Of magic and mania: reflections on the fan following of Brazilian football and Pelé in Calcutta

Why do Indians celebrate Brazilian football? Is it because Indians do not have local stars to root for? Why does it have to be Brazil? Why was a generation of football fans in Calcutta in awe of an exotic South American footballer called Pelé? This essay responds to these conundrums by analysing transnational football fandom from perspectives of cultural diffusion and image-making. It situates circulation of culture in a historical study of the impact of Brazilian football, with particular emphasis on Pelé, as borne out by fan culture in India. It examines if the similarities between India and Brazil in the global meridian of development had any bearing on football fandom. Next, it studies particularly how Pelé’s visit to Calcutta in 1977 was registered by the overlapping categories of fans, politicians and journalists. By doing so, it offers a model of understanding moral/cultural networks of transnational fandom in terms of hero/icon/legend worship.     

Financial condition of Brazilian soccer clubs: an overview

In Brazil, the transition to corporate management of soccer clubs started in the 1990s. When the ‘Lei Pelé’ was enacted in 1998, expectations were very high that the Brazilian clubs would become modernized institutions capable of surviving in the recently developed soccer business. However, the results that clubs reported in their financial statements a decade later do not show the desirable evolution. This essay looks back at this modernization process while analysing the clubs’ results and their financial ratios with the aim of understanding their main difficulties and how successful they have been in trying to modernize.     

Pelé, racial discourse and the 1958 World Cup

The aim of this essay is to map out the racial discourses of the 1950s, particularly those pertinent to the 1958 Soccer World Cup, in order to better understand the main ideas about race, which were in vogue at the time when Edson Arantes do Nascimento (Pelé) became (inter)nationally famous as a great sports star. The essay argues that Pelé’s statements regarding race and race relations in Brazil were inherently based on the discourses prevalent among academics and Brazil’s black activists during the 1950s. Pelé’s professional asceticism and his belief in individualism, cultivated during his youth in the city of Bauru, were further reinforced by the racial discourses of the 1950s. These views led him to believe that any discrimination he might encounter due to his colour and class could be overcome with a disciplined and professional attitude. Today, this sort of ascetic view of the world has been accused by certain segments of Brazil’s black movements as being insufficient to overcome the supposedly irresolvable inequalities that exist between Brazil’s black and white populations. Pelé, however, has not changed his position regarding anti-black discrimination, choosing to continue to emphasize professionalism and discipline as the two most formidable tools in the fight against racial discrimination and inequality.     

From local heroism to global celebrity stardom: a critical reflection of the social cultural and political changes in British football culture from the 1950s to the formation of the premier league

This essay through a critical reflection of various social, cultural and political changes in British football, from the 1950s to the formation of the global premier league, explores how they facilitated the broader change in which football players have transformed from local heroes to global stars. As British football became more Europeanized, at the same time, players began to hold greater financial power and the conditions were set for an acceleration in the relationship between football and consumerism, whereby the new economics of signs and space allowed entrepreneurs to commodify the identity of the football club thus providing the foundation for the new consumption of football in the 1990s. Finally, the essay concludes that the development of ‘new’ football and late modern 24?h news culture supports Buckley’s suggestion that new media is primarily concerned with stories of ‘empty global stars, cod personalities and celebrities whose fame is largely self-referential’.     

"Now the African reigns supreme": the rise of African boxing on the Witwatersrand, 1924-1959

This essay explores the growth of boxing among the African populations on the Witwatersrand region of South Africa between 1924 and 1959. It details how the sport's jump in popularity with Africans paralleled migration to Johannesburg. Africans increasingly saw boxing as an activity and skill conducive with survival in this new environment, and thus the sport grew in popularity, stature, and skill-level amongst this emergent urban population. The essay further explores the various ways that the sport was disseminated and popularized during the era, thus detailing how the sport reached both the African masses and petit-bourgeois educated elite. As their presence in Johannesburg became more and more permanent, boxing came to encompass various meanings and ideals, such as notions of discipline, independence and civility, to these urban populations.     

Brazilian soccer: symbolic dimensions of its practice

This essay explores the symbolic dimensions of soccer in Brazilian society from the perspective of sports anthropology. It discusses how the founding of the game was handled, in terms of stylization and standardization of rules. This, as the essay argues, would effect amplified representations in emotional regimes and adhesion to the game, thus making it a singular sports modality for understanding societies such as Brazil.     

Mormon Missionaries and the Emergence of Modern Argentine Sport, 1938–1943

Abstract

In 1938, Mormon missionaries from North America, under the leadership of Frederick Salem Williams, formed an athletic club, Club Atlético Los Mormones (‘The Mormons Athletic Club’, CALM), in Buenos Aires, Argentina. CALM would sponsor professional teams in baseball, softball, and basketball, all bearing the name Los Mormones (‘The Mormons’). Los Mormones won three league championships in the four years they played baseball and four championships in the five years they played softball. Two of their basketball players would become national all-stars, one of whom would represent Argentina at the South American Championship in 1940. Williams served as president of the softball league and vice president of the baseball league. Los Mormones’ story is outlined and situated in relation to the various discourses that, woven together, constitute the cultural context of modern Argentine sport: physical culture and modernity, United States-Argentine relations, amateurism versus professionalism, and the spread of North American sports to Latin America.     

Spectacular Bodies: The Swimsuit,Sexuality and Hollywood

This article explores the mutually beneficial relationship between the American swimsuit and film industries during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Three examples will be used: Fatty and the Bathing Beauties from 1913 (prior to regulated film content), Footlight Parade from 1933 (when limited self-regulation had been put in place, but was not yet rigorously enforced) and the Tarzan film franchise (which spans both the second period and a later, third period of actual implementation and subsequent negotiation). Using these examples, the paper will consider several of the popular associations attached to the swimmer and the swimsuit. It will discuss the ways in which Hollywood utilised the swimsuit, the swimmer and swimming in both its films and its promotional materials and will demonstrate how through the sporting associations of both the garment and sports stars, film producers negotiated the processes of censorship and self-regulation while allowing the continued use of semi-naked and eroticised bodies, to their own profit and to that of the increasingly fashionable swimwear industry.     

‘We Will Try Again,Again, Again to Make It Bigger’: Japan,American Football,and the Super Bowl in the Past,Present, and Future

Abstract

This study is to analyse how the Japanese have traditionally received and currently perceive the Super Bowl, and for this purpose, it aims to locate the position of American football in Japanese history, society, and culture. It explores the game’s history and then examine the degree of its spread among Japan’s sporting population. A two-dimensional approach of historical study and inter-game comparison gives context to the analyses of reference frequency and contents of news media, followed by speculative discussions of what the near future of Japan’s American football would be like. To conclude, it clarifies the ways the Super Bowl has been received and is now being perceived by two groups: The first group is the general people who see the Super Bowl as the convenient and useful medium by which they could learn effectively about American culture through the one-night mania for ‘conspicuous consumption’. The second group comprises American football experts and enthusiasts, including 13,000 athletes and their OBs, coaches, trainers, and other staff members of the leagues and associations as well as the general sports fans. For this group, the Super Bowl is the apex of their favourite sport to which only a selected talented few could join.     

Guangzhou 2010: Eastern Orwellian Echoes – Yang Shu-chun and a Taiwanese Patriotic Media Offensive

Taiwanese ‘sports stars’ have been receiving national media attention for over a decade. In particular, the so-called Honour of Taiwan has been especially celebrated: for the media they have epitomised the nation's strength, symbolised its self-belief and represented its self-assertion. This essay explores the Taiwanese media reaction to an incident at the Guangzhou Games involving the Taiwanese athlete ‘super-star’ Yang Shu-chun, which reveals another aspect of this media attention and exposes national jealously, distrust and dislike – sport seemingly a surrogate for political point-scoring.     

The Gaelic Athletic Association's Invasion of America, 1888: Travel Narratives,Microhistory and the Irish American ‘Other’

This article explores a little-known event in Irish and American sports history, namely a tour made by the Gaelic Athletic Association to North America in 1888. The article focuses on a newspaper diary kept of the tour by Joseph Whelan, and published in the Irish newspaper Sport. In analysing Whelan's comments, the article seeks to understand how such material can be used to create a microhistory of a specific event such as a sporting tour, and discusses how far the methodology of microhistory can be useful to sports historians. The commentary of Whelan also allows for an exploration of travel narrative. This is a key point with respect to the late-nineteenth-century Irish, as Whelan is a tourist who will return home, rather than an immigrant moving permanently to Ireland. The history of Irish America, and the question of the Irish as 'other', has been dominated by the archives of the immigrant. What the material from the tour allows is an Irish view of America as tourist as opposed to settler. This raises significant questions for the existing historiography of Irish America. In conclusion the article argues that travel narratives of sporting events – tours, tournaments and mega-events – can allow us to approach the history of sport from a fresh angle.     

Reluctant mediator: Hong Kong,the two Koreas and the Tokyo Olympics

This essay examines the complex, and ultimately unsuccessful, negotiations between North and South Korea, undertaken with the encouragement of the International Olympic Committee during 1962–63 to form a united Korean team to participate in the Tokyo Olympics of 1964. In particular, it focuses on the role of Hong Kong, chosen as a ‘neutral’ site for the two Korean delegations to meet. It shows how the IOC's optimism for a ‘sporting’ solution was to founder on continued mutual suspicion and recriminations between the two Koreas and how the Hong Kong government's reluctance to get involved, the US political intervention, and North Korean participation in the GANEFO Games were all to complicate the process.     

Pibes,Cracks and Caudillos: Argentina,the World Cup and identity politics

Scholars of Argentine fútbol have explored the construction of fútbol criollo and how this style of play has factored into the broader debate over national identity in Argentina. Focusing on the performance of the key Argentine personalities at the FIFA World Cup from 1958 to 1990, this essay explores how fútbol represented a contested vision of the nation across five decades. After a 24-year absence at the FIFA World Cup, and in the wake of the overthrow of President Juan Perón, Argentina underachieved at the 1958 tournament. The country would later experience a number of disappointments en route to eventually winning the 1978 and 1986 World Cups. However, across this time span (and beyond) the team’s style of play and identity became the subject of intense debate. Popular discourse revealed a preference between two approaches seemingly in juxtaposition to each other. On the one hand, traditionalists favoured the criollo style, which celebrated the pibe (the young kid from the streets) and the potrero (the dusty fields where fútbol is practised) as emblematic of the nation. These symbols represented the working class and elevated the life of the barrio as an anchor to the nation’s humble beginnings. On the other hand, reformers preferred approaches that proved successful in Europe. Sometimes described by critics as anti-fútbol, the emphasis was on physicality, strict adherence to tactics and data-driven training. Proponents in Argentina equated this European approach to progress and modernity. Between 1958 and 1990, notable Argentine personalities at the FIFA World Cup embodied both of these philosophies.     

排球比赛中运动员思维特征及思维能力的培养

从分析比赛中运动员思维活动的特征着手，简明了思维能力在高水平排球比赛中所起着的微妙的，不易被人们重视的作用，对思维能力发展对策进行了探讨。     

The Rise of ‘The World's Largest Sport and Athletic Outfitter’: A Study of Gamage's of Holborn, 1878–1913

This essay explores the evolution of modern sporting goods retailing through the development of Gamage's (A.W. Gamage Holborn Ltd.) before the First World War. The essay examines how Gamage's exploited new models of fashionable consumerism to create a unique retail environment that directly targeted young male consumers enjoying modern forms of sporting and recreational activities. By the end of the nineteenth century, the so-called ‘People's Popular Emporium’ purported to be the ‘world's largest sport and athletic outfitter’. The essay considers Gamage's rise to prominence in a crucial period in the development of commodity culture. It examines the changing cultural form of shops and shopping in relation to the desires of a burgeoning mass market that sought to express and visibly display its economic, sporting, and social status.     

Seeing your way to health: the visual pedagogy of Bess Mensendieck's physical culture system

This essay examines the images and looking practices central to Bess M. Mensendieck's (c.1866-1959) 'functional exercise' system, as documented in physical culture treatises published in Germany and the United States between 1906 and 1937. Believing that muscular realignment could not occur without seeing how the body worked, Mensendieck taught adult non-athletes to see skeletal alignment and muscular movement in their own and others' bodies. Three levels of looking practices are examined: didactic sequences; penetrating inspection and appreciation of physiological structures; and ideokinetic visual metaphors for guiding movement. With these techniques, Mensendieck's work bridged the body cultures of German Nacktkultur (nudism), American labour efficiency and the emerging physical education profession. This case study demonstrates how sport historians could expand their analyses to include practices of looking as well as questions of visual representation.     

学校体育是全民健身体育的重点

学校体育是全民健身体育的重点,本文对如何加强学校体育工作,从体育教学改革、课外体育活动、业余训练和后勤管理四个方面工作进行论述。     

The Evolution of Athleticism in Elite Irish Schools 1878–1914. Beyond the Finn/Cronin Debate

The debate about the development of sport in Ireland is a lively one and is broadening all the time as more and more historians investigate it. This essay examines the criticisms by Cronin on Finn and argues that Cronin has at best an imperfect understanding of Athleticism as an education ideology. It explores the ideology of Athleticism with a focus on two elite Irish schools and points the way for more detailed research approach in understanding the extent of Athleticism in these schools and its diffusion into wider Irish society.     

跳高运动员的体成份变化观察

体成份是影响运动能力的重要因素 ,尤其是以克服自身身体重量为特征的运动项目。本文通过对 7名优秀跳高运动员体成份多年的监测 ,对体成份改变与训练、比赛的关系做初步探讨 ,并为医务监督的重要指标提供依据     

美国足球发展的历史回顾与现状分析

美国足球已经走过了近150年的历程,至上世纪末,美国足球经过了萌芽、成型、纷争、探索和转折等5个发展阶段。“足球战争”、北美职业足联的兴衰以及1994年世界杯是影响美国足球发展进程的3个重大事件。目前,随着足球大联盟部分球队开始盈利,职业联赛水平逐步提高,青少年足球广泛开展以及足球观众不断增加,美国足球运动已呈现出良好的发展态势。