What is the relationship between sport and national identity? What can sport tell us about changing perceptions of national identity?
Bringing together the work of established historians and younger commentators, this illuminating text surveys the last half-century, giving due attention to the place of sport in our social and political history.
It Includes studies of:
English football and British decline
Englishness and sport
Ethnicity and nationalism in Scotland
Social change and national pride in Wales
Irish international football and Irishness
Sport and identity in South Africa
Cricket and identity crisis in the Caribbean
Baseball, exceptionalism and American Sport
Popular mythology surrounding the sporting rivalry between New Zealand and Australia
Sport and National Identity in the Post-War World presents a wealth of original research into contemporary social history and provides illuminating material for historians and sociologists alike.