Culture, Politics and Sport: Blowing the Whistle, Revisited
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Culture, Politics and Sport ‘Whannel is a foundational figure in the study of sports and the media. ... For 20 years his writing has set a high standard ... and it remains an inspiration to many.’ Toby Miller, Professor of Cultural Studies, University of California Riverside Garry Whannel’s text Blowing the Whistle: The Politics of Sport broke new ground when it was first published in 1983. Its polemical discussion brought sports as cul- tural politics into the academic arena and set the agenda for a new wave of researchers. Since the 1980s sport studies has matured both as an academic discipline and as a focus for mainstream political and public policy debate. In Culture, Politics and Sport: Blowing the Whistle, Revisited. Garry Whannel revisits the themes that led his first edition, assessing their 1980s context from our new millennium perspective, and exploring their continued relevance for contemporary sports academics. This revisited volume will appeal to undergraduate students and researchers in sports and cultural studies. Garry Whannel is Professor of Media Cultures and Director of the Centre for International Media Analysis at the University of Bedfordshire. His previous books include Media Sports Stars: Masculinities and Moralities, Fields in Vision: Television Sport and Cultural Transformation, Understanding Sport (co-authored with John Horne and Alan Tomlinson) and Understanding Television (co-edited with Andrew Goodwin), all published by Routledge. Routledge Critical Studies in Sport Series Editors Jennifer Hargreaves and Ian McDonald University of Brighton The Routledge Critical Studies in Sport series aims to lead the way in developing the multi-disciplinary field of Sport Studies by producing books that are interrog- ative, interventionist and innovative. By providing theoretically sophisticated and empirically grounded texts, the series will make sense of the changes and challenges facing sport globally. The series aspires to maintain the commitment and promise of the critical paradigm by contributing to a more inclusive and less exploitative culture of sport. Also available in this series: Understanding Lifestyle Sports British Asians and Football Consumption, identity and difference Culture, identity, exclusion Edited by Belinda Wheaton Daniel Burdsey Why Sports Morally Matter Olympic Media William J. Morgan Inside the biggest show on television Andrew C. Billings Fastest, Highest, Strongest A critique of high-performance sport The Cultural Politics of the Rob Beamish and Ian Ritchie Paralympic Movement Through an anthropological lens Sport, Sexualities and Queer Theory P. David Howe Edited by Jayne Caudwell Physical Culture, Power, and the Body Edited by Jennifer Hargreaves and Patricia Vertinsky Culture, Politics and Sport Blowing the Whistle, Revisited Garry Whannel First published 2008 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2008 Garry Whannel The right of Garry Whannel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-93377-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN10 0–415–41706–6 (hbk) ISBN10 0–415–41707–4 (pbk) ISBN10 0–203–93377–X (ebk) ISBN13 978–0–415–41706–8 (hbk) ISBN13 978–0–415–41707–5 (pbk) ISBN13 978–0–203–93377–0 (ebk) To Tommie Smith and John Carlos, to the supporters of AFC Wimbledon, and to all other people involved in sport who had had enough, and decided to do something about it, thus fulfilling the first criterion of meaningful political action. Contents List of figures ix Series editor’s foreword x Preface and acknowledgements xii List of abbreviations xiv PART 1 The politics of sport 1 1 Introduction 3 2 The complete original text of Blowing the Whistle: The Politics of Sport 27 2.1 Politics on the pitch 29 2.2 Arguments about sport 41 2.3 Ruling English games 53 2.4 Playing under capitalism 68 2.5 Sport and the state 94 2.6 Arguments for socialism 101 2.7 A guide to reading 114 2.8 Afterword 118 3 Profiting by the presence of ideals: sponsorship and Olympism 122 4 Sport and popular culture: the temporary triumph of process over product 130 viii Contents PART 2 Sport, cultural politics and political culture since 1983 141 5 Pleasures, commodities and spaces 143 6 Nations, identities, celebrities and bodies 170 7 Globalisation: the global and the local 198 8 Back to politics 220 Notes 238 Bibliography 247 Index 254 Figures 1.1 The author, by the monument to Pierre de Coubertin 9 1.2 My grandfather, showing off his exemplary technique on the bowling green 17 1.3 One of the pleasures of golf 17 1.4 School football 18 1.5 The Downtown Athletic Club, New York, home of the Heisman Trophy 24 2.8.1 The Alternative Bestsellers list 118 5.1 ‘Welcome to Wembley’ 149 5.2 Wembley in cardboard on Clapham Common, 1996 149 5.3 Villa Park, Birmingham, UK 150 5.4 Yankee Stadium, New York 150 5.5 Maracana Stadium, Rio de Janeiro 151 5.6 Estadi Olimpic de Montjuic, Barcelona 151 5.7 Wembley Stadium, London 162 7.1 ‘Welcome Real Madrid to Hotel Kunlun’ 205 7.2 Raul poster 205 7.3 Chinese man wearing Beckham shirt 205 7.4 La Bombonera, Buenos Aires 209 7.5 The Padang and the Selangor Club, Malaysia 214 8.1 ‘If teams could transfer fans, what would you be worth?’ 227 8.2 Paris Plage 234 8.3 Hôtel de Ville with sanded areas for volleyball 234 Series editor’s foreword I still remember the pleasant surprise of coming across a well fingered copy of Garry Whannel’s Blowing the Whistle (Routledge 1983) in a second hand book- shop that specialised in radical literature. It was the late 1980s, I was in the final year of my politics degree at Liverpool University and my tutor had already advised that I couldn’t possibly do a final year dissertation on a socialist analysis of sport and society. His rationale was that sport was outside of real politics and anyway there was not a sufficient literature to support such a study. While we agreed to disagree on what constituted ‘real politics’, I had to concede the point about the lack of literature (incorrectly it seems, for I was as unaware as were my tutors that there was already a significant literature on sport and society – enough anyway to support an undergraduate dissertation!). In any case, it was a real joy and a revelation to read Blowing the Whistle. I had never come across a book like this: an incisive analysis of sport from a contem- porary British socialist perspective; a perspective that revealed the links between capitalism, class, gender, the body and sport. While it came too late for me to convince my tutor that he had been wrong, Blowing the Whistle proved to be hugely influential in pointing me in a new direction that took me to Leicester University to study an MA on the Sociology of Sport under the combative guid- ance of Eric Dunning. Then a couple of years later I was in the fortunate position of being offered posts at three higher education institutions. The choice was not difficult to make – in 1993 I started work at Roehampton Institute, London (now Roehampton University), with two colleagues whose work best represented my idea of a socialist-inspired critique of sport – Jennifer Hargreaves (co-editor of this series) and Garry Whannel. We worked collaboratively to produce study programmes at undergraduate and Masters levels that were interrogative, chal- lenging common-sense ideas and exposing relations of power in the world of sport; interventionist, highlighting the relationship between theory and practice and providing arguments and analyses of topical and polemical issues; and inno- vative, seeking to develop new areas of research, and stimulating new ways of thinking about and studying sport. Our aim was similar to the aim of this Routledge Critical Studies in Sport series – to lead the way in developing the multi- disciplinary field of sport studies for university students and to maintain a critical approach to the excessively commercialised, damaging and exploitative culture Series editor’s foreword xi of top-level competitive sport. We are delighted to be collaborating again know- ing that Garry’s Culture, Politics and Sport: Blowing the Whistle, Revisited fits perfectly into our series. I have regularly used the original Blowing the Whistle as a key text to introduce students to the politics of sport. It is well researched, accessibly written, politi- cally astute and highly engaging. Indeed, an excerpt from the text is on the front of my module handbook for a first year ‘Introduction to the Politics of Sport’ module I teach. Yet, the text is very difficult for students to get hold of as it has been out of print for many years.