Hope you can join Andrei Markovits and Lars Rensmann at Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor MI for a discussion of their new book — Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture.

In a recent review in the Times Higher Education, John Harris wrote: “This book is a valuable contribution to the burgeoning study of sport in a global perspective. . . . Markovits and Rensmann’s erudite analysis presents many of the key issues and offers interesting points to consider as the sports world continues to change at a remarkable pace.”

The Singing of National Anthems in International Soccer

Andrei S. Markovits

co-author with Lars Rensmann of the recently published Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture

The World Cup ended on Sunday, July 11th. Many of us delighted in this tournament not only as inveterate soccer fans, but also as witnesses to a unique event that unified the globe for more than a month. And yet, the potentially divisive forces of nationalism have not vanished. Clearly, in competitions in which teams appear solely based on the commonality of their players’ passports, any and all rooting interests express by definition some kind of nationalism, no matter how muted. The “us” and “we” means ipso facto a nation. This is markedly different in such top-level competitions like the Champions League in Europe and the Copa Libertadores in South America where the “us” and “we” is decidedly non-national and accentuates at the same time the global and the local. Having attended five World Cups since 1966 and experienced all with some degree of knowledge and consciousness since the 1954 tournament in Switzerland, I have witnessed the ever-increasing singing of national anthems by players and fans in the more recent cups.

Indeed, the singing – or not singing – of the anthem by players led to major discussions in their home countries pertaining to the degree of their patriotism and their commitment to playing for their country. Nowhere was this more pronounced than in France where players’ singing of the Marseillaise was judged in terms of its quality, demeanor, projection, and acquaintance with the text as proper measures of their extant national allegiance to France and thus their commitment to play for the national team. Clearly, the volume of the criticisms escalates proportionally to the team’s failures on the field.

More after the jump.

Earlier this week, we posted Andrei Markovits’s reading list and said that, like us, he’s probably deeply depressed that the World Cup has ended. Well, we now have confirmation – Andrei is indeed heartbroken:

“you were SPOT ON with your assessment that I am devastated with the end of the World Cup. I am ambling about aimlessly and helplessly and totally disoriented.”

Unfortunately, Andrei is suffering from a classic case of World Cup withdrawal. Don’t worry though; he will be back on his feet in no time:

“THANK GOD for MLB’s ALL STAR Game, the resumption of the baseball season tonight, the Tour de France and The (British) Open Championship.”

So fear not, and take comfort in knowing that you will soon return to normal.

Try coping by reading one of Andrei’s books:

And remember, if Andrei can get through it, you can too!

Here we are at a critical juncture for the future of soccer in America and the game’s broader cultural significance beyond its currently well-established place of being an appreciated recreational activity for millions of youngsters. Much will depend on the American players’ ability to advance deep in the world’s most watched sports event (2 billion people watched the final game in 2006). Success at the World Cup will capture the imagination of soccer fans and thus enhance the American game’s legitimacy both here and abroad.

Attaining this will have a number of beneficial implications each of which would be important by itself. But as a package, the long-term results of such a positive outcome might truly become a game changer on many an important level of quotidian lives.

What are these beneficial implications? How are quotidian lives going to be changed? Click over to Huffington Post and read the complete article from the authors of Gaming the World then tune in on Saturday to cheer as the U.S. national team takes the field against England!

In this podcast from the University of Michigan, Andrei Markovits discusses how international sports heroes “play an inordinate role in actually changing society,” and how soccer has been Olympianized by The World Cup which has increased interest here in the U.S. These themes are further developed in his new book, co-authored with Lars Rensmann, Gaming the World.

Could technology prevent refereeing errors like this in soccer?

The authors of Gaming the World think so. Read The Beautiful Game’s Serious Blemish over at the New York Times’s soccer blog, The Goal, for a thoughtful argument for introducing more technology and adding a second referee. Markovits and Rensmann have three main points:

There is the need for video evidence. This would literally furnish the game changer in those few key situations that decide a match, such as an unjustifiably denied goal, an erroneous red card or an egregious offside call….

(more after the jump)

Some good-natured gambling has been occurring on the grounds of Princeton University Press.  Many American sports enthusiasts often forget the passion of hockey fans, so to celebrate the 2010 NHL playoffs, religion/anthropology editor and Montreal Canadiens fanatic Fred Appel made yours truly (me!, Director of Publicity) and die-hard Philadelphia Flyers fan a non-monetary (hey, we work in publishing!) bet.  If the Flyers won, Fred would have to wear my Flyers jersey the entire day.  If the Canadiens won, I would wear their sweater.  Well, as many watched last night, Philly ended the dreams and aspirations of many Canadians by ousting the Habs from the finals.  The Philadelphia Flyers will meet the Chicago Blackhawks for the right to hoist Lord Stanley’s Cup.  Here are some pics of Fred sporting the colors of his mortal enemy. 

Professional sports today have truly become a global force, a common language that anyone, regardless of their nationality, can understand. Yet sports also remain distinctly local, with regional teams and the fiercely loyal local fans that follow them. This new book examines the twenty-first-century phenomenon of global sports, in which professional teams and their players have become agents of globalization while at the same time fostering deep-seated and antagonistic local allegiances and spawning new forms of cultural conflict and prejudice.

Andrei Markovits and Lars Rensmann take readers into the exciting global sports scene, showing how soccer, football, baseball, basketball, and hockey have given rise to a collective identity among millions of predominantly male fans in the United States, Europe, and around the rest of the world.

Chapter one now online:
http://bit.ly/djry7R

Gaming the World:
How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture
By Andrei S. Markovits & Lars Rensmann

Andrei Markovits tackles a fascinating question over at The Huffington Post — why have sports become the last accepted bastion of “separate, but equal”? Football, baseball, and basketball — prominent sports are a boys only club for the most part, and have been allowed to continue this way in spite of demands for equality in virtually ever other arena. Markovits writes:

Short of certain religions (an arena in which, too, the struggle for equality has had some remarkable successes), one would be hard put to point to any institution of such importance in our society in which such “sexual apartheid” (to use Paul Hoch’s apt terminology though I prefer “gender apartheid”) is not only tolerated but actively enforced, perhaps even feted as progress.

Why is this and are there solutions? Markovits continues:

If we continue to define “the best”, which is such an integral part of any sport, by our current criteria, then this separate but equal world will never change. But if we construct alternate logics to what constitutes “the best” – include metrics of cooperation and style, for example, in computing winners and losers, or create truly gender-integrated teams in which the women’s output would be weighted more heavily (e.g. assign five points to baskets scored by female players as opposed to the two by males) thereby creating real incentives to have the women be welcomed as positive additions to these teams, as has been the case in the aforementioned intramural contests — then we might actually arrive at a truly integrated sports world which would thus be congruent with virtually all important public institutions of our contemporary democratic world.

Markovits is  is co-author with Lars Rensmann of the forthcoming book Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culturein which the issue raised in this article — as well as others of the sports worlds in Europe and North America — are discussed in detail.