Syllabus
Note: The last two meetings will be double in length, and thus there have extra readings (although shorter pieces), make sure you plan ahead for them. 6 Apr (Week 1)
Introduction to the course: What is a sport and how can anthropologists study it?
Readings
Besnier, Brownell & Carter, “Introduction” and “Epilogue”
Optional
Besnier, Niko, and Susan Brownell. 2012. “Sport, Modernity, and the Body.” Annual Review of Anthropology 41: 443–59.
GLOBALSPORT website: http://global-sport.eu 13 Apr (Week 2)
Sport in the ancient world: power games in ballcourts, the stadium, and the arena.
Readings
Besnier, Brownell & Carter, “Sport, Anthropology, and History”
Optional
Hill, Warren D., and John E. Clark. 2001. “Sports, Gambling, and Government: America’s First Social Compact?” American Anthropologist 103: 331–45.
Pritchard, David M. 2009. “Sport, War and Democracy in Classical Athens.” International Journal of the History of Sport 26: 212–45. 20 Apr (Week 3)
Sport, colonialism, and imperialism: the emergence of modern sport; sport as an example of early globalization; sport as a tool of colonial oppression and resistance.
Readings
Besnier, Brownell & Carter, “Sport, Colonialism, and Imperialism”
Optional
Hokowhitu, Brendan. 2004, “Tackling Māori Masculinity: Genealogy of Savagery and Sport.” TheContemporary Pacific 16: 259–84.
Film
· Trobriand Cricket (to be watched in the course meeting) 27 Apr (Week 4)
Sport and its complex relationship to health: bodies, humours, and hormones.
Readings
Besnier, Brownell & Carter, “Sport, Health, and the Environment”
Optional
· Lucia, Amanda L. 2020. “Anxiety over Authenticity: American Yoga and the Problem of Whiteness.” In White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals, 69–98. Oakland: University of California Press. (Website) 4 May (Week 5)Sport and social inequality 1: how sport creates socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic hierarchies.
Readings
Besnier, Brownell & Carter, “Sport, Social Class, Race, and Ethnicity”
Optional
Fuentes, Sebastián. 2018. “The Geography of Rugby in Buenos Aires: Class Inequalities Through the Lens of Sports.” GLOBALSPORT website, 31 January, https://bit.ly/3srCujW
Haugen, Matthew. 2021. “Neoliberalism, Masculinity, and Social Mobility in Chinese Tennis.” In Besnier, Calabrò & Guinness, 119–136.
McManus, John. 2021. “Benevolent Hosts, Ungrateful Guests: African Footballers, Hospitality and the Sports Business in Istanbul.” In Besnier, Calabrò & Guinness, 25–46. 11 May (Week 6)
Sport and social inequality 2: the tortuous relationship of sport to gender, sex, and sexuality.
Readings
Besnier, Brownell & Carter, “Sport and Sex, Gender, and Sexuality”
Optional
Borenstein, Hannah. 2021. “Labouring Athletes, Labouring Mothers: Ethiopian Women Athletes’ Bodies at Work.” In Besnier, Calabrò & Guinness, 65–82.
Guinness, Daniel, and Xandra Hecht. 2021. “Fijian Rugby Wives and the Gendering of Globally Mobile Families.” In Besnier, Calabrò & Guinness, 139–156. 18 May (Week 7)
“Mega sport”: sport as global spectacle and the gift economy of mega-events.
Readings
Besnier, Brownell & Carter, “Sport, Cultural Performance, and Mega-Events” 25 May (Weeks 8–10)
Sport constructs the nation and the citizen.
Readings
Besnier, Brownell & Carter, “Sport, Nation, and Nationalism”
Optional
Guinness, Daniel, and Niko Besnier. 2016. “Nation, Nationalism, and Sport: Fijian Rugby in the Local-Global Nexus.” Anthropological Quarterly 89, no. 4: 1109–42. 25 May (Weeks 8–10)
Sport as utopia: sport for development and peace, sport as hope for a better life.
Readings
Besnier, Brownell & Carter, “Sport in the World System”
Optional
Banaś, Paweł. 2016. “Playing Football on the Margins: West African Football Players in Poland.” GLOBALSPORT website, 25 September, https://bit.ly/3HFELMZ
Hann, Mark. 2021. “The Dream Is to Leave: Imagining Migration and Mobility through Sport in Senegal.” In Besnier, Calabrò & Guinness, 195–212. 1 Jun (Weeks 11–12)
Ability and disability in the sport world.
Readings
Eveleth, Rose. 2012. “Should Oscar Pistorius’s Prosthetic Legs Disqualify Him from the Olympics? Scientists Debate Whether Prosthetic Legs Give Pistorius an Unfair Advantage in the 400-Meter Race,” Scientific American, 24 July, https://bit.ly/3ItyNjr
· Howe, P. David. 2018. “Athlete, Anthropologist and Advocate: Moving toward a Lifeworld Where Difference is Celebrated. Sport and Society 21, no. 4: 678–688. (Website)
Film
· Murderball (to be watched in the course meeting, if available) 1 Jun (Weeks 11–12)
Enhancing, doping, and sport cyborgs: the politics and culture of sport regulation.
Henne, Kathryn. 2010. “WADA, the Promises of Law, and the Landscapes of Antidoping Regulation.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 33, no. 2: 306–25.
Kovač, Uroš. 2016. “‘Juju’ and ‘Jars’: How African Athletes Challenge Western Notions of Doping.” The Conversation Africa, 28 October, https://bit.ly/3vppZHq
Annotation
Sport brings together seemingly incompatible aspects of human existence, such as pleasure and violence, competition and sociality, work and leisure, hierarchy and equality, and morality and corruption. It is thus a particularly productive lens through which we can explore many of the topics that are of interest to anthropologists and other social scientists, and this course explores what we can learn about broad questions in anthropology through the lens of sport.
Few activities in the lives of ordinary people around the world bring together physicality, emotions, politics, money, and morality as dramatically as sport. Whether in Brazil’s huge soccer stadiums or parks in China, on baseball diamonds in Cuba or rugby fields in Fiji, or in wrestling arenas in Senegal, human beings test their physical limits, invest remarkable amounts of emotional energy, bet money, perform witchcraft, ingest substances, and display what they think is important in life. Sport plays a tremendously important role in setting boundaries between groups, contesting them, defining what is normal and what is extraordinary, and entangling the everyday life of ordinary people with the state, the nation, and the global. Thus, while sport is easy to dismiss as an inconsequential aspect of our lives, on closer inspection it emerges as a microcosm of what life is about. To borrow a phrase from Émile Durkheim, one of the founders of the modern social sciences, sport provides a window onto “the serious life.”