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.

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.

The EUSB (European Sports Badge) is meant to target a large audience through popular sports. Modern sport and its various events have been originated in Europe during the past two centuries. Physical exercise and personal fitness are nowadays well-respected and truly popular. This study aims at responding to the question, to what extent popular sport can make a contribution to the genesis, the implementation, and the fostering of a mutually acknowledged and experienced EU-identity. A differentiation between the two main spheres of sport, professional sports and popular sports, shows that the official and documented emphasis of the EU on the professional sphere hitherto led to negligence and a misconceiving attitude towards mass sports so far.

Cities are both real and imaginary places whose identity is dependent on their distinctive heritage: a network of historically transmitted cultural resources. The essays in this volume, which originate from a lecture series at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London, explore the complex and multi-layered identities of European cities. Themes that run through the essays include: nostalgia for a grander past; location between Eastern and Western ideologies, religions and cultures; and the fluidity and palimpsest quality of city identity. Not only does the book provide different thematic angles and a variety of approaches to the investigation of city identity, it also emphasizes the importance of diverse cultural components. The essays presented here discuss cultural forms as various as music, architecture, literature, journalism, philosophy, television, film, myths, urban planning and the naming of streets.

This book investigates the use of football to create, shape and promote Spanish, Catalan and Basque national identities and explores the utilization of soccer to foster patriotic feelings, exposing the often dark vested interests behind the propagation of national narratives through soccer.

This book explores several cultural and historical paths intertwined in the genesis and development of sport and physical activities within colonial and postcolonial contexts. As far as youth organizations and Western-based sports are concerned, the Independencies political split needs to be reconsidered, from a cultural perspective with practices overlapping spatial, chronological and epistemological borders. When looking at the variety of practices, the colonial legacies and the ensuing migration journeys through a global perspective, there is a need to understand the diverse ways of composing and building the postcolonial sport worlds. Multiculturalism (South Africa, France, Algeria), transnational journeys (Pacific Islands), rebuilding of national identities through sporting institutions (Ireland, West Africa), racialization of the society (Rwanda, South Africa), gender control (from the West-East to the North-South gap), sportization of traditional/old games (Americas), and so on. Following the various studies shaping this book, the ambivalence of sporting and physical activities’ paths comes up. It is apparent these trajectories have generated a mixed feeling of adhesion and repulsion towards Western hegemonies in postcolonial societies.

This book focuses on the emergence and expansion of media markets; high-performance sport’s transformation by, and effects upon, Cold War dynamics and inter-relations and the implications of the Treaty of Rome for an emerging European identity in sport as in other areas. It traces the connections between the forces of ideological division, economic growth, leisure consumption, European integration and the development of European sport, and examines the role of sport in the changing relationship between Europe and the US. Illuminating a key moment in global cultural history, this book is important reading for any student or scholar working in international studies, modern history or sport.

Football is unquestionably the world’s most popular and influential sport. There is no corner of the globe in which the game is not played or followed. More countries are affiliated to FIFA, football’s governing body, than to the United Nations. The sport has therefore become an important component of our social, cultural, political and economic life. The Routledge Handbook of Football Studies is a landmark work of reference, going further than any other book in considering the historical and contemporary significance of football around the world. Written by a team of leading sport scholars, the book covers a broad range of disciplines from history, sociology, politics and business, to philosophy, law and media studies. The central section of the book examines key themes and issues in football studies, such as the World Cup and international competition, governance and ownership, fandom and celebrity. The concluding section offers in-depth surveys of the culture and organisation of football in each of the regional confederations, from UEFA to CONCACAF. This book will be fascinating reading for any serious football fan and an essential resource for advanced students or scholars undertaking research in football or sport studies, and any practitioner or policy-maker working in football.

It is difficult to fully understand the role that sport plays in contemporary global society without understanding how and why governments, NGOs and other organizations formulate and implement policy relating to sport. The Routledge Handbook of Sport Policy is the only book to offer a comprehensive overview of current perspectives, techniques and approaches to the analysis of sport policy around the world. The book introduces a diverse range of approaches to policy analysis across the full range of political and societal contexts, including developed and developing economies; state-centric, mixed economy and market-led systems, and both liberal democracies and political systems characterized by a dominant elite. It is arranged into five sections addressing the key topics and themes in the analysis of contemporary sport policy, including: theory and its implications for methodology globalization, governance, partnerships and networks elite sport policy development, sport and joint policy agendas sport policy and social theory. With contributions from leading policy analysts around the world, including Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia, this book is important reading for any student, researcher or professional working in sport management, sport development, sport and society, or mainstream public policy, policy analysis or social policy.

How do migrant youth negotiate their role in society through sport and leisure practices? How can political theory and qualitative critical research work together to make sense of these processes? These are among the questions that led to a long-term investigation of young males’ sport practices in Ireland, possibly the most fertile contemporary setting for the analysis of questions of sport and identity. Youth Sport, Migration and Culture emphasises the epistemological and ethical urgency of doing research with rather than on young people. Engaging with the social changes in Irish society through the eyes of children of immigrants growing up in Ireland, the book looks closely at young people’s leisure practices in multi-ethnic contexts, and at issues of inclusion in relation to public discourses around ‘national identity’ and immigration. Offering compelling analysis of how ideas of race and racism are elaborated through sport, this book is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the sociology of sport, sport development or youth culture.