America's Game(S)

America's Game(s): A Critical Anthropology of Sport considers American sports in the current moment, a moment marked by globalization, post-coloniality, neo-liberal reform, and diasporas. It debates where and how does one locate America in the sporting world: in the traditions and rituals of our national pastime or in the baseball academies run by American professional teams in the Dominican Republic? On the basketball courts of South Central Los Angeles or in the basketball practices run by American coaches in Senegal, Serbia, and Lebanon? With the athletes that carry our flag in Olympic ceremonies or among the executives in the boardrooms of Nike? Among the infamous "bleacher bums" of Chicago's Wrigley Field or with Cuban baseball fans in Havana who devote their energies to following Cuban defectors in Major League Baseball? This book argues that "America" is located in these familiar sites and practices but also and increasingly in these novel contexts, where the bodies, strategies, and aspirations of others are becoming subject to American ludic, agonistic, and moral orders. This book suggests that American sports as a category needs to be reconsidered, in order to take into account the extensive networks of expertise, finance, and performance moving out from American athletic institutions as well as the ever increasing influx of talent coming from abroad that sustains American collegiate and professional athletics. As America strives to balance cosmopolitan objectives with resurgent nationalism, it is critical to consider 'American sports' from within and without. This book will be of great interest to scholars of culture, politics, and sport. This book was previously published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.Eastman, Benjamin is the author of 'America's Game(S)' with ISBN 9780415390729 and ISBN 0415390729.