Xi Jin-Ping’s World Cup Dreams: From a Major Sports Country to a World Sports Power

Abstract

Football is among the world’s most popular sports. It is also one which China has sought to develop in the field of global professional sport. Nevertheless, the professionalization of football in China has not to date actually improved China’s Olympic achievement in the sport. In stark contrast to the glory of being the country that won most gold medals at the 2008 Olympics, China’s poor football performance has been troublesome for the country’s leader. In 2009, newly elected Xi Jin-Ping made a public statement about promoting elite football and expressed his personal hope that China would be capable of both qualifying for the final stages and winning the FIFA World Cup. With such concern on the part of the state leader, attention turned to football, with many private enterprises beginning to echo government policy by demonstrating a willingness to promote elite football. In addition, to accelerate football development, the Chinese Government promised to take action on the separation of government football associations. Research on this process was based on the theoretical framework of state corporatism derived from Schmitter’s work of 1974. Semi-structured interviews were conducted as the method of data collection aimed at helping us understand how Chinese Government either integrated or controlled relevant stakeholders such as NGOs and private enterprises, and further, to discuss the interactions between them.     

Situation criticality and basketball officials’ stress levels

Officials are expected to perform impeccably despite the wide range of stressors they experience. A stressor that officials frequently report is situation criticality. Situation criticality is comprised of score differential (i.e., more pressure in close games) and time remaining in a game (i.e., more pressure as time expires), which affects athletes’ stress levels. The present study explored the effect of situation criticality on officials’ stress levels. High school basketball officials (n = 108) with an average of 18.1 (SD = 11.2) years of officiating experience were given a survey packet containing game situations that varied in criticality. For each game situation (n = 9) officials completed the overall stress and appraisal portions of the Stress Appraisal Measure (SAM). Results revealed that situation criticality has an effect on officials’ perceived stress levels. Both threat and challenge appraisals were positively correlated with perceived stress. Overall, these findings indicate that officials’ stress levels fluctuate within games depending on score differential and time of game. The findings encourage officials to recognise and manage their stress, possibly through their appraisals. Additionally, the findings can affect the training of officials in the management of stress, as well as prompt the consideration of potential rule changes that reflect the increased situational demands on officials in critical situations (e.g., expanded instant replay).     

It’s Good to Talk: Oral History,Sports History and Heritage

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on what appears to be the relatively under-used methodologies associated with oral history – principally the interview as a primary source of data – in the writing of sports history. The observation is acknowledged as one made from a UK perspective, not least on account of the authors’ status as monolingual researchers, albeit from the different but culturally diverse nations of England and Scotland. The points of reference within this article are, therefore, necessarily drawn from works published in English, and the substantive oral history case studies are mostly sampled from those researched in the UK to date, chosen because they are either groundbreaking or illustrative of the opportunities, methodological challenges and politics that have come to be associated not only with the method itself, but the discipline of sports history. This paper will, therefore, firstly outline the development of oral history. Secondly, it will discuss the ways in which it has been applied within British sports history and, finally propose opportunities it presents for the future development of the discipline and those historians researching sport.     

‘All-things-considered,’ ‘Better-than,’ And Sports Rankings

Comparative judgments abound in sports. Fans and pundits bandy about which of two players or teams is bigger, faster, stronger, more talented, less injury prone, more reliable, safer to bet on, riskier to trade for, and so on. Arguably, of most interest are judgments of a coarser type: which of two players or teams is, all-things-considered, just plain better? Conventionally, it is accepted that such comparisons can be appropriately captured and expressed by sports rankings. Rankings play an important role in sports arguably because of the conventional acceptance that rankings capture and express all-things-considered relations between the ranked teams or players. Standard ranking practices rely on a number of widely held assumptions. I discuss three of the most important and argue that at least one of them must be false. If this is right, the strong and growing commitment to using rankings to determine participation in tournaments and the awarding of championships is mistaken. At the least, given the conventional wisdom about rankings, my argument provides good reasons to be skeptical that any particular ranking ‘gets it right’. At the limit, it suggests that our most basic assumptions about all-things-considered athletic quality are wrong.     

Living on the edge: Psychological drivers of athletes’ intention to re-patronage extreme sporting events

Extreme sports are a multi-billion-dollar marketing phenomenon. The authors explore in the context of extreme sports the relationship between risk-taking attitude, perceived control, self-enhancement, event image, and re-patronage intention, through the lens of edgework theory and cognitive adaptation. The authors advance a theoretical model of multiple moderated mediation that provides insights for understanding what drives consumer-athletes’ intention to be loyal to extreme sporting events. The authors test the model with the PROCESS macro in SPSS on 500 active participants in such events and find that risk-taking leads to feelings of self-enhancement, especially when consumers feel in control of the risks they face. Self-enhancement in turn leads to re-patronage intention, especially when consumers have a positive image of the event.     

Sports’ disciplinary legacy and the challenge of ‘coaching differently’

Be empowering. Be athlete-centered. Be autonomy supportive. These are three related topics currently being promoted by sport psychologists and sport pedagogists in an effort to recognize athletes’ unique qualities and developmental differences and make coaching more holistic and coaches more considerate. This has led us to ask, how likely are such initiatives to lead to coaches putting their athletes at the center of the coaching process given that coaches’ practices have largely been formed through relations of power that subordinate and objectify athletes’ bodies through the regular application of a range of disciplinary techniques and instruments [e.g. Barker-Ruchti, N., &; Tinning, R. (2010). Foucault in leotards: Corporeal discipline in women's artistic gymnastics. Sociology of Sport Journal, 27, 229–250; Heikkala, J. (1993). Discipline and excel: Techniques of the self and body and the logic of competing. Sociology of Sport Journal, 10, 397–412; Gearity, B., &; Mills, J. P. (2012). Discipline and punish in the weight room. Sports Coaching Review, 1, 124–134]? In other words, to try to develop athlete-centered coaches capable of coaching in ways that will empower their athletes without also problematizing the discursive formation of coaches’ practices concerns us [Denison, J., &; Mills, J. P. (2014). Planning for distance running: Coaching with Foucault. Sports Coaching Review, 3, 1–16]. Put differently: how can athlete empowerment initiatives be anything more than rhetoric within a disciplinary framework that normalizes maximum coach control? It is this question that we intend to explore in this paper. More specifically, as Foucauldians, we will argue that coaching with greater consideration for athletes’ unique qualities and developmental differences needs to entail coaching in a less disciplinary way and with an awareness and appreciation of the many unseen effects that disciplinary power can have on coaches’ practices and athletes’ bodies.     

‘Women can’t referee’: exploring the experiences of female football officials within UK football culture

The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of female (association) football officials who officiate in amateur men’s and boys’ football matches in two UK counties (Warwickshire and Somerset). The research presents a view of men’s football from a position that has hitherto been overlooked in the social exploration of football culture. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork collected between September and December 2012, the findings provide insight into some women’s experiences of sexism and marginalization in predominantly male football contexts. Participant observations, formal semi-structured interviews and a range of informal conversations with four female match officials demonstrated a wide range of abuse that could generally be construed as sexist. The women used various strategies to overcome the hostile attitudes that often greeted their presence on the football pitch. Moreover, they continuously negotiated their identities as females and football officials in a space where men and masculinity are prevalent.     

‘Nothing but Trouble’: The Soviet Union's Push to ‘Democratise’ International Sports During the Cold War, 1959–1962

Analysing internal documents from recently accessible Soviet archives as well as International Olympic Committee (IOC) correspondence, this article explores how Soviet sports administrators sought to gain influence and authority in international sports in order to advance Soviet state goals during the Cold War. To counter the ‘reactionary’, ‘Anglo-American’ bloc they perceived in the IOC and International Federations (IFs), members of the Soviet All-Union Committee on Physical Culture and Sport sought to ‘democratise’ international sports organisations by transforming them into truly international bodies that included representatives from all regions of the world, especially those sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Because of the governing culture of the IOC and the personalities of many of its members, any stance taken on by Soviet members could not overtly challenge Olympic ideals. Couching their call to expand Olympism in the principles of international cooperation, democracy and the right for everyone to participate in sports, Soviet administrators could present themselves as dedicated promoters of sport and use their clout to further Soviet interests. Through their efforts to increase Soviet influence globally, Soviet administrators challenged the insularity of the IOC and IFs and helped to transform international sports and the Olympic Games into a truly global movement.     

Sports coaches as ‘dangerous individuals’—practice as governmentality

Recent concern surrounding sports coaches' interaction with young people has reflected a fundamental change in the way coaches and others regard the role of sports. In this paper, we consider the identification and definition of the contemporary sports coach (whether acting in a professional or volunteer capacity) as, in Foucault's term, a ‘dangerous individual’. We suggest that the mainstream discourse of child protection and safeguarding, variously interpreted and applied, has contributed to a culture of fear in sports coaching practice. Drawing on data from a recently completed Economic and Social Research Council-funded research project, we argue that contradictions in policy and practice, which serve to privilege a particular discourse, have cast the coach as both predator and protector of young sports performers. This has undermined the role of the coach, led to intergenerational fear, created doubt about coaches' intentions and promoted their adoption of defensive and protective practices. Utilising the concept of governmentality, we argue that, as a consequence, fundamental trust-based relationships, necessary in healthy athlete???coach engagement, have been displaced by a discourse embodied in sterile delivery and procedure governed by regulation and suspicion.     

From Exclusion to Inclusion: Changes in Women’s Roles in Folk Sports and Indigenous Physical Culture in China

Abstract

The physical culture of Chinese folk sports is embedded in religions and rituals that have been predominantly ruled by men. However, this situation has been changing as the forms and meanings of folk sports transform in modern China. Based on the literature and interviews, in this research, the Funeral Dance of the Tujia ethnic group was considered as a case to explore how gender roles in Tujia indigenous physical activity changed during the modernizing process. Given the transformation of Funeral Dance from an indigenous funeral ritual to a national fitness programme and public and commercial performances, Tujia women have gained social access, legal status, national identity, and value, allowing them to participate in the dance. Policy interventions, capitalist drive, and social progress constituted an integral force that has systematically challenged the engendered nature of Chinese folk sports. Nevertheless, in Tujia’s conceptual framework, there is an invisible curtain between the stage and backstage of Funeral Dance performances. In the ‘front’, the participation of women is fully encouraged; however, ‘backstage’, the gender taboo remains as a so-called sporting tradition. The inclusion of both genders in folk sports is an unavoidable tendency in China, though the gendered boundaries continue to impact on women’s participation.     

Examining 50 years of ‘beautiful’ in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue

The year 2014 marked the 50th Anniversary of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue (SISI). I argue that SISI is problematic for the continued struggle of women in sport given the nature and the extent of sexual objectification. The SISI has evolved over the years from a bathing suit fashion spread to a contemporary multimedia colossal. For example, to help celebrate the 50th anniversary, SISI teamed up with Mattel and featured Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Barbie in the February 2014 issue, and a special collector’s item Barbie doll was produced and sold exclusively at Target. Sport is a celebration of human variety, yet Sports Illustrated rarely includes female athletes on their covers, and instead pushes a product that celebrates heterosexuality and sexual objectification of females.     

Understanding sport event volunteers’ continuance intention: An environmental psychology approach

The purpose of this study was to investigate influences of environmental and personal factors on volunteers’ behavioral intention. More specifically, the authors examined the relationships among work climate, intrinsic motivation, attitude, emotional exhaustion, and continuance intention through the lens of environmental psychology model. Survey forms tapping the interested outcomes were collected from 924 volunteers of a national sporting event in China. Results of structural equational modeling supported all hypothesized relationships, except the negative relationship between emotional exhaustion and continuance intention. This study expanded the understanding and application of the environmental psychology model in the context of volunteerism in sport.     

解析Extreme—Sports

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Sports and Naiveté

Abstract

This paper examines varieties of naiveté manifested in the world of sport. In particular, I examine epistemological, ethical, and metaphysical naiveté. My contention is that virtually from cradle to grave forms of naiveté toward sport are present. We are tempted and all too often succumb to the temptation to accept appearances. But the initial appearances of sport often disappoint, and the underlying reality that confronts us is sometimes a hard reality. Faced with disappointment and exposed illusions, one’s next step may be to adopt a hermeneutics of suspicion towards sport. There is no going back to the earlier naive stance. But is this the final word on the matter? Once one has adopted a critical perspective towards sport, is it possible to join the hermeneutics of suspicion to what Wendy Doniger refers to as a “hermeneutics of retrieval”? That is, after the first naiveté toward sport is exposed as inadequate, is it possible to arrive at what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur calls a “second naiveté” that allows one to appreciate, in a renewed and legitimate way, a phenomenon such as sport, subsequent to the loss of layers of innocence? In this paper I examine whether, in the case of sport, this can be done with integrity.     

Global Perspectives on Sports and Movement Cultures: From Past to Present – Modern Sports between Nationalism,Internationalism, and Cultural Imperialism

The presentation uses the slogan of the ISHPES-congress ‘Global perspectives on Sports and Movement Cultures: From Past to Present’ in Qatar, by focusing on the development of modern sports which involve nationalism, internationalism, and cultural imperialism. Theoretical considerations on sports history and universal history form the introduction to the presentation. Sports have indeed become universal and taken on global perspectives, but both factors are based on local, regional, and national physical cultures. In a second step, the thesis of sport as a ‘pattern of modern universal culture’ (Bausinger) is discussed. Deep structures of anthropologically based categories of (natural) physical cultures like running, jumping, or throwing are differentiated from surface-oriented structures such as man-made sport. The notion of sport as a dominant, but permanently changing form (and content) of modern physical culture is described and explained with respect to the work of Allen Guttmann and Norbert Elias.     

From the Institutionalisation of ‘All Disabilities’ to Comprehensive Sports Integration: France Joining the Paralympic Movement (1954–2012)

This article presents the institutional implications and ideologies in the organisation of a Sports Movement for the disabled, whether a physical or sensory handicap, and focusing particular attention on its development in France, linked with international structures. The emergence and development in France of sports organisations for the disabled is based on a different model from that introduced in England by Guttmann through the Stoke Mandeville Games. From the 1960s, both trends, one supported by physicians and the other by individuals concerned with disabilities, structured the International Movement as a contest of negotiations and competition. The objective of rehabilitating paraplegics put in place at Stoke Mandeville gradually gave way to a sport rational and the integration of all types of disability within the Movement. The desire to unite in a single organisation was the driving force of the Movement in its search for dual recognition, on the one hand, as the representative of all physical and sensory deficiencies and, on the other, by the able-bodied sports councils and, in particular, the International Olympic Committee. However, this raised a number of issues inherent to any deficiency when taking into account its specific peculiarities.     

Last Man Picked. Do Mainstream Historians Need to Play with Sports Historians?

This polemical essay explores whether ‘mainstream’ political and social historians need to engage with the history of sport. It recounts the coercive nature of the author's encounters with sports and sports history and suggests that greater integration of the history of sport into histories of Britain relies on a mutual understanding of the imperatives of academic historians, not least in the world of the Research Excellence Framework and the ‘impact’ agenda.