The sports of Europe and the United States were imitated and assimilated and became symbols of national and cosmopolitan identity. This work examines the national and international importance of sport and its role in shaping post-millennium global culture.

The sports of Europe and the United States were imitated and assimilated and became symbols of national and cosmopolitan identity. This work examines the national and international importance of sport and its role in shaping post-millennium global culture.

This book aims to pull together the main themes relevant to the relationship between sport and violence, using information from the media, court reports, statistics and research. The topics covered include: football grounds and violence; the links between sport, politics and violence; the way it is treated in the media; violence directed at minority groups; and the economic perspective.

This is the first book to address the gap in the literature linking the physical culture of the ancient world with the beginnings of modern sport, this original book traces the history of the evolution of a variety of sport, games and physical education from 450-1650AD across Western Europe. Drawing on primary sources, this book takes a thematic approach, looking at the changing nature of geopolitical structures, educational systems, religious institutions and the practice of warfare and medicine and goes on to trace the disappearance of ancient physical culture with its gymnasia, gladiators and chariot races, the invention of a new physical culture based on chivalry around 1000AD, the transformation of that culture in the Renaissance, and its disappearance around 1650 under the influences of new science. Offering a new and original perspective on the relationship between sport and society, this unique study will be of great interest to all historians of sport and culture.

Sport annually mobilizes millions of people across Europe: as practitioners in a wide variety of competitive, educational, or recreational contexts, and as spectators, who are physically present or following events through the mass media. This book presents original research into modern sport funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Its aim is to examine the distinctive contribution made by this complex phenomenon to the construction of European identities. Attention is focused on sport's social significance, as a set of mass-mediated practices and spectacles giving rise to a network of images, symbols, and discourses. The book seeks to explore, and ultimately to explain, the processes of representation and mediation involved in the sporting construction, and subsequent renegotiation, of local, national, and, increasingly, global identities. It offers a survey of key developments in sporting Europe - from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, and from the Atlantic to the Urals - presenting findings by acknowledged international experts and emerging scholars at the level of individuals, communities, regions, nation-states, and Europe as a whole, in both its geographical and political incarnations. Its focus on representation offers a broadly conceived, and consciously inclusive, approach to issues of 'Europeanness' in modern and contemporary sport.

Sport is far more than a national and international entertainment: it is a source of political identity, morale, pride and superiority. Tribal Identities explores the influence of sport on the nations of Europe as a mechanism of national solidarity promoting a sense of identity, unity, status and esteem; as an instrument of confrontation between nations, stimulating aggression, stereotyping, and images of inferiority and superiority; and as a cultural bond linking nations across national boundaries, providing common enthusiasm, shared experiences, the transcendence of national allegiances, and opportunities for association, understanding and goodwill.

This book examines the political significance of sport and its importance for nation-state building and political and economic transition across thirteen post-Soviet and post-socialist countries, primarily located in Eastern Europe. Adopting a critical case-study approach, building on historical and comparative frameworks, the book uses sport as a symbolic lens through which to examine the transition of Eastern European countries to the Western capitalist system. Covering a wide geographical area, from Poland to the Caucuses and Turkmenistan, it explores key themes such as nationalism, governance, power relations, political ideology, separatism, commercialisation and economic development, and the symbolic value of mega-events. Sport, Statehood and Transition in Europe is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in sport policy, the politics of sport or political science.