Tag Archives: PCQ

PCQ 7 Gabriel Maletta

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Rowe’s article ‘Stages of the global’ shows both the positive and negative effects that media has upon football. On one side the media is capable of broadcasting football to the world. Just as our classroom shows, people from across the world cheer for teams thousands of miles away. Cable television and the internet have allowed fans unprecedented access to their teams and even spread the fan bases. Media forms take a large portion of the credit in making soccer the world beloved sport that it is today. Continue reading →

Style and Identity PCQ 6

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Lechner’s article focuses on the Dutch national team and their development of a “Dutch National Style” of football throughout the late 20th century. Lechner bases some of the Dutch resurgence in the late 20th century on the collective memory of earlier Dutch victories.  It can be drawn from our discussion about national myths that the Dutch victories of ’74 and ’78 are part of the foundation of Dutch soccer. The Dutch as a team know they are capable of this greatness, therefore blocking one of the first hurdles of attaining a championship, the preconceived notions of a teams limitations. Tying this back to the article of American exceptionalism, I feel that it is this preconceived notion of limitations that is hindering America in adopting the sport of soccer. Continue reading →

Soccer: Fighting for a spot at the table PCQ 5

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In his article Buffington reveals the multitude of problems that face soccer in the United States. One of the aspect he touches on briefly is soccer’s ‘newcomer’ status as a sport in America. Buffington argues that America’s sports were already decided and established in the late 19th century. As such soccer did not have the chance to develop and entrench itself as one of America’s key sports. In order for soccer to thrive in America it must compete with these already fiercely beloved sports. Continue reading →

Gabriel Maletta PCQ 3

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The Business of Soccer

Swain’s article reflects on the progression of football from a private school boy’s game into a professional sport in the later half of the 19th century in the region of Lacashire, England. Towards the middle of the 19th century rules were set in place to cement what is today known throughout in soccer. One of our early class discussions and readings focused on the various factors that led to the development of football in Brazil, specifically into a very technical and free-flowing style. A question posed by a member of the class asked why only in Brazil was this style invented. Swain seeks to answer the same question as to why in Lancashire, England was soccer able to take hold and fully evolve into a professional sport. Swain brings up many reasons, varying from the regions private schools to the Lancashire team’s easy attitudes toward player recruitment. Continue reading →

Jordan Adams PCQ 3

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On Bosworth Field or the Playing Fields of Eton and Rugby? Who Really Invented Modern Football PCQ

 

The introduction to this article attempts to explain that before football became a competitive professional sport an established and flourishing sporting culture already existed. Foot races, horse racing, boxing, and cricket were the main sports that were popular before the development of professional football. Throughout the 1870’s however football quickly joined the ranks of other popular and commercialized sports which led to it reaching a level of professionalism. This process began due to the rivalry that existed between the countries of Lancashire and Yorkshire which shifted their competition from war and violence to the sporting field.

 

The Rules of Football and Sheffield’s Contribution

“Without that book of football laws, the games would never have been invented and the World would have been a much poorer place’, in fact, the code was very poor and far from disseminating the ‘kicking’ variety of football, it rapidly alienated many of those who were sympathetic to the game.” (1428) Continue reading →

Gabriel Maletta PCQ2

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Lopes article tracks the growth of soccer in Brazil, beginning with the early games played by Europeans and the elite up until Brazil’s 1998 run to the World Cup in France where the national team fielded a racially and socially mixed team. He pays particular attention to the steady increase of non-white players, either mestizo or black, in the ranks of Brazilian club and national teams. The rise of Brazil’s non-European soccer greats mimics the history described by Carrington in his “Sport and Race” article. Carrington argues that sport, seen through the lens of imperialism and race, was initially reserved for the colonizers or the elite. This was true in the case of Brazil as it was only Europeans or those exposed to a European schooling that were able to indulge in the sport. It was only through ‘factory-teams’ that football reached the working classes of Brazil and spread like wildfire. Continue reading →

Jordan Adams PCQ 2

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Class Ethnicity and Color in the making of Brazilian Football PCQ

 

The Football of Brazilian Elites

This section of the reading brings back the idea that soccer was used as a way to help English settlers establish relationships with some of the locals around the colony. Football was a means of staying busy for English workers without the inclusion of any Brazilian players. Because the game was mainly played solely by the English it was easy to associate the game as something meant solely for the upper classes. People frequented the game in suits and ties similar to how baseball games originally became popular. The leisurely activities early on have always been linked to the elite classes because they could afford not to be working all day. The origins of football in Brazil seem to have begun as a spectacle where players and spectators went to see and be seen by members of their own social status.

“Players also frequented dances at the clubs; playing football regularly was one of the several characteristics of an elite lifestyle. Several football clubs were made up of university students, and access to law, medicine, and to a lesser extent engineering was a form of social reconversion. For the declining Brazilian rural aristocracy, or an expanded reproduction of the new scholarized urban elites.” (243) Continue reading →

Race, Nationalism, Globalization and Sports – by Jordan Adams

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Theories of “Race” 

Michael Banton’s piece on the theories of race help the readers understand how the idea of race came to be and how different races were identified. Cuvier believed that one’s physical prowess determined the quality of their culture and the limits of their mental abilities. Banton’s article explains the theories behind racism, a social response that cannot be inherited, yet can be learned through social practices. The creation behind different races seems to be linked to the belief that whites were superior beings to humans of different color, race allowed European colonists to justify their capitalist motives in foreign territories.

Banton points out that while discrimination and crime are inevitable parts of society, racial discrimination places certain people within a perceived social category solely based off of differences in appearance. The theories of race piece also explain a shift in the use of different racial identifications from one that justified exploitation of labor to practices of expulsion.

Race

Mikalila and Lemonik declare that race was born out of capitalist beliefs, those who could not advance as quickly or as efficiently as the Europeans did must be lesser beings.  Colonizing the Irish helped establish a racial dominance that the British spread throughout the expansion of their empire. If race was not born out of capitalism it must have been a belief founded in religion where whites claimed that blacks must be lesser beings because they believed they were the descendants of Ham. What caught my attention was the creation of the IQ test in 1905 Continue reading →

Race, Nationalism, Globalization and Soccer, by Gabriel Maletta

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The first article, Banton’s Theories of ‘Race’ seeks to define Race as a social construct born out of the scientific and social enlightenments of the last few centuries. He argues that the development of race as a science was adopted in order to find meaning to what was, at the time, a complete European domination of other cultures. Banton shows, along with Mariel Mikaila and Arthur Lemonik’s article “Race”, how race is an inherently social construct stemming from geographic, political, cultural, economic and religious factors. Their articles shed light on late 19th and early 20th century attempts by social scientists to create a scientific approach to racism, such as Curie ‘European, African, Mongoloid theorem’ or social Darwinist principles. Mikaila and Lemonik go on to argue the consequences of race in modern society particularly in its limiting factor and its ability to create social, political and economic stress on society.  Continue reading →