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Sport, Prestige and International Relations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Lincoln Allison  and
Terry Monnington
Lincoln Allison
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Terry Monnington
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Extract

In An Essay Written In The Mid-1980S Trevor Taylor Concluded that ‘. . . international relations scholars show little sign of seriously considering the place of sport in global human affairs’ and prescribed that ‘international relations should take more account of sport . . .’ We might have expected some change in the period since then, not least because the academic study of sport has established itself in such fields as politics and law and has made further advances in sociology and social history. The ‘myth of autonomy’ which suggested that sport should and did have little effect on other human activities has been largely undermined; indeed, we might argue that in some cases there has been an overreaction against it. Modern sport is increasingly and perhaps essentially international and has had an international dimension almost from the outset. It has developed highly autonomous international organizations, most notably the International Olympic Committee and FIFA, the international (association) football federation.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , January 2002 , pp. 106 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2002

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Footnotes

*

This article is the first in an occasional series on Politics and Culture.

References

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7 See, for example, Hugh Carnegy, ‘Hugely Important Symbol of Acceptance’, China Supplement, Financial Times, 13 November 2000, p. VII.

8 See, for example, Chanda, Nayan and Huus, Kari, ‘The New Nationalism’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 9 11 1995, pp. 21–28 Google Scholar and Shi, Yinhong ‘Why Against China?’, Beijing Review, 21 10 1996, p. 11.Google ScholarPubMed We are grateful to Shaun Breslin for information on the background to the Chinese Olympic bid.

9 See Guelke, Adrian, ‘Sport and the End of Apartheid’, in Allison, Lincoln (ed.), The Changing Politics of Sport, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1993, pp. 151– 70.Google Scholar

10 See House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Session 1999–2000 Tenth Report, ‘UK Relations with the People’s Republic of China’. The Chinese response was available on http://www.chinese-embassy.org.uk I am grateful to my colleague Shaun Breslin for information on the issue.

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23 In interviews with Allison, Lincoln in 1999 as part of the research for his Amateurism in Sport, An Analysis and a Defence, London, Frank Cass, 2001.Google Scholar

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28 Ibid., p. 72.

29 Ibid., p. 78.

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32 Ibid., p. 100.

33 Ibid., p. 157.

34 Department of the Environment, Sport and Recreation, London, HMSO, 1975, p. 18, para. 62.

35 See Monnington, Terry, ‘Politicians and Sport: Uses and Abuses’, in Allison, Lincoln (ed.) The Changing Politics of Sport, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1993, pp. 125–50.Google Scholar

36 As suggested in an open letter from the then Minister for Sport, Colin Moynihan, to the Director of the Sports Council, John Smith, Department of the Environment, 19 November 1997.

37 Sport: Raising the Game, London, Department of National Heritage, 1995, p. 2.

38 Major, John, ‘Three Weeks that Lifted a Nation’, Electronic Telegraph, 417, 1 07 1996, p. 1.Google Scholar

39 For a more detailed description of the role and function of these bodies see the official web site of Sport England, http://www.sportengland.org.uk

40 See Monnington, Terence, ‘The Politics of Black African Sport’, in Allison, Lincoln (ed.) The Politics of Sport, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1986, pp. 149–73.Google Scholar

41 See UN Development Programme, UN Human Development Report 2000, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000 and World Bank, World Development Report 1999/ 2000, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.

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45 We are grateful to John Roberts, West Midlands Director of Sport England, for clarifying this point. The crucial decision in releasing money on the current scale for potential medalists was the relaxation in 1997 of the ruling that lottery monies must be devoted to capital projects.