Abstract:Hmong American gymnast Sunisa "Suni" Lee won the gold medal in the individual all-around event at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. This essay analyzes the media frenzy surrounding Lee's rise to Olympic stardom in US gymnastics. In particular, it focuses on how the media narrate Lee's family and Hmong ethnic history of being refugees to becoming an Olympic gold medalist. This essay deconstructs how the state exceptionalizes this history in the context of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in service of the imperial US nation-state in ways that recuperates US empire and bolsters US nationalism. The essay reveals the ways that ongoing anti-Asian racism in the US contradicts the state's claim to Lee's gold medal. Ultimately, the essay argues that Hmong American writing during Lee's Olympic journey presents a "state-less critique" that situates Lee's success in her ethnic Hmong American community and not within the nation-state.
{"title":"De-exceptionalizing Sunisa Lee: Uneven Gymnastics and a Hmong American State-less Critique","authors":"Kong Pheng Pha, Kari Smalkoski","doi":"10.1353/aq.2023.a905866","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2023.a905866","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Hmong American gymnast Sunisa \"Suni\" Lee won the gold medal in the individual all-around event at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. This essay analyzes the media frenzy surrounding Lee's rise to Olympic stardom in US gymnastics. In particular, it focuses on how the media narrate Lee's family and Hmong ethnic history of being refugees to becoming an Olympic gold medalist. This essay deconstructs how the state exceptionalizes this history in the context of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in service of the imperial US nation-state in ways that recuperates US empire and bolsters US nationalism. The essay reveals the ways that ongoing anti-Asian racism in the US contradicts the state's claim to Lee's gold medal. Ultimately, the essay argues that Hmong American writing during Lee's Olympic journey presents a \"state-less critique\" that situates Lee's success in her ethnic Hmong American community and not within the nation-state.","PeriodicalId":51543,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN QUARTERLY","volume":"75 1","pages":"609 - 631"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42001009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The tangible project of decolonization requires revolutionary hope to sustain it. Quite often, studies surrounding oppressed populations largely tend to theorize from a point of death, contributing to a culture of hopelessness and pessimism. This essay explores what happens when we theorize from a point of life and joy, specifically theorizing Palestinian resistance and place-claiming through the embodied sport of skateboarding—not in hopes of erasing death, but in hopes of providing a fuller view, and looking for ruptures wherein quotidian life seeps through coloniality as a form of resistance itself. Thinking through skateboarding as a subculture, I analyze a nonprofit organization, SkatePal and its media presence, using my theory and analytic: occupied joy. I argue that the skate scene in Palestine functions as a site of quotidian anticolonial and anti-imperialist resistance through reclaiming freedom of movement, resisting multiple effects of military occupation, and unsettling trauma spectacle through the play and joy associated with the immediate act of skating. In theorizing from life and bearing witness to the sense of agency that skateboarding restores in Palestinian youth, there is hope that the theory of occupied joy can do the same for other oppressed peoples, bringing us all tangibly closer to a more liberated world.
{"title":"Occupied Joy: The Politics of Skateboarding in Palestine","authors":"Ruba H. Akkad","doi":"10.1353/aq.2023.a905863","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2023.a905863","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The tangible project of decolonization requires revolutionary hope to sustain it. Quite often, studies surrounding oppressed populations largely tend to theorize from a point of death, contributing to a culture of hopelessness and pessimism. This essay explores what happens when we theorize from a point of life and joy, specifically theorizing Palestinian resistance and place-claiming through the embodied sport of skateboarding—not in hopes of erasing death, but in hopes of providing a fuller view, and looking for ruptures wherein quotidian life seeps through coloniality as a form of resistance itself. Thinking through skateboarding as a subculture, I analyze a nonprofit organization, SkatePal and its media presence, using my theory and analytic: occupied joy. I argue that the skate scene in Palestine functions as a site of quotidian anticolonial and anti-imperialist resistance through reclaiming freedom of movement, resisting multiple effects of military occupation, and unsettling trauma spectacle through the play and joy associated with the immediate act of skating. In theorizing from life and bearing witness to the sense of agency that skateboarding restores in Palestinian youth, there is hope that the theory of occupied joy can do the same for other oppressed peoples, bringing us all tangibly closer to a more liberated world.","PeriodicalId":51543,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN QUARTERLY","volume":"75 1","pages":"543 - 566"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43801937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay examines industrial and labor practices in the pro wrestling industry. By analyzing the WWE Network as an "industrial disruptor," this essay suggests that this disruption shifted not only who was considered the prototypical wrestler; it also changed the relations of power within the industry. While the deployment of the streaming service increased the reach of the WWE beyond the national borders of the US, it inadvertently created a pathway for local, regional, and international wrestling companies to also utilize streaming service technology to collectively work together to mitigate some of the industrial hegemony of the WWE. Moreover, the WWE's attempt to create "digital wrestling territories" has changed the relationship between the local and the global, which has reformulated digital global intimate industrial relations. Although the WWE is a global company that has retained dominance for almost forty years, the deployment of streaming services has forever changed the business of pro wrestling.
{"title":"Grappling with the Digital: The New Industrial Geographies of Professional Wrestling","authors":"Dewitt King","doi":"10.1353/aq.2023.a905865","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2023.a905865","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay examines industrial and labor practices in the pro wrestling industry. By analyzing the WWE Network as an \"industrial disruptor,\" this essay suggests that this disruption shifted not only who was considered the prototypical wrestler; it also changed the relations of power within the industry. While the deployment of the streaming service increased the reach of the WWE beyond the national borders of the US, it inadvertently created a pathway for local, regional, and international wrestling companies to also utilize streaming service technology to collectively work together to mitigate some of the industrial hegemony of the WWE. Moreover, the WWE's attempt to create \"digital wrestling territories\" has changed the relationship between the local and the global, which has reformulated digital global intimate industrial relations. Although the WWE is a global company that has retained dominance for almost forty years, the deployment of streaming services has forever changed the business of pro wrestling.","PeriodicalId":51543,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN QUARTERLY","volume":"75 1","pages":"589 - 608"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49129319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The US faces a legislative wave of state-level restrictions on transgender athlete participation, while at the elite level of sport there are ongoing exclusions of trans women and women with sex variations, with confusing, inconsistent policies from national sports governing bodies on just what constitutes "female eligibility." In the midst of debates about "fairness" and advocacy for great inclusion, an attention to the surveillance systems at work in sports can shift the terms of debate away from the imperative of a level playing field and toward a discussion of bodily autonomy, privacy, and self-determination for athletes. In doing so, I take a critical surveillance studies lens to illuminate connections between surveillance in sports and other societal institutions. In offering a broad view of the surveillance of sex in sports, I utilize Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon's concept of liquid surveillance to describe the ways that surveillance mechanisms, logics, and rhetoric seeps through, and out of, sports.
{"title":"The Seeping Surveillance of Sex in Sports","authors":"Valerie Moyer","doi":"10.1353/aq.2023.a905861","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2023.a905861","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The US faces a legislative wave of state-level restrictions on transgender athlete participation, while at the elite level of sport there are ongoing exclusions of trans women and women with sex variations, with confusing, inconsistent policies from national sports governing bodies on just what constitutes \"female eligibility.\" In the midst of debates about \"fairness\" and advocacy for great inclusion, an attention to the surveillance systems at work in sports can shift the terms of debate away from the imperative of a level playing field and toward a discussion of bodily autonomy, privacy, and self-determination for athletes. In doing so, I take a critical surveillance studies lens to illuminate connections between surveillance in sports and other societal institutions. In offering a broad view of the surveillance of sex in sports, I utilize Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon's concept of liquid surveillance to describe the ways that surveillance mechanisms, logics, and rhetoric seeps through, and out of, sports.","PeriodicalId":51543,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN QUARTERLY","volume":"75 1","pages":"501 - 518"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44154671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay explains the role of sports media entertainment in habituating audiences to a logic of conservative populism, which connects justifications for racialized and gendered violence with a sense of anxiety and humiliation. The essay develops the concept of antagonistic sports fandom, a mode of engagement in which verbal duels become the dominant way that fans and media figures engage with sports. It argues that one of the crucial roles of antagonistic sports fandom is to provide a public forum where the pleasure of subjugating bodies can be justified via the invocation of victimization and humiliation, presented as apolitical fun. The essay develops these points by examining the sports media company Barstool Sports, the FX television series The League, and the 2009 film Big Fan.
{"title":"Antagonistic Sports Fandom","authors":"Thomas P. Oates","doi":"10.1353/aq.2023.a905862","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2023.a905862","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay explains the role of sports media entertainment in habituating audiences to a logic of conservative populism, which connects justifications for racialized and gendered violence with a sense of anxiety and humiliation. The essay develops the concept of antagonistic sports fandom, a mode of engagement in which verbal duels become the dominant way that fans and media figures engage with sports. It argues that one of the crucial roles of antagonistic sports fandom is to provide a public forum where the pleasure of subjugating bodies can be justified via the invocation of victimization and humiliation, presented as apolitical fun. The essay develops these points by examining the sports media company Barstool Sports, the FX television series The League, and the 2009 film Big Fan.","PeriodicalId":51543,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN QUARTERLY","volume":"75 1","pages":"519 - 541"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43361895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The history of campaigns against apartheid through sport reveals messy relationships between athletes and social movements, advancing recent debates over the possibilities and constraints of sport politics. The anti-apartheid movement coalesced around a transnational sporting boycott to isolate South Africa, but the American tennis icon Arthur Ashe made a series of visits to compete there in the 1970s. Ashe believed in participation as the primary mechanism for change through sport, only later embracing the boycott. When tennis tournaments and rugby tours brought South Africans to the United States, anti-apartheid organizations mobilized their own confrontational protests to interrupt play. As the growing movement won over athletes and South African propaganda turned toward commercial sport spectacle, the special position that athletes occupied provided leverage. However, their magnified legacy also obscured how resistance to apartheid through sport found success in the first place. Despite the appeal of participation as the natural path of progress, strategies of confrontation often proved more effective in the struggle against apartheid. Questioning the politics of participation and widening the frame to consider confrontation changes our understanding of sport politics, looking beyond individual athletes and bringing everyday people off the sidelines.
{"title":"Playing on Grassroots: The Anti-Apartheid Movement, Arthur Ashe, and the Sport Boycott","authors":"Evan DiPrete Brown","doi":"10.1353/aq.2023.a905867","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2023.a905867","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The history of campaigns against apartheid through sport reveals messy relationships between athletes and social movements, advancing recent debates over the possibilities and constraints of sport politics. The anti-apartheid movement coalesced around a transnational sporting boycott to isolate South Africa, but the American tennis icon Arthur Ashe made a series of visits to compete there in the 1970s. Ashe believed in participation as the primary mechanism for change through sport, only later embracing the boycott. When tennis tournaments and rugby tours brought South Africans to the United States, anti-apartheid organizations mobilized their own confrontational protests to interrupt play. As the growing movement won over athletes and South African propaganda turned toward commercial sport spectacle, the special position that athletes occupied provided leverage. However, their magnified legacy also obscured how resistance to apartheid through sport found success in the first place. Despite the appeal of participation as the natural path of progress, strategies of confrontation often proved more effective in the struggle against apartheid. Questioning the politics of participation and widening the frame to consider confrontation changes our understanding of sport politics, looking beyond individual athletes and bringing everyday people off the sidelines.","PeriodicalId":51543,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN QUARTERLY","volume":"75 1","pages":"633 - 654"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48085355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Crow as the Leaves on the Floor","authors":"Roger Reeves","doi":"10.1353/aq.2023.a905859","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2023.a905859","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51543,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN QUARTERLY","volume":"75 1","pages":"469 - 469"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46113817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On an American Study of Sports: A Conversation","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/aq.2023.a905869","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2023.a905869","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51543,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN QUARTERLY","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46170819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay examines how the Golden State Warriors' multimedia empire invites viewers to embrace Silicon Valley–driven transformations of space and body that appropriate value generated by Black, Brown, and working-class communities for the benefit of a wealthy, white ownership class. These transformations form part of the tech industry's imperializing adventures in bodily and societal improvement through the intertwined processes of disruption, technological solutionism, datafication, and financial speculation. First, we show how the Warriors promote analytics, wearable technology, surveillance, and white managerialism as keys to success on and off the court. We then turn to the team's 2019 move from Oakland's Oracle Arena to San Francisco's Chase Center, which offered investment and networking opportunities for Silicon Valley elites while making the team less affordable and physically accessible to its traditional Black and working-class Oakland fanbase. Ultimately, we argue that the Warriors promote Silicon Valley processes of wealth extraction by obscuring where and how value is generated, both within the labor relations that define the Warriors' sports organization and in the gentrification of the Bay Area and the commodification of Black Oakland for an increasingly non-Black fanbase.
{"title":"Silicon Valley's Team: The Golden State Warriors, Datafied Managerialism, and Basketball's Racialized Geography","authors":"Kit Hughes, Evan Elkins","doi":"10.1353/aq.2023.a905860","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2023.a905860","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay examines how the Golden State Warriors' multimedia empire invites viewers to embrace Silicon Valley–driven transformations of space and body that appropriate value generated by Black, Brown, and working-class communities for the benefit of a wealthy, white ownership class. These transformations form part of the tech industry's imperializing adventures in bodily and societal improvement through the intertwined processes of disruption, technological solutionism, datafication, and financial speculation. First, we show how the Warriors promote analytics, wearable technology, surveillance, and white managerialism as keys to success on and off the court. We then turn to the team's 2019 move from Oakland's Oracle Arena to San Francisco's Chase Center, which offered investment and networking opportunities for Silicon Valley elites while making the team less affordable and physically accessible to its traditional Black and working-class Oakland fanbase. Ultimately, we argue that the Warriors promote Silicon Valley processes of wealth extraction by obscuring where and how value is generated, both within the labor relations that define the Warriors' sports organization and in the gentrification of the Bay Area and the commodification of Black Oakland for an increasingly non-Black fanbase.","PeriodicalId":51543,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN QUARTERLY","volume":"75 1","pages":"471 - 499"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49654767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:During the 1970s, the Black Panther Party believed in and provided sports programming that spoke to community embodiment. The Party's approach aligned with what Jack and Micki Scott called "the sports liberation movement." Though understudied in sports history, the Scotts endeavored to create a revolution motivated by the 1968 Olympics. They controversially wrote about and taught sports in a way that prioritized the needs and well-being of professional athletes and everyday people, rather than US patriotism and capitalism consumption. Influenced by fellow leftists like the Scotts, the Black Panthers circulated ideas on freedom and free movement, drawing inspiration from international role models in non-European, socialist countries too. They imagined that socialist sports could escape the militarization of sport in the US and find space for gender inclusion. Their interpretation of socialism showed up in both philosophy and pedagogy, on and off the mat. Using sports archives from the Party as well as broader newspaper research, I contend in this essay that the Panthers, representative of the larger Black Power movement, politicized sport as a necessary site to revolutionize the everyday person's life.
{"title":"Vanguard of the Athletic Revolution: The Black Panther Party, Micki and Jack Scott, and the Sports Liberation Movement","authors":"M. Aziz","doi":"10.1353/aq.2023.a905868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2023.a905868","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:During the 1970s, the Black Panther Party believed in and provided sports programming that spoke to community embodiment. The Party's approach aligned with what Jack and Micki Scott called \"the sports liberation movement.\" Though understudied in sports history, the Scotts endeavored to create a revolution motivated by the 1968 Olympics. They controversially wrote about and taught sports in a way that prioritized the needs and well-being of professional athletes and everyday people, rather than US patriotism and capitalism consumption. Influenced by fellow leftists like the Scotts, the Black Panthers circulated ideas on freedom and free movement, drawing inspiration from international role models in non-European, socialist countries too. They imagined that socialist sports could escape the militarization of sport in the US and find space for gender inclusion. Their interpretation of socialism showed up in both philosophy and pedagogy, on and off the mat. Using sports archives from the Party as well as broader newspaper research, I contend in this essay that the Panthers, representative of the larger Black Power movement, politicized sport as a necessary site to revolutionize the everyday person's life.","PeriodicalId":51543,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN QUARTERLY","volume":"75 1","pages":"655 - 672"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49049162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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