Nationalism and Sport: A Review of the Field

Abstract

AbstractThe connection between nationalism and sport seems at once both obvious and manifest, with the most lavish praise of the nation often arising at sporting events. While a sizeable body of academic literature exists on the connection between the two concepts, it remains overlapping and unstructured. This state of the field review essay accounts for the major works in this field and categorizes it according to the function it fulfills in the subfield. Specifically, it focuses on sport as a mechanism for the diffusion and creation of nationalism, sport under conditions of globalization at Sporting Mega Events (SMEs), and the connection between sport and the distinction between civic and ethnic definitions of nationality.