This is the first book to focus on indigenous, traditional and folk sports and sporting cultures. It examines the significance of sporting cultures that have survived the emergence and diffusion of western sports and have carved out a unique position not only in spite of, but also in response to, modernity.
This is the first book to focus on indigenous, traditional and folk sports and sporting cultures. It examines the significance of sporting cultures that have survived the emergence and diffusion of western sports and have carved out a unique position not only in spite of, but also in response to, modernity.
Presenting case studies from around the world, including from Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, the book draws on multi-disciplinary work from sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies and political science, exploring key themes in the social sciences including nationalism, identity, decolonisation and gender. From Turkish oil wrestling, Kabbadi in South Asia and Iroquois lacrosse, to wushu and sumo in East Asia, these sporting practices continue to capture the indigenous imagination on the margins of the western hegemonic sport complex. Situated in the fissures between the local and the global, the archaic and the modern, and between ritual and record, they inhabit a liminal space of transformation as they assume new cultural and political meanings, offering important perspectives on the complexities, challenges and contradictions of modernity.
This is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in sport, indigenous studies, anthropology, social and cultural history, or globalisation.
Introduction, Part I - Rediscovering Heritage: Identity and
Ethnopolitics,
1. Oil over Turkey: UNESCOs Kirkpinar Wrestling in Edirne,
2.
Xam Sa Coosan, Know your Heritage: Senegalese Wrestling and the
Rediscovery of Ethnicity,
3. Heritage, Spectacle, Ethnos: The Revival of
Traditional Games in Central Asia,
4. From Subalternity to Intangible
Heritage and National Symbol: Catalonias Castells, Part II - Nationalizing
the Traditional,
5. The Construction and Deconstruction of Kabaddi, the
National Sport of Bangladesh: A Tale of Its Identity and Decline,
6. A Tale
of Two Sumos: Tradition and Sport,
7. Irelands Hurling,
8. Finnish
Pesäpallo: The Modernization and Indigenization of a Northern European
Bat-and-Ball Game, Part III - Modernizing the Indigenous: Redemptions and
Disenchantments,
9. From Segregation to Integration: Changing Gender Roles in
the Modernisation of Traditional Folk Sports in China,
10. Traditional
Chinese Martial Arts: The Naming and Development of Wushu,
11. Swedish Bandy
and its Struggle with Modernity,
12. Playing for the Creator: Understanding
the Indigenous Roots of Lacrosse, Part IV - Indigenizing the Modern: In
Search of Myth, Ethos, and Symbol,
13. The Symbolism of Indigenous Sport
Disciplines: Sįmi Sports and their Roots in Reindeer Husbandry,
14. Dragon
Boat: A Traditional Asian Sport with a Modern Flair,
15. Beyond the Sweep:
The Meanders of Capoeira as a Martial Art and Cultural Expression,
16.
Between Modern Sport and Ethnic Essence: The Jai Alai of Global Capitalism,
and the Pelota of the Basques
Mariann Vaczi is Assistant Professor of Basque Studies and Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno, USA. She is the author of Soccer, Culture and Society in Spain: An Ethnography of Basque Fandom (Routledge, 2015) and Catalonias Human Towers: Castells, Cultural Politics, and the Struggle toward the Heights (Indiana University Press, 2023). She is the co-editor of Sport and Secessionism (Routledge, 2020).
Alan Bairner Professor of Sport and Social Theory at Loughborough University, UK. He is the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Sport and Politics (Routledge, 2016) and Sport and Secessionism (Routledge, 2020).
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