Journal of Sport and Social Issues

The National Games, designed to develop Olympic talent and promote national unity, also allow the channeling of resources for the development of a sports infrastructure in Indian cities. This study of the 1997 National Games in Bangalore discusses the intersection between urban planning, sports infrastructure, and social organization. Issues covered include financing, the political economy underlying construction of facilities, slum removal, and the projection of nationalist ideology. In all cases, the sports spectacle uncovers and activates a range of social conflicts that reveal contradictions between social equity and planning models.

In the city of Bangalore, India, the main annual festival of the Karaga draws its ritual personnel from a network of wrestling houses, where concepts of the conservation and channeling of bodily fluids underlie training. These concepts are, in turn, linked to an older model of urban planning in which artificial water bodies and gardening were integral components of the built environment. As the city’s population has grown and its economy shifted toward manufacturing and high technology, a different model of planning has slowly destroyed the older ecological system while inserting large sports complexes as important urban nodes. There is a simultaneous movement to link sports, beauty contests, and media as entertainment, with a concomitant redefinition of the body.

This article offers an analysis of how sport can occupy a progressive role in contemporary culture. Contrasting the political constitution of Latino identities with the marketing strategy of Major League Soccer, readers are introduced to alternative and antagonistic constructions of Latinos. Upon examining the constitution of Latino audiences, the author argues that sport does serve a progressive function by challenging the dominant political discourse. Although clearly in pursuit of economic goals, Major League Soccer’s constitution of Latinos suggests that the ideological marginalization of minorities in the United States can, and in many instances will, be counterbalanced by popular culture’s need for minority groups as consumers.

Previous research has identified sport as a practice that creates and legitimizes notions of male dominance. However, gender is constructed and resisted differently within various sporting activities. This article addresses the diversity of masculinities in sport through an exploration of the construction of gender in an emerging sport—snowboarding. The analysis identifies four social practices used by male snowboarders to construct their sport as a masculine practice: (a) appropriation of other cultural masculinities, (b) interaction and clothing styles, (c) violence and aggression, and (d) emphasized heterosexuality. The findings indicate that the historical context of snowboarding and the social class, race-ethnicity, and age of snowboarding participants influence the social practices used to create masculinity. Although snowboarders rely on different social practices to construct masculinity than those used in organized sports, these practices also serve to support notions of male dominance and difference from women.

The European Championship held in England during June 1996 marked an important stage in the popular rehabilitation of football in Britain. Coupled with the financial revolution that has been occasioned by revenue the game now receives from television companies and sponsors, events such as Euro 96 have seen football become a major aspect of popular culture. Such a transformation would have been unthinkable to many during earlier periods when the game was widely regarded as a ‘slum sport,’ unloved by mainstream society. This article explores the press coverage of the England team’s progress in Euro 96 and argues that the xenophobia that was in abundant evidence cannot be understood in isolation from broader social and political trends. Furthermore, the relation between militarism and the sporting ethic is considered, and it is suggested that the discourse of warfare now tends to inform popular representations of sport, reversing the relationship between the two which characterized earlier periods.

This article looks at the representation of women in football-related stories during the course of the 1996 European Championships. Through an analysis of a tabloid newspaper’s football coverage, it traces the England team’s progress to the semifinals of the competition and examines the portrayal of women in these reports. The findings suggest that despite the great strides forward being made by women in a number of sports including football, reporting in the popular press continues to promote sport as a predominantly male activity. The research also indicates that women remain subordinate and sexually objectified in the majority of sports coverage.