Sport, Identity and Ethnicity

Sport is now a major industry -- and one of increasing importance throughout both the developed and developing world -- but, until now, it has received little serious attention from anthropologists. In this first general book on the anthropology of sport, the contributors look at how different sports are used by a wide variety of peoples to express, manipulate and negotiate their identities, and to challenge the way they are defined by others.

Chapters address:

-the role played by football teams in colonial Zimbabwe to express locals' autonomy from their British rulers;

-the evolution of one of Venice's central festive occasions -- its regatta -- from a ritual of state to a sport of the people; modern and postmodern transformations of polo in Pakistan, its original home

-the resolution of problematic aspects of social life in Turkey through wrestling;

-the manner by which Catalan nationalists successfully exploited the Barcelona Olympics for their own political ends; and

-the controversy between anglers and anti-anglers in Britain.

This pioneering volume will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, sport historians and all those interested in this popular subject.