Reviews for The Athletic Crusade: Sport and American Cultural Imperialism

The average rating for The Athletic Crusade: Sport and American Cultural Imperialism based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-09-04 00:00:00 Eduardo Cruz Reviewed by Hirko, S. Program in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. (to be published in, Sociology of Sport Journal, September 2008). The Athletic Crusade: Sport and American Cultural Imperialism is a well-researched book which provides a comprehensive, yet short (164 pages) history lesson of how America has used sport to expand its global influence. Gerald Gems paints a clear picture of how race and economics are inextricably linked in America's use of sport as a policy to influence and control cultures outside its borders. The purpose of the book is clear: to understand how America used sport to increase its global hegemony and to learn the ways in which these cultures were affected by this form of American intervention. Gems presents several predominant themes of sport interwoven with political history and foreign sociocultural norms: how American sport was imposed on foreign cultures, how foreign cultures accepted American sport as a part of their culture, how an emphasis on sport increased foreign nationalism and rejected American imperialism, and how the cross-cultural flow of American sport played a role in the wider global arena. The book fills a void as an important resource for a seemingly forgotten aspect of American expansionism: American attempts at cultural domination in the Pacific, Asia, Caribbean, and Central America. Gems sets the stage with a thorough historical introduction of America's need for expansion with the call for Manifest Destiny in the mid- to late-1800s, a time when sport was taking root in American culture. After the American West was conquered, the United States headed outside of its continental borders south and west in search of economic benefit, colonial expansionism, and land-grabbing. Placed into context is the formation of American expansionist policies, including the racist policies of the American politic and the religious protestant zeal that supported White cultural elitism. Chapters, in sequence, include investigations of American influence in the Pacific and Asian cultures of China, Japan, the Philippines, and Hawaii. The Caribbean islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic follow. In Chapter 9, "The Outposts of Empire," several pages are each devoted to Samoa, Guam, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Panama. Beginning with a look at China in Chapter 2, Gems sets the stage with a recurring theme: that the introduction of American sport (primarily baseball) failed to inculcate protestant values and transform foreign cultures. The United States' political ambitions on foreign lands met cultural resistance everywhere it set foot. Indeed, White sports such as baseball, basketball, and track were used as a means to control and an attempt to cleanse foreign cultures. Athletic contests among various Asian and Pacific cultures, including National Games and Far East Games organized by the YMCA and American colonial governments, provided opportunity to impose Americanized ideals through sport and pride. Yet more often than not, these competitions created racial tensions between the cultures and the Americans, and enhanced nationalism among the foreigners. The foreigners resisted American cultural assimilation by beating the Americans at their own game, such as defeating traveling American intercollegiate athletic teams and military squads. Two of the more interesting chapters discuss the traditional sports of martial arts in Japan (Chapter 3) and surfing in Hawaii (Chapter 5). Though these cultures absorbed American baseball, martial arts and surfing also flourished and, in turn, became popular in America. The book would benefit from a deeper look into the role of martial arts in Japan and surfing in Hawaii before American interference. Throughout the volume, Gems mentions how American colonizers used sport as an educational tool to not only promote well-being through physical education, but to instill Anglo work ethic, moral character, and values. Gems presents an interesting political mix of the seemingly deliberate nature by American politicians and the social elite to use the YMCA as further means to control foreign cultures and proselytize. The author's discussion of the role of the U.S. government and the YMCA to use sport as a social force ties each of the chapters back to the book's purpose and intent. Though Gems succeeds in weaving the sociohistorical and political context with the role of sport, the book lacks depth in a few areas. There is an opportunity to address how women in foreign cultures were influenced by the Americans' use of sport. Two notable recent efforts about China and Cuba provide a limited glimpse into the history of women and gender issues in sport and recreation: "Chinese women and sport," an essay by James Riordan and Dong Jinxia (1999), discusses traditional attitudes to women's involvement in combat sports of martial arts, wrestling, and boxing; and, Sport in Latin American Society, by J.A. Mangan and Lamartine DaCosta (2002) includes a chapter on masculinity in Cuban baseball at the expense of women. A more deliberate and extensive discussion of gender differences in sport participation and the affect of sport on women would provide a more complete understanding of the sociohistoric forces at work. In addition, contrasting the role of the influence of American sport to foreign traditional sports and non-organized recreation may provide a more enhanced view of how individuals used sport to form their nationalistic identities in reaction to American imperialism. The final two pages of the book leave the reader with a bitter taste - a diatribe at the American homogenization of the world through the policies of American political establishment, materialism, military expansionism, and capitalism. While many can argue America has imposed its culture on the world stage, this wider political discussion belongs in a separate volume. Regardless, The Athletic Crusade provides an important contribution to history, sociology, and the study of sport. It is a well-written, extensively researched, engaging, and informative book. Gerald Gems succeeds in his purpose to help us learn the ways that America both succeeded and failed to use sports to dominate Pacific, Asian, Caribbean, and Central American cultures. References Mangan, J. A., & DaCosta, L. P. (2002). Sport in Latin American society: Past and present. London: Frank Cass Publishers. Riordan, J., & Jinxia, D. (1999). Chinese women and sport. In J. Riordan & R. Jones (Eds.), Sport and physical education in China (pp. 159-184). New York: Routledge.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-04-24 00:00:00 James Gravley I don't mind admitting that Alexis de Toqueville's Democracy in America is quite possible the most demanding piece of exposition I've read since Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind. I suspect it's one of those books ' analogous, if you will, to Cervantes' Don Quixote, Melville's Moby Dick, Proust's In Search of Lost Time or Musil's Man Without Qualities ' that avid readers want to have read, but never have. I finally did. If you can find the time (and the quiet) to read fifty pages of this book a day, you can accomplish it in under three weeks. If you can devote yourself to more than fifty pages a day ' and have the concentration necessary to make sense of what you're reading ' you're a better (wo)man than I am. I couldn't. In spite of my best efforts and virtually ideal conditions (most often in some secluded spot in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden), I found myself having to read many sentences two and three times over. Democracy in America is no doubt more worthy of a dissertation than of a review. And I suspect that thousands of dissertations have been written on this oeuvre. The book is dense ' with a capital "D" ' and any sort of commentary on it could rival exegesis of the Torah. Dense it is. But also prescient ' with a capital "P." If you can't find the time or the circumstances to devote yourself to a reading of the entire work, read just Chapter 10 of Part II, Volume One ("Some Considerations Concerning the Present State and Probable Future of the Three Races that Inhabit the Territory of the United States"). And keep in mind that Volume One was published in 1835; the "Trail of Tears" (the expulsion of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia to a circumscribed territory in Oklahoma) happened only three years later; and the Civil War was still relatively far off! But what of de Tocqueville's observation at the conclusion of Volume One concerning Americans and Russians ' ions before the start of the Cold War? Allow me to quote at length from pp. 475-476, as I don't want to shortchange the man: "There are today two great peoples on earth, who, though they started from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans. Both grew in obscurity, and while humanity's gaze was focused elsewhere, they abruptly vaulted to the first rank among nations: the world learned almost simultaneously of their birth and of their grandeur. All other peoples seem close to achieving the limits traced for them by nature and henceforth need only to preserve what they already have; but these two are still growing. All the others have stopped, or move forward only with the greatest of effort. Only these two march with an easy and rapid stride down a road whose end no eye can yet perceive. The American does battle with the obstacles that nature has placed before him; the Russian grapples with men. One combats wilderness and barbarity; the other, civilization with all its arms. The American makes his conquests with the farmer's ploughshare, the Russian with the soldier's sword. To achieve his goal, the American relies on personal interest and allows individuals to exercise their strength and reason without guidance. The Russian in a sense concentrates all of society in the power of one man. The American's principal means of action is liberty; the Russian's, servitude. Their points of departure are different, their ways diverse. Yet each seems called by a secret design of Providence some day to sway the destinies of half the globe." Just as prescient are de Tocqueville's observations in Volume Two, Part II, Chapter 20 (pp. 649 - 652 in the Arthur Goldhammer/Literary Classics of the United States, © 2004 edition I've just read). In these four pages (titled "How Industry Could Give Rise to an Aristocracy"), de Tocqueville not only foresees the dangers of the industrial process known as "Taylorism" introduced decades later by the Ford Motor Company, but also adumbrates the condition of alienation between worker and owner/manager, haves and have-nots, into which we in the U. S. are now inexorably slipping. (Should you have any interest in understanding more about this latter development, I would respectfully refer you to Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine, which I reviewed here at Goodreads at the end of last month.) And what of this concluding observation 150 years before the deluge of widgets and gadgets in which most of the current generation of digital addicts would appear to be drowning? "Habitual inattention must be regarded as the greatest defect of the democratic mind (last sentence on p. 718)." There are no doubt other good reasons for the seemingly constant state of distraction of so many young minds ' and de Tocqueville carefully lays out his argument in the pages leading up to his conclusion. And yet, one has to wonder whether the "democratic mind" as it has come to be in these United States and elsewhere in the Western World at the beginning of the twenty-first century was the incubator or the egg in our so-called "high-tech (r)evolution." Please allow me to return to p. 198 to conclude with one last citation, even if I could go on and on with others worth their aphoristic weight in gold. "Time no more stops for nations than it does for individuals. Both advance daily toward a future of which they know nothing." "…(A) future of which they know nothing." Scary stuff ' but worthwhile (to say the least!) reading. RRB 6/14/13 Brooklyn, NY