Sport and Modernity

This important new book from one of the world's leading sociologists of sport weaves together social theory, history and political economy to provide a highly original analysis of the complex relationship between sport and modernity.

Incorporating a powerful set of theoretical insights from traditions and thinkers ranging from classical Marxism and the Frankfurt School to Foucault and Bourdieu, Gruneau analyzes the emergence of "sport" as a distinctive field of practice in western societies. Examining subjects including the legacy of Greek and Roman antiquity, representations of sport in nineteenth-century England, Nazism, and modern "mega-events" such as the Olympics and the World Cup, he seeks to show how sport developed into an arena which articulated competing understandings of the kinds of people, bodies and practices best suited to the modern western world.

Richard Gruneau is Professor of Communication at Simon Fraser University.

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Athletics, Body Imagery and Spectacle: Greco-Roman Practices, Discourses and Ideologies
• 2. The Politics of Representation: English Sport as an Object and Project of Modernity
• 3. ‘Staging’ (Capitalist/Colonial) Modernity: International Exhibitions and Olympics
• 4. German Modernism, Anti-Modernism and the Critical Theory of Sport
• 5. A Savage Sorting of ‘Winners’ and ‘Losers:’ Modernization, Development, Sport, and the Challenge of Slums

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