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Playing Across the ‘Halfway Line’ on the Fields of International Relations: The Journey from Globalising Sport to Sport Diplomacy

Review products

Heather L.Dichter and Andrew L.John, eds., Diplomatic Games: Sport, Statecraft, and International Relations since 1945 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014). 496 pp. (hb), £36,95, ISBN: 978-0813145648.

BarbaraKeys, Globalizing Sport: National Rivalry and International Community in the 1930s (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2006). 288 pp (hb), £60.95, ISBN: 9780674023260.

JeniferParks, The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sports Bureaucracy, and the Cold War: Red Sport, Red Tape (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2017). 205 (hb), $95, ISBN: 978-1498541183.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2020

Philippe Vonnard*
Affiliation:
University of Lausanne, Faculty of political sciences, Institute of sport sciences, Bâtiment Synathlon, 1015Lausanne
Kevin Tallec Marston
Affiliation:
CIES, Hôtel DuPeyrou, 2000 Neuchatel, Switzerland and International Centre for Sports History and Culture, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH, United Kingdom

Extract

On the still divided Joseon peninsula, a united Korean women's ice hockey team competed at the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics. Only a few months later, the French, Croatian and Russian heads of state quite literally invited themselves on to the winners’ podium at the 2018 FIFA men's World Cup in Moscow. Such conspicuous examples are emblematic of the role of modern sport in the realm of international relations.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors, 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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23 Avery Brundage was IOC president from 1952 to 1972.

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27 The Harlem Globetrotters were a team composed of African-American players founded before basketball integrated in 1950 who then travelled around the world during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It was considered as one of the best teams of the world.

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56 See Barney, Robert K., Wenn, Stephen R. and Martyn, Scott G., Selling the Five Rings: The International Olympic Committee and the Rise of Olympic Commercialism (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2002)Google Scholar; LaFeber, Walter, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999)Google Scholar; Smit, Barbara, Sneaker Wars: The Enemy Brothers who Founded Adidas and Puma and the Family Feud that Forever Changed the Business of Sports (New York: HarperCollins, 2008)Google Scholar

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