This article analyzes Soviet hockey as a transnational phenomenon by underlining three international events that marked milestones in the domestication of hockey in the country and in the Sovietization of international hockey. Focusing on the period of the massification of the sport in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), from the end of the 1940s to the end of the 1960s, it interprets the appropriation and transformation of a Canadian sport in the Soviet reality through the analytical tools of cultural translation and hybridization. It is this period of great cultural and social transformation, first in the xenophobic context of the anti-cosmopolitan campaign that took place during late Stalinism, and later in the internationalist enthusiasm that characterized Khrushchev’s Thaw, that ice hockey has been sovietized. That process neccessitated the translation of a foreign cultural object in Soviet languages and semiotic tools. Meanwhile, international hockey itself underwent a profound hybridization process to which the Soviets greatly contributed.
{"title":"Shooting Over the Curtain—A Transnational Analysis of Soviet Hockey in the 1950s and 1960s","authors":"Mathieu Boivin-Chouinard","doi":"10.1123/shr.2020-0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.2020-0026","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes Soviet hockey as a transnational phenomenon by underlining three international events that marked milestones in the domestication of hockey in the country and in the Sovietization of international hockey. Focusing on the period of the massification of the sport in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), from the end of the 1940s to the end of the 1960s, it interprets the appropriation and transformation of a Canadian sport in the Soviet reality through the analytical tools of cultural translation and hybridization. It is this period of great cultural and social transformation, first in the xenophobic context of the anti-cosmopolitan campaign that took place during late Stalinism, and later in the internationalist enthusiasm that characterized Khrushchev’s Thaw, that ice hockey has been sovietized. That process neccessitated the translation of a foreign cultural object in Soviet languages and semiotic tools. Meanwhile, international hockey itself underwent a profound hybridization process to which the Soviets greatly contributed.","PeriodicalId":42546,"journal":{"name":"Sport History Review","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64166123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
From the onset, South African amateur wrestling, under the auspices of the SA Amateur Wrestling Union and its successors, was organized along racial lines and, under apartheid, it continued to cater exclusively to white amateurs. By 1970, it was suspended from the International Amateur Wrestling Federation. Denied participation in international competition, it resorted to rebel and boycott-busting tours involving a number of sympathetic countries and individuals in Europe, the Americas, and the Far East. Organized mostly clandestinely, it succeeded in offering international competition to the South African national wrestling team for almost two decades. One program, the Oregon Wrestling Cultural Exchange, was particularly strong. This US-based program generated strong opposition from the Amateur Athletics Association, the International Wrestling Federation, and several anti-apartheid organizations. It survived until the end of the 1980s, when the USA Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (1986) and the campaigns of the anti-apartheid movement closed it down.
{"title":"“Wrestling with Apartheid”: South Africa–US Amateur Wrestling Relations, Rebel Tours, and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1960–1991","authors":"Hendrik Snyders","doi":"10.1123/shr.2020-0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.2020-0013","url":null,"abstract":"From the onset, South African amateur wrestling, under the auspices of the SA Amateur Wrestling Union and its successors, was organized along racial lines and, under apartheid, it continued to cater exclusively to white amateurs. By 1970, it was suspended from the International Amateur Wrestling Federation. Denied participation in international competition, it resorted to rebel and boycott-busting tours involving a number of sympathetic countries and individuals in Europe, the Americas, and the Far East. Organized mostly clandestinely, it succeeded in offering international competition to the South African national wrestling team for almost two decades. One program, the Oregon Wrestling Cultural Exchange, was particularly strong. This US-based program generated strong opposition from the Amateur Athletics Association, the International Wrestling Federation, and several anti-apartheid organizations. It survived until the end of the 1980s, when the USA Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (1986) and the campaigns of the anti-apartheid movement closed it down.","PeriodicalId":42546,"journal":{"name":"Sport History Review","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64165789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper analyzes how professional wrestling expanded stereotyped race, national, and class images toward the Spanish public in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The professional wrestling circuit of music halls, theaters, and circuses helped connect a myriad of grappling practices spanning different national traditions. Nonetheless, it also helped convey different racial, ethnic, and national images within a frame of social class divide at a time of rampant imperialism and colonial domination. In this context, Spain experimented with a short-lived wrestling mania, with several international wrestling tournaments and jujutsu exhibitions before World War I. In these tournaments, both fighters and patrons exploited racial stereotypes as a way to better sell the activity to the paying audience, connecting with, but also reinforcing, the perceptions that populated the collective imagination about different people, due to ethnicity or nationality linked also to social class.
{"title":"Transnational Stereotypes in Professional Wrestling during the Early Twentieth Century in Spain","authors":"Carlos García-Martí, R. Sánchez-García","doi":"10.1123/shr.2020-0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.2020-0024","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyzes how professional wrestling expanded stereotyped race, national, and class images toward the Spanish public in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The professional wrestling circuit of music halls, theaters, and circuses helped connect a myriad of grappling practices spanning different national traditions. Nonetheless, it also helped convey different racial, ethnic, and national images within a frame of social class divide at a time of rampant imperialism and colonial domination. In this context, Spain experimented with a short-lived wrestling mania, with several international wrestling tournaments and jujutsu exhibitions before World War I. In these tournaments, both fighters and patrons exploited racial stereotypes as a way to better sell the activity to the paying audience, connecting with, but also reinforcing, the perceptions that populated the collective imagination about different people, due to ethnicity or nationality linked also to social class.","PeriodicalId":42546,"journal":{"name":"Sport History Review","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64166350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The struggle against apartheid was fought on many fronts. Internationally, the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) across a number of countries engaged in a range of activities that highlighted the atrocities of the Pretoria regime and the plight of the majority in South Africa. An important site of struggle against apartheid was in the sports sphere. Ireland and the Irish AAM played a significant role in this regard. The AAMs in Australia, Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States, among others, recorded victories against apartheid through demonstrations, boycotts, and the ban on participation of South African teams in international tours, tournaments, and events. A number of scholars have highlighted the role of the international AAM and its campaigns against apartheid sport. To date, historical studies of the anti-apartheid struggle and South African sport have primarily focused on Britain and New Zealand and, to a lesser extent, the United States. Irish sporting contacts with South Africa extend back over a century. Thus, focusing on the case study of Irish AAM activism against segregated sport further adds to the literature on the sports boycott and the struggle against apartheid. This article draws on Jacob Dlamini’s notion of “moral agents” in understanding players’, teams’, and sports associations’ decisions to continue to play with apartheid, despite international opposition. Drawing from archives in Ireland and South Africa, this article adds new details to the struggle against apartheid rugby in South African sport between 1964 and 1989.
{"title":"“Playing With Apartheid”: Irish and South African Rugby, 1964–19891","authors":"Chris Bolsmann","doi":"10.1123/SHR.2020-0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/SHR.2020-0027","url":null,"abstract":"The struggle against apartheid was fought on many fronts. Internationally, the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) across a number of countries engaged in a range of activities that highlighted the atrocities of the Pretoria regime and the plight of the majority in South Africa. An important site of struggle against apartheid was in the sports sphere. Ireland and the Irish AAM played a significant role in this regard. The AAMs in Australia, Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States, among others, recorded victories against apartheid through demonstrations, boycotts, and the ban on participation of South African teams in international tours, tournaments, and events. A number of scholars have highlighted the role of the international AAM and its campaigns against apartheid sport. To date, historical studies of the anti-apartheid struggle and South African sport have primarily focused on Britain and New Zealand and, to a lesser extent, the United States. Irish sporting contacts with South Africa extend back over a century. Thus, focusing on the case study of Irish AAM activism against segregated sport further adds to the literature on the sports boycott and the struggle against apartheid. This article draws on Jacob Dlamini’s notion of “moral agents” in understanding players’, teams’, and sports associations’ decisions to continue to play with apartheid, despite international opposition. Drawing from archives in Ireland and South Africa, this article adds new details to the struggle against apartheid rugby in South African sport between 1964 and 1989.","PeriodicalId":42546,"journal":{"name":"Sport History Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64166127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hockey: A Global History","authors":"John Wong","doi":"10.1123/shr.2019-0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.2019-0038","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42546,"journal":{"name":"Sport History Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48441164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article discusses six factors that have contributed to what Clare S. Simpson called the “paucity of primary and secondary sources” related to women’s bicycle racing of the 1890s: efforts by the League of American Wheelman to suppress the sport, and the resulting lack of statistical compilations of the women’s accomplishments; the East Coast bias that prevailed then and through the twentieth century; the prominence of local, as opposed to national, sports coverage in the 1890s; the difficulty of accessing contemporary newspaper accounts of the women’s races; the brevity of the era itself, which lasted only a few years; and good old-fashioned gender bias. Fortunately, with the recent burst of publications about nineteenth century women’s racing, we can now look forward to a more balanced representation of bicycle racing history.
{"title":"1890s Women’s Bicycle Racing: Forgotten, but Why?","authors":"R. Gilles","doi":"10.1123/shr.2019-0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.2019-0012","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses six factors that have contributed to what Clare S. Simpson called the “paucity of primary and secondary sources” related to women’s bicycle racing of the 1890s: efforts by the League of American Wheelman to suppress the sport, and the resulting lack of statistical compilations of the women’s accomplishments; the East Coast bias that prevailed then and through the twentieth century; the prominence of local, as opposed to national, sports coverage in the 1890s; the difficulty of accessing contemporary newspaper accounts of the women’s races; the brevity of the era itself, which lasted only a few years; and good old-fashioned gender bias. Fortunately, with the recent burst of publications about nineteenth century women’s racing, we can now look forward to a more balanced representation of bicycle racing history.","PeriodicalId":42546,"journal":{"name":"Sport History Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48896016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 1966, the National Hockey League (NHL) expanded for the first time since the 1920s, doubling its size from six teams to twelve. Although hockey was still perceived as a distinctly Canadian passion, none of the NHL’s six new teams were located in Canada. The disappointment across the country was palpable, especially in Canada’s third-largest city, Vancouver, which had applied to be one of the expansion locations. A stable presence in minor league hockey on Canada’s west coast for decades, it seemed only natural that Vancouver, as the lone bidder from the ostensible birthplace of ice hockey, would be tapped for NHL expansion. This paper examines Vancouver’s attempted entry into the NHL and argues that the forces of commercialism and national identity, combined with political maneuvering among NHL owners, not only influenced the content and trajectory of the Vancouver bid, but also contributed to its ultimate failure.
{"title":"When Culture Meets Capital: Commercialism, National Identity, and Vancouver’s Initial Attempt to Join the NHL","authors":"John Wong, Scott R. Jedlicka","doi":"10.1123/shr.2018-0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.2018-0026","url":null,"abstract":"In 1966, the National Hockey League (NHL) expanded for the first time since the 1920s, doubling its size from six teams to twelve. Although hockey was still perceived as a distinctly Canadian passion, none of the NHL’s six new teams were located in Canada. The disappointment across the country was palpable, especially in Canada’s third-largest city, Vancouver, which had applied to be one of the expansion locations. A stable presence in minor league hockey on Canada’s west coast for decades, it seemed only natural that Vancouver, as the lone bidder from the ostensible birthplace of ice hockey, would be tapped for NHL expansion. This paper examines Vancouver’s attempted entry into the NHL and argues that the forces of commercialism and national identity, combined with political maneuvering among NHL owners, not only influenced the content and trajectory of the Vancouver bid, but also contributed to its ultimate failure.","PeriodicalId":42546,"journal":{"name":"Sport History Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47408135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
During the nineteenth century in North America, a small group of working-class women turned to sport to earn a living. Among them were circus performers, race walkers, wrestlers, boxers, shooters, swimmers, baseball players, and bicycle racers. Through their athleticism, these women contested and challenged the prevailing gender norms, and at the same time expanded notions about Victorian women’s capabilities and appropriate work. This article focuses on one of these professional sports, namely high-wheel bicycle racing. Bicycle historians have mostly dismissed women’s racing during the brief high-wheel era of the 1880s as little more than sensational entertainment, and have not fully understood its importance. I hope to change these perceptions by providing evidence that female high-wheel racers in the United States, who often began as pedestriennes (race walkers), were superb athletes competing in an exciting, well-attended, and profitable sport.
{"title":"Women’s High-Wheel Bicycle Racing in Nineteenth-Century America: More than Salacious Entertainment","authors":"M. Hall","doi":"10.1123/shr.2019-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.2019-0006","url":null,"abstract":"During the nineteenth century in North America, a small group of working-class women turned to sport to earn a living. Among them were circus performers, race walkers, wrestlers, boxers, shooters, swimmers, baseball players, and bicycle racers. Through their athleticism, these women contested and challenged the prevailing gender norms, and at the same time expanded notions about Victorian women’s capabilities and appropriate work. This article focuses on one of these professional sports, namely high-wheel bicycle racing. Bicycle historians have mostly dismissed women’s racing during the brief high-wheel era of the 1880s as little more than sensational entertainment, and have not fully understood its importance. I hope to change these perceptions by providing evidence that female high-wheel racers in the United States, who often began as pedestriennes (race walkers), were superb athletes competing in an exciting, well-attended, and profitable sport.","PeriodicalId":42546,"journal":{"name":"Sport History Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45271433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The bicycle has a unique status as a moniker of several things: a practical piece of transportation, a sporting tool, the imprimatur of modernity, and, relevant to this special issue, a symbol of gender and class equity. But the racing of bicycles by women has been oddly absent from the literature in sport history. Women have been part of the bicycle’s experience since the bicycle’s inception in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet until recently, one would be hard pressed to know of this lengthy tradition of women in cycling and, especially of, women’s racing. This special issue seeks to rectify this situation.
{"title":"Introduction: The Quest to Control The Powerful Meanings of Bicycle Racing","authors":"A. Wilde","doi":"10.1123/shr.2019-0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.2019-0034","url":null,"abstract":"The bicycle has a unique status as a moniker of several things: a practical piece of transportation, a sporting tool, the imprimatur of modernity, and, relevant to this special issue, a symbol of gender and class equity. But the racing of bicycles by women has been oddly absent from the literature in sport history. Women have been part of the bicycle’s experience since the bicycle’s inception in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet until recently, one would be hard pressed to know of this lengthy tradition of women in cycling and, especially of, women’s racing. This special issue seeks to rectify this situation.","PeriodicalId":42546,"journal":{"name":"Sport History Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41633780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, women officially competed in track and field for the first time. After a world-record-breaking 800-meter final, the press inaccurately reported that the runners collapsed at the finish and generally called for the race to be eliminated since it called too greatly on feminine strength. In intervening years between the 1928 and 1932 Olympics, the IOC and IAAF voted to eliminate the race from the program. A fuller understanding of 800-meter race, within a broader American cultural milieu about women’s health and sport, demonstrates how the media and sport governing bodies intersect with ideologies of femininity.
{"title":"“Beyond Women’s Powers of Endurance”: The 1928 800-Meter and Women’s Olympic Track and Field in the Context of the United States","authors":"Colleen English","doi":"10.1123/shr.2018-0040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.2018-0040","url":null,"abstract":"In the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, women officially competed in track and field for the first time. After a world-record-breaking 800-meter final, the press inaccurately reported that the runners collapsed at the finish and generally called for the race to be eliminated since it called too greatly on feminine strength. In intervening years between the 1928 and 1932 Olympics, the IOC and IAAF voted to eliminate the race from the program. A fuller understanding of 800-meter race, within a broader American cultural milieu about women’s health and sport, demonstrates how the media and sport governing bodies intersect with ideologies of femininity.","PeriodicalId":42546,"journal":{"name":"Sport History Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48757937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}