{"id":2110,"date":"2018-07-09T09:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T14:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/?p=2110"},"modified":"2018-07-11T08:54:35","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T13:54:35","slug":"the-world-cup-national-unity-and-globalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2018\/07\/09\/the-world-cup-national-unity-and-globalization\/","title":{"rendered":"The World Cup, National Unity, and Globalization"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_2113\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2113\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/caochopp\/14542840305\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-2113\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2018\/07\/14542840305_ccb657a3f8_z-600x129.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"129\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2018\/07\/14542840305_ccb657a3f8_z-600x129.jpg 600w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2018\/07\/14542840305_ccb657a3f8_z-300x65.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2018\/07\/14542840305_ccb657a3f8_z.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2113\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Rodrigo Soldon Souza, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h5>The FIFA World Cup is in full swing in Russia, and fans from all over the world have been traveling or tuning in to catch their favorite teams and players. The World Cup may seem like fun and games, but for social scientists all over the world, soccer &#8212; or \u201cfootball,\u201d as most of the world calls it &#8212; is Exhibit A in the argument that sport and its mega-events are a powerful social force on the world stage.<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lboro.ac.uk\/departments\/ssehs\/staff\/richard-giulianotti\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Richard Giulianotti <\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.abdn.ac.uk\/staffnet\/profiles\/r.robertson\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Roland Robertson<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. 2009. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/us.sagepub.com\/en-us\/nam\/globalization-and-football\/book229013\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Globalization and Football<\/span><\/em><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Sage. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www2.le.ac.uk\/departments\/sociology\/people\/edunning\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Eric Dunning<\/span><\/a>.<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 1999.<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.taylorfrancis.com\/books\/9781134870141\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sport Matters: Sociological Studies of Sport, Violence and Civilisation<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Routledge. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.uclan.ac.uk\/staff_profiles\/professor_john_horne.php\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">John Horne<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/univie.academia.edu\/WolframManzenreiter\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wolfram Manzenreiter<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. 2006. &#8220;<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1111\/j.1467-954X.2006.00650.x\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An Introduction to the Sociology of Sports Mega-Events<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.&#8221; <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Sociological Review <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">54(2): 1-24.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>Sport elites and enthusiasts often celebrate the positive, community-building dimensions of soccer\u2019s social power, highlighting soccer\u2019s role in building national unity and fostering international cooperation. Across various geographic boundaries and historical periods, soccer can and often does bring people together through shared traditions, social networks, and goals. International sports can even shape international politics and diplomacy.<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/arts.brighton.ac.uk\/staff\/alan-tomlinson\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alan Tomlison<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pem.cam.ac.uk\/fellows-staff\/fellows-2\/professor-chris-young\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Christopher Young<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. 2006. <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sunypress.edu\/p-4194-national-identity-and-global-sp.aspx\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">National Identity and Global Sports: Events<\/span><\/i> <i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Culture, Politics, and Spectacle in the Olympics and the Football World Cup<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. State of New York University Press. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pem.cam.ac.uk\/international-programmes\/pembroke-kings-programme\/academics\/courses\/professor-lincoln-allison\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lincoln Allison.<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 2004. <\/span><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.taylorfrancis.com\/books\/9781134281589\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Global Politics of Sport: The Role of Global Institutions in Sport<\/span><\/a><\/em>.\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Routledge.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>As TSP co-Publisher Doug Hartmann has insisted for years however, even as sport builds community and social connections, it simultaneously crates differences and distinctions, some of which can lead to conflict or inequality. Global soccer exhibits these social dynamics as well. For example, the popularity of sports and competition in many parts of the world can be connected to historical processes of colonialism and imperialism. Another common theme in the social scientist\u2019s playbook is the racism and violence that so often accompanies soccer in both national and international settings.<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/bencarrington.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ben Carrington<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. 1998. &#8220;\u2018Football\u2019s Coming Home,\u2019 But Whose Home? And Do We Want It?: Nation, Football and the Politics of Exclusion.&#8221; Pp. 121-143 in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.routledge.com\/Fanatics-Power-Identity-and-Fandom-in-Football\/Brown\/p\/book\/9780415181044\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fanatics: Power, Identity, and Fandom in Football<\/span><\/i><\/a>.\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Routledge. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lboro.ac.uk\/departments\/ssehs\/staff\/richard-giulianotti\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Richard Guilianotti<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (ed). 2013.\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Football-Violence-Identity-Richard-Guilianotti\/dp\/0415098386\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Football, Violence and Social Identity<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Routledge. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All this might help explain why some scholars have been cautious and critical of the Russian World Cup, such as Jules Boykoff, who warns against the presence of bigotry and ultranationalism in an op-ed with the\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/la-oe-boykoff-world-cup-russia-20180514-story.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LA Times<\/span><\/a>.<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The complicated intersections of sport, power, and race means that there are times when it\u2019s not all fun and games.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4>For more, check out this <em>NBC Think<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/think\/opinion\/russia-s-2018-world-cup-run-over-putin-dictators-everywhere-ncna890056\">article<\/a> on\u00a0\u201csportwashing\u201d&#8211; using mega-sports events to elevate a country or politician&#8217;s reputation and distract from their negative human-rights records.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The FIFA World Cup is in full swing in Russia, and fans from all over the world have been traveling or tuning in to catch their favorite teams and players. The World Cup may seem like fun and games, but for social scientists all over the world, soccer &#8212; or \u201cfootball,\u201d as most of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,15,13,85,14],"tags":[226,38543,477,105278,64,258,38541,1046,26934,105281,95502,1588,3984,669,38546,38542,82,947,50,108,133,4496],"class_list":["post-2110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-culture","category-inequality","category-politics","category-race","tag-colonialism","tag-culture","tag-football","tag-global-sports","tag-globalization","tag-imperialism","tag-inequality","tag-international","tag-international-politics","tag-international-sports","tag-mega-events","tag-nation","tag-national-identity","tag-nationalism","tag-politics","tag-race","tag-racism","tag-soccer","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-violence","tag-world-cup"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2110"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2119,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions\/2119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}