CO356 - Sport Media - Meister: Social Issues

THE SPRING OF 1971 heralded the greatest geopolitical realignment in a generation. After twenty-two years of antagonism, China and the United States suddenly moved toward a detente--achieved not by politicians but by Ping-Pong players. The Western press delighted in the absurdity of the moment and branded it "Ping-Pong Diplomacy." But for the Chinese, Ping-Pong was always political, a strategic cog in Mao Zedong's foreign policy. Nicholas Griffin proves that the organized game, from its first breath, was tied to Communism thanks to its founder, Ivor Montagu, son of a wealthy English baron and spy for the Soviet Union.

A People's History of Sports in the United States-the culmination of Dave Zirin's pathbreaking writing on sports and politics-unabashedly stands with the tradition of radical athletes, sports-writers, and fans. In this ""thought-provoking, contrarian take on American sport"" (Booklist), Zirin offers a riotously entertaining chronicle of larger-than-life sporting characters and dramatic contests, sketching an alternative history of the United States as seen through the games its people played-games that Zirin argues are a reflection of the political conflicts that shape American society

Sports fandom is either an aspect of a person's fundamental identity, or completely incomprehensible to those who aren't fans at all. What is happening in our brains and bodies when we feel strong emotion while watching a game? How do sports fans resemble political junkies, and why do we form such a strong attachment to a sports team? Journalist Eric Simons presents in-depth research in an accessible and brilliant way, sure to interest readers of Jonah Lehrer and Malcolm Gladwell. Through reading the literature and attending neuroscience conferences, talking to fans, psychologists, and scientists, and working through his issues as part of a collaboration with the NPR science programRadioLab,Eric Simons hoped to find an answer that would explain why the attractive force of this relationship with treasured sports teams is so great that we can't leave it.

Sport is filled with much paradox. Sport, by nature, is inherently based on athleticism, fitness, strength, and other seemingly healthful benefits. Though such benefits are common, there is the constant presence where the unhealthy and inappropriate associations exist. This dichotomy is quite prevalent in many forms in contemporary sport. Among the most troubling occurrence with contemporary sport is the increasingly visible prevalence of criminal behaviors associated with sport. This text seeks to examine some of the most relevant and thought provoking occurrence of criminal and quasi-criminal behavior in sport. Through identifying pertinent issues, including motives and causes associated with such actions, this work aims to present a comprehensive view at these issues while providing regarding ways such matters can be effectively dealt with in contemporary society. Among the topics to be addressed in this work include: drug issues, violence, gambling, ticket scalping, hazing, fraud in nonprofit sport, homeland security issues and disaster preparedness in sport, intellectual property.

This text offers a distinctive introduction to sport in contemporary society, drawing on recent developments in sociological theory and research, particularly in relation to debates about culture and consumption. The book argues that sport can be seen as central to the "economies of signs and space" of late modernity in which a concern with the body as an object of contemplation and improvement, and not just an instrument for getting things done, increasingly informs images in the mass media, politics and everyday life.

book argues that the influence of sports on our lives is even more profound than this huge figure would seem to suggest. Exploring such topics as the role of sports in the creation of mass culture, cheating, the abuse of illegal drugs, the strange and fascinating role that numbers play in sporting events, and the future of spectator sport, this book surveys the outsized impact that sports have on American culture. The author draws from new work in such fields as history, economics, politics, sociology, psychology, and ethics to support his claims.

This comprehensive collection examines the culture of sport and its relationship with various social institutions. The editors first provide a broad overview of the field and describe the ways in which the concept of sport as a meritocratic contest is undermined by the powerful social structures within which it is embedded. Sections focus on political economy, violence, the media, education, politics, fans and community, and the body. Primary readings from noted scholars in each section address current issues such as the presence of big-time sports in educational institutions; the effects of corporate media; race and class relations; professional athletes’ ties to politics; and how sports alter perceptions and practices regarding beauty and health. In addition, entertaining and provocative essays from journalists supplement academic readings and spotlight key issues. Section introductions from the editors connect the readings to a theoretical framework that explores the perspectives of new institutionalism, cultural hegemony, social capital, and symbolic interaction and cultural construction. Providing a cohesive foundation for a wide range of readings, Sport, Power, and Society is a must-have resource for understanding the current issues and debates surrounding the interactions of sport and society.

Why do billions of people around the world love sports? This informative book attempts to find out why--by examining sports in all its facets, providing an overview of the history of sports, with a constant focus upon the social conditions through which sport arises.

The spectacle of modern sport displays all the latest commercial and technological innovations, yet age-old religious concerns still thrive at the stadium. Coaches lead pre-game and post-game prayers, athletes give God the credit for home runs and touchdowns, and fans wave signs with biblical quotations and allusions. Like no other nation on earth, Americans eagerly blend their religion and sports. Playing with God traces this dynamic relationship from the Puritan condemnation of games as sinful in the seventeenth century to the near deification of athletic contests in our own day.

From ancient Egyptian archery and medieval Japanese football to contemporary American baseball, every sport has been shaped by--and in turn has helped shape--the culture of which it is a part. Yet as Allen Guttmann shows in this far-ranging study, for all their differences sports throughout the ages have exhibited many common characteristics. They have always been a domain for the cultivation of gender roles, for example, as well as for the enactment of class and ethnic identities. They have also followed a similar historical trajectory from traditional to modern forms. Written in entertaining, accessible prose and illustrated with dozens of images, Sports: The First Five Millennia traces this evolution across continents, cultures, and historical epochs to present a single comprehensive narrative of the world's sports. Beginning with a discussion of what constitutes a sport--and what does not--Guttmann explores the vast variety of sports played by the preliterate peoples of the Americas and Africa, by the Greeks and Romans of antiquity, and in premodern China and Japan as well as in Islamic Asia and medieval Europe. These traditional sports include everything from Cherokee stickball and Chinese kit-flying to Persian wrestling and English bearbaiting. Guttmann then turns his attention to modern sports, an invention of eighteenth-century England that spread throughout the world during the nineteenth century and became institutionalized during the twentieth. Marked by an adherence to codified rules and increasingly governed by international organizations such as the Federation Internationale de Football Association and the International Olympic Committee, modern sports have all butdisplaced their traditional antecedents throughout the world.

More Than Just a Gametracks the explosion of the sports industry in the United States since 1945 and how it has shaped class, racial, gender, and national identities. By examining both professional and intercollegiate sports such as baseball, football, basketball, golf, tennis, and stock car racing, Kathryn Jay looks at the impact of packaging, salary, hype, corporate sponsorship, drug use, and the presence of women and African American players. Jay also considers the persistent belief that sports encourage good citizenship and morality despite a rise in cheating and violent behavior and an unabashed emphasis on financial gain. More Than Just a Gameis a fascinating exploration of a phenomenon that has engaged the American imagination and thrilled fans for decades.

This book focuses on the increasingly ubiquitous phenomenon whereby notable figures from the sporting world fall from grace in full public view on the main stages of media.

A cultural history of fitness explores the ways in which human exercise has changed over time and what can be learned from our athletic ancestors, evaluating whether today's high-tech exercise machines are actually productive while making recommendations based on early health practices.

Addressing both collegiate and professional sports, the updated edition of Fair Play explores the ethical presuppositions of competitive athletics and their connection both to ethical theory and to concrete moral dilemmas that arise in actual athletic competition. A major new section in chapter four examines the ethics of genetically enhancing athletic abilities. Other new material covers the analysis of sports and games according to influential philosopher Bernard Suits; the morality of cheating and the ethics of strategic fouling; and the impact of performance-enhancing drugs on the legitimacy of records. In addition, Simon provides enhanced considerations of the morality of competition in sports, the ethical aspects of violence in sports, and the arguments in defense of intercollegiate sports. (Please note we also have an older edition (2004) of this book available).

Randolph Feezell's Sport, Play, and Ethical Reflection immediately tackles two big questions about sport: "What is it?" and "Why does it attract so many people?" He argues that sports participation is best described as a form of human play, and the attraction for participants and viewers alike derives from both to its aesthetic richness and narrative structure. He then claims that the way in which sports encourage serious competition in trivial pursuits is fundamentally absurd, and therefore participation requires a state of irony in the participants, where seriousness and playfulness are combined. Feezell builds on these conclusions, addressing important ethical issues, arguing that sportsmanship should be seen as a kind of Aristotelian mean between the extremes of over and under investment in sport. Chapters on cheating, running up the score, and character-building stress sport as a rule-governed, tradition-bound practice with standards of excellence and goods internal to the practice. With clear writing and numerous illuminating examples, Feezell demonstrates deep insight into both of his subjects.

The authors combine to produce a work that addresses some of the most pressing issues in athletics today. While the book focuses primarily on steroid and supplement abuse, it also covers unethical practices on the part of some coaches and athletes to gain a competitive edge. Finally, it offers healthy alternatives to supplements for athletes wishing to gain size and strength without putting their future health at risk.

With every positive drugs test the credibility and veracity of modern elite sport is diminished. In this radical and provocative critique of current anti-doping policy and practice, Verner Møller argues that the fight against doping – promoted as an initiative to cleanse sport of cheats – is at heart nothing less than a battle to save sport from itself, located on the fault-line between the will to purity and the will to win.

Drawing on extensive and detailed case studies of doping in sport, and using a highly original blend of conceptual ideas from philosophy and sociology, Møller strongly criticises current anti-doping regimes and challenges our commonly held ideas about the nature of sport and the risks posed by drugs to health and fair play. He argues forcefully that we must understand the precarious position of the athlete and that only by containing coaches, doctors and drug companies within the anti-doping regime can we hope to ever make progress on this most important issue.

Written in a lively and engaging style, and skilfully blending empirical case studies with cutting edge theory, this book represents an important statement on the nature of sport, morality and modernity. It is important reading for all serious students and scholars of the ethics, sociology and politics of sport.

This book brings together an interdisciplinary group of experts in bioethics, sports, law, and philosophy to examine the need for regulating such athletic performance-enhancing technologies as steroids and gene doping.

The use of performance-improving drugs in sports dates back to the early Olympians, who took an herbal tonic before competitions to augment athletic prowess. But the permissibility of doing so came into question only in the twentieth century as the popularity of anabolic steroid use and blood doping among athletes grew. Sports officials and others -- aided by the development of technologies to test participants for proscribed substances -- became concerned over the physical safety of athletes and competitive fairness in sporting events.

Ethics and College Sports is a careful analysis of the root problems in intercollegiate athletics in American universities. It examines the prevalent myths that are regularly used to justify the inclusion of intercollegiate athletics, and all of the abuses and scandals it has brought to university campuses, from a moral perspective.

The most critical issues in intercollegiate sport are examined here from a variety of perspectives. The same general challenges, in varying forms, have confronted those responsible for intercollegiate sport from 19890 to the present day. The time has come to reexamine thee problems in the light of new research (such as the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletes) and new analyses; and to review our old solutions to see where they should be adapted, where maintained, and where abandoned. Part of the mission of New Game Plan for College Sport is to act as a forum for conflicting opinions on how to improve our college sports enterprise. It is not a theoretical piece, but instead relies on the wisdom and experience of those who have had significant roles in sport to discuss how far we may have come from the ideals of sport and what we still can do to correct our course. The analyses presented here, prepared by experts on the issues, explore such essential topics as the commercialization of sport; race and gender; legal issues; gambling; performance enhancing drugs; and the academic peril faced by too many student athletes.

Sport is often thought of as simply "games," but it can in fact be much more. Sport can be responsible for guiding social justice movements, igniting city-wide riots, uniting countries, permanently injuring youth, revolutionizing views about race, gender and class, and producing several of the most successful global industries. Reports of ethical crises in athletics are constant fodder for popular attention, whether performance enhancing drugs in baseball, corruption in college athletics, the epidemic of brain damage among NFL players, and others too numerous to mention. As a proxy for social concerns, we naturally think of sport in inherently moral terms. Yet we can hardly define the term <"sport,>" or agree on acceptable levels of sporting risk, or determine clear roles and responsibilities for fans, players, coaches, owners, media and health care personnel. Bringing together 27 of the most essential recent articles from philosophy, history, sociology, medicine, and law, this collection explores intersections of sports and ethics and brings attention to the immense role of sports in shaping and reflecting social values.

It's rough down in the trenches, where linemen weighing more than three hundred pounds hurl themselves at one another in brutal hand-to-hand combat, but it is nothing compared to the pain I kept buried inside so I could play out my dream-not only surviving professional football, but living openly for who I am. A gay man. (From the Book Jacket)

Using interviews with openly gay and closeted team-sport athletes, Eric Anderson examines how homophobia is reproduced in sport, how gay male athletes navigate this, and how American masculinity is changing. By detailing individual experiences, Anderson shows how these athletes are emerging from their athletic closets and contesting the dominant norms of masculinity. From the locker rooms of high school sports, where the atmosphere of "don't ask, don't tell" often exists, to the unique circumstances that gay athletes encounter in professional team sports, this book analyzes the agency that openly gay athletes possess to change their environments.

Former athlete and coach Pat Griffin makes a provocative and impassioned call for attention to a topic too long avoided by women's sports advocates. In Strong Women, Deep Closets, she provides a critical analysis of discrimination and prejudice against lesbians in sport. The book is the first to explore the lesbian sporting experience as well as examine homophobia and heterosexism in women's sport. The work is based on theoretical and historical foundations and is written in an academic yet engaging style. Griffin brings to light the experiences of lesbian coaches and athletes in their own words.

Contributors examine the lesbian stigma in sport, the evolution of homophobic language in the sport context as it relates to changing attitudes, policy issues concerning transsexual and intersex athletes, the multiple minority status of African American sexual minorities, the evolution of the Gay Games as a site where diversity and unity are valued, and the benefits of sexual orientation diversity within sports organizations.

The original essays in the comprehensive collection examine the lives and sports of famous and not-so-famous African American men and women athletes from the nineteenth century to today. Here are twenty insightful biographies that furnish perspectives on the changing status of these athletes and how the changes mirrored the transformation of sport, American society, and civil rights legislation. Out of the Shadon's shows us athletes struggling to make it in a Jim Crow society--Jimmy Winkfield in horse racing, Marshall Taylor in bicycling, William Henry Lewis in football, and Jack Johnson--and those achieving success on an international stage while suffering segregation at home--Ora Washington (tennis), Satchel Paige, Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, Alice Coachman (track and field), and Jackie Robinson. In the twentieth century athletes saw opportunities to fight for civil rights through their performances as was the case with Althea Gibson (tennis), Wilma Rudolph, Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, and Arthur Ashe. Today's successful African American athletes, such as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Venus and Serena Williams, deal with issues of race and celebrity culture. The contributors to this collection are some of today's best authors of sports history, including Gerald Early, Anthony O. Edmonds, Gerald R. Gems, and Donald Spivey. Together, these biographies not only provide insightful analyses of the athletes' careers, they tell a fascinating two-hundred-year-long story about the complex relationship between race and sport in America and how some gifted individuals achieved success on the playing field despite difficult living conditions and economic circumstances.

As Americans, we believe there ought to be a level playing field for everyone. Even if we don’t expect to finish first, we do expect a fair start. Only in sports have African Americans actually found that elusive level ground. But at the same time, black players offer an ironic perspective on the athlete-hero, for they represent a group historically held to be without social honor. In his first new collection of sports essays since Tuxedo Junction (1989), the noted cultural critic Gerald Early investigates these contradictions as they play out in the sports world and in our deeper attitudes toward the athletes we glorify. Early addresses a half-century of heated cultural issues ranging from integration to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Writing about Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood, he reconstructs pivotal moments in their lives and explains how the culture, politics, and economics of sport turned with them. Taking on the subtexts, racial and otherwise, of the controversy over remarks Rush Limbaugh made about quarterback Donovan McNabb, Early restores the political consequence to an event most commentators at the time approached with predictable bluster.

Darwin's Athletes zeroes in on our society's fixation on black athletic achievement. John Hoberman compellingly argues that this obsession - one shared by both blacks and whites in the media, in corporate America, and even by athletes themselves - has come to play a disastrous role in African American life and a troubling role in our country's race relations. This sports fixation originates in the painful century-long exclusion of blacks from every other path to high achievement. The scarcity of other kinds of " race heroes " has conferred messianic status on the most popular black athletes, which has fostered a delusion of integration while contributing to deep social divisions. Rich, flamboyant superstars lend credence to age-old prejudices, recycled " scientific" theories denigrating black intelligence, and stereotypes of black violence. This athleticizing of black identity encourages a disdain for academic achievement already too widespread among black males.

From Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, saysNew York Timescolumnist William C. Rhoden, black athletes still find themselves on the periphery of true power in the multibillion-dollar industry their talent built. Provocative and controversial, Rhoden’s$40 Million Slavesweaves a compelling narrative of black athletes in the United States, from the plantation to their beginnings in nineteenth-century boxing rings and at the first Kentucky Derby to the history-making accomplishments of notable figures such as Jesse Owens, Althea Gibson, and Willie Mays. Rhoden makes the cogent argument that black athletes’ “evolution” has merely been a journey from literal plantations—where sports were introduced as diversions to quell revolutionary stirrings—to today’s figurative ones, in the form of collegiate and professional sports programs. Weaving in his own experiences growing up on Chicago’s South Side, playing college football for an all-black university, and his decades as a sportswriter, Rhoden contends that black athletes’ exercise of true power is as limited today as when masters forced their slaves to race and fight. The primary difference is, today’s shackles are often of their own making. Every advance made by black athletes, Rhoden explains, has been met with a knee-jerk backlash—one example being Major League Baseball’s integration of the sport, which stripped the black-controlled Negro League of its talent and left it to founder. He details the “conveyor belt” that brings kids from inner cities and small towns to big-time programs, where they’re cut off from their roots and exploited by team owners, sports agents, and the media. He also sets his sights on athletes like Michael Jordan, who he says have abdicated their responsibility to the community with an apathy that borders on treason. Sweeping and meticulously detailed,$40 Million Slavesis an eye-opening exploration of a metaphor we only thought we knew.

The hardening of racial lines during the first half of the twentieth century eliminated almost all African Americans from white organized sports, forcing black athletes to form their own teams, organizations, and events. This separate sporting culture, explored in the twelve essays included here, comprised much more than athletic competition; these "separate games" provided examples of black enterprise and black self-help and showed the importance of agency and the quest for racial uplift in a country fraught with racialist thinking and discrimination.

The racial makeup of sports in the United States serves as a classic example of racism in the 21st century. This book examines the racial disparities in sports and the continuing significance of race in 21st-century America, debunking the myth of a "postracial society." Sports can serve as an inspirational example of what can be achieved through hard work and perseverance, regardless of one's race. However, there is plenty of evidence that race still plays a major role in sports, and that sports are key agents of racial socialization. White Sports/Black Sports: Racial Disparities in Athletic Programs challenges the idea that America has moved beyond racial discrimination and identifies the obvious and subtle ways in which racial identities and athletic determinism affect non-white individuals in the world of sports.

A growing controversy in recent years has arisen around the use and abuse of Native American team mascots. The Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves, Washington Redskins, Kansas City Chiefs, Florida State Seminoles, and so forth--these are just a few of the images and names popularly associated with Native Americans that are still used as mascots by professional sports teams, dozens of universities, and countless high schools. This practice, a troubling legacy of Native–Euro-American relations in the United States, has sparked heated debates and intense protests that continue to escalate. Team Spirits is the first comprehensive look at the Native American mascots controversy. In this work activists and academics explore the origins of Native American mascots, the messages they convey, and the reasons for their persistence into the twenty-first century. The essays examine hotly contested uses of mascots, including the Washington Redskins, the Cleveland Indians, and the University of Illinois's Chief Illiniwek, as well as equally problematic but more complicated examples such as the Florida State Seminoles and the multitude of Native mascots at Marquette University. Also showcased are examples of successful opposition, including an end to Native American mascots at Springfield College and in Los Angeles public schools.

Sports fans love to don paint and feathers to cheer on the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians, the Atlanta Braves, the Florida State Seminoles, and the Warriors and Chiefs of their hometown high schools. But outside the stadiums, American Indians aren't cheering--they're yelling racism. School boards and colleges are bombarded with emotional demands from both sides, while professional teams find themselves in court defending the right to trademark their Indian names and logos. In the face of opposition by a national anti-mascot movement, why are fans so determined to retain the fictional chiefs who plant flaming spears and dance on the fifty-yard line?