Sport, Identity and Ethnicity

Description

Sport is now a major industry -- and one of increasing importance throughout both the developed and developing world -- but, until now, it has received little serious attention from anthropologists. In this first general book on the anthropology of sport, the contributors look at how different sports are used by a wide variety of peoples to express, manipulate and negotiate their identities, and to challenge the way they are defined by others. Chapters address: -the role played by football teams in colonial Zimbabwe to express locals' autonomy from their British rulers; -the evolution of one of Venice's central festive occasions -- its regatta -- from a ritual of state to a sport of the people; modern and postmodern transformations of polo in Pakistan, its original home -the resolution of problematic aspects of social life in Turkey through wrestling; -the manner by which Catalan nationalists successfully exploited the Barcelona Olympics for their own political ends; and -the controversy between anglers and anti-anglers in Britain. This pioneering volume will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, sport historians and all those interested in this popular subject.

Jeremy MacClancy Oxford Brookes University

"a useful contribution to our understanding of the multitudinous ways in which sports contribute to the making and remaking of social identities." The Australian Journal of Anthropology "offers valuable and suggestive insights regarding a variety of sporting forms that have received relatively little attention from historians and sociologists. It also serves the academic community well by drawing our attention to the possibilities that exist within an approach to studying play, games, and sports that has yet to receive the attention it merits - the anthropological. [...] The scholarly community has great need of such works!" The Sports Historian 'the collection provides interesting and varied insights into the ways in which sport plays a part in identity creation and confrontation. Its ethnographically rich contents deserve a wide readership.' Culture, Sport, Society 'The book presents a diversity of sports, some of them marginal by world standards of practice and popularity. However, the significance of these sports is understood by the way the authors integrate in their studies historical traditions, politics of identity and culturally constructed realities.' Social Anthropology '...the essays in MacClancy's readable and interesting collection demonstrate that sport is not only a reflection of society, but is also a major mode of expression.' International Sports Studies