Sport And Identity In France

How does sport shape society? This book seeks to answer this question by examining the meaning of sport in French society and the construction of local, national and, increasingly, global identities through sport. It begins by reassessing modern sport's emergence and consolidation in France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and then traces developments from the Second World War to the present, reflecting on the current status and future role of French sport. Horse racing, cycling, tennis, adventure sports, rugby and football, as well as the role of the Olympic Games, are discussed. The author investigates the interaction of these mass and elite physical practices with a wide variety of sporting locations - spatial and temporal, concrete and imagined - and in a rich field of representations, including literature and the fine arts, the press, cinema, radio, television and digital media. Related concepts of sporting celebrity, stardom and heroism also inform the discussion, offering new contributions to this developing critical area.

Hare traces the gradual evolution of traditional French football values and considers the impact of new and controversial business practices. He asks what is peculiarly French about French football, and what does football tell us about France?.

Sport is far more than a national and international entertainment: it is a source of political identity, morale, pride and superiority. Tribal Identities explores the influence of sport on the nations of Europe as a mechanism of national solidarity promoting a sense of identity, unity, status and esteem; as an instrument of confrontation between nations, stimulating aggression, stereotyping, and images of inferiority and superiority; and as a cultural bond linking nations across national boundaries, providing common enthusiasm, shared experiences, the transcendence of national allegiances, and opportunities for association, understanding and goodwill.

The Making of Les Bleus traces the Fifth Republic’s quest to create elite athletes in two global team sports, football and basketball, primarily at the youth level. While the objective of this mission was to improve performances at international competitions, such programs were quickly seized upon to help ease domestic issues and tensions. The onset of the Cold War forced countries of all sizes to rethink their relevancy. A country’s ability to exert “soft power,” or influence others through the cultural sphere, became more important. Sport was but one way through which to do so. The extent to which France harnessed the athletic domain was unprecedented among other West European nations. In France, sport, particularly at the youth level, was used to cultivate soft power internationally, to transmit republican ideals of democracy and fair play to the youth, and to examine and create a modern, post-colonial French identity in a globalizing world. The French sought to find a “third way” in sports, much in the way that it sought to create an alternative between the diplomatic policies of Washington and Moscow. Fifth Republic sports systems placed the training of elite athletes under the state. At the same time, private clubs also played an important role in developing players to serve the republic in elite competition. Examination of the republic’s quest to create elite athletes provides perspective on how France coped with and adapted to the post-1945 world. In what ways did the country reconfigure its global role? How did domestic changes impact society? In a globalizing, post-colonial world, how has France come to terms with the past? In what ways has France sought to create a new “French” identity? This story helps answer such questions. The history of the state’s cooption of youth sports forms a compelling tale and serves as a prism through which to investigate the larger history of France, the evolution of society, the impacts of the media revolution, and the government’s mission of public health. It underscores just how much things have changed—yet still remained the same. You can find a podcast interview with the author about this book at: http://newbooksinsports.com/2013/11/14/lindsay-krasnoff-the-making-of-les-bleus-sport-in-france-1958-2010-lexington-books-2012/

The stadium century traces the history of stadia and mass spectatorship in modern France from the vélodromes of the late nineteenth century to the construction of the Stade de France before the 1998 soccer World Cup. As the book demonstrates, the stadium was at the centre of debates over public health and urban development and proved to be a key space for mobilising the urban crowd for political rallies and spectator sporting events alike. After 1945, the transformed French stadium constituted part of the process of postwar modernisation but also was increasingly connected to global transformations to the spaces and practices of sport. Drawing from a wide range of sources,the stadium century links the histories of French urbanism, mass politics and sport through the stadium in an innovative work that will appeal to historians, students of French history and the history of sport, and general readers alike.

Sport and physical culture in Occupied France examines the Vichy state’s attempts to promote physical education and sports in order to rejuvenate French men and women during the Occupation. Through this cultural lens, it illuminates the central paradox of state power during the Vichy Regime. The state organised a centralised physical cultural programme meant to control and discipline French men and women. However, these activities instead empowered individuals and sporting associations to create spaces for individual expression, protect entrenched business enterprises, preserve republican institutions and organise sites for mutual aid and assistance. Based on extensive archival research, this innovative, multi-city analysis demonstrates how French sporting federations, associations and athletes appropriated Vichy’s physical education directives to reshape the ideology of the state and serve their own local agendas.

This edited volume gathers together studies examining various aspects of physical culture in literature written in French from Europe and around the Francophone world. We define “physical culture” as the systematic care for and development of the physique, and interpret it to include not only sport in the modern sense, but also all the athletic activities that preceded it or relate to it, such as bodily forms of exercise, leisure, and artistic creation. Our essays pursue diverse interpretive approaches and focus on texts from a wide variety of periods (medieval to the present) and genres (short stories, novels, essays, poetry) in order to consider the fundamental—yet highly neglected—place of physical activities in literature and culture from the French-speaking world. Some of the questions the essays explore include: Does the genre “sports literature” exist in French, and if so, what are its characteristics? How do governments or other political entities mobilize sports literature? What role do narratives about sports—especially the creation of teams—play in the construction of national, regional and/or local identities? How is physical culture used in literary works for pedagogical or ideological purposes? To what extent do sports performances provide a metaphorical and figurative discourse for discussing literature and culture?

As France's oldest team sport, rugby football has throughout its 125-year history reflected major changes in French society. This book analyzes for the first time the complex variety of motives that have led the French to adopt and remake this rather unlikely British sport in their own image. A major site for the construction of masculine, class-based regional and national identities, France's tradition of 'Champagne rugby' continues to be as subject to dramatic upheavals as the society that produced it. The game's precocious professionalism and endemic violence have not infrequently caused the French to be cast as international pariahs. Such isolation, exacerbated by internal politics, has led the French not only to encourage the extension of the sport beyond its British imperial base (into Italy and Romania, for instance), but also to engage in some uncomfortable tactical alliances, most obviously with apartheid South Africa.Taking his analysis both on and off the field, the author tackles these issues and much more: the relationship of sport and the state (including particularly the Vichy period and the period under de Gaulle); professionalization; the persistence of colonial and postcolonial structures (including the role of ethnic minorities); and gender issues - especially masculine identities. At the same time he links the evolution of the sport to the broader context of French socio-economic, political and cultural history.This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the cultural analysis of sport or French popular culture.