International sporting events, including the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup, have experienced profound growth in popularity and significance since the mid-twentieth century. Sports often facilitate diplomacy, revealing common interests across borders and uniting groups of people who are otherwise divided by history, ethnicity, or politics. In many countries, popular athletes have become diplomatic envoys. Sport is an arena in which international conflict and compromise find expression, yet the impact of sports on foreign relations has not been widely studied by scholars.
In Diplomatic Games, a team of international scholars examines how the nexus of sport and foreign relations has driven political and cultural change since 1945, demonstrating how governments have used athletic competition to maintain and strengthen alliances, promote policies, and increase national prestige. The contributors investigate topics such as China’s use of sports to oppose Western imperialism, the ways in which sports helped bring an end to apartheid in South Africa, and the impact of the United States’ 1980 Olympic boycott on U.S.-Soviet relations. Bringing together innovative scholarship from around the globe, this groundbreaking collection makes a compelling case for the use of sport as a lens through which to view international relations.
Tabella dei contenuti
1. Introduction: Competing in the Global Arena: Sport and Foreign Relations since 1945, by Andrew L. Johns
2. ‘A Game of Political Ice Hockey’: NATO Restrictions on East German Sport Travel in the Aftermath of the Berlin Wall, by Heather L. Dichter
3. Steadfast Friendship and Brotherly Help: The Distinctive Soviet–East German Sport Relationship within the Socialist Bloc, by Evelyn Mertin
4. Welcoming the ‘Third World’: Soviet Sport Diplomacy, Developing Nations, and the Olympic Games, by Jenifer Parks
5. Forging Africa-Caribbean Solidarity within the Commonwealth? Sport and Diplomacy during the Anti-apartheid Campaign, by Aviston D. Downes
6. Peronism, International Sport, and Diplomacy, by Cesar R. Torres
7. A More Flexible Domination: Franco-African Sport Diplomacy during Decolonization, 1945–1966, by Pascal Charitas
8. The Cold War Games of a Colonial Latin American Nation: San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1966, by Antonio Sotomayor
9. ‘Our Way of Life against Theirs’: Ice Hockey and the Cold War, by John Soares
10. ‘Fuzz Kids’ and ‘Musclemen’: The US-Soviet Basketball Rivalry, 1958–1975, by Kevin B. Witherspoon
11. The White House Games: The Carter Administration’s Efforts to Establish an Alternative to the Olympics, by Nicholas E. Sarantakes
12. Reclaiming the Slopes: Sport and Tourism in Postwar Austria, by Wanda Ellen Wakefield
13. Politics First, Competition Second: Sport and China’s Foreign Diplomacy in the 1960s and 1970s, by Fan Hong and Lu Zhouxiang
14. Reds, Revolutionaries, and Racists: Surfing, Travel, and Diplomacy in the Reagan Era, by Scott Laderman
15. Conclusion: Fields of Dreams and Diplomacy, by Thomas W. Zeiler
Circa l’autore
Heather L. Dichter is associate professor of sport management and sport history at De Montfort University and a member of DMU’s International Centre for Sports History and Culture. She is the coeditor of Olympic Reform Ten Years Later.
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