More than Cricket and Football

A passport to the many nations, sports stars, and sports across the globe

Contributions by Lisa Doris Alexander, Sean Bell, Benn L. Bongang, Dong Jinxia, Joel S. Franks, Silvana Vilodre Goellner, Annette Hofmann, Cláudia Samuel Kessler, Jack Lule, Li Luyang, Mark Panek, Roberta J. Park, Gamage Harsha Perera, Nancy Spencer, Tim Swartz, Viral Shah, Dominic Standish, Dan Travis, Theresa A. Walton-Fisette, Zhong Yijing

Given the presumed dominance of American sport, many fans throughout the hemisphere find it difficult to envision the role of sport beyond the confines of their own continent. And yet, world sport consists of so much more than the games Americans play and so much more than the stereotype of cricket for the elite and football for the working class. While cricket and football do indeed play significant roles in international sport, there is an even wider range globally. This variety suggests a rich and vibrant sporting environment consisting of a mixture of local traditions and outside influences. As worldwide sport continues to gain in popularity, we also see parallels to many aspects visible in North American sport, particularly celebrity and all its trappings and pitfalls.

The success of athletes from other countries in basketball and ice hockey, and the proliferation of stars imported and now exported to and from North America provides some better examples of sport’s international power. It also creates a very new kind of sport celebrity, albeit one that often shows a rather limited reach beyond that star’s own country or continent. Thus, rather than focusing on the Western Hemisphere, this collection of some of world sport’s most heralded celebrities (including stars of Motocross, surfing, distance running and more) serves as a sort of passport to many places that make up our global sporting environment.

Joel Nathan Rosen, Allentown, Pennsylvania, is associate professor of sociology at Moravian College in Bethlehem. He is coeditor of A Locker Room of Her Own: Celebrity, Sexuality, and Female Athletes; Fame to Infamy: Race, Sport, and the Fall from Grace; and Reconstructing Fame: Sport, Race, and Evolving Reputations, all published by University Press of Mississippi. Maureen M. Smith, Richmond, California, is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Science at Sacramento State University, where she teaches sport history and sport sociology. She is the past president of the North American Society for Sport History and an active member of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport and the International Society of the History of Physical Education and Sport.