Tailgate Parties
Think football, and odds are you think tailgate party. And with good reason — the tailgate party is among the most time-honored and revered American sporting traditions, what with the festivities, the food and the fans. And the beer. Don’t forget the beer. To the untrained eye, these game-day rituals appear to be little […]
China and the Olympics
Anthropologist Susan Brownell studies sports and the Olympics: My question, "will the Olympics change China, or will China change the Olympics?" was really an attempt to prod my audiences to think about the bigger question of the implications for the developed West of China's rise, because Westerners seemed so concerned about the question of whether […]
The Ball
John Fox, a Harvard Ph.D. anthropologist, talked to CNN about his new book, The Ball: Discovering the Object of the Game CNN: Your book starts with a basic question from your son, "Why do we play ball?" Did you find an answer? Fox: I wouldn't say I found an answer. It's a philosophical question […]
Weather Control
This interesting anthropology-related news bite appeared at ESPN: BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia’s top prosecutor is questioning why a shaman, or medicine man, was paid $2,000 to keep rain away from the closing ceremony of the Under-20 World Cup. The attorney general’s office opened the investigation Tuesday after the comptroller’s office in Bogota questioned cost overruns […]
Homophobia in Soccer
Type the name of Philipp Lahm into the Google search engine and the first thing its “autocomplete” feature throws up about Germany’s national football captain is “Philipp Lahm schwul” – “Philipp Lahm gay”. […]As elsewhere in Europe, Germany has no openly gay men in the professional leagues. Given the amount of repressive hide-and-seek going on, […]
Women’s World Cup
Anthropologists discuss football/soccer and culture at The New York Times and CNN: Beatriz Vélez, former anthropology professor at the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín, studied the gender dynamics of football in her home city beginning in the 1990s. First, she wrote about the grudging acceptance girls received as token participants in the Football for Peace […]