Globalization And Sport, Structure And Agency: The Need For Greater Clarity

Globalization is most simply understood as the internationalization of the market economy. The argument that has been advanced in various fields of academia asserts that as the marketplace becomes more technologically and industrially developed, the actions of those who operate within this marketplace become undifferentiated. Uniqueness is abandoned in favour of the rationalized world, in which the relentness drive to maximize production in the most efficient manner reigns supreme. In this paper we wish to continue the debate that has been put forward concerning globalization and latterly, globalization and sport. We attempt to tie together diverse and often contradictory interpretations concerning globalization in sport. While cognizant of the power that a global marketplace has upon culture, we argue that it is not only the structural global properties or characteristics that help define the sports experience. Equally important, are the local and particular meanings that are attached to the global properities of individuals or groups in producing localized “maps of meaning”.