The Development of Social Media and its Impact on the Intercultural Exchange of the Olympic Movement, 2004–2012

Abstract

The development of social media, in the form of Internet and mobile platforms, has rapidly flourished in the early twenty-first century. The changes in broadcasting forms of the first three Olympic Games of the twenty-first century, Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012, have corresponded and reflected the speedy expansion of this social media. This phenomenon invites not only attention to the historical transformation of the roles of media for the Olympic Games but also reflection on the concept of culture and intercultural exchange based on this phenomenon. This paper studies the relationships between social media, cultural exchange and the Olympic Games in the context of globalization. It argues that the characteristics of social media as ‘participation; openness; conversation; communities; connectedness’ will meet up with the goal of the Olympic Movement and aid the realization of the Olympic Ideal.     

‘In our case,it seems obvious the British Organising Committee piped the tune’: the campaign for recognition of ‘Ireland’ in the Olympic Movement, 1935–1956

In the 22 years between 1935 and 1956, the Irish Olympic Council and its later variant the Olympic Council of Ireland engaged in a struggle with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the right to be recognized as Ireland in Olympic competition and to include Irish nationals regardless of their place of residence on the island on the team. After competing as Ireland in 1924, 1928 and 1932, the landscape changed significantly in 1935 when Ireland was rebranded as the Irish Free State and its selection was limited to the state's boundaries by the IOC. As a result, Ireland failed to compete in the 1936 Berlin Games and over the next two decades Irish Olympic officials engaged in a campaign for the right to select Irish nationals, regardless of where they resided in the island and to be recognized as Ireland for Olympic purposes. This had serious implications for Irish sport and had the potential to split the national federations on political boundary lines.     

The Origins and Development of Athletics Among the Military,European and Migrant Communities in Nineteenth-Century Singapore, 1819–1899

There is no detailed study about the origins of athletics in nineteenth-century Singapore. This research relied primarily on newspaper records, official census reports, club membership and school enrolment to study the origins and degree of participation in athletics in the military, European, Eurasian, Chinese, Malay and Indian communities. It also makes comparison to the diffusion and transmission of athletics within the global and the various local communities. The findings suggest that a ‘foot-race’ was first introduced primarily to the Malay and Chinese community in the annual New Year regatta since 1837. Athletic events were held by the troops at Tanglin Barracks and Fort Canning in 1877 following the practice and tradition of the military colleges and camps in England. The athletic meets were also organised by the European, Eurasian, Straits Chinese, Malay and Tamil sports clubs starting in 1880 thereafter. It was introduced to three English boys' schools since 1887 after the establishment of the Education Department in 1872 and the organisation of Government and aided English schools. There were no physical education or athletic programme in the English girls' schools and in the elementary Malay, Chinese and Anglo-Tamil schools.     

The Legacy of the Games of the New Emerging Forces and Indonesia’s Relationship with the International Olympic Committee

Abstract

The Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO) often serve as an example of the entanglement of sport, Cold War politics and the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1960s. Indonesia as the initiator plays a salient role in the research on this challenge for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The legacy of GANEFO and Indonesia’s further relationship with the IOC, however, has not yet drawn proper academic attention. This paper analyzes Indonesia’s interactions with the IOC until the present time, with a focus on the country’s involvement in sporting events under the patronage of the IOC (such as the Asian and Southeast Asian Games). In addition, two case studies demonstrate the variable relationship between the two actors. First, Indonesia only narrowly escaped sanctions over a dispute on the use of the Olympic logo in 2015. Yet, the country is named as host of the 2018 Asian Games, hence showing high ambitions to re-enter the international sports arena. These incidents illustrate the significance of conformity of local agencies towards the IOC with regard to political positions and power structures. The study opens the field to local – Asian – perspectives on interactions with the IOC.     

The Impact of Gymnastics on Children’s Physical Self-Concept and Movement Skill Development in Primary Schools

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an 8-week gymnastics curriculum on children’s movement competence and their physical self-concept. There were 113 children (46% girls, 49% intervention) with a mean age of 9.4 years (SD = 1.8) that participated. Intervention children underwent 8 weeks of gymnastics and the comparison group continued with their standard curriculum. Age was a significant co-variate, a separate analysis was conducted on the lower (grades 2 and 4) and upper (grade 6) groups. The lower age group showed significant improvement in favor of the gymnastic group in fundamental movement skills. The upper age group showed a significant improvement for the control group in general body coordination and fundamental movement skills. For all grades, the physical self-concept showed a significant main effect in favor of the gymnastics group. The gymnastics intervention was found to be of particular benefit for developing children’s movement competence and physical self-concept in younger children.     

The ‘origins of football debate’ and the early development of the game in Nottinghamshire

This article continues the debate on the origins of football. It contains new data which note early football activity and initial club formation in Nottinghamshire. The authors reach the conclusion that former public schoolboys were prominent in the development of football in that particular area and see this as further confirmation of their hypothesis that many of these individuals should be seen as important in the establishment of football as a modern sport.     

If sport's the solution then what's the problem? The social significance of sport in the moral governing of ‘good’ and ‘healthy’ citizens in Sweden, 1922–1998

All over the westernised world, sport has been promoted as a ‘solution’ to many of the social ‘problems’ and challenges that face modern societies. This study draw on Foucault's concept of governmentality to examine the ways in which Swedish Government Official Reports on sport, from 1922 to 1998, define social problems and legitimate governing, and sport as a solution, in the name of benefiting Swedish society. The analysis shows that citizens' ‘good’ and ‘healthy’ behaviour and bodies are in focus of problematisation throughout the studied period. In relation to this, sport is seen as an important tool and solution. Parallel with increased critique of sport in contemporary times, a neo-liberal governmentality is embraced which in turn affect how ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ are thought of in individualistic and rational ways.     

‘Physical Education’s First Lady of the World’: Dorothy Sears Ainsworth and the International Association of Physical Education and Sport for Women and Girls

Abstract

Dorothy Sears Ainsworth has received wide acclaim for her pioneering efforts in international relations that enhanced collaboration among female physical educators in the decades following World War II. As Director of Physical Education for Women at Smith College (1926–1960), Ainsworth became a global figure, traveling extensively and organizing the first international conference on physical education for women and girls in Copenhagen in 1949. This resulted in the establishment of the International Association of Physical Education and Sport for Girls and Women (IAPESGW), today counting over 400 members from 45 different countries. In this paper we (re)consider the largely hagiographical accounts of Ainsworth’s career and re-examine her contributions to the international stage in light of her maternalist views on female sport and physicality. Indeed, women’s difference from men dominated the discourse of many international women’s movements at this time. We consider what IAPESGW’s long-term governance by primarily white and wealthy women may have meant in terms of the organization’s focus and globalizing efforts and conclude that though Ainsworth’s essentialist approach ignored earlier feminist sporting movements, and would not outlast the more progressive winds of change in the 1970s, neither should her early contributions to establishing bonds among female physical educators globally be minimized.     

‘The Best Football Team,The Best Platoon’: The Role of Football in the Proletarianization of the British Expeditionary Force, 1914–1918

This article examines the role of football, alongside other working-class pastimes, in engendering the proletarianization of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) during the Great War. The article details how the nature and longevity of the Great War, allied to the associated need to raise a predominantly working-class ‘civilian army’, stimulated new approaches to sustaining morale which embraced working-class-derived values and customs. The raison d’être of the BEF's combat motivation (why a soldier should fight) increasingly depended upon workplace-centred notions of solidarity and mutuality. In military terms, these proletarian set of motivational influences became known as ‘loyalty to the primary group’, and the proletarian sport of football became one of the major vehicles for their diffusion. Concurrently, troop entertainments and recreations became dominated by some of the temporary escapes of proletarian culture – most notably organized football tournaments, but also music hall, cinema, fairs and trips to the seaside. By 1918 the BEF was decidedly proletarian, not just in its composition but also in its values and customs.     

‘Between Work and Laziness’: Leisure in the Polish Countryside (1945–1989)

Abstract

The paper draws attention to free time activities in the Polish countryside after 1945. In pre-war rural worldview, every action in which the element of household usefulness was absent, was valued negatively, and considered to be laziness. Growing spatial mobility of village dwellers and changing attitudes towards work on farms resulted in depreciation of land as superior value. This shift together with industrialization and positive valuation of urban culture brought new patterns of spending time in the countryside. Traditionally, ‘Neighbourhood sit-ins’ – a kind of zone of pleasure and fun, situated on the border between the spheres of work and active rest – have been transformed into something totally different. The emergence of radios, TV sets, and pop culture meant that group meetings were focused on content entirely separate from work. In my article, I would like to examine the intersection of two domains of leisure in post-war countryside, time of community, associated with relaxing meeting, spontaneous fun on the one hand and organized time of the youth on the other. Another major issue I would like to discuss in my paper is emergence of private spare time and its perception by village dwellers.     

Rhodesia's ‘rebel and racist’ Olympic team: Athletic glory,national legitimacy and the clash of politics and sport

This article traces the history of the Olympic participation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, then the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, and then unilaterally independent settler-ruled Rhodesia after 1965, placing heavy emphasis on the racially integrated aspects of the sporting sphere. Rhodesia's status in the International Olympic Committee inevitably came under assault after 1965 owing to its white government and international sporting sanctions. The battles of the press, the high-level diplomatic manoeuvring, and finally the IOC debate first to exclude Rhodesia from Munich and then to permanently expel the Rhodesian NOC in 1975 are analysed in detail. As a charismatic organization, the IOC operated outside the world of rules and rational principles, devoted to certain values expressed in ‘Olympism’. Because of this commitment, and the resulting belief that politics had no place in sport, the IOC was insulated from the great changes taking place in the world at large. The newly independent world sought to make democratic equality a part of the Olympic vision, trumping the long-held charismatic principles of the IOC; the expulsion of Rhodesia was the culmination of this trend.     

‘One of the Worst Statistics in British Sport,and Wholly Unacceptable’: The Contribution of Privately Educated Members of Team GB to the Summer Olympic Games, 2000–2012

Much has been published on sport in Britain's private schools of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, but no research of modern policy, practice and outcomes has been conducted since the 1970s. Assessment of the contribution of these schools to Team GB at recent summer Olympic Games – and to international sport in general – by politicians, sports leaders and physical education lobbyists has thus largely been informed by speculation. Future government policy on physical education and sport in schools may therefore be influenced by flawed evidence. This article examines the schooling of all members of Team GB for the summer Olympic Games of 2000–2012, and compares the contribution of its privately educated and state-educated members in terms of performance in competition and medals won. Online research using the websites of schools, sports associations, governing bodies of sport, Olympic associations and the media, together with biographies of sportsmen and sportswomen, provided information about each team member's schooling, sporting background and Olympic record. The speculation was inaccurate – exaggerating the proportion of privately educated members of Team GB but underestimating their contribution.     

‘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.     

The Origins of Football Debate: The ‘Grander Design and the Involvement of the Lower Classes’, 1818–1840

This article presents extensive new material in ‘the origins of football debate’ by using the British Library's digitisation project of nineteenth-century newspapers. In so doing, it responds to claims from Graham Curry and Eric Dunning that previous works of the ‘revisionist historians’ John Goulstone, Adrian Harvey and Peter Swain are misleading and have led to hasty conclusions. It evidences a football culture beyond the domain of the public schools and highlights the shift in the locus of games from urban areas to paddocks and fields complying with the Highways and Police Acts. This compliance reduced the number of prosecutions covered in newspaper reports of the day but other games, in which misdemeanours took place, are recorded, suggesting that a broad football culture did still exist in this period. The article rejects Curry and Dunning's thesis surrounding a mid-century ‘civilising spurt’ in sport in favour of explanations surrounding the structural changes taking place in the nineteenth century, including increasing industrialisation, urbanisation, population growth, and migrationary movements. It also emphasises the emergence of a horizontally stratified class-based society and an attack on football games from an emerging social and industrial elite who were looking after their property and commercial interests.     

Alsatian Ski Clubs Between 1896 and 1914: An Exploratory Evaluation of the Role of Employees in the German ‘Sportization’ of Skiing

The study explores, with the use of a local example (the province of Alsace), the conditions of the sportization of skiing in Germany prior to the First World War. Common sense credits the upper class with playing a predominant role in this transformation of skiing into a sport. The author believes, on the contrary, that it is the employees (middle class) who are the principal actors. These key stakeholders of the new middle class (Neu Mittelstand) thus express symbolically their role in the modernization of German society, as well as their ambition to climb the social ladder. Furthermore, they make use of the same values they use consistently in their everyday working environment: applied knowledge, rationalization, technicalization, performance comparison and decisiveness. Based on a corpus of original reference sources (administration and association archives, press releases and special journals) the study reinforces the hypothesis that certain physical activities become the true ‘sports for employees’.