Andrei S. Markovits, Steven L. Hellerman

Offside

Soccer and American Exceptionalism

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Soccer is the world's favorite pastime, a passion for billions around the globe. In the United States, however, the sport is a distant also-ran behind football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Why is America an exception? And why, despite America's leading role in popular culture, does most of the world ignore American sports in return? Offside is the first book to explain these peculiarities, taking us on a thoughtful and engaging tour of America's sports culture and connecting it with other fundamental American exceptionalisms. In so doing, it offers a comparative analysis of sports cultures in the industrial societies of North America and Europe. The authors argue that when sports culture developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nativism and nationalism were shaping a distinctly American self-image that clashed with the non-American sport of soccer. Baseball and football crowded out the game. Then poor leadership, among other factors, prevented soccer from competing with basketball and hockey as they grew. By the 1920s, the United States was contentedly isolated from what was fast becoming an international obsession. The book compares soccer's American history to that of the major sports that did catch on. It covers recent developments, including the hoopla surrounding the 1994 soccer World Cup in America, the creation of yet another professional soccer league, and American women's global preeminence in the sport. It concludes by considering the impact of soccer's growing popularity as a recreation, and what the future of sports culture in the country might say about U.S. exceptionalism in general.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Seitenzahl: 366
• Erscheinungstermin: 22. April 2001
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 234mm x 156mm x 22mm
• Gewicht: 623g
• ISBN-13: 9780691074474
• ISBN-10: 069107447X
• Artikelnr.: 22311096

Autorenporträt

Andrei S. Markovits, born in October 1948 in the West Romanian city of Timisoara as the only child of a Hungarian-speaking middle-class Jewish couple, is the Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Raised in Vienna and New York City, Markovits attended Columbia University from which he received five degrees. His academic career led him to holding positions on the faculties of Wesleyan University, Boston University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz before assuming his current professorships at the University of Michigan in 1999. In addition, Markovits was a long-time member of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University where he was also a Visiting Professor of Social Studies in 2002-2003. Markovits held guest professorships at universities in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Israel. He has been awarded many fellowships and was a member of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences of Stanford University and the Institute for Advanced Study Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin). His many books, articles, and reviews have appeared in fifteen languages. Markovits' published scholarship ranges from European social democracy and labor unions to European anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism; from the politics of scandal to that of the Green movement and party in Germany. His latest work has been primarily focused on the consumption of sports (i.e., the fans as opposed to the athletes) in North America and Europe, as well as dog rescue in the ever-changing context of human-animal relations. Markovits was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Leuphana University in Lueneburg, Germany. Additonally, the President of the Federal Republic of Germany bestowed on Markovits the Cross of the Order of Merit, First Class, one of the highest honors awarded by Germany to Germans and foreigners alike. A lover of all music, Markovits has been particularly enamored with the work of Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorak, and the Grateful Dead, whom he followed on many a tour on the East Coast between 1969 and Jerry Garcia's tragic and untimely death in 1995. A devoted lover of golden retrievers over many years, Markovits and his wife, Kiki, live with their beloved golden Emma in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Markovits recently published his memoir under the title THE PASSPORT AS HOME: COMFORT IN ROOTLESSNESS. (Budapest and Vienna: The Central European University Press, 2021). The book has also appeared in a German and Romanian translation!