Soft Power Politics - Football and Baseball on the Western Pacific Rim

Soft Power Politics- Past and Present: Football and Baseball on the Western Pacific Rim illustrates the momentous expanse and moment of sport in the Asia Pacific region and through these essays dealing with two of the most prodigious global team sports confronts various cultural clashes that Samuel Huntington would ensure the end of civilisation. They also demonstrate the power sport has to change the world and to inspire and unite people globally. All who sail under the flag ofSport as ingenuous as it may seem to the host of cynics that abounds, believe that dialogues that emerge from arguments included in this text represent communication of the highest order and have the potential to produce the cohesion that can close some of those cracks that Huntington said would open up along, what he called the fault lines between civilisations.This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Rob Hess, Associate Professor College of Sport & Exercise Science at Victoria University. He is an Academic Editor of the IJHS, and is the President of the Australian Society for Sports History,Peter Horton, a Senior Lecturer at James Cook University and Fellow of the Cairns Institute is a member of the Academic Editorial teams of: Africa, Australasia and the Pacific and Asia of theIJHS.J.A. Mangan, Emeritus Professor, University of Strathclyde, (FRHS, FRAI, D. Litt.l) and Adjunct Professor of the Cairns Institute, is the Founding Editor of The International Journal of the History of Sport and the series Sport in the Global Society.

1. Soft Power Politics, Hegemonic Realities and Eastern Promise: Changing Circumstances - 'Look East Young Man and Woman'! 2. Forging Imperial and Australasian Identities: Australian Rules Football in New Zealand During the Nineteenth Century 3. Women's Football in the People's Republic of China: Retrospect and Prospect 4. Pacific Islanders in Global Rugby: The Changing Currents of Sports Migration 5. Reflections on Race, Regionalism and Geopolitical Trends via Australian Soccer 6. The Significance of Koshien Baseball in Postwar Okinawa: A Representation of 'Okinawa' 7. Seeking a Separate National Identity: The Taiwanese State, Politics and the 2007 Baseball World Cup 8. Globalisation, Individualism and Scandal: New Directions in Japanese Baseball 9. An Indispensable but Fragile Geopolitical Triangle: Baseball in Japan, Korea and Taiwan 10. Epilogue: Sport on the Western Pacific Rim: The Present and the Future