Guangzhou: The Asian Games and the Chinese ‘Gold-Fest’ – Geopolitical Issues for Australia

At the Guangzhou Asian Games, the performances of China's athletes, the officials and the host city of Guangzhou were outstanding. China's journey to the Asian Games in Guangzhou and the accompanying political and sporting machinations throughout are considered in the initial discussion of this essay. The analysis subsequently focuses on Australia's metamorphosis as an ‘Asian’ nation and the sporting, cultural and diplomatic implications this could have for Australia and China. Would this signal Australia's egress from the Commonwealth Games and the Commonwealth per se, thus cutting the British Imperial umbilicus? The presence of Australia at the Asian Games may also enhance the soft power ambitions China has for its engagement in the Asian Games; succeeding in competitions that include a global sports ‘heavyweight’ like Australia would add kudos to the performances of Chinese athletes. How would Australia benefit from this shift? Considering Australia's geopolitical and economic ties with East Asia would an increased level of sporting engagement with China concomitantly produce cultural, economic and political successes? In the long term, Australia may inevitably become part of the post-colonial East Asian world: the future world of power, wealth and geopolitical influence.     

The ‘East Asian’ Olympic Games: what of sustainable legacies?

Sport has proven to be an unstoppable globalising force. The Olympic Movement has come to epitomise modernisation and the extent to which Western sport has become globalised. The philosophy of Olympism, once resting upon just two pillars of Excellence in Sport and Culture has since 1994 been underpinned by a third, the Environment. All of the Olympic Games host cities now have to support a responsible concern for environmental issues and with that the very sustainability of ‘our’ culture, and sport itself. They must do so by bequeathing a holistic positive legacy from their Games. This paper will analyse the three ‘Asian’ Olympic Summer Olympic Games – Tokyo 1964, Seoul 1988 and Beijing 2008 – by looking at the cultural, sporting and environmental legacies each has left.

The discussion of the concept of sustainability as an element of culture will embrace Littig and Griessler’s idea that social sustainability is about the quality of societies expressed through the nature-society relationships and is not merely an economically based notion.1 ?1.?Littig & Griessler, ‘Social Sustainability’, 72. In this paper we consider the three Asian Summer Olympic Games. Each has been related to a specific nodal point in the host country's national history, as a means of illustrating, indeed emphasising, the always unique impacts of context on event and process. Yet we propose that, locked as they are in distinct epochs and differing cultural, political and economic contexts, they are nonetheless marked in common by an Asian discourse heavily reliant upon economic and nationalistic motivations.

The progressive analysis of each Games demonstrates that although each was unique, particularly in regards to the expectations stakeholders had of ‘their Olympics’, all three host nations represented themselves as ‘modern hybrids’ by simultaneously demonstrating their modernised characters and emphasising their ancient cultures. The analysis demonstrates the holistic impact of these events by reference to the wide range of economic, social, cultural and sporting changes that have emerged for each host from each festival. The evaluation of the nature and significance of these legacies reemphasises the impact of the Olympic Games as a vehicle for social change and illustrates the transformative power of sport at national and global levels.     

The Asian Games and Diplomacy in Asia: Korea–China–Russia

In this article, I will look at the impact of sport on relations between states. In particular, I will study the role that sport has played in enhancing (or damaging) diplomacy in international relations. I will look especially at the role that the Olympics and the Asian Olympics have played in promoting diplomatic breakthroughs between countries. My cases focus on the use of sports diplomacy to foster the end of the Cold War in Asia, studying the breakthroughs between Korea, China and Russia. I will then look at the Beijing Games of 2008 and Guangzhou Asian Games of 2010.     

Marketing ‘Brand China’: Maintaining the Momentum – ‘The Middle Kingdom’ Resurgent and Resplendent

The multiplicity of manoeuvres that characterise modern China's geopolitical ascendancy and ambition illustrate political ingenuity used calculatedly with the clear intention of becoming invulnerable. Past recent humiliations are not to reoccur. In addition, ‘The Middle Kingdom’ is to be reincarnated: invincible imperialism pursued. The strategic plurality employed in complex compositional patterns is both imperial and historic in nature: the past is to be projected into the present and the future. The once ‘Great Game’ is now ‘The Great East Asia Game’! In the light of the Guangzhou Asian Games Triumphalism, there could be a ‘double entendre’ employed here of sizable significance. This essay considers the possibility.     

‘The Event That Shook the Whole World Up’: Historicizing the 1983 Pan-American Games Doping Scandal

Abstract

In August of 1983 at the Pan-American Games in Caracas, Venezuela, a multi-faceted doping crisis occurred that overshadowed all other aspects of the games. This essay marks the first attempt to historicize the events surrounding this watershed moment in the fight against drug use in sport. Doping was revealed in three ways in Caracas: by the large number of positive tests that resulted in the first loss to doping of medals in the history of the Pan-American Games, by the exodus of the 12 American track and field athletes who flew home rather than be subject to testing in the sophisticated lab run by Dr Manfred Donike, and by a rash of ‘injuries’ and unexpectedly poor performances that kept athletes out of the medals and thus out of Donike’s lab. In the aftermath of the games, the United States Olympic Committee implemented new policies to ensure that Americans competing in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games would not run the risk of similar public embarrassment.     

‘The emblem of one united body … one great sporting Maple Leaf’: The Olympic Games and Canada's quest for self-identity

For Canadians, the enduring late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debate between adherents of sustained British imperialism and those champions of Canadian sovereignty closed in December 1964 by dint of a Canadian Parliamentary act establishing a new national symbol, one that henceforth removed the British ensign from national flag and federal governmental identifications and replaced it with a simple red maple leaf embossed on a white background between two panels of red. This is the primary identification symbol, the logo, indeed the brand, by which Canada is now recognized throughout the world. The birth of the red maple leaf logo's legitimization in both national and international context points to a role played by the Canadian Olympic Committee, the embryo saga of which was superimposed on the initiatives of the nation's first Olympic team, the aggregation of male athletes that competed in the London Games of 1908. This work argues that the introduction of the red maple leaf as a national symbol of Canada, with respect to the logo's initial international debut at the Games of the Fourth Olympiad celebrated in London in 1908, provided the first in a series of succeeding international Olympic occurrences that lent sustenance to a greater Canadian movement towards neoliberal promoted national self-identity and a commensurate beginning of the erosion of what most Canadians would refer to as ‘Britishness’.     

‘Samurai’ politics: Japanese cultural identity in global sport – The Olympic Games as a representational strategy

Modern Japan has considered global sport an appropriate forum for not only defining the national cultural identity of Japan but also for conducting its international diplomacy. The recent phenomenon of Japanese baseball athletes ‘defecting’ from Japanese leagues to play for the American baseball leagues has often been described in political terms. This paper argues that the current trend of analysing Japanese nationals playing baseball in America in political terms can be historically contextualized by reviewing the bids by Japanese cities for the 1940, 1964, 1998 and 2016 Olympic Games.     

‘The Hefty Hebrew’: Boxing and British-Jewish Identity, 1890–1960

Between the late 1890s and early 1950s, British boxing was dominated by Jews of Russian and Eastern European migrant origin. In a wider sense, an analysis of boxing can add to our understanding of broader social changes occurring within British Jewry during this roughly 60-year period. However, involvement in boxing during these years (whether as amateurs or professionals, as boxers, managers, promoters, coaches or spectators) also had a noticeable direct impact on the identity of scores of young Jews. This article will show that social change occurring within British Jewry between 1890 and 1960 did not occur separately from the world of British boxing. Although this sport can act as a lens through which to view transformations in terms of Jewish identity, class, religious outlook and culture, it is also the case that boxing clearly influenced changes in these spheres for a significant section of the community.     

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.     

Authenticating Mäori Physicality: Translations of ‘Games’ and ‘Pastimes’ by Early Travellers and Missionaries to New Zealand

This paper theorizes how knowledge of indigenous tribal epistemologies was made ‘knowable’ through Enlightenment rationalism in an early colonial context. Specifically, the paper determines how and what knowledge of Mäori tribal physical activities was interpreted and authenticated through early travellers' tales and missionaries’ accounts in New Zealand. The central thesis argues that what was established as authentic and truthful aligned with Enlightenment rationalism, while those Mäori physical practices incomprehensible to Western understandings were deemed inauthentic and, consequently, were obscured and/or discarded. Throughout, the article theorizes the translation of knowledge into meaningful Western discourses and how these translations came to be crystallized in the colonial imagination.     

‘Welcome to the Olympic Victims Hotel’: Homelessness and the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games

This paper uses newspaper reports to document the experiences of people who were made homeless by the building frenzy surrounding the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Quebec. What these reports show is that the ‘Olympic victims’, as they were named by the press, were displaced from their homes and dwellings due to rent hikes and demolition projects related to the Games. Then, they were further disadvantaged by falling through the cracks of an already struggling welfare system in Montreal. The findings from this paper address concerns surrounding claims to benefits and legacy discourses associated with the Games, while bringing attention and awareness to the lives of the people most at risk from Olympic development. In doing so, this paper also contributes to the small but growing body of literature that aims to document the stories of such displacement and extends that timeline to 1976.     

National Media Coverage and the Creation of a Canadian ‘Hockey World’: The Winnipeg-Montreal Stanley Cup Hockey Challenges, 1899–1903

This essay examines media coverage of five Stanley Cup hockey championship series played between hockey clubs based in Winnipeg and Montreal from 1899 to 1903. Coverage of the Winnipeg–Montreal challenges contributed significantly to the growth of a Canadian ‘hockey world’ – and a broader ‘world of sport’ – during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, press reports and telegraph re-enactments linked fans in Winnipeg and Montreal together. At the same time, newspapers in other Canadian centres provided coverage of Stanley Cup matches. As the media constructed a shared sports information system throughout Canada, people were drawn into a wide-ranging community of interest centred on sport. Telegraph bulletins, in particular, gave fans a strong sense of participation in games that were being played in other places. By 1903, Stanley Cup hockey challenges had become ‘national’ Canadian events, followed by audiences across the country through news stories and ‘live’ telegraph reconstructions.     

‘A Threat to National Unity’ – Football in Jordan: Ethnic Divisive or a Political Tool for the Regime?

In Jordan, national identity is composed of two sub-national identities: the Transjordanian identity of Jordan's indigenous inhabitants from east of the Jordan river, and the Palestinians originating in the west of the Jordan river. Historically, the Jordanian throne has maintained power through an alliance with the Transjordanians. As the majority of the Jordanians are of Palestinian origin, democratisation in Jordan would likely imply the Palestinians taking over the political momentum in the country. When unrest has erupted in Jordan, as during the democracy protests of the Arab Spring, this has on some occasions been labelled as threats to the national unity by the Jordanian monarchy. No one wants to return to the civil war of 1970. On the other hand, to avoid democratisation, the memory of the civil war must be sustained. Since the civil war, Jordan has had a history of ethnic-based football riots. These are reminders of the threats to stability, security and national unity. But as long as they are contained at the football stadiums, they serve the interests of political forces wanting to preserve power and political status quo.     

The ‘inclusion’ of elite athletes with disabilities in the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games: An exploratory analysis of British newspaper coverage

The XVII 2002 Commonwealth Games held in Manchester, England, was the first major international multi-sport event to include elite athletes with disabilities (EADs) in its main sports programme and medal table. In this exploratory article we seek to examine some of the complex issues surrounding the inclusion of EADs in the Manchester Games by analysing the coverage afforded those athletes by six national British newspapers. The results suggest that: (1) there was a tendency by the British media to discuss the performances of EADs in terms more-or-less consistent with a medicalized understanding of disability; (2) the inclusion of EADs in the Games signalled the ‘end of a sporting apartheid’ between ‘able-bodied’ athletes and EADs; and (3) that the participation of EADs in the Games was said to reflect the alleged growing ‘inclusion’ of people with disabilities in the wider society more broadly. The paper concludes by discussing some of the unintended consequences of including EADs in the Games, including those brought about by the classification system used to group athletes into events according to their particular impairment. Those which were associated with the supposed need for greater media coverage of EADs in ‘able-bodied’ sports competitions such as the Commonsealth Games.