Summary
Contents
Subject index
Sport is the most universal feature of popular culture. It crosses language barriers and slices through national boundaries, attracting both spectators and participants, to a common lingua franca of passions, obsessions and desires. This book brings to light the connections between sport and culture. It argues that although sport is obviously a source of pleasure, it is also part of the government of everyday life. The creation of a sporting calendar, movements of rational recreation and the development of physical education in the public sector, are read as ways of disciplining and shaping urban-industrial populations. In addition, sport is examined as a principal front of globalization. The sports process draws t
National Symbolism and the Global Exchange of Sporting Bodies
National Symbolism and the Global Exchange of Sporting Bodies
The irrepressible conflict between Labor and Capital [is] asserting itself under a new guise…. Like every other form of business enterprise, Base Ball [sic] depends for results on two interdependent divisions, the one to have absolute control and direction of the system, and the other to engage – always under the executive branch – the actual work of production. (Albert Spalding, quoted in Marcano and Fidder, 1999: 518)
Far from the musings of a latter-day Marxist, these words were spoken a century ago by a powerful industrialist involved in building both MLB and his own sporting-goods firm. They capture the central issue of this book. Globalizing sport necessitates twin ...
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