Barbaric sport
Subtitle: a global plague
By: Marc Perelman ; translated by John Howe
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Brooklyn, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 134
ISBN-13: 9781844678594; 9781844679133
Subjects: Sociological aspects; Sports; Corrupt practices; Sports and globalization; Sports and state
Work titles: Sport barbare
Description: "Marc Perelman pulls no punches in this succinct and searing broadside, assailing the “recent form of barbarism” that is the global sporting event. Forget the Olympics and consider, under Perelman’s guidance, the ledger of inequities maintained by such supposedly harmless games: They have provided a smokescreen for the forcible removal of “undesirables;” aided governments in the pursuit of racist agendas; affirmed the hypocrisy of drug-testing in an industry where doping is more an imperative than an aberration; and developed the pornographic hybrid that Perelman dubs ‘sporn’, a further twist in our corrupt obsession with the body. Drawing examples from the modern history of the international sporting event, Perelman argues that today’s colosseums, upheld as examples of “health,” have become the steamroller for a decadent age fixated on competition, fame and elitism."--Publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.

Translated from French.
Table of contents: title: The real nature of the Olympic Games: Berlin 1936, Moscow 1980, the football World Cup, Argentina 1978; title: Beijing 2008: the games of shame; title: The Olympic charter; title: Competitive sport: globalized sports-spectacle and national fetish; title: Sport: as old as the world?; title: Origin and development of the theses on the critique of sport; title: The stadium: consolidation of the masses; title: Sport, culture and youth; title: The sporting champion: addiction and drugs; title: The globalization of sport through doping; title: The globalization of sport and the sporting mode of production; title: The show stadium; title: The power of images; title: A standardized aesthetic; title: Sexuality, homosexuality and sport; title: The religion of sport; title: The critique of sport as it was; title: The arrival of sport as an academic discipline; title: The future of the critique of sport.