GLOBAL SPORTS FANDOM IN SOUTH KOREA : american major league baseball and its fans in the ... online community

This book explores the transformation of cultural and national identity of global sports fans in South Korea, which has undergone extensive cultural and economic globalization since the 1990s. Through ethnographic research of Korean Major League Baseball fans and their online community, this book demonstrates how a postcolonial nation and its people are developing long-distance affiliation with American sports accompanied by nationalist sentiments and regional rivalry. Becoming an MLB fan in South Korea does not simply lead one to nurturing a cosmopolitan identity, but to reconstituting one’s national imaginations. Younghan Cho suggests individuated nationalism as the changing nature of the national among the Korean MLB fandom in which the national is articulated by personal choices, consumer rights and free market principles. The analysis of the Korean MLB fandom illuminates the complicated and even contradictory procedures of decentering and fragmenting nationalism in South Korea, which have been balanced by recalling nationalism in combination with neoliberal governmentality. Front Matter ....Pages i-xii Introduction: The Cultural Politics of Sports in the Era of Globalization (Younghan Cho)....Pages 1-33 Front Matter ....Pages 35-35 Sport and Crisis of Nation Under Globalization (Younghan Cho)....Pages 37-66 Glocalization of Sports from Above: A Korean Baseball Player as a National Individual (Younghan Cho)....Pages 67-100 Glocalization of Sports from Below: Online Communities Among Korean MLB Fans (Younghan Cho)....Pages 101-129 Front Matter ....Pages 131-131 The Making of the National Fandom and Its Discontent (Younghan Cho)....Pages 133-163 The Emergence of Individuated Nationalism (Younghan Cho)....Pages 165-192 Articulation of the National, Regional, and Global (Younghan Cho)....Pages 193-221 Postscript: The “Here-and-Now” of Global Sports Fandom (Younghan Cho)....Pages 223-233 Back Matter ....Pages 235-238