The Cultural Significance Of Global Sports

Interesting post over at WorldChanging from David Hsu entitled, Do Global Sports Matter? He tries to examine the positives and negatives of global sports, especially in the light of recent controversies.

“The interesting thing is that many of these criticisms of sport do reflect many of our other concerns about the contradictions and conflicts inherent in an increasingly technological, globalized, competitive, and fast-moving society. Many of the ethical criticisms of sport could be applied to other topics that are more typically WorldChanging, such as global competition, values, and environmentalism.”

As an aside, I have been meaning to blog on the Cricket controversy in the UK, with the allegations of ball-tampering by umpire Hair. In the meantime, you can check out some critical thoughts from Mike Marquese(one of my favourite Cricket commentators) and the discussion over at The Guardian is equally good.

Eventually I will get around to finishing my review of How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikley Theory of Globalisation. Foer’s book really deserves a little bit more attention than it has received, especially because it connects the dots between economic globalisation, multiculturalism, new tribalism, marketing and postmodernity.

When we pick at the cultural edges of global sports, all sorts of interesting topics emerge!

[tags] Sport, Cricket, Football [/tags]