London 2012 – Site for Political Animosities: South Korea and Japan in Confrontational Rational ‘Irrationality’ (Part Two: Long Gestations)

Sport and politics have a close relationship. Political conflicts are re-enacted, reflected and reinforced on international sports stages. In East Asia, the past casts a long shadow! It darkened the London 2012 stage. Controversy followed a South Korean football player's celebration at the London Olympics semi-final match between South Korea and Japan. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned the player Park Jong-woo from participating in the bronze medal ceremony. He was accused by the IOC of a political act that violated IOC and FIFA regulations. Park's celebration included holding up and carrying around a sign, which was interpreted by the IOC as a political message about a South Korean territorial dispute with Japan. The incident became a lead story in the South Korean media. The IOC's decision caused intense nationwide indignation and an outpouring of anti-Japanese sentiment. It was not a unique incident. This essay examines media representations of the incident and how political controversies between South Korea and Japan are reproduced, intensified and exacerbated by media reporting of international sports events. In South Korea, insult was added to injury by the fact that IOC's disapproval of Park's behaviour was contrasted in the South Korean media and by the public with the IOC's silence regarding the Japanese gymnastics team's uniform emblazoned with the ‘Rising Sun’ flag. The evidence from the incident is clear. Mega-sports events can be inflammatory occasions for the expression of hostile and heated political expression. Nowhere is this more the case than in East Asia with its long history of fierce national animosities and memories of national hostilities and humiliations. Throughout East Asia, international sport has become a potent medium for perpetuating painful memories!     

London 2012 – Site for Political Animosities: South Korea and Japan in Confrontational Rational ‘Irrationality’ (Part One: Long Memories)

Sport and politics have a close relationship. Political conflicts are re-enacted, reflected and reinforced on international sports stages. In East Asia, the past casts a long shadow! It darkened the London 2012 stage. Controversy followed a South Korean football player's celebration at the London Olympics semi-final match between South Korea and Japan. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned the player, Park, Jong-woo, from participating in the bronze medal ceremony. He was accused by the IOC of a political act that violated IOC and FIFA regulations. Park's celebration included holding up and carrying around a sign which was interpreted by the IOC as a political message about a South Korean territorial dispute with Japan. The incident became a lead story in the South Korean media. The IOC's decision caused intense nationwide indignation and an outpouring of anti-Japanese sentiment. It was not a unique incident. This essay examines media representations of the incident and how political controversies between South Korea and Japan are reproduced, intensified and exacerbated by media reporting of international sports events. In South Korea, insult was added to injury by the fact that IOC's disapproval of Park's behaviour was contrasted in the South Korean media and by the public with the IOC's silence regarding the Japanese gymnastics team's uniform emblazoned with the ‘Rising Sun’ flag. The evidence from the incident is clear. Mega-sports events can be inflammatory occasions for the expression of hostile and heated political expression. Nowhere is this more the case than in East Asia with its long history of fierce national animosities and memories of national hostilities and humiliations. Throughout East Asia, international sport has become a potent medium for perpetuating painful memories!     

Re-Entering the Sporting World: China's Sponsorship of the 1963 Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO)

Prior to the 2008 Olympics, China's most sustained support of an international multi-sport event came in 1963 when it contributed significantly to the financing of and then dominated the medals table at the inaugural Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO), held in Jakarta. GANEFO is a singular moment through which to understand politics and sport in the 1960s. This article is a consideration of China's role in GANEFO, and the West's response to China's involvement. It explores the ways in which China used the event to navigate issues of international and regional geopolitics, and considers the diplomatic and sporting corridors within which GANEFO resonated. GANEFO was a platform through which geopolitical tensions were revealed, and China engaged in propaganda campaigns directed at the West and positioned itself to win allies among the decolonising countries of Asia and Africa – astride the artificial boundary that separated the Second and Third Worlds. China's interest in and the West's response to GANEFO reflected the ways in which anti-communist Cold War politics were conflated with racialised, post-colonial discourses and tension between Second World powers.     

The ‘British World’, other worlds,and the five rings: possibilities for trans-imperial histories and historical ‘what ifs’

In the early 1890s an ardent British imperialist proposed a ‘Pan-Britannic Olympics’ that included not only the British Empire but the USA in a plan to use sport to unite the English-speaking peoples of the globe into a world-ruling coalition. While that proposal was eventually bested by the Baron Pierre de Coubertin's movement that created an even more inclusive modern Olympics, the sentiments of the ‘Pan-Britannic’ scheme became in embroiled in debates over the national and imperial uses of international sport. Pondering the role of Coubertin's Olympics in forging a variety of imperial and national identities within the British Empire while also employing speculative alternative histories reveals the complex transnational and trans-imperial dimensions of the Olympics in modern global history.     

The Establishment of the Qatar National Olympic Committee: Building the National Sport Identity

This paper examines the process of the establishment of the Qatar National Olympic Committee (QOC) in the late 1970s as part of a nation-building process. Qatar was one of the British protectorates in the Gulf region having its international relations controlled by Britain. On September 3, 1971, the country's Heir Apparent appeared on local TV and announced Qatar's independence. In the following years, the new Amir started a campaign of nation-building. Sport played an important part in this campaign, facilitating the formation of a national identity. Meanwhile, sports federations in Qatar began to apply for membership of their respective International Federations (IFs). In order to send athletes to the Olympics, the QOC was established in 1979 and it was recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1980. The primary written sources used in this paper are official documents from the IOC, the IFs and the Official Gazette of the State of Qatar. The establishment of the QOC can be seen as part of the process of nation-building experienced by Qatar after its independence. International sports events were used to win international recognition, and investments in infrastructure, sports facilities and elite sport were seen by the Qatar government as an important approach to boost the country's international representation. However, in order to join the Olympic movement and raise Qatar's national flag at international sporting events, the QOC had to revise its Constitution to meet all the requirements of the IOC.     

Tokyo - Bidding for the Olympics and the Discrepancies of Nationalism

Since the first Modern Olympics in 1896 only a few cities have hosted or will host the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games more than once: London, Paris, Los Angeles, Athens and Tokyo. There is no doubt that the improvements in infrastructures and structural changes that were carried out for Tokyo in preparation for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics demonstrated that ‘Japan was experiencing remarkable economic growth’. The ‘development’ of Tokyo, 97% of the Olympic budget being earmarked for improvements to infrastructures, resulted in excessively centralised politics and economics. Looking at the bidding process to host the 2016 and 2020 Olympics, it can be seen that various expectations of sports are political in nature: from the political problem of remembering legacies as mere representations to the current situation of a nation basing its presence on involvement in the Olympics. The Sports Promotion Act enacted in 1961 was revised 50 years later, and policies on sport came to be regarded as national strategies. The new act became the basis for establishing the Sports Agency and specified governmental support for hosting the international sporting events it promotes. The time has come to seriously consider the necessity of critically arguing about nationalism, as well as how to determine the relationship between a nation and sport in terms of sport governance.     

Argentina and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics

The election of Raúl Alfonsín in October of 1983 represented the return of democracy to Argentina after more than seven years of a military dictatorship that left the country in a terribly distressed state. Since the dictatorship had joined the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics led by the USA, for Argentina, the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics meant both coming back to the Olympic fold and the first such festival under the new democratic government. This paper explores Argentina's trajectory towards, and construction of, its participation in the country's first post-dictatorship Olympics. In doing so, this paper reveals why participation in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics was not a priority for the incoming administration and why such participation was not conceived as a potential emissary capable of reaffirming on the global Olympic stage the hard fought, yet still emerging, democracy of Argentina. In addition, it reveals not only the determination of the Alfonsín administration to make his sport policy work but also its aspirations, complexity and ambiguities.     

East Reflects on West,East Meets West!: South Korean Media Responses to London 2012

London 2012 was a contradiction of Kipling's meretricious couplet about East and West. What was the response of the East, specifically the South Korean media, to London's selection as the host city of the 2012 Olympics? Furthermore, what were the various viewpoints of the South Korean media regarding the significance of London hosting the Olympic Games hard on the heels of the Beijing Olympics? Answers to these questions can provide insights into the geopolitics and politics of modern South Korea, which has very different relationships with China and Britain. An analysis, macroscopic and microscopic, in terms of politics, economics and culture, of media reactions in South Korea to the Olympics of the two nations can provide illuminating insights into a sports mega-event as an instrument of soft power.     

‘Make Goals Not War’: The Contribution of International Football to World Peace

Academic treatments of football have tended to focus either on the game's capacity to inspire xenophobic hooliganism amongst its followers or how it has been exploited by politicians for nationalistic purposes. This article seeks to readdress the imbalanced impression of football's social and political impact presented in this literature and in the dominant media discourse by highlighting the positive contributions made by the world's most popular sport to international relations by facilitating communication and respect for global rules of fair play.     

How can Country-of-Origin image be leveraged to create global sporting goods brands?

While much marketing research has focused on brand creation and management, less is known about the creation of sport brands. This paper complements the stakeholder model of branding and brand creation, which highlights the role of a firm's stakeholders in the analysis of brands, by including country-specific factors based on location and Country-of-Origin (CoO). Using a sample of innovative New Zealand-based firms, our qualitative study uses a comparative case method in two subsector settings to investigate how they have built outdoor sport brands based on that country's particular country-specific factors. We show how firms are able to leverage New Zealand's strong sport product category-country associations to create brand value. Our findings confirm that CoO image together with sport product category-country associations enables the creation of brands in sport product categories. Our paper contributes to theory and practice by extending understanding of brand creation by demonstrating the importance of location and product category. Further research directions are suggested.     

Not Quite Free? Irish Postcoloniality and the Career of Pat O'Callaghan

This paper explores the career of the Irish Olympian Pat O'Callaghan. He won successive hammer-throwing titles in the 1924 and 1928 Olympics as a representative of the independent Irish state. The paper argues that in these Olympics, O'Callaghan can be considered as representing a postcolonial state, in line with much scholarship on other aspects of Irish culture. However, the Irish later fell into a dispute with the International Amateur Athletics Federation and the International Olympic Committee, which were largely steered by the British in dealing with contentious issues over the Irish border, and the Irish were thus effectively banned from the 1936 games. The paper concludes with a discussion over the nature of postcolonial identities in sport, and the complexities around the issue in relation to the constant mediation over what national identities mean within the context of rule-making by international sporting bodies.     

People's Daily: An Evolutionary Narrative on Asia in Its Coverage of the Asian Games

Amid the complex international situation and entangled interests, news narration is usually conducted by the government, media and the public together by copying mainstream ideas and concepts. In covering the Asian Games, People's Daily takes on a periodical change in its narration about Asia during the history of China's participation in the Games: in the stage of ‘alienation and struggle’, the narration is focused on politics; in the stage of ‘participation and competition’, the narration becomes two dimensional, touching on both politics and sport; in the stage of ‘hosting the Games and taking the lead’, the narration is further diversified and incorporates politics, sport and culture. Such an evolution takes place in a profound international and historical context, reflecting the changes not only in China's sporting events coverage but also in the ‘mindset and insight’ of Chinese media in covering sporting events and Asia.     

Olympics,Media and Politics: The First Olympic Ideas in Brazilian Society During the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

The Olympic Games of the modern era are powerful global mediated events. Olympic cities receive an overwhelming examination by world media. As the 2016 Olympic host, Rio de Janeiro has been given an enormous amount of attention, both by the international media and researchers who looked at the urban spaces of Rio, the struggles over the hegemony of the city and the social meanings the Olympics bring to the host city’s citizens. However, studies over the historical relationship between Rio, sport and media are rare. This paper addresses the historical uses of the term Olympic by Brazilian media during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. By looking at the main articles in the newspapers of these periods, we examine the extent to which ideologies over sports have changed the way the Olympics were represented in Brazil’s national imaginary. We demonstrate how the use of expressions associated with the Olympics historically generated a closer appreciation of these events by the public. We also show how political authorities appropriated the Olympics for their own benefit. The paper concludes by asking whether or not the historical lessons from the early Olympic ideas in Brazil have been learned by the 2016 Rio Games organizers.     

Asian Football: A Cesspool of Government Interference,Struggles for Power,Corruption, and Greed

Arab politics have been written into the DNA of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) starting with the expulsion of Israel in 1974. The expulsion like that of Taiwan the same year underscored the incestuous relationship between politics and sport that is among the most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa despite self-serving denials by the high and mighty of regional and international sports. A failure by world soccer body FIFA in the cases of both Israel and Taiwan to follow through on threats to sanction the AFC for violating the charters of the world and Asian soccer body with the expulsions has shaped global soccer's attitude towards autocratic regimes. In the Middle East and North Africa, FIFA's and the AFC's refusal to insist on adherence by national associations to their principles, rules, and regulations amounted to effective support for autocratic rule in a soccer crazy region where rulers see the game as a key tool to retain power by exercising absolute control of public space and an institution that evokes deep-seated passions.     

Cycle of Conflict: A Decade of Strife in English Professional Rugby

Rugby union was the last major international sport to embrace open professionalism. In the years leading up to the abandonment of the amateur principle by the sport's world governing body, the (English) Rugby Football Union's rearguard action on both domestic and international fronts left it ill-equipped to cope with the realities of a new world order. This discussion will provide a brief review of the circumstances that led to rugby union's change of status; examine in detail how and why conflicts that emerged in the aftermath of professionalism were particular to the English experience; analyse events that have sustained these conflicts over a decade; and offer an assessment of future prospects for stability in the domestic game.     

体育构建上海形象的途径及机制研究

随着全球化进程的进一步加速，城市形象问题业已成为城市规划发展的重点，也越来引起国际城市关系研究者的重点关注。体育在提升城市内涵，树立城市形象方面具有特殊作用。上海建设全球化体育城市的目标，为城市形象塑造带来了新的机遇，如何通过体育构建及塑造上海城市形象，其具体途径及机制也被提上重要议程。本研究认为，体育构建上海城市形象的路径可以包含以下几个方面：（1）强调政府主导地位；（2）以体育实力地位培育城市形象领导力；（3）走体育赛事战略发展之路；（4）以体育产业经济接轨巩固城市形象凝聚力；（5）以体育文化交流提升上海城市形象感染力。     

‘Doing it for Dot’: exploring active ageing sport tourism experiences through the medium of creative analytical practice

ABSTRACT

This is a true story about the active sport tourists encountered at the 17th World Veterans Championships (WVC 2014), with a particular focus on the movements and memories of the world's oldest international table tennis player. Through the employment of creative analytical practice and, more specifically, creative non-fiction, I offer an (auto)ethnographical narrative designed to target your sociological imagination, engendering a deeper, personally applicable, appreciation towards the consumption and production of active sport tourism. A couple of overlapping evocative vignettes offer a candid insight into how new awareness, attraction, attachment and allegiance have been created from my personal involvement and social interaction with over 200 active ageing athletes, including an inspiring Australian centenarian named Dorothy (Dot) de Low. By sharing my story, I hope to encourage others to stop hiding in the shadows, embrace their subjectivity and share their lived experiences of active sport tourism engagement.     

Sport as a Factor of Nation Branding: A Quantitative Approach

In recent times, governments have become increasingly aware of the significance of shaping the international image of a state. However, the multidimensional character of the state’s brand causes difficulties in measuring it. The aim of the paper is to investigate whether good performance in sport shapes the brand of a nation, thus, making sport a tool of nation branding. The paper is both theoretical and empirical. Theoretically, a conceptualization of nation branding has been presented. The empirical part is focused on analyzing the influence of the level of sport on the international image of states. The level of sports was measured on the basis of the states’ achievements at the Summer Olympics, and on the international image of 10 selected countries with the use of available data concerning a states’ brand.     

疫情背景下北京冬奥会国际传播战略与实践策略刍议

新冠疫情增加了逆全球化趋势,疫情防控与中国国家形象塑造成为当前中国政府和社会各界关注的重要议题。2022年北京冬奥会作为后疫情时代中国最大的主场外交活动之一,是提升我国体育国际话语权、改善国家形象的重要机遇。基于此,结合当前全球疫情背景,从国际关系、国际舆论、国内发展状况等角度综合分析了北京冬奥会国际传播面临的机遇与挑战,并从国际传播战略和国际传播实践策略两个层面出发,提出战略规划和策略实施的具体路径,以期提高体育国际传播效果,增强中国体育国际话语权,构建国际传播新格局。