This text looks at how an understanding of rugby can provide insight into what it has meant to "be a man" in societies influenced by the ideals of Victorian upper and middle classes. It shows that rugby has been a means of promoting male exclusivity, but also been a means of cultural incorporation.

This book explores the expansion of rugby from its imperial and amateur upper-class white male core into other contexts throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The development of rugby in the racially divided communities of the setter empire and how this was viewed are explored initially. Then the editors turn to four case studies of rugby's expansion beyond the bounds of the British Empire (France, Italy, Japan and the USA). The role of women in rugby is examined and the subsequent development of women's rugby as one of the fastest growing sports for women in Europe, North America and Australasia in the 1980s and 1990s. The final section analyses the impact of commercialisation, professionalisation and media on rugby and the impact on the historic rugby culture linked to an ethos of amateurism.

This study examines the role of modern sports in constructing national identities and the way leaders have exploited sports to achieve domestic and foreign policy goals. The book focuses on the development of national sporting cultures in Great Britain and the United States, the particular processes by which the rest of Europe and the world adopted or rejected their games, and the impact of sports on domestic politics and foreign affairs. Teams competing in international sporting events provide people a shared national experience and a means to differentiate “us” from “them.” Particular attention is paid to the transnational influences on the construction of sporting communities, and why some areas resisted dominant sporting cultures while others adopted them and changed them to fit their particular political or societal needs. A recurrent theme of the book is that as much as they try, politicians have been frustrated in their attempts to achieve political ends through sport. The book provides a basis for understanding the political, economic, social, and diplomatic contexts in which these games were played, and to present issues that spur further discussion and research.

In recent decades Africa has emerged as a sporting giant. The African sporting phenomenon has been addressed in the popular press and it has also attracted scholarly interest; however, this interest is almost entirely focussed on men. Yet women’s participation in recreational and elite sport is worthy of exploration and research. This path-breaking collection of essays provides an introduction to a variety of dimensions of women’s participation in African sports. Several key concepts are addressed in the book: women and media, women and sport-migration, sport and empowerment, sporting and social development, women’s sport and postcolonial Africa, and professional sport and economic development. This collection, authored by established scholars, will attract readership from students from Sports Studies to African Studies and from undergraduate students to university teachers. This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

The meanings attached to sports in South African societies, past and present, are explored in this book, which focuses particularly on the part played by the prominent team sports of rugby, soccer and cricket in the creation of social divisions and unities over the course of South African history. In the past, only white South Africans could represent "South Africa" in international sport. Now, formerly white-dominated sports have been promoted as unifying forces for a nation in the process of forging a new national identity. The book considers the history and changing meanings attached to particular sports in the old and new South Africas, and how sport is being used and abused today.

In 1995 rugby union became the last significant international sport to sanction professionalism. To some this represented an undesirable challenge to the traditions of the game. To others the change was inevitable and overdue – an acknowledgment of both the realty of modern sport and the extent to which money had already permeated the game. While there are some commonalities in the response to professional rugby, the contributions to this book, representing almost all of the significant rugby playing countries, reveal much more that was shaped by particular local contexts both within rugby and in terms of its place within the economic, political, class and social structures of the surrounding society. The authors assess the contrasting ways in which rugby administrators at local, regional and national level grappled with the changes that were required and the demands of the corporate backers who funded the transition to professionalism. But the more contentious relationships considered are those involving the many amateur rugby players and committed fans who found that significant community and historical reference points were subtly altered or simply obliterated in the face of new commercial imperatives – and especially new competitions that separated elite players from the grassroots of the game. Some have adapted to the replacement ‘product’ with relish, others have not. Some have genuine and well articulated grievances against the processes of changes. Others have fallen victim to a nostalgia which appropriates very selective memories of the amateur past to highlight apparent problems with the professional present. Above all, these contributions provide a range of perspectives that enable the reader to take stock at a particular point in what is still a rapidly evolving game. Read in ten or twenty years, this book may confirm that many of the right paths have been taken – or it may provide pointers to crisis as yet unimagined.

It is generally forgotten that cricket rather than rugby union was the 'national game' in New Zealand until the early years of the twentieth century. This book shows why and how cricket developed in New Zealand and how its character changed across time. Greg Ryan examines the emergence and growth of cricket in relation to diverse patterns of European settlement in New Zealand - such as the systematic colonization schemes of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the gold discoveries of the 1860s. He then considers issues such as cricket and social class in the emerging cities; cricket and the elite school system; the function of the game in shaping relations between the New Zealand provinces; cricket encounters with the Australian colonies in the context of an 'Australasian' world. A central theme is cricketing relations with England at a time when New Zealand society was becoming acutely conscious of both its own identity and its place within the British Empire. This imperial relationship reveals structures, ideals and objectives unique to New Zealand. Articulate, engaging and entertaining, Ryan demonstrates convincingly how the cricketing experience of New Zealand was quite different from that of other colonies.