Sports in African History, Politics, and Identity Formation

Sports in African History, Politics, and Identity Formation explores how sports can render a key to unlocking complex social, political, economic, and gendered relations across Africa and the Diaspora. Sports hold significant value and have an intricate relationship with many components of African societies throughout history. For many Africans, sports are a way of life, a site of cultural heroes, a way out of poverty and social mobility, and a site for leisurely play. This book focuses on the many ways in which sports uniquely reflect changing cultural trends at diverse levels of African societies. The contributors detail various sports, such as football, cricket, ping pong, and rugby, across the continent to show how sports lay at the heart of the discourse of nationalism, self-fashioning, gender and masculinity, leisure and play, challenges of underdevelopment, and ideas of progress. Bringing together the newest and most innovative scholarship on African sports, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary Africa, African history, culture and society, and sports history and politics.

IntroductionMichael Gennaro and Saheed Aderinto Part 1: Region-Based Essays West and Central Africa 1."I Was Really Disgusted at Seeing Healthy Young Boys Playing Ping Pong": Ping-Pong and Masculinity in Post–World War II NigeriaMichael Gennaro 2.Pas de Deux as I Tell You: Physical Education, Dance, and the Remaking of Discipline in World War II BrazzavilleDanielle Porter Sanchez 3.Cameroonian Cricket: The Interface between Local and Dominant Colonial IdeologiesJoanne Clarke 4.Political Action in Sports Development Under the National Liberation Council (NLC) Era in GhanaKwame Adum-Kyeremeh 5. "The Best of the Best": The Politicization of Sports under Ghana’s Supreme Military CouncilHumphrey Asamoah Agyekum Southern Africa 6. "We Have Material Second to None": Colored Sportsmen and Masculine Competition in the South African Press, 1936–1960Cody S. Perkins 7. Playing Away from Home: The Nature of Soccer Integration in South Africa, 1978–1984Gustav Venter 8. Examining Physical Culture in a Local ContextFrancois Cleophas 9. "Visionary Courtyard Players": The Robben Island Rugby Board and the Transition to Post-Apartheid South Africa, c. 1972–1992Hendrik Snyders 10.The Birth of the Springboks: How Early International Rugby Matches Unified White Cultural Identity in South AfricaZachary R. Bigalke 11.A Tale of Two Sports Fields: Contested Spaces, Histories, and Identities at Play in Rural South AfricaTarminder Kaur North and East Africa 12. The Bulldog, the Pharaoh, and Football: British Imperialism and Egypt’s National Sport and Identity, 1882–1934Christopher Ferraro 13.Sports and Physical Education in Ethiopia during the Italian Occupation, 1936–1941Tamirat Gebremariam and Benoit Gaudin Part 2: Theme-Based Essays Diaspora and the Economic and International Dimension 14.Commercialization of Football in Africa: Prospects, Challenges, and ExperiencesManase Chiweshe 15.Islam and the Foreign Other: Representing the Alterity of Hakeem OlajuwonMunene Mwaniki 16.Afro-Orientalism in the Global Village: Media Imaginations of South Africa and Africa in the Coverage of the 2010 World CupShepherd Mpofu

Michael J. Gennaro is Assistant Professor of History at Bossier Parish Community College, USA. Saheed Aderintois Associate Professor of History at Western Carolina University, USA.