This book examines Australia’s sporting relationships with the Asian region during the interwar period. Until now, Australia’s sporting relationships with the Asian region have been neglected by scholars of Australian and Asian sports history, and the broader field of Australia’s Asian context. Concentrating on the period of the 1920s and 1930s – when sporting relationships between Australia and a number of Asian nations emerged in a variety of sports – this book demonstrates the depth of these previously under-examined connections. The book challenges, and complicates, the broader historiography of Australia’s Asian context – a historiography that has been strongly influenced by the White Australia Policy and the Pacific War. Why, for example, did white Australia so warmly welcome visiting Japanese sportsmen at a time when the Pacific region appeared to be inexorably sliding into a war that was informed by racial antagonisms? This book examines sporting relations between Australia and seven Asian countries (China, Japan, India, Netherlands East Indies, Philippines, Malaya and Singapore) and a range of sports including rugby, football, swimming, hockey, boxing, cricket and tennis. This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Practiced and watched by billions, sport is a global phenomenon. Sport history is a burgeoning sub-field that explores sport in all forms to help answer fundamental questions that scholars examine. This volume provides a reference for sport scholars and an accessible introduction to those who are new to the sub-field.

This multivolume set is much more than a collection of essays on sports and sporting cultures from around the world: it also details how and why sports are played wherever they exist, and examines key charismatic athletes from around the world who have transcended their sports. Sports Around the World: History, Culture, and Practice provides a unique, global overview of sports and sports cultures. Unlike most works of this type, this book provides both essays that examine general topics, such as globalization and sport, international relations and sport, and tourism and sport, as well as essays on sports history, culture, and practice in world regions—for example, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, and Oceania—in order to provide a more global perspective. These essays are followed by entries on specific sports, world athletes, stadiums and arenas, famous games and matches, and major controversies. Spanning topics as varied as modern professional cycling to the fictional movie Rocky to the deadly ball game of the ancient Mayans, the first three volumes contain overview essays and entries for specific sports that have been and are currently practiced around the world. The fourth volume provides a compendium of information on the winners of major sporting competitions from around the world. Readers will gain invaluable insights into how sports have been enjoyed throughout all of human culture, and more fully comprehend their cultural contexts. The entries provide suggestions for further reading on each topic—helpful to general readers, students with school projects, university students and academics alike. Additionally, the four-volume Sports Around the World spotlights key charismatic athletes who have changed a sport or become more than just an outstanding player.

To think that Australia is confronting Asia for the first time in the 21st century is to deny Australia's history and the self-awareness that comes from understanding that the country has been here before. Asia appears throughout modern Australian history as a source of anxiety or hope. It has been a presence both within and outside Australia, shaping who Australians are, as well as the country's engagement with the wider world. This book assembles an impressive group of scholars across a range of disciplines to present a broadly conceived cultural history that places Asia at or near the center of Australia's national story. *** "Australia's Asia: From Yellow Peril to Asian Century captures the essence of the pendulum swings that have characterized Australian approaches to Asia over the past century and a half. ... The editors have done a first-class job in assembling high-quality chapters that make an important contribution to the existing literature on Australia and Asia. ... Moreover, this book tells an important story about the role and impact of individuals -- not just elites, but in many cases ordinary citizens -- in building Australia's relations with Asia. It is a valuable remedy to the ahistorical approach of so many of the debates within Australia over regional engagement and is a useful text for those outside Australia interested in acquiring insights into what motivates the country's approach to its region." - Pacific Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 4, December 2014Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?

"Modern sports" were introduced to Asia in the late nineteenth century as an innovation from the West, concurrently with the development of modern society in Asia. This book traces the historical developments of sporting cultures in Asia in specific local contexts – including Singapore, China, Myanmar, Taiwan, the Philippines, and India – and their intersections with larger social developments of colonialism, postcolonialism, nationalism, and the building of modern Asia and its place in a globalized world. The case studies herein present the social history of modern team sports with standardized rules such as basketball and cricket, and less familiar sports such as fives and chinlone, as they vacillate between global and local perspectives. This book also shows that modern sports have had an important influence on the makeup of everyday life in Asia, and the essays here also consider sports’ impact on gender, body culture, and celebrity culture, among other concerns. This book painstakingly bridges the gaps between Asian Studies and Sports Studies in a way that reflects the historicity and multiplicity of sports in Asian societies. By adopting multi-disciplinary approaches, this book innovatively offers significant intersection between sociology, cultural studies and Asian studies of sport in Asia. This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.