Andrei S. Markovits

Women's soccer in the United States: yet another American 'exceptionalism'.

Arguably, womens soccer in the United States has been among the best played and extensively watched in the world. Not only has the American national team won more international championships than any other national team, but the WUSA (Womens United States Soccer Association), a professional league, has become the top womens professional league in the world, attracting the best women soccer players from countries such as Germany, Norway, Brazil and China. Furthermore, in terms of female soccer players, the United States – with nearly 10 million registered participants – leads the world by a wide margin. Yet, unlike in many countries of the world, soccer remains a minute feature on the topographical map of American sports space. Why is this the case? This study will consider this fascinating dilemma.

The trade unions

For the West German unions, events in the mid- and late 1970s brought to an end a kind of ‘golden era’. This period was even worse for unions in most other European countries. Gone were the days of virtual full employment, annual increases in real wages, and extension of social and workplace benefits that had been first won, and then extended during the 1960s and early 1970s when sympathetic Labour and Social Democratic parties were in government throughout Northwestern Europe. In the course of the last decade, however, various internal and external challenges profoundly changed labour’s world both in the Federal Republic and the rest of Europe. These changes centred first and foremost on the altered states of solidarity for the unions both in the labour market and the political arena. Throughout Western Europe one could unmistakably detect major challenges to the solidarities of labour and the ‘old’ left which had dominated progressive politics since the beginning of the century when the dual development of mass production in the industrial sphere and large-scale political participation in the political realm created what we have come to know as modern society.

The “Olympianization” of Soccer in the United States

What the world calls “football,” far and away the globes most popular sport, has led a marginal existence as soccer in the United States, where football denotes a different game that has remained an integral part of American sports culture since the late 19th century. In the past two decades, soccer in the United States has undergone a substantial metamorphosis that has altered its former marginality without, however, giving it cultural power anywhere near that still exerted by baseball, basketball, football, and even ice hockey. Soccer in America now exists in three universes that overlap yet still remain distinct from each other: the world of millions of soccer players who pursue the game on the field but have no interest to follow it beyond their active involvement, a small group of soccer aficionados whose main identification with the game rests precisely in following not playing it, and a newly developed segment that neither plays much soccer nor follows the sport yet has come to delight in the quadrennial event of the World Cup.

Women and the World of Dog Rescue: A Case Study of the State of Michigan

In the wake of the considerable cultural changes and societal shifts that the United States and all advanced industrial democracies have experienced since the late 1960s and early 1970s, one can also observe a dramatic change in how humans in these societies have come to relate to nonhuman animals, dogs in particular. One of the new institutions created by this change in attitude and behavior toward dogs is the canine rescue organization, examples of which have arisen all over the United States beginning in the 1980s. While the growing scholarship on the changed dimension of the human-animal relationship attests to its social, political, and intellectual salience to our contemporary world, the work presented here constitutes the first academic research on the particularly important institution of dog rescue. This paper presents some key findings from a survey of canine rescue workers in the state of Michigan, with a concentration on the dynamics of gender within canine rescue work.

Introduction Mapping Sports Space

Sports forms (the shape that sports has taken) and practices (the activities that constitute the sport itself) have been seen as interesting but not of great importance: In such a view, sport has some interest as a reflection of the society itself, but by definition, from such a perspective, sport is not of real social significance. It is a kind of reminder of the broader social analysis: The values found in sport or a particular sports culture are those that characterize the wider society. One would typically expect an advanced industrial democracy to support those sports that embody the core values of the society. In classic structural-functionalist fashion, this framework locates sport as mere reflection—a cultural reflex, no more, of the wider social body. Purportedly, more critical approaches claim to have broken with this tradition. Three classic critiques of contemporary sport adopted radical, almost insurrectionist, postures toward contemporary sport. Paul Hoch, working within the revolutionary left networks of the 1960s and 1970s, published Rip Off the Big Game: The Exploitation of Sports by the Power Élite in 1972. In France, linked to the radical movement of 1968 and its associated cultural politics, Jean-Marie Brohm collected together some of his provocative essays in the arrestingly titled volume Sport: A Prison of Measured Time (1978). East of Brohm, in the Federal Republic of Germany, Bero Rigauer was the first to take its logical conclusions toward the analytical emphases of the Frankfurt School: As the first graduate student of Theodor W. Adorno to work on the topic of sport, Rigauer produced Sport and Work (first published in German in 1969, English edition 1981), in which he argued that sport was simply analogous to work/labor and the values and ideologies represented by the latter in an advanced capitalist society/economy. The problem with such approaches—however sophisticated the

The contemporary power of memory: The Dilemmas for German foreign policy

Collective memory matters in the formulation and implementation of any countrys foreign policy. This is a fortiori the case in todays Germany where policy makers and the public confront an array of collective memories which are mutually antagonistic, often contradictory and still highly contentious. After presenting an argument for the validity of collective memory as a decisive factor in the creation and choice of policy, the article then describes the present “memory map” of Germany and concludes with some speculative thoughts on how persistent collective memories might influence the speed and direction of European development.

Nationbuilding and the politics of nationalism : essays on Austrian Galicia

The province of Galicia was the easternmost land of the old Habsburg Empire. Throughout the nineteenth century it was noted for political conflicts and the cultural vibrancy of its three major national groups: Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews. This volume brings together for the first time eleven essays on various aspects of the last seventy-five years of Austrian Galicias existence. Included are general surveys on Galicia within the imperial Habsburg system and on the fate of Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews within the province. Various aspects of Ukrainian development receive special attention, and a major bibliographic essay completes the volume. Among the leading specialists represented are Peter Brock, Paul R. Magocsi, Ezra Mendelsohn, Ivan L. Rudnytsky, and Piotr Wandycz.

An ounce of prevention? The reform of the German trade union Federation

This article investigates the causes and content of the ongoing reform of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB). We argue that problems predating German unification ‐ in particular, a skewed demographic profile, financial crisis and waning political clout ‐ are the central factors that led German unionists to undertake reform and have largely determined the reforms content. German unification acted simply as a catalyst rather than the cause prompting union reform. German unions can only retain their prominent economic and social position if they promote genuine democratic reform within their ranks. Otherwise unions will never attract employees from the high technology and service sectors that are essential to the union movements survival in the coming century. German unions should also resist the temptation to take on all of the problems plaguing German society. They must instead concentrate on the essential tasks of all labour movements: discerning the ever‐changing wants of todays increasingly hete...

Modell Deutschland and the New Europe

Although the end of 1992 will mark the beginning of the European Internal Market, 1989 might well be considered the year of Europe. In an earlier age it might even have been called an annus mirabilis. Not only did it see a fundamental reorganization in existing power relations in state and society, a change in elites, the redefinition of public and private, and the introduction of a new economic order in Eastern Europe, it also restored Western Europe to its former contours if not its former borders. It was the year of Germany, which saw the long awaited unification of both the divided capital and state mat was the most conspicuous expression of the Cold War and a divided Europe.

Germany: hegemonic power and economic gain?

German economic power in Europe is uncontested. What is contested are its effects on Germanys neighbors. Accompanying the obvious benefits that accrue to Europe from German economic might are also potential disadvantages, particularly that of dependence. Data on Germanys relationship with countries in both East and West Europe shed light on this issue. This study suggests that the benefits outweigh any associated costs, thus rendering Germany a benign hegemon.