provide a definitive answer to the question, asked by many at the time, “why did this happen?” but it would give us a much more nuanced, detailed, and rich appreciation of the complex social, cultural, historical, economic, and indeed political, circumstances that made the event possible in the first place. This is what a sociologically informed, non-reductionist but contextually driven cultural studies analysis can produce and what this book as a whole hopes to introduce to students.
In some ways, the arguments put forward by the likes of Hitchens as well as by leftist critics like Eagleton and others (for a discussion of this point see chapter 14
