Sport, Modernity, and the Body

Abstract

Over the past three decades, the important role that anthropological theory has bestowed on the body, modernity, nationalism, the state, citizenship, transnationalism, globalization, gender, and sexuality has placed sports at the center of questions central to the discipline. New approaches to the body, based on practice theory, view the sporting body as more than just a biological entity, allowing us to observe sports as they “travel” transnationally and illuminating issues relevant to such dynamics as colonialism, globalization, sport mega-events, and labor migration. A distinctly anthropological approach, with its unique research methods, approaches to theory, and holistic thinking, can utilize insights from the constitution of sport as human action to illuminate important social issues in a way that no other discipline can. On this foundation, the anthropology of sport is now poised to make significant contributions to our understanding of central problems in anthropology.