Games and Empires: Modern Sports and Cultural Imperialism / Edition 1

by Allen Guttmann

Overview

An exploration of the ways in which modern sports have spread from their Western roots to all corners of the globe. Could this be another form of cultural imperialism?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231100427
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	12/08/1994
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	0.81(w) x 9.00(h) x 6.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Allen Guttmann is professor of American studies at Amherst College. Among his many works areWomen's Sports, named the book of the year by the North American Society for Sport History,Sports Spectators, The Games Must Go On, and From Ritual to Record, all published by Columbia University Press.

Editorial Reviews

Modern sports, opines Gutman (Women's Sports), are to a large degree a British invention. He sees modern sports as having seven characteristics: secularism, equality, bureaucratization, specialization, rationalization, quantification and obsession with records. Tracing the spread of cricket to such diverse lands as India and Jamaica, of soccer to Latin America and Africa, of rounders (U.S. baseball) to Japan and the Caribbean, the professor of American Studies at Amherst sees the diffusion of sports as resulting not from political or economic power but from cultural hegemony. The author distinguishes ``hegemony'' from ``imperialism'' by stressing that the former ``is something more complex than the domination by the totally powerful of the entirely powerless.'' He demonstrates the continuing diffusion by citing the National Football League's attempts to enter the European market. Carefully researched and informative, the book will appeal mainly to academics willing to overlook the turgid style. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

How did baseball get so popular in Japan? Why has cricket never caught on in the U.S.? What is the impact on a country's traditional sports when the people are suddenly exposed to soccer or basketball? These are the kinds of questions that drive Guttmann's fascinating study of sports as a commodity of cultural exchange. Writing with wit and verve, Guttmann reviews the international diffusion of six sports (cricket, soccer, baseball, basketball, American football, and the Olympic games), analyzes how various societies have reacted to the introduction of these games, and then assesses whether the popularity of the games constitutes a form of cultural imperialism. His verdict is that traffic on the cultural highway goes in both directions. Traditional societies and mores are greatly affected by these sports, but they can also provide a method of crystallizing anticolonial sentiments and cultural pride. (Nothing like beating one's colonial oppressors at the oppressor's own game!) Guttmann's analysis of the German nationalistic Turnen movement, which emphasized group discipline and calisthenics rather than individual competition and records, is especially fascinating. Recommended for academic and larger public library collections.

George Needham