Stephen Wagg

Comedy, Politics, and Social Difference

Because I Tell a Joke Or Two

Dominic Strinati

Come on Down represents an introduction to popular media culture in Britain since 1945. It discusses the ways in which popular culture can be studied, understood and appreciated, and covers its key analytical issues and some of its most important forms and processes. The contributors analyse some of popular culture's leading and most representative expressions such as TV soaps, quizzes and game shows, TV for children, media treatment of the monarchy, Pop Music, Comedy, Advertising, Consumerism and Americanization. The diversity of both subject matter and argument is the most distinctive feature of the collection, making it a much-needed and extremely accessible, interdisciplinary introduction to the study of popular media culture. The contributors, many of them leading figures in their respective areas of study, represent a number of different approaches which themselves reflect the diversity and promise of contemporary theoretical debates. Their studies encompass issues such as the economics of popular culture, its textual complexity and its interpretations by audiences, as well as concepts such as ideology, material culture and postmodernism.

Come on Down?

Bringing together leading international writers on cricket and society, this important new book places cricket in the postcolonial life of the major Test-playing countries. Exploring the culture, politics, governance and economics of cricket in the twenty-first century, this book dispels the age-old idea of a gentle game played on England's village greens. This is an original political and historical study of the game's development in a range of countries and covers: * cricket in the new Commonwealth: Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Caribbean and India * the cricket cultures of Australia, New Zealand and post-apartheid South Africa * cricket in England since the 1950s. This new book is ideal for students of sport, politics, history and postcolonialism as it provides stimulating and comprehensive discussions of the major issues including race, migration, gobalization, neoliberal economics, the media, religion and sectarianism.

Following On

Cricket and National Identity in the Postcolonial Age

David L. Andrews

This is a collection of essays on the symbolic role of sport in the delicate interplay of the superpowers during the Cold War, showing how sport and politics became inextricably intertwined.

Sport and the Cold War

East Plays West

Dilwyn Porter

The ideal of the amateur competitor, playing the game for love and, unlike the professional, totally untainted by commerce, has become embedded in many accounts of the development of modern sport. It has proved influential not least because it has underpinned a pervasive impression of professionalism - and all that came with it - as a betrayal of i

It Matters Not Who Won or Lost?

Amateurism in British Sport

Cricket is an enduring paradox. On the one hand, it symbolises much that is outmoded: imperialism; a leisured elite; a rural, aristocratic Englishness. On the other, it endures as a global game and does so by skilful adaptation, trading partly on its mythic past and partly on its capacity to repackage itself. This ambitious new history recounts the politics of cricket around the world since the Second World War, examining key cultural and political themes, including decolonisation, racism, gender, globalisation, corruption and commercialisation. Part One looks at the transformation of cricket cultures in the ten territories of the former British Empire in the years immediately after 1945, a time when decolonisation and the search for national identity touched every cricket playing region in the world. Part Two focuses on globalisation and the game’s evolution as an international sport, analysing: social change and the Ashes; the campaigns for new cricket formats; the development of the women’s game; the new breed of coach; the limits to the game’s global expansion; and the rise of India as the world’s leading cricket power. Cricket: A Political History of the Global Game, 1945-2017 is fascinating reading for anybody interested in the contemporary history of sport.

1945 to 2012

Cricket: A Political History of the Global Game, 1945-2017

David Andrews

The Cold War spanned some five decades from the devastation that remained after World War Two until the fall of the Berlin wall, and for much of that time the perception was that only on the Eastern side were politics and sport inextricably linked. However, this assumption underestimates the extent to which sport was an important symbol for both power blocs in their ongoing ideological struggle. This collection of essays from leading international authorities on sport, culture and ideology brings together an impressive body of work organized around key political themes and outstanding moments in sport, and is at once a political history of sport and an illuminating new perspective on the forces that shaped this unsettled time.

Jane Pilcher

Dr Jane Pilcher

That childhood is a social construction is understood both by social scientists and in society generally. The authors of this book examine the political issues surrounding childhood, including law making, social policy, government provisions and political activism.; This text examines current social and political issues involving childhood. It looks at the impact of the "New Right" who talk of family values, parent power in schools, irresponsible provision of contraception to young girls and the increase in child violence as a result of mass media. It also considers the response of the caring professions and the "Modern Left" who campaign, amongst other things, for the establishment of children's rights.

Politics, Childhood And Society In The 1980s And 1990s

Thatcher's Children?

This book takes stock of British football at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is written by a range of concerned academics and writers, all of whom have an active relationship with the contemporary football world. The book assesses the changes that have occurred in many areas of football culture and the political and academic debates that have accompanied these changes. English football in particular, it seems, is 'fat city'. The Premiership, now eight years old, has, via satellite television, become a globalised phenomenon: there are Liverpool supporters in Bangladesh, Chelsea fans in sub-Saharan Africa and Manchester United followers across the globe. Grounds are full. Top class football attracts people to bars and pubs in huge numbers. Hooliganism appears a thing of the past. Everyone seems to love football and/or to support a team. The British football media are generally euphoric in their rendering of contemporary football culture. However, the contributors to this book argue that the heavily commodified, PR-driven and cartelised British football world, with which so many contemporary politicians and other public figures rush to identify themselves, has either created, exacerbated or continued to ignore serious problems of social exclusion problems of class and community, race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality and age.

British Football & Social Exclusion

George E.C. Paton

Chris Powell

First published in 1996, this volume is a sequel to Humour in Society: Resistance and Control which was edited by George E.C. Paton and Chris Powell. Now, seven years later, the culturally central nature of humour seems greater than ever. This collection of original essays critically assesses the practices of humour in various role relationships in a number of social contexts, for example, in the workplace and between family members. A feature of this new volume is the critical analysis of socio-linguistic practices, including the use of jokes and cartoons, to manage tensions in social relationships at the micro- and macro-sociological levels of human interaction. Wider social and cultural issues area also examined by other contributors concerned with alternative comedy and sitcoms in British and Australian society, for example, which along with humour practices are situated by the editors in their introduction to substantiate the value of studying and researching the sociology of humour.

Practices and Issues

The Social Faces of Humour

Karl Spracklen

M. Selim Yavuz

Brett Lashua

This book draws from a rich history of scholarship about the relations between music and cities, and the global flows between music and urban experience. The contributions in this collection comment on the global city as a nexus of moving people, changing places, and shifting social relations, asking what popular music can tell us about cities, and vice versa. Since the publication of the first Sounds and the City volume, various movements, changes and shifts have amplified debates about globalization. From the waves of people migrating to Europe from the Syrian civil war and other conflict zones, to the 2016 “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union and American presidential election of Donald Trump. These, and other events, appear to have exposed an anti-globalist retreat toward isolationism and a backlash against multiculturalism that has been termed “post-globalization.” Amidst this, what of popular music? Does music offer renewed spaces and avenues for public protest, for collective action and resistance? What can the diverse​​ histories, hybridities, and legacies of popular music tell us about the ever-changing relations of people and cities?

Volume 2

Sounds and the City

Analysing the politics of the 2012 London Olympics, Stephen Wagg examines the framing of London's bid to host the Games, arguments about the Games' likely impact and the establishment of 'Fortress London' to protect the Games. The book asks who won, and who lost out, in this important event as well as exploring its media coverage and legacy.

Politics, Promises and Legacy

The London Olympics of 2012

Senior Research Fellow Department of Historical and International Studies Dilwyn Porter

In the essays collected here, amateurism, both as ideology and practice, is subject to critical and unsentimental scrutiny, effectively challenging the dominant narrative of more conventional histories of British sport.

It Matters Not Who Won Or Lost?

Jon Dart

This volume is built around three assumptions - first, that for huge numbers people around the world, including many sport lovers, there are more important things in life than sport; second, that the governance of sport is in many ways problematic and needs to be confronted; and, third, that contrary to the still-popular belief that sport and politics don't mix, sport often provides an ideal theatre for the enacting of political protest. The book contains studies of a range of protests, stretching back to the death of suffragist Emily Davison at the Derby of 1913 and encompassing subsequent protests against the exclusion of women from the sporting arena; the Berlin Olympics of 1936; Western imperialism; the Mexico Olympics, 1968; the state racism of apartheid in South Africa; the effect of the global golf industry on ecosystems; Israeli government policy; resistance to the various attempts to bring the Olympic Games to Canadian and American cities; the cutting of welfare benefits for disabled British citizens; class privilege in the UK; Russian anti-gay laws; and high public spending on sport mega-events in Brazil. The collection will be of interest to scholars and students with an interest in Sports Studies, History, Politics, Geography, Cultural Studies and Sociology.

Stephen Wagg

Books

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