1) Nationalism, international relations, geopolitics and the role of sport

- NATIONALISM
- some studies have concentrated on specific sports, mostly on soccer
- in some societies sport has clearly been used as a mean to establish national solidarity
- Bairner talks about a national sport and says that this concept is a slippery one
- Most of the countries have their national sport
- He gives examples of Gaelic football or Canadian hockey
- The point is that national sports take different forms and in, doing so, they provide us with important
insights into the character of a particular nation

- Representation of a nation through sport can differ from one nation to another
- He gives an example of Americans which put relatively little emphasis on international success
- Most of the affection for sports such as baseball, American football and basketball have huge arenas
where Americans come and feel supreme
- Americans do , of course, root their nations representatives in global events such as the Olympic
Games, but for most sport fans in America only American games are what really counts
- Ireland and Canada are different, Bairner says
- They do not believe that playing with themselves is what really promotes the nation
- It is important to play at home, but it is also important to beat other nations
- That is why these nations take Olympic and other global sports events more seriously

- Still, sports have never been fully successful in uniting whole nations or nationalities
- They have also been involved in creation and perpetuation of divisions created around questions of
identity
- There are divisions based on race, social class... which sport sometimes helps overcome, but
sometimes it makes these divisions even deeper

- Bairner mentions hegemonic identity in nation-states which is not necessary always inclusive
- In this instances, some citizens may choose to celebrate an alternative national identity
- For this, he gives an example of year 1998 when Turkey beat Germany in European championship in
football and when there was almost as much celebration in the streets of Germany as there was in
Turkey itself because of huge numbers of Turkish immigrants living in Germany

- Sport and national identify, no matter how complex the relationship between them is, is important
- Through sports, nationalism and nationalities have successfully resisted globalization
- It looks like well be seeing a lot of national flags in sports arenas around the world for a long, long
time

- How much a nation is important can be seen in the reading of Amy Guttman
- She talks about American exceptionalism
- She says that Americans always thought of themselves as unique and treated America as an
exception
- If we connect this to sport then John R.Tunis is important
- He devoted most of his life to novels and essays about American sports
- In the American Way in Sport he says that sport is a great clue to national character
- He said that sport was the frontier that made us what we are in sport today

- Guttman talks about baseball as American national game There is only one game in America
Baseball

- INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS and GEOPLOTILICS
- Grix and Lee ask themselves Why are large developing countries hosting sports mega-events and
what does this contemporary phenomenon tell us about the significance of, for example, the
Olympics and World Cup in global affairs?

- Staging sports mega-events potentially provides emerging powers with opportunities to generate
attraction even where they possess unattractive domestic political characteristics
- The key advantage, as we have stated, of a sports mega-event is that the hosting state is able to
communicate their attractiveness through the shared cultural values of sport
- This is not a new development in international relations, for the Nazis attempted to influence foreign
public opinion of their regime through a bombastic Olympics as early as 1936 with the first
truesports mega-event

- Today, the same thing is happening
- States want to show that they are true global players in international poltics
- What China, Brasil, south Africa do have in common is that they have all become predominant
players in the hosting of sports mega-events
- Sports mega-events are notable socialising events in which the majority of states compete with each
other, watched by a majority of the worlds population, and sponsored by the world's leading
transnational businesses
- In this global context they provide unprecedented diplomatic opportunities for host states in
particular to practice the politics of attraction by championing universally shared and admired
sporting norms in ways that project a positive image of themselves in order to increase credibility
and status on the worlds stage
- This is crucial for states like Brazil, China and South Africa whose political and social systems are
otherwise difficult to export to others
- The socialising of others through public diplomacy is both an exercise and augmentation of the host
states soft power
- In the case of China and South Africa the successful hosting of the 2008 Olympics and the 2010 World
Cup respectively signalled a shift from pariah state to included state
- For Brazil, China, and South Africa the successful bidding for (and in the case of the latter two)
successful hosting of a sports mega signals and boosts also a shift from regionally based emerging
power to embedded global power

- Ping-pong diplomacy is worth mentioning here which refers to the exchange of table tennis (ping-
pong) players between the United States and People's Republic of China(PRC) in the early 1970s
- The event marked a thaw in U.S.China relations that paved the way to a visit to Beijing by President
Richard Nixon

- Sport is connected to war, also
- For example The Football War also known as the Soccer War or 100 Hour War, was a
brief war fought by El Salvador and Honduras in 1969
- The cause of the war was economic in nature, namely issues concerning immigration from El
Salvador to Honduras
- These existing tensions between the two countries became more visible with rioting during the 1970
FIFA World Cup
- The war began on 14 July 1969, when the Salvadoran military launched an attack against Honduras

- The Dinamo ZagrebRed Star Belgrade riot was a football riot that took place on May 13, 1990
at Maksimir Stadium in Zagreb, Croatia between the Bad Blue Boys (fans ofDinamo Zagreb) and
the Delije ("heroes"; fans of Red Star Belgrade)
- The incident took place just weeks after Croatia's first multi-party elections in almost 50 years in
which the parties favouring Croatian independence had won the majority of votes
- The riot resulted in over 60 people wounded, including some stabbed, shot and poisoned by tear gas
and was a sort of a sign what would happen only a couple of months later war

- Also, collapse of the British Empire is connected to Sports
- Collapse of British Empire?? The ashes- bodyline
- The wider controversy: anger and disillusion at the mother country; high level political involvement;
and a stiffening of the mood for independence
- Australian independence come with bad feelings from bodyline
- match where best team Hungary beat England on English soil (first time cince 1949) and it got
England to reconsider continental tactics; the English Football Association (FA) simply assumed that
as the originators of the game, English players were technically and physically superior to their
foreign counterparts. In addition, coaching and tactical advances from abroad were ignored


2)Globalization, its characteristics and the role of sport

- The emergence and diffusion of modern sports in the 19th and 20th centuries are clearly part of the
larger process of globalization
- The globalization of sports has been characterized by the creation of national and international
sports organizations, the standardization and worldwide acceptance of the rules and regulations for
individual and team sports, the development of regularly scheduled international competitions, and
the establishment of special competitions, such as the Olympic Games and the various world
championships, that aspire to involve athletes from nations in all corners of the globe

- Giulianotti says that globalization has became sociologys most prominent research theme and the
subject of a major public debate
- Globalization is marked by numerous social processes: rising global independencies between
individuals, groups, societies; growing movement of people, increasing links between states...
- He mentions Roland Robertson as the founder of globalization studies
- Robertson defines globalization as compression of the world and the intensification of
consciousness of the world as a whole
-
- Giulianotti says that modern sports like cricket, football, rugby, baseball and hockey have been
globalized since their foundation in particular nations
- To trace this, Giulianotti uses Robertsons general model of globalization, divided into 5 historical
processes:
1. Globalizations first or germinal phase (15th/16th c) when Catholicism became global
religious system, national communities appeared, heliocentrism, ideas about individualism
and humanity
2. Incipient phase (18th /19th c)- rise of unitary nation-states, international relations,
communication systems, a question of non-European involvement in international society
and early international exhibitions
3. Take off phase (1870 1920) national and personal identities predominated, global
sport competitions begin and military conflicts became important and huge
4. Struggle fo hegemony phase 1920s 1960) - military tensions
5. Uncertainty (1960- today) greater levels of global consciousness, civil rights, post-
materialism, environmentalism... cold war ended, international system became more fluid

- Robertson offers potentially valuable explaining of sports globalization
- Ronertson and Guillianotti apply this model to globalization of football:
1. Footballs germinal phase- before footballs formal codification in 1863 when urbankization,
industrialization and British colonial and trade actions provided a good infrastructure for
footballs future expansion
- Sill, localized versions of football were played
2. Incipient phase - 19th c to 1870 English public schools and working-class clubs were playing sports
according tovvarious rules
- A common legal framework emerged and growing international society allowed Britain to
exibit football abroad
3. Footballs take-off phase 1870 1920 football established a s a massive popular sport in Europe
and South America, African Colonies and parts of Aia and North America
- The game was characterised by: male individuals practising the game and the best becoming
heroes, nations were ritually sustained through national tournaments, FIFAs foundtation in
1904 institutionalized footbals international system
4. During the struggle-for-hegemony phase, football became super populaer with wide organizational
networks and many national and international events
5. Footballs uncertainty phase we see today when because of greater political struggles and complex
relations between rising numbersof actors like FIFA and other clubs, ponsors, associations...
- Football connectiong with NGOs and rising questions of racism, inequality..
- New football neations are emerging and football became important for countries like Korea,
Japan, China...

- Kuper and Szymansky talk exactly about that
- There are counties such as South Korea which became interested in football and are taking foreign
trainers to coach them
- What if forced on them i Koreans to think like Duch peoples European style of thinking, playing
and living so that they could play real European, German, Duch, English... football

- from about 1970 to 2000, the six founding members of the European Economic Community
dominated soccer thinking and won almost all the games prizes
- These countries perfected what you might call the continental European style: a fast, physical,
collectivist soccer
- But then these countries began exporting their expertise
- Kuper and Szymanski give a story of a Duch coach Hiddink who went to S. Korea to coach their
national football team
- Hiddink and other Dutch, German, French, and Italian expat managers established themselves in
Hiltons and westerners compounds around the planet
- In the past few years they have helped several new soccer countriesRussia, Australia, South Korea,
Turkey, and Greece, to name a fewovertake their own native countries
- Its because of men like these that England will not be the best soccer country of the future

- British spread the game to continental Europe, Latin America, and bits of Africa
- However, for a century Asia and North America remained almost immune
- Contrary to myth, soccer took a long time to become a global game
- What people called the World Cup should until the 1980s have been called the EuroLatin
American Duopoly.
- Though most people on the planet lived in Asia, the continents only representative at the World Cup
of 1978 was Iran
- Even in 1990 the British Isles had more teams at the World Cup (three) than all of Asia combined
(two)
- Many Asian countries still barely knew about soccer

- But by 1990 the so-called third wave of globalization was under way
- Increased world trade, cable television, and finally the Internet brought soccer to new territories.
Roberto Fontanarrosa, the late Argentine cartoonist, novelist, and soccer nut, said, If TV were only
an invention to broadcast soccer, it would be justified

- We could say that what football really globalizes is the fact that peripghery can became a part of a
core
- Countries like Korea and China, which are now rising economies want to be taken seriously and want
to be a part of the International politics