Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport

285 Pages·1.658 MB·English

by  Ben Carrington, Ian McDonald

Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport
The cultural ubiquity, political prominence and economic significance of contem-
porary 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 of power that it lends itself to critique and deconstruction.
Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport brings together leading experts on sport
to address these issues and to reflect on the continued appeal of sport to people
across the globe, as well as on the forms of inequality that sport both produces and
highlights. Including a Foreword by Harry Cleaver and Afterword by Michael
Bérubé, this book assesses the impact of this work on the fields of ‘mainstream’
Marxism and Cultural Studies. Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sportis centred on
three vital questions:
• Is Marxism still relevant for understanding sport in the twenty-first century?
• Has Marxism been preserved or transcended by Cultural Studies?
• What is the relationship between theory and intervention in the politics of
sport?
The result is a unique and diverse examination of modern sports culture. The
first book published on the relationship between sport and Marxism for over
twenty years, Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport is an invaluable resource for
students of sport sociology, Marxism and Cultural Studies at all levels.
Ben Carringtonteaches sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and
is a Carnegie Visiting Research Fellow at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.
Ian McDonald teaches the sociology and politics of sport at the University of
Brighton, UK. He is the co-editor (also with Ben Carrington) of ‘Race’, Sport and
British Society(Routledge, 2001).
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 interrog-
ative, interventionist and innovative. By providing theoretically sophisticated
and empirically grounded texts, the series will make sense of the changes and
challenges facing sport globally. The series aspires to maintain the commitment
and promise 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
Acritique 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
2Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2009 Ben Carrington and Ian McDonald selection and editorial
matter; © individual chapters the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Acatalogue 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– . II. 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
Contents
Notes on contributors vii
Series editors’ preface xi
Acknowledgements xv
Foreword xvii
HARRY CLEAVER
1 Marxism, Cultural Studies and sport: mapping the field 1
BEN CARRINGTON AND IAN MCDONALD
PART I
Marxism, Cultural Studies and sport: the key debates 13
2 Sport without final guarantees: Cultural Studies/Marxism/sport 15
BEN CARRINGTON
3 One-dimensional sport: revolutionary Marxism and the
critique of sport 32
IAN MCDONALD
PART II
Political economy, commodification and sport 49
4 The urban sport spectacle: towards a critical political
economy of sports 51
ANOUK BÉLANGER
5 Between culture and economy: understanding the politics of
media sport 68
GARRY WHANNEL
vi Contents
6 Marxism, alienation and Coubertin’s Olympic project 88
ROB BEAMISH
PART III
The sporting poetics of class, race and gender 107
7 Post-Marxism, black Marxism and the politics of sport 109
BRETT ST LOUIS
8 Venus and Serena are ‘doing it’ for themselves: theorizing
sporting celebrity, class and Black feminism for the Hip-Hop
generation 130
JAYNE O. IFEKWUNIGWE
9 Socratic solitude: the Scouser two-as-one 154
GRANT FARRED
PART IV
Key concepts, critical theorists 179
10 Michel Foucault and the critique of sport 181
TOBY MILLER
11 Re-appropriating Gramsci: Marxism, hegemony and sport 195
ALAN BAIRNER
12 Sport, culture and late capitalism 213
DAVID L. ANDREWS
Afterword 232
MICHAEL BÉRUBÉ
Index 242
Notes on contributors
David L. Andrews is Professor of Physical Cultural Studies at the University
of Maryland, College Park, USA 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 and 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 Social 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 joint editor (with John Sugden) of Sport in Divided
Societies (Meyer and Meyer, 1999). He has written widely on the politics
of sport with a particular focus on such issues as national identity, social
democracy, masculinity and sectarianism.
Rob Beamish is Head of the Sociology Department, Queen’s University,
Kingston, Canada. He was among the founders of the Centre for Sport Studies
at Queen’s which, in the 1970s, initiated in Canada the systematic study of
sport using Marxist and Critical Theory. He has published widely in numerous
sport studies journals and recently co-authored, with Ian Ritchie, Fastest,
Highest, Strongest: A Critique of High-Performance Sport(Routledge, 2006). His
viii Notes on contributors
theoretical work includes Marx, Method and the Division of Labour and ‘The
Making of the Manifesto’ in The Socialist Register.
Anouk Bélanger is Professor of Sociology at the Université du Québec à
Montréal, Canada. Her work focuses 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 Researchand 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 Farredis Professor of Africana Studies and English at Cornell University,
USA. He is author of What’s 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 for 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
Press, forthcoming). He is the general editor of the journal South Atlantic
Quarterly.
Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe is a Visiting Research Fellow in Africana Women’s
Studies at Bennett College, USA, having previously held the positions of
Reader in Anthropology at the University of East London, UK, and, more
recently, Visiting Scholar in the Cultural Anthropology Department at Duke
University, USA. Her scholarly interests include comparative ‘mixed race’
theories and identities politics; feminist (post)colonial and transnational
genealogies of the African Diaspora; global youth cultures and the politics of
appropriation and authenticity; and the discrepant management of public
memories in cultural and heritage tourism (Cape Town, South Africa). Among
her publications are Scattered Belongings: Cultural Paradoxes of ‘Race’, Nation
and Gender(Routledge, 1999) and the edited ‘Mixed Race’ Studies: A Reader
(Routledge, 2004). She is currently working on a new book project provi-
sionally entitled Out of Africa (‘By Any Means Necessary’): Recent Clandestine
West African Migrations and the Gendered Politics of Survival, which seeks to
resituate these contemporary migration processes within the African Diaspora
paradigm and to force a reassessment of what constitutes volition and
victimization.
Notes on contributors ix
Ian McDonald teaches Sociology and Politics of Sport at the University of
Brighton, UK. He is the co-editor (with Ben Carrington) of ‘Race’, Sport
and British Society (Routledge, 2001). He is also co-editor (with Jennifer
Hargreaves) of the Routledge ‘Critical Studies in Sport’ Series.
Toby Miller is Chair of the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the
University of California, Riverside, USA. He is the author and editor of
over twenty books, including The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and
the Postmodern Subject(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Contemporary
Australian Television(University of New South Wales Press, 1994; with Stuart
Cunningham); Technologies of Truth: Cultural Citizenship and the Popular Media
(University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Popular Culture and Everyday Life(Sage
Publications, 1998; with Alec McHoul); Film and Theory: An Anthology(Basil
Blackwell, 2000; edited with Robert Stam); Global Hollywood (British Film
Institute/Indiana University Press, 2001; with Nitin Govil, John McMurria
and Richard Maxwell);Globalization and Sport: Playing the World(Sage, 2001;
with Geoffrey Lawrence, Jim McKay and David Rowe); SportSex (Temple
University Press, 2001); Cultural Policy(Sage Publications, 2002; with George
Yudice); Critical Cultural Policy Studies: A Reader(Basil Blackwell, 2003; edited
with Justin Lewis); and Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism,
and Television in a Neoliberal Age (Temple University Press, 2007). His work
has been translated into Spanish, Chinese, German, Japanese and Swedish.
Brett St Louisis a sociologist who teaches at Goldsmiths College, University of
London, UK. He has written extensively on social theory, ‘race’ and culture
and has published articles in a range of journals, including Body and Society,
Ethnic and Racial Studies, Ethnicities, new formations and Sociology of Sport
Journal.He is the author of Rethinking Race, Politics, and Poetics: C.L.R. James’
Critique of Modernity(Routledge, 2007).
Garry Whannel is Professor of Media Cultures, and Director of the Centre
for International Media Analysis in the Department of Media Arts at the
University of Bedfordshire, UK. He has been writing and researching on the
theme of media and sport for over twenty years and his most recent published
work includes Media Sport Stars, Masculinities and Moralities(Routledge, 2001)
and (with John Horne and Alan Tomlinson) Understanding Sport (E. and
F.N. Spon, 1999). Previous books includeFields in Vision: Television Sport and
Cultural Transformation(Routledge, 1992) andBlowing the Whistle: The Politics
of Sport (Pluto, 1983). He also edited Consumption and Participation: Leisure,
Culture and Commerce(LSA, 2000) and has previously co-edited collections
on television, leisure cultures, the Olympic Games and the World Cup. His
current research interests include the politics of the Olympic bidding process
and the growth of commercial sponsorship.