The Politics and Culture of Modern Sports

This study examines the role of modern sports in constructing national identities and the way leaders have exploited sports to achieve domestic and foreign policy goals. The book focuses on the development of national sporting cultures in Great Britain and the United States, the particular processes by which the rest of Europe and the world adopted or rejected their games, and the impact of sports on domestic politics and foreign affairs. Teams competing in international sporting events provide people a shared national experience and a means to differentiate "us" from "them." Particular attention is paid to the transnational influences on the construction of sporting communities, and why some areas resisted dominant sporting cultures while others adopted them and changed them to fit their particular political or societal needs. A recurrent theme of the book is that as much as they try, politicians have been frustrated in their attempts to achieve political ends through sport. The book provides a basis for understanding the political, economic, social, and diplomatic contexts in which these games were played, and to present issues that spur further discussion and research.

Sheldon Anderson is professor of modern European history and international studies at Miami University.

Chapter 1: British Sports and National Identity in Nineteenth Century Europe
Chapter 2: Sports and Construction of American National Identity, and the Export of Baseball Abroad
Chapter 3: Sports in the Service of Fascism and Communism in the Interwar Period.
Chapter 4: Sports and the Cold War
Chapter 5: Communist Sport Rivalries and the Role of Sport in the German Question
Chapter 6: Sports and the Reconstruction of Postwar Western Europe and Japan
Chapter 7: Sports, Decolonization, and Nation Building
Chapter 8: Globalization and Competing Sporting Identities
Chapter 9: The Politics and Economics of Hosting International Sporting Events