The New Geopolitics of Sport in East Asia

The global geopolitics of sport is being transformed in and by East Asia. Sport in recent decades has been avidly embraced by East Asian nations, with implications both for their image on the international stage and their domestic national identities. The three post-war East Asian Olympic Games, the ‘glittering’ Guangzhou Asian Games in 2010 and the march of Asia into the global sport market illustrate the fact that a new global sports order has emerged.

This collection uniquely discerns the ‘tectonic’ shift of global power in the geopolitical, economic, cultural and social dynamics of sport from West to East. It also reveals ‘that the global empire of commerce’ is similarly shifting eastwards. The chapters, written by leading authorities on East Asia, widens the focus, advances the knowledge and sharpens the appreciation of both global sport and regional current transformation in the making and, in doing so, contributes to an understanding of profound changes in global sport.

This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

William W. Kelly is Professor of Anthropology and Sumitomo Professor Japanese Studies at Yale University, USA. He is the author of a dozen articles on sports and Japanese society and editor of Fanning the Flames (2004), This Sporting Life (2007), and The Olympics on East Asia (2011), among other publications.

J.A. Mangan, Emeritus Professor, University of Strathclyde, UK; FRHS; FRAI; FRSA; RSL; D. Litt, is founding editor of The International Journal of the History of Sport and the series Sport in the Global Society, author of the globally acclaimed Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School, The Games Ethic and Imperialism and ‘Manufacturing Masculinity’: Making Imperial Manliness, Morality and Militarism and author or editor of some 50 publications on politics, culture, and sport.