Ben Carrington - Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport

Routledge Critical Studies in Sport

Series Editors

Jennifer Hargreaves and Ian McDonald

University of Brighton

The Routledge Critical Studies in Sport series aims to lead the way in developing the multi-disciplinary field of Sport Studies by producing books that are interrogative, interventionist and innovative. By providing theoretically sophisticated and empirically grounded texts, the series will make sense of changes and challenges facing sport globally. The series aspires to maintain the commitment and of the critical paradigm by contributing to a more inclusive and less exploitative culture of sport.

Also available in this series:

Understanding Lifestyle Sports

Consumption, identity and difference

Edited by Belinda Wheaton

Why Sports Morally Matter

William J. Morgan

Fastest, Highest, Strongest

A critique of high-performance sport

Rob Beamish and Ian Ritchie

Sport, Sexualities and Queer/Theory

Edited by Jayne Caudwell

Physical Culture, Power, and the Body

Edited by Jennifer Hargreaves and Patricia Vertinsky

British Asians and Football

Culture, identity, exclusion

Daniel Burdsey

Culture, Politics and Sport

Blowing the Whistle , Revisited

Garry Whannel

Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport

Edited by Ben Carrington and Ian McDonald

First published 2009

by Routledge

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.

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2009 Ben Carrington and Ian McDonald selection and editorial matter; individual chapters the contributors

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Marxism, cultural studies and sport / edited by Ben Carrington and Ian McDonald.

p. cm.

1. Sports Social aspects. 2. Sports and state. 3. Philosophy, Marxist. I. Carrington, Ben, 1972

McDonald, Ian, 1965

GV706.5.M364 2009

306.483 dc22 2008020760

ISBN 0-203-09905-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-37540-1 hbk

ISBN10: 0-415-37541-X pbk

ISBN10: 0-203-09905-2 ebk

ISBN13: 978-0-415-37540-5 hbk

ISBN13: 978-0-415-37541-2 pbk

ISBN13: 978-0-203-09905-6 ebk

Notes on contributors

David L. Andrews is Professor of Physical Cultural Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, and is one of the leading international scholars currently writing on the intersection of sport and contemporary culture. His books include Michael Jordan, Inc.: Corporate Sport, Media Culture, and Late-Modern America (SUNY Press, 2001), Manchester United: A Thematic Study (Routledge, 2004) and Sport-Commerce-Culture: Essays on Sport in Late Capitalist America (Peter Lang, 2006). With Steven J. Jackson, he is the editor of Sports Stars: The Cultural Politics of Sporting Celebrity (Routledge, 2001) and Sport, Culture, and Advertising (Routledge, 2003); with Stephen Wagg he is the editor of East Meets West: Sport the Cold War (Routledge, 2007); and with C.L. Cole and Michael Silk, he is editor of Corporate Nationalism(s): Cultural Identity and Transnational Marketing (Berg, 2005). He is currently on the editorial board of the Sociology of Sport Journal , and an associate editor of the Journal of Sport and Issues .

Alan Bairner is Professor of Sport and Social Theory at Loughborough University, UK, having previously held the position of Professor in Sports Studies at the University of Ulster. His doctoral thesis, which was completed at the University of Hull, was entitled An Examination of the Origins, Development and Analytical Applicability of Antonio Gramsci s Theory of the State . He is the author of Sport, Nationalism, and Globalization: European and North American Perspectives (SUNY Press, 2001), co-author (with John Sugden) of Sport, Sectarianism and Society in a Divided Ireland (Leicester University Press, 1993) and editor (with John Sugden) of Sport in Divided Societies (Meyer and Meyer, 1999). He has written widely politics of sport with a particular focus on such issues as national identity, social democracy, masculinity sectarianism.

Rob Beamish is Head of the Sociology Department, Queen s University, Kingston, Canada. He was among founders of the Centre for Sport Studies at Queen s which, in the 1970s, initiated in Canada the systematic of sport using Marxist and Critical Theory. He has published widely in numerous sport studies journals recently co-authored, with Ian Ritchie, Fastest, Highest, Strongest: A Critique of High-Performance (Routledge, 2006). His theoretical work includes Marx, Method and the Division of Labour and The of the Manifesto in The Socialist Register .

Anouk B langer is Professor of Sociology at the Universit du Qu bec Montr al, Canada. Her on urban popular cultures, sports and collective memory. She earned her Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University which was entitled Marketing Memories: Sport Venues and the Political Economy of Memory in Montreal She has published widely on sport, spectacle and political economy in journals such as the International Review for the Sociology of Sport , Canadian Journal of Urban Research and Sociology and Society.

Currently she is part of the executive board of an international research group, the Culture of Cities Project,

through which she runs a project on urban popular cultures.

Ben Carrington teaches Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, where he is also the Associate Director of the Center for European Studies and is a Carnegie Visiting Research Fellow at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. He is the co-editor (with Ian McDonald) of Race , Sport and British Society (Routledge, 2001).

Grant Farred is Professor of Africana Studies and English at Cornell University, USA. He is author of My Name? Black Vernacular Intellectuals (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), Phantom Calls: Race and the Globalization of the NBA (Prickly Paradigm Press, 2006) and Long Distance Love: A Passion Football (Temple University Press, 2008). His forthcoming works include Bodies at Rest, Bodies in Motion: The Event of the Athlete (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) and The Politizen (Cornell University forthcoming). He is the general editor of the journal South Atlantic Quarterly .

Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport

The cultural ubiquity, political prominence and economic significance of contemporary sport present fertile terrain for its critical socio-cultural analysis. From corporate and media dominated mega-events like the Olympic Games, to state programmes for nation-building and health promotion, to the cultural politics of race , gender, sexuality, age and disability, sport is so profoundly marked by relations that it lends itself to critique and deconstruction.