Sporting Dystopias: The Making and Meaning of Urban Sport Cultures (S U N Y Series on Sport, Culture, and Social Relations)

Challenges the unexamined belief that sports stadiums, events, and teams in cities are always beneficial to the comunities. Reaching beyond the popular celebration of commercial gains often associated with the proliferation of stadiums, events, and teams in the city, Sporting Dystopias explores the role of sport in the process of community building. Scholars from various fields, including anthropology, cultural studies, history, marketing, media studies, and sociology, examine the cultural, economic, and political interplay of sport and the city. The book systematically challenges the overwhelming claims of sport's benefit to the city as it scrutinizes the various tensions inherent in the relationship. Grounded in economic means, racial and ethnic affiliation, and the contestation for space, sport is seen as precipitating a broad range of human challenges. Author Biography: Ralph C. Wilcox is Interim Vice President and Campus Executive Officer of the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg. He is the editor of Sport in the Global Village. David L. Andrews is Associate Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland at College Park. He is the editor of Michael Jordan, Inc.: Corporate Sport, Media Culture, and Late Modern America, published by SUNY Press, and the coeditor (with Steven J. Jackson) of Sport Stars: The Cultural Politics of Sporting Celebrity. Robert Pitter is Assistant Professor of Recreation Management and Kinesiology at Acadia University. Richard L. Irwin is Associate Professor of Human Movement Sciences and Education at The University of Memphis. He is the coauthor (with William A. Sutton and Larry M. McCarthy) of Sport Promotion and SalesManagement. Within a North American context, US and Canadian scholars of sport science, kinesiology, and social sciences explore the characteristics that modern sports and modern cities share, and the complementary relationship between the two phenomena. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)