'As much about globalization as it is about football, this engaging narrative demonstrates how the world's most popular sport has been influenced by a range of complex global processes and flows. Researchers, teachers and students interested in processes of globalization will find it both very interesting and highly informative. Those with interests in football and sport will find a wealth of conceptual resources and comparative material that should prove invaluable. Globalization and Football deserves to be widely read and I am confident it will be!' - Barry Smart, Professor of Sociology, University of Portsmouth This timely book provides an engaging, clear view of the interrelationships within key globalization processes and the international sport of football. Intelligently combining the conceptual and methodological aspects of global studies with the specific cultural conditions of the 'beautiful game' Giulianotti and Robertson illuminate its social history and diffusion, as well as wider cultural, economic, political and social dimensions.
Using football to chart an increasing global connectivity, or globality, the authors explore how the game may be understood as a metric, mirror, motor and metaphor of globalization Issues discussed include: - Transnational Identities and the Global Civil Society, - Cosmopolitanism & Americanization, - Neo-Liberalism, Inequalities and Transnational Clubs, - Politics, Nations, and International Governance, Ideal for students and lecturers concerned with the sociology of sport, globalization and international cultural studies - the book will be of interest to anyone keen to map the intricate ways in which transnational processes may impact upon particular domains of social life.