Forty Years of Sport and Social Change, 1968-2008: To Remember Is to Resist

1968 was a year of protest in civil society (Prague, Paris, Chicago) and a year of protest in sport. After a world-wide campaign, the anti-apartheid movement succeeded in barring South Africa from the Olympic Games, while US athletes from the Olympic Project for Human Rights used the medals podium to decry the racism of North America. Meanwhile, students in Mexico demonstrated against social priorities in Mexico, the host of the 1968 Games. These events contributed significantly to the rejection of the idea that sports are apolitical, and stimulated the scholarly study of sport across the social sciences.

Leading up to the Beijing Olympic Games, similar dynamics were played out across the globe, while a campaign was underway to boycott the ‘Genocide Olympics’. The volume, To Remember is to Resist, came out of a three-day conference on sports, human rights and social change hosted by the University of Toronto forty years after Mexico and eighty days before the Beijing Opening Ceremony.

The contributions to this volume capture the memories of activists who were "on the ground" using sport as a site for the struggle for human rights and provide scholarly examinations of past and current human rights movements in sport.
This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Russell Field is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management at the University of Manitoba, whose current research examines the contested meanings of global sporting events.
Bruce Kidd is currently Dean of the Faculty of Physical Education and Health at the University of Toronto. During more than forty years, Kidd has combined careers as an internationally ranked athlete, coach, sports administrator, professor and dean with critical scholarly and popular writing about sport, often on the issues in which he has been directly involved.

Foreword: 1968 and All That: Social Change and the Social Sciences of Sport Peter Donnelly 1. ‘To Remember is to Resist’: An Introduction Russell Field Section 1: Remembering 2. The Conservative Vision of the Amateur Ideal and its Paradoxical Whitening Power: The Story of Valerie Jerome in 1950s and 1960s Canadian Track and Field Valerie Jerome and Stuart Parker 3. The Athlete as Sisyphus: Reflections of an Athlete Advocate Ann Peel 4. Tony Suze’s Reflections on the Importance of Sport in the Struggle to End Apartheid Chuck Korr 5. The Untold Story of Robben Island: Sports and the Anti-apartheid movement Anthony Suze Section 2: Resisting 6. ‘In Good Conscience’: Andy Flower, Henry Olonga and the death of democracy in Zimbabwe Callie Batts 7. Social Change and Popular Culture: Seminal Developments at the Interface of Race, Sport and Society Harry Edwards 8. Anti-Apartheid Boycotts and the Affective Economies of Struggle: The Case of Aotearoa New Zealand Malcolm MacLean 9. It's Not Just Sport: Delhi and the Olympic Torch Relay Boria Majumdar and Nalin Mehta 10. Between Small Everyday Practices and Glorious Symbolic Acts: Sport-based Resistance Against the Communist Regime in Czechoslovakia Dino Numerato Section 3: Continuing contemporary Struggles 11. The Ambiguities of Development: Implications for ‘Development Through Sport’ David R. Black 12. One Day, One Goal? PUMA, Corporate Philanthropy and the Cultural Politics of Brand ‘Africa’ Michael D. Giardina 13. ‘No Olympics on Stolen Native Land’: Contesting Olympic Narratives and Asserting Indigenous Rights within the Discourse of the 2010 Vancouver Games Christine M. O’Bonsawin 14. Epilogue: The Struggles Must Continue Bruce Kidd