Sporting Dystopias

The Making and Meanings of Urban Sport Cultures

Edited by Ralph C. Wilcox, David L. Andrews, Robert Pitter, and Richard L. Irwin

Subjects: Public Policy
Series: SUNY series on Sport, Culture, and Social Relations
Paperback : 9780791456705, 298 pages, March 2003
Hardcover : 9780791456699, 298 pages, March 2003

Alternative formats available from:

Table of contents

1. Sport in the City: Cultural, Economic, and Political Portraits
Ralph C. Wilcox and David L. Andrews

2. Sport and Community/Communitas
Alan G. Ingham and Mary G. McDonald

3. Mediated Sports, Mayors, and the Marketed Metropolis
Gene Burd

4. Urban(e) Statuary Times
Synthia Sydnor Slowikowski

5. No Christmas Dinner: The Effect of Major Sporting Events on Local Homelessness
Robin M. Mathy

6. Rounders or Robin Hoods? Questioning the Role of the Ticket Scalper As Entertainment Outlaw or Free Market Capitalist
Michael F. Atkinson

7. Horse Racing in Chicago, 1883–1894: The Interplay of Class, Politics, and Organized Crime
Steven A. Riess

8. Athletics in the Ward and Beyond: Neighborhoods, Jews, and Sport in Toronto, 1900–1939
Danny Rosenberg

9. Urban Sanctuary: Youth Culture in a Recreation Drop-in Center
Brian Wilson and Phil White

10. Researching Youth Sports Programs in a Metropolitan Setting: Essentials of, Barriers to, and Policy for Achieving a Comprehensive Program
Michael A. Clark

11. Soccer, Race, and Suburban Space
David L. Andrews, Robert Pitter, Detlev Zwick, and Darren Ambrose

12. The New Politics of Urban Consumption: Hoop Dreams, Clockers, and "America"
CL Cole and Samantha King

13. In Place of "Race," Space: "Basketball in Canada" and the Absence of Racism
Gamal Abdel-Shehid

14. Driving the Lane against the Raptor: The Production and Racialization of (Transgressive) Subjects on the Streets of Toronto
Andrew D. Thornton

List of Contributors

Index

Books in the SUNY 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.

Description

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.

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.