Philip Dine

Sport and the State in contemporary France: From la Charte des Sports to decentralisation

Abstract Recent French success in international competitions has drawn attention to the role of the State in encouraging both elite performance and mass participation in sport. This article traces the evolution of the Etat gestionnaire in the sporting domain: from its origins in the Charte des Sports imposed by the wartime Vichy administration, through the administrative continuities and political changes of the Fourth Republic, to the ambitious programme of reform instigated by de Gaulle in response to the perceived humiliation of the nations athletes at the 1960 (Rome) Olympic Games. The ‘special relationship’ deemed to exist between the State and the national sports federations is itself considered in the final section of the discussion, with particular reference being made to the education system, governmental and non‐governmental organisations, and arrangements for funding; this administrative apparatus is specifically analysed in terms of the impact of the Socialist governments decentralisation la...

Decolonizing the Republic

The origins of the Fifth Republic in the institutional crisis prompted by the Algerian war of national liberation (1954–62) are generally well remembered. Less often discussed are the long-term implications of the ideological about-turn that was required in order to ‘‘decolonize’’ a territory that for over a century had not been considered a colony at all. Recent research into the specifically Algerian genesis of the Fifth Republic has now highlighted the establishment at this time of durably influential definitions of nationality and citizenship. In particular, Todd Shepard’s analysis of the French ‘‘invention of decolonization’’ in Algeria traces the emergence of constructions of Frenchness that would continue to inform the putatively post-colonial Republic over the next half a century. Crucially, these ran counter to the myth—as well as the strictly limited reality—of French ‘‘color blindness’’ in the colonial sphere, a model of assimilation that purported to extend the ideal of republican universality throughout the overseas empire. As Shepard explains: ‘‘In this revolutionary moment, political institutions and the law joined with, reinforced, and sometimes redefined other crucial definitions (scientific, medical, bureaucratic, and cultural, for example) of who was French and how France should be governed, definitions in which race and ethnicity were already explicit’’ (12). Thus, having had Frenchness in a variety of guises imposed upon them for over a century, Algerians were at a stroke, and permanently, rendered alien. This move was to have significant consequences for French society, in that it established the centrality of racially defined ethnicity to future constructions of national identity. The new Republic’s determination to forget Algeria encouraged a broader separation of the narratives of decolonization and modernization, including

The end of an idyll? Sport and society in France, 1998-2002

This article considers developments in French sport in the period 1998-2002, with particular emphasis on the social representation of performances by the nations elite athletes in international competitions. It opens with the victory of the home side in the France 98 football World Cup and closes with the defeat of the national team in the 2002 edition of that same competition. The various attempts made both before and after France 98 to use sport as a means of promoting social inclusion and national solidarity, particularly as regards hitherto alienated young males from ethnic minorities (especially those of North African origin), are considered against this background. In order to place such developments in context, attention is also given to changes in patterns of sports participation and spending among the general French population. The article concludes with a brief survey of some recent intellectual critiques of this newfound national enthusiasm for sports.

MEMORIAL BOUNDARIES AND TEXTUAL TRANSGRESSIONS: THE NARRATIVE POLITICS OF FRANCE’S ALGERIAN WAR

Despite the recent growth in university courses on European Studies and Cultural Studies, and notwithstanding increasing public concern about questions of national identity within Europe, there is currently little material available which explores the diversity of European identities specifically within the context of European literary and filmic culture. In tackling ten novels, six plays, four films, three short stories, three books of travel writing and one diary, covering fifteen nationalities in all, the authors of this volume are seeking to fill this gap. The twelve essays contain detailed textual analysis embedded within a framework of cultural theory whose most celebrated reference points include Freud, Edward Said, Benedict Anderson and Homi Bhabha. This volume is aimed not only at specialists in identity studies and those concerned with the artistic landscape of a wider Europe - including Russia, the Balkans, Finland and Turkey. It will also interest those preoccupied with building an imaginative and imagined identity for Europe, an identity which might help to sustain it as a political entity and lend it greater popular legitimacy than it enjoys at present.

Le Football de Paris et ses Banlieues: Un Sport Devenu Spectacle

black players, the turfmen had all the power they would need to embrace their ‘Darwinian inevitability’. Even Issac Murphy was out of the sport within a decade and a half, dying of pneumonia at the age of thirty-five. As the Great War loomed, black jockeys sought refuge at European tracks, while racing in America was changed forever. An argument could be made that the long-term effects of slavery and segregation impacted no other sport more than horse racing. Although today a diverse international business, African-American jockeys, trainers and owners are few, and without a renewed emphasis on increasing diversity that probably will not change. In essence, Katherine Mooney’s efforts to tell the stories of the African-American professionals who made horse racing what it is today accentuates the need for us to embrace the past. Despite this welldeserved praise, our work is not done yet.

The Making of Les Bleus: Sport in France, 1958–2010

Since the heady sporting summer of 1998, when France unexpectedly won the football World Cup, much has been written about what was a remarkable series of events both on and off the pitch. For the u...

Une certaine idée du rugby: Sport, media and identity in a 'glocalised' game

From its origins in the later nineteenth century, French rugby has been an important site for the construction of a variety of masculine, class-based, regional and national identities. The game’s rise coincided with that of the popular press, and also with the emergence of specialised sporting publications at both the local and national levels. With a significant head-start on association football, particularly in the south-west of the country, rugby became associated with the defence of regional pride and local interests. This was a process invested in both morally and materially by newspapers and radio. With the advent of television, rugby was variously appropriated by national broadcasters and Gaullist politicians, who exploited its regional credentials at a time of rapid societal change. Since the game’s professionalisation in 1995, and its resulting ‘glocalisation’, media-aware rugby entrepreneurs have sought new sporting and commercial strategies, which have ranged from provincial nostalgia to pragmatic cosmopolitanism.

Sport, Politics and Society in the Arab World

development of liberal or social democracy.When Christensen turns to theUnited States, in Chapter 16, his argument is less persuasive because his research is less thorough (9 pages for the United States vs. 64 for Greece and 54 for Britain). The 11 pages devoted to Germany, however, are a marvel of compression. Although he draws upon limited sources, he demonstrates convincingly that Germany’s version of ‘vertical sport’ in the form of hierarchically organised drill and/or mass gymnastic demonstration hindered, if it did not actually prevent, the development of a democratic society. Hostility to modern sports went hand in hand with hostility to liberal democracy. Although my reaction to the argument of Sport and Democracy as it was presented in an early manuscript version was quite sceptical, Christensen has converted me into a rather tentative believer – as least in regard to the psychological and social consequences of active participation in horizontally organised mass sport. That elite athletes at the collegiate and openly professional levels exhibit some markedly antisocial behaviour does not diminish the force of Christensen’s argument. These miscreant athletes are involved in hierarchically organised vertical sport rather than horizontally organised mass sport. About the alleged democratising effects on sports spectators, however, I remain an unconverted sceptic. Social–psychological experiments conducted by Leonard Berkowitz and many other students of ‘aggression’ have conclusively established that viewing sports films increases rather than decreases the propensity to behave aggressively and commit acts of physical violence. Sociological studies by Eric Dunning and many others have documented too many instances of spectator violence, from fans’ abusive barracking to hooligans’ physical assault, for me to share the Progressive reformers’ faith that sports spectators are ipso facto socialised into ‘acceptance of shared values associated with democratic political culture’ (p. 34). I hope that my scepticism about the behaviour of sports spectators does not dissuade serious historians from reading Christensen’s sotto voce challenging, widely informed, closely argued and very important book.

Sarkozy and Sport

Although not the most objectively important sphere in which Nicolas Sarkozy has sought to exert influence, sport has been taken very seriously by the President. His personal investment in the national sporting project reflects a broader reluctance to delegate governmental decision-making, which has been particularly marked in the case of the responsible ministry. Nor is Sarkozy the first head of the Fifth Republic to have sought to enhance his prestige through the appropriation of sporting champions and iconic events—a presidential tradition which leads directly back to de Gaulle himself. After a brief overview of that political background, this article considers Sarkozys distinctive approach to sporting manifestations of France and Frenchness, suggesting that his variety of executive activism over the period 2007 to 2012 has been a high-risk political strategy, which has permitted sharply contrasting readings of the president as a sportsman, a supporter, and a sports administrator by proxy.

SPORT AND THE MEDIA IN IRELAND: An introduction

The symbiotic relationship that has existed since the mid-nineteenth century between sport and the media*from the popular press, through newsreels and radio, to television, and beyond*is so well established as hardly to require comment. However, the very familiarity of this long and successful marriage should not blind us to its abiding, and abidingly remarkable, affective power, both for individuals and for communities, real and ‘imagined’, of all kinds. We may thus legitimately pause to reflect on the key role played by the media in establishing the local, national and international significance of what are inherently ephemeral and objectively trivial corporeal practices. Whether it be through the national football cultures of England and Scotland, or the national cycling cultures articulated through Spain’s Vuelta, Italy’s Giro and, especially, the Tour de France, sport annually continues to mobilise millions of spectators, whether physically present or, especially, by means of the mass media. This is even more obviously true of such major international competitions as the World Cup, European Championship and European Champions League competitions in association football. To pursue a little further the example of the Tour de France*an event launched in 1903 by the specialist sports newspaper L’Auto, as part of a combined commercial and political circulation war with its rival Le Vélo in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair*we might even argue that France’s ‘great bike race’ is actually and annually brought into existence by the media. As Jacques Marchand, one of the event’s most seasoned reporters, once remarked: ‘cycle road racing does not really have spectators, it has readers above all’ (Marchand 11). For Marchand, the fleeting vision of the race itself meant little to the crowds massed on the roadside. Indeed, they became conscious of its significance*as lived experience, rendered comprehensible and thus comprehended*only when the event had been variously reconstituted, and thus effectively translated, by its only permanent spectators, that is the accompanying journalists. This special number of Media History is conceived as a contribution to the ongoing scholarly analysis of sport’s social significance, as a set of mass-mediated practices and spectacles giving rise to a complex network of images, symbols and discourses. Its specific aim is to examine the distinctive contribution of various sports*as communicated by a range of mass media*to the creation of modern Irish identities. For sport inhabits a central place in Irish life, more possibly than in any other country in Europe. Indeed, sport provides a defining element in many Irish people’s sense of themselves and their country. One might even suggest that given the loss of an indigenous language to most Irish people and the increasing secularisation of the country, sport is as important as a distinct marker of identity now in Ireland as at any point in the country’s history. And this in a country in which the emergence and consolidation of Irish nationalism and the building of the Irish state were inextricably linked with sport, in particular the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), still the largest sporting organisation on the island. Indeed, uniquely again in international sport, Gaelic games (essentially amateur in ideology and practice) continue to be the most popular