Olympism: The Global Vision

The collection starts from the premise that Olympism and the Olympic Games make sense only when they are placed within the broader national, colonial and post colonial contexts and argues that sport not only influences politics and vice-versa, but that the two are inseparable. Sport is not only political; it is politics. It is also culture and art. This collaboration is a first in global publishing, a mine of information for scholars, students and analysts. It demonstrates that Olympism and the Olympic movement in the modern context has been, and continues to be, socially relevant and politically important. Studies focus on national encounters with Olympism and the Olympic movement, with equal attention paid to document the growing nexus between sports and the media; sports reportage; as well as women and sports. Olympism asserts that the Olympic movement was, and is, of central importance to twentieth and twenty-first century societies. Finally, the collection demonstrates that the essence of Olympism and the Olympic movement is important only in so far as it affects societies surrounding it. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Boria Majumdar, a Rhodes scholar, is research fellow at Latrobe University in Melbourne. Sandra Collins is a visiting scholar at the Center for Japanese Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

- Preface: The IOC Olympic Studies Centre Philippe Blanchard - The Lausanne Olympic Studies Centre Research Grants Programme John J. MacAloon - Prologue: The Story of the Homecoming: IOC weds IJHS Boria Majumdar - The Latin American 'Olympic Explosion' of the 1920s: Causes and Consequences Cesar Torres - Conflicts of 1930s Japanese Olympic Diplomacy in Universalizing the Olympic Movement Sandra Collins - 'A Debt Was Paid Off in Tears': Science, IOC Politics and the Debate about High Altitude in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics Alison M. Wrynn - 'If You Want to Cry, Cry on the Green Mats of Kôdôkan': Expressions of Japanese Cultural and National Identity in the Movement to Include Judo into the Olympic Games Andreas Niehaus - Revisiting South Africa and the Olympic Movement: The Correspondence of Reginald S. Alexander and the International Olympic Committee, 1961-86 Maureen Margaret Smith - When North-South Fight, the Nation is out of Sight: The Politics of Olympic Sport in Postcolonial India Boria Majumdar - A Brief Historical Review of Olympic Urbanization Hanwen Liao and Adrian Pitts - Epilogue Sandra Collins