Sport, Revolution and the Beijing Olympics

Grant Jarvie, Dong-Jhy Hwang, Mel Brennan

• Publisher: Berg Publishers
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781847883735
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

The 2008 Olympic Games will be held in Beijing but many human rights activists support a boycott. They liken the circumstances to previous governments that used the games to glorify their regimes - most notoriously the Nazis in 1936. What has led to this perception and is it fair? Sport, Revolution and the Beijing Olympics is a cultural history of sport in China and challenges many such ingrained Western assumptions. The authors unpick the relationship of sport to imperialism and revolution, and examine its significance in both China and Taiwan at governmental and everyday levels. In the process, they successfully debunk harmful myths, such as the prevalence of drugs in Chinese sport among women athletes, and present a balanced view that is a much-needed corrective to popular understanding.

Table of contents

• 1 Sport, Revolution and the Beijing Olympics: An Introduction
• 2 Sport, Physical Culture and Western Faith Invaders
• 3 Sport, Physical Culture, Nationalism and the Chinese Republic
• 4 Socialism, Health, Soviet Sport and the Cultural Revolution
• 5 Reform, Opening Up and Making Sense of Modern Sport in China
• 6 Capitalist Sport, the Beijing Olympics and Human Rights?
• 7 Conclusion: Sport, Social Change and the Public Intellectual
• Bibliography
• Index