Sports, Global Politics, and Social

Value Change: A Research Agenda

by Lars Rensmann

Sports as a form of modern organized leisurely activity emerged in the process of the
reshaping of social life in 19th century industrializing societies. Since then they are one
of the cultural hallmarks of modernity. Yet the evolution of organized sports as an
important sociocultural arena has long been at the margins of academic interest. This
neglect also applies to many fields for which sports and sports cultures would have
been perfectly suited, such as cultural sociology, cultural history, and the study of
culture and politics.1 Nevertheless sports have mattered all along. And they not only
continue to literally move and deeply affect millions of people but have expanded
their social relevance in recent decades. Sports also make a large segment of the most
sophisticated scholars and intellectuals (often unadmittedly) first turn to the sports
pages every morning when they read the news. But scholarly interest in, for instance,
the relationship between football and working class origins and identities has partly
been suffocated by the association of football fan culture with hooliganism, right-wing
groups, and politico-economic power players – as if any of this would disqualify sports
from being a significant social force, and consequently from being a worthy subject of

1
Until this day, even sports sociology has only been half-heartedly institutionalized in few
universities and had to struggle to be taken seriously as sociological subfield.

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research.2 Despite their important role in forging, constructing and self-ascribing social
identities and shaping popular and political cultures around the globe, sports have
thus long been a widely ignored if not disdained. From a cross-disciplinary view, sports
are often still viewed as a somewhat peculiarly “illegitimate” subject of social science
inquiry, social history, cultural studies, and research on international politics.
There are several key reasons for this hitherto persistent marginalization.
Paraphrasing Marx’s frequently quoted dictum about religion, the mantra of sports as
a collective “opium of the peoples” engendering aggression and serving the powers
that be has dominated the scholarly and intellectual focus for decades. Sports has long
been a subject at best deserving occasional dismissive social criticism and polemical
commentary, even if some of sports' potentially progressive qualities have been
acknowledged. As part of popular culture, sporting events and fan cultures have
indeed been embedded in political and social domination since antiquity. Sports
continue to be utilized by political regimes and autocratic ones in particular.
The traditional scholarly denigration of sports has also to do with their
commercialization and professionalization since the first half of the 20th century. This
process transformed organized leisurely activity—often with working class origins –
into organized commodities. In our commercialized age, this process has reached
unprecedented levels during the current “second,” post-industrial globalization
(Markovits and Rensmann 2010: 43-106). Moreover, it is not even necessary to mention
global organizations such as FIFA and the IOC, and the many scandals they were and
are involved in, making negative front page news, to understand that the world of
organized sports is indeed known for being corrupted. These powerful regulative
global sports bodies indeed often lack minimal standards of democratic principles,
transparency, and accountability, epitomizing failing global institutions (Sugden and
Tomlinson 2005).
Only over the last decade has the hegemonic academic marginalization of one of

2
In Italian popular culture, where sports traditionally play a particularly significant role, there are
more daily sports papers than in any other country. Not by coincidence, the national football chant
“Forza Italia” was successfully turned into a right-wing populist party led by Silvio Berlusconi that
dominated Italian politics for two decades since the Tangentopoli corruption scandals and breakdown
of the party system in the early 1990s. Still, even though there is plenty of popular literature on
berlusconismo and the effective use of football (and the global club AC Milan in particular) for political
and economic purposes, serious scholarly work is strikingly rare even here (one of the notable
exceptions is Foot 2007). Even in the world’s hubs for scholarly work on sports, society and culture,
namely the UK and the USA, the study of sports largely remained caught in a pariah status with a
handful of research centers, only recently making partial inroads as parvenu. In the field of sports
sociology, the Leicester School examining English football hooliganism did of course groundbreaking
work since the late 1980s (for an overview and evaluation Best 2010), followed by initial work on the
globalization of football by Giulianotti (1999) and comparative sports sociology by Markovits and
Hellerman (2001). The evolution of the field has its roots some 30 years ago, with the development of
journals such as Soccer and Society, Sociology of Sport Journal, or International Review of the Sociology of
Sport.

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the most relevant societal spheres begun to be challenged, and in many ways
profoundly so. Driven by new cross-disciplinarily oriented studies of professional and
amateur sports cultures, for a few years now we have been witnessing a considerable
change in direction. In particular the area of sports and international politics, for a long
time entirely dormant, has in the latest years partly been resuscitated. This ignited an
innovative reconstruction of the academic landscape. Research has evolved and
explores a wide range of topics and intersections of sports and politics, such as soft
power politics and the political impact of sports mega events (Grix and Lee 2013;
Lenskyi 2002; 2008), international sports policy and governance (Palmer 2013), sports,
political culture, and globalization (Allison 2005; Giulianotti and Robertson 2004; 2007;
2009; Markovits and Rensmann 2010), women’s rights, sports cultures, and female
fandom (Markovits and Albertson 2012), global sports migration (Bale and Maguire
1994; Maguire and Falcous 2010), or the interaction of football and transnational
public spheres (King 2003). Notwithstanding these nascent trends, overall IR (and
political science) have "barely had an impact on the study of sport in general and on
the political use of sport by states in particular” (Grix and Lee 2013: 5).
This article seeks to advance the still nascent but now emerging field of research
on sports and global politics in two ways: First, by addressing largely unexplored
issues of sports, politics, and social conflicts. In so doing, the article discusses the
evolving research landscape and puts the spotlight on sociopolitical arenas that
include global institutions and commercialized sports mega events, which have
attracted most scholarly attention in contemporary research--but also turns to
decentered perspectives on everyday soccer cultures. Second, by generating
hypotheses on the direct and indirect political effects of sports cultures, the
subsequent section focuses on the role of sports in forming sociopolitical identities,
and in particular on the relationship between local social identities – reinforced
through sports – and cosmopolitan value change.
These interlinked spatial and substantive claims advance a conceptual
framework through which I analyze team sports as an independent force – or
independent variable – of “glocalization.” This framework grounds a critical research
agenda that understands and examines sports as profoundly embedded in
socioeconomic, cultural and political forms of rule and domination. Such agenda also
seeks to disclose sports’ emancipatory and subversive potential in advancing
cosmopolitan norms and globalization from below. The argument is developed by
reviewing some important new research in sports, and global as well as “glocal”
politics. Moving beyond the conventional political focus on sports mega events, soft
power in international relations, and global institutions, the article then develops
critical perspectives on the often underrated broader, indirect political impact of
sports – and football in particular. Special attention is paid to the relationship between
sporting phenomena and social values, and the meaning of sports for global as well as
local allegiances and identities.

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RETHINKING GLOBAL SPORTS AND POLITICS: LOOKING AT AND BEYOND GLOBAL
INSTITUTIONS, SOFT POWER, AND SPORTS MEGA EVENTS

There are three noteworthy, interlinked areas in which research on sports and
international politics has made recently significant inroads into political science and
political sociology: (i) the politics of global institutions and the agents of global sports
policy; (ii) the role of sports as a soft power and public diplomacy instrument
recognized by scholars and policy makers alike; and (iii) global sports mega events as a
political focal point. In these areas, there is reinvigorated, innovative scholarship
liberating the subject from a formerly entirely ephemeral existence.
First, cross-disciplinary research has increasingly focused on sports institutions as
socio-political organizations that exert significant power and influence in
contemporary global society. Especially FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football
Association) and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) as significant
international organizations (IOs) have increasingly become the subject of scholarly
interest in recent years. They are arguably the world’s most global institutions, with
more member nations than nation states on this planet and thus more members than
the UN and an almost complete representation of the world. Yet they also signify like
few other global institutions the failings of elite-driven institutional “globalization
from above” (Rensmann 2014). Pretending to advance (and regulate) global football
and the “Olympic spirit” respectively, these global organizations are made up by
entirely self-selected elites originating from national federations. These global
institutions claim non-governmental organization (NGO) status. However, criminal
investigations and critical institutional analyses suggest they are arguably thoroughly
profit-oriented and corrupted, business-friendly elite INGOs or business international
non-governmental organizations (BINGOs). In fact, they may also be classified as
monopoly capitalist organizations: they exercise historically institutionalized
monopoly rule over global events and competitions, such as the FIFA World Cup and
the Olympic Games, for the main purpose of extracting maximum profit (Sugden and
Tomlinson 2005; 2011). The critical analysis has been bolstered by recent global public
attention on corruption scandals at these world sports governing bodies, and – in the
case of FIFA – subsequent international criminal investigations led by the US. The
spotlight is now first and foremost on FIFA (Tomlinson 2014). There have evidently
been bribes involved in the FIFA leadership and in the prelude to the selection process
of World Cup host countries. And in Qatar, the dubious winner in the behind-closed-
doors selection process to host the 2022 World Cup, human rights INGOs and the
International Labor Organization already count a record-breaking number of
casualties among workers building the stadiums and architecture for the World Cup
(Gibson 2014). Consequently, especially FIFA today epitomizes in the court of global

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public opinion a profoundly dysfunctional, corrupt, failing global institution
representing powerful particular interests and cartels. FIFA and the IOC represent the
worst aspects of both global institutions and organized globals sports. They tend to
directly serve economic and social domination.
This is why there has been an ongoing struggle and public pressure for global
institutional reform and supporting research. Reform of these institutions may no
longer be enough. Particularly in the case of FIFA and the IOC, the call to build
accountable, trustworthy, transparent, democratized and efficient global sports
institutions has long been challenged by work demonstrating the need for these
organizations to be replaced by alternative institutions—a complete overhaul that
refocuses on supporting sports’ evolution and identity from below (Foster 2005).3
Institutional analyses of sports organizations on the regional, national and
subnational level also display at best mixed results. This applies to institutional
performance and the goal to advance sports, and sports culture as a potentially
progressive, humanitarian social force. Italy is an exemplary case but far from being
the only country marked by a series of scandals affecting organized soccer. The Italian
crisis culminated in the disclosure of years of match-fixing in the calciopoli scandal in
2006, involving clubs and institutional failure of the national football federation (Foot
2007). Even UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, which regulates
European soccer and which many argue is one of the most transparent regional sports
organizations in comparative terms, suffers from a primarily profit-driven
commercialization while simultaneously lacking supervision and institutional
democracy (King 2007).
Institutions matter, and so does their critical analysis. It fulfils an important
societal function. However, while critical studies of institutional processes, governance
problems, and institutionalized social domination are important, they may also be in
danger of reproducing a restricted view on global politics and sports. The sole focus
on these organizations and their failures risks reducing the relationship between
sports and politics to domination. Such narrow focus may exclude the multi-faceted
relations between sports and politics below the level of centralized institutional
power, and beyond economic interests. What has hardly been examined is the
relationship between sports governance institutions (and their legitimacy and
efficiency) and their broader socio-cultural and political impact on global society. In
how far does FIFA, for instance, engender or harm the potential of sports in conflict

3
These institutional failures also have an impact on global sports governance and global sports
policy, which involve governments and a multiplicity of subnational and transnational agencies. Within
the vast and growing framework of global governance and global public policy research sports
governance and policy has once again only lately been discovered as subject worthy of systematic
analysis. For a first excellent, critical and comprehensive account on multi-level global sports policy,
network policy, and globalization see Palmer 2013.

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resolution, and the legitimacy of soccer in promoting a just society through its
unifying language?
A second research strand on sports and politics indirectly touches on the
important issue of sports-related identity – and the political relevance of identity
dimensions of sports competitions – by applying the concept of “soft power.” It refers
to the use of sports as a non-coercive means of power and attraction in foreign policy,
engendering and pursuing a state’s cultural diplomacy and “public diplomacy” (Nye
2008). Joseph Nye understands soft power as intangible forms of “co-optive power”
that can be contrasted to hard or “ordering power.” Without necessarily replacing
coercive power, the increasing relevance of such soft power is enabled by the growing
interdependence of societies in globalized information society. In this context, Nye
considers soft power equally important to hard power, as the use of force tends to be
less acceptable. A state may achieve the outcomes it prefers in world politics, argues
Nye, based on soft power resources such as cultural attraction fostering “the ability of
a country to structure a situation so that other countries develop preferences or define
their interests in ways consistent with its own.” (Nye 1990: 168)
States have recognized the significance of sports for a very long time. This does
not just apply to the use of sports as an instrument to consolidate domestic power. To
be sure, governments of all system types have long tried to employ sports and
organized sports events as a resource to bolster national identity or domestic regime
support. In fact, the role of sports in increasing prestige and leverage or “soft power”
on the stage of international politics vis-à-vis other states has also a long history
throughout the 20th century.
In contrast with what we often associate with “soft” and “smart power” today,
traditionally sports investment in the service of foreign policy, international prestige
and status – ultimately with the goal to increase influence in international relations –
was especially significant on the part of autocratic regimes. This arguably started with
Nazi Germany and the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. It continued during the Cold War in the
Soviet Union and among the Warsaw Pact countries, which spent a significant part of
the GDP on achieving national prestige enhanced through medal counts and sporting
success, fostering the international image and identity of being powerful and
successful nations (Allison and Monnington 2005; Grix 2012; Grix and Lee 2013).
Jonathan Grix and Donna Lee persuasively argue that especially “emerging
states” recently invest in sports and sports events. They thus follow the “lure of the
politics of attraction.” While the term “emerging states” may be misguiding (it is
commonly used for transitional or new states, or states no longer classified as “failed”),
Grix and Lee show that aspiring state powers and international power players seek to
expand (or consolidate) their international status. This includes countries like South
Africa (host of the World Cup 2010), which is still only on the road to fully
reestablishing itself in the international arena as strong, significant, powerful nation.
Sports, and especially sports mega events showcasing one’s nation, are hereby

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consciously employed as a means of public diplomacy (Grix and Lee 2013: 4). Public
diplomacy differs from the direct, often secretive bargaining between government
representatives in international relations. Public diplomacy takes the indirect path, or
detour, by appealing to global public opinion and recognition: a nation’s standing or
“brand” based on its globally perceived power, identity, character, and capacities. In
the current age of post-industrial globalization and partially globalized age, global
publics have become an increasingly important factor in international affairs.
Consequently, states and international institutions actively pursue, invoke, and play in
this arena (Keohane 2001). Sports as well as sports events draw public attention to
countries. They are thus important elements shaping the global perception of a state
or nation – arguably more so than ever before, as broadcasts and sports in general
reach audiences in the billions (Markovits and Rensmann 2010).
In fact, the aspiring power Brazil has made public sports diplomacy, which
includes hosting the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games, openly part of a soft
power strategy seeking to increase the countries’ national standing and leverage
(Soares e Castro 2013). Following the history of autocratic regimes with their special
eagerness to invest in sports for political purposes, the resurgent global powers Russia
and China have been outspending other nations, including western ones, with billions
spent in the government-subsidized sports industry and increasing international
competiveness. They have also massively invested in mega events like the Sochi 2014
Winter Olympics and the Bejing 2008 Summer Olympics respectively. But even small
nations like Singapore have profoundly increased government spending on sports in
recent years (with some sporting successes) to enhance its standing and soft power by
facilitating a positive and successful brand image, identity, and projected power.
However, even though sports investments by states in the pursuit of soft power
have increased over time, and particularly in the age of global interdependence, the
underlying political issues and dynamics are complex. These investments are
themselves controversial. Moreover, by no means do they guarantee positive results –
neither in terms of a nation’s prestige and power, nor vis-à-vis domestic conditions of
sports, politics, and society. It was overdue for scholarship to recognize the role of
sports (and especially sports mega events) in pursuing international prestige and soft
power strategies in international relations (IR). By now, the soft power concept is
rightly applied to sports politics by policy makers and researchers alike (Grix 2012). The
actual empirical and political output of such strategies is considerably less clear. This is
even more so the case for measuring and evaluating the effect of such policies and
politics of collective self-representation on shared national identity constructs, at
home and abroad.
The question of the indirect impact of such politics of sports on identity has
hardly ever been explored to date, while the issue of soft power strategy outcomes in
IR is addressed in a third group or new wave of research: the proliferating study of
sports mega events, such as the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games, and their

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expected and actual effects (Cornelissen and Swart 2006; Grix and Lee 2013; Lenskyj
2002; 2008; Markovits and Rensmann 2010: 43-106; Palmer 2013: 144-182).
Of particular interest are the recent aspirations by (re)emerging international
powers to host global sports mega events and use them as tool to “communicate their
(new) identity” (Grix and Lee 2013: 6), e.g. South Africa, Brazil, Russia, Qatar, and China,
and look for political dividend in foreign policy by means of "cultural diplomacy"
(Ndlovu 2010). The emergence of scholarly work paying systematic attention to the
complex global political impact and contested nature of sports mega events had long
been overdue. Until recently the intriguing political force field of sports mega events
had been left to historians alone, even though these events have often been
overshadowed by – or even been at the heart of – international conflicts and symbolic
politics. The most obvious cases are political calls for event boycotts, from the 1936
Nazi Olympics to the 1980 Moscow summer Olympics and Los Angeles 1984 (Abrams
2013).
Initial studies show that the soft power payoffs desired by political elites, the
gains in international social and power capital, that big investments in sports mega
events are supposed to bring are by no means a sure bet. Especially autocratic
regimes, which are the most eager spenders, also run the risk that high exposure
might backfire because global attention can also be directed to domestic human
rights violations, corruption, and environmental harm. Mega events also offer a space
for “glocal” contestation of government policies and national self-representation; they
often serve as sites of public contestation – most recently in Brazil 2014. This is
especially the case if campaigns on social media, INGOs and local activists coordinate
and form transnational protest movements in the prelude to and during global sports
mega events (Golebiewski 2013; Lenskyj 2008). For instance, in the case of Qatar –
governed by a small but geopolitically ambitious autocratic regime – the question is
wide open if the country’s “soft power gamble” by hosting the 2022 World Cup will
yield positive output in terms of its image, prestige, identity, as Qatar’s repressive and
undemocratic system, poor women’s and human rights record, and disastrous labor
standards have come under massive global public scrutiny (Brannagan and Grix 2014).
And Russia, which spent 51 billion US$ on the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, hardly
improved its soft power due to the escalating hard power crisis in the Ukraine taking
shape in the immediate aftermath of Sochi. The often-envisaged economic and
infrastructure benefits of such events are at least as dubious, as the 2010 World Cup in
South Africa and the 2014 World Cup in Brazil have amply demonstrated (Grix and Lee
2013).
Comparative impact studies of mega events need to move beyond the rationale
and expected politico-economic utility of such events towards a more systematic
analysis of the outcomes or legacies of these events and their relationship to regime
types. For example, it is necessary to systematically explore the actual political
outcomes in relation to effects on domestic stability and national identity or pride, as

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well as positive influences on global public opinion about a state’s identity and
capacities, or on the increase of international soft power. Initial general hypotheses
have hereby been replaced by more nuanced, qualified hypotheses and tests. The
former either claimed that the benefits of hosting mega events tend to always
outweigh costs due to a positive effects on prestige, status and soft power; or, quite
the reverse, that mega events are economically so costly and always tend to fall short
of expectations in improving states’ prestige, status and soft power in IR. Winning the
bidding may always tend to imply initial gains. Yet the positive effects of hosting
games can be negatively influenced by various variables (e.g. organizational failure,
domestic/transnational protests, attention to HR violations, economic costs, external
factors and political crises).
Moreover, research needs to better understand the potentially transformative
impact of transnationalized identities on politics at mega events. In turn, few have
studied the effects of mega events for social, cultural, and political identities, values,
and political behavior.4 Golebiewski argues that with increased intercultural
communication, transnational protests at Olympics and other mega events are
sprouting, shifting from “merely” local issues. That official Olympic goals transcend
national boundaries cultures makes the Olympics particularly attractive for universal,
global issues addressed by like-minded transnational non-state actors, who
themselves are shaped by globalized identities (Golebiewski 2013). Completely
unexplored, however, is the impact of such transnational political activity at mega
events on engendering or reinforcing transnational or glocalized identities and
cosmopolitan values.
It is important, however, for a broadened critical research agenda on global
sports and politics to look not just beyond centralized global institutions and state's
use of sports for soft power pursuits, but also expand research beyond those highly
commercialized mega events. The impact of these events may generally be overrated,
especially in relation to issues of sociopolitical identities and values. These events may
effectively reinforce and mobilize national identities at a specific moment (such as the
stunning support for their national team displayed by Americans during the 2014
World Cup). Yet affective ties mobilized and recreated during a major sports event that
happens every four years can be expected to have a much smaller long-term impact
than ties generated and sustained through the support for teams and clubs playing all
year long. It is especially through deep-seated local, I argue, and through increasingly
“glocal” ties to a beloved sports team or club that social identity is fostered and
reinforced. It is the power of these deep allegiances that can also substantively
transform social values and attitudes towards the world, ultimately facilitating more

4
One of the few, and most intriguing, research projects on political identity constructs and
effects is the work by Sala, Scott, and Spriggs (2007), who examined the role of political identities and
allegiances in the politics of Olympic figure skating judging during and after the Cold War within a
moderately constructivist theoretical framework.

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cosmopolitan values through the love of the sport and one’s team, and the desire to
see it succeed (Markovits and Rensmann 2010).

FROM SOFT POWER POLITICS TO GLOCAL IDENTITIES AND SOCIAL VALUE CHANGE:
LOCATING POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS AND COSMOPOLITANISM IN TRANS-
NATIONAL SPORTS CULTURES

As important as global sports events that create short-time global attention every four
years may be, their ultimate political impact may be more limited than other
dimensions of sports culture. An alternative view on the global political significance of
sports decenters the analytical perspective and the subject of study. In addition to
systematically and critically examining the political conflicts playing out at the level of
global institutions, global sports policy, and mega events, such research is grounded in
an analysis of the everyday culture of local sports. The (contested) identities sports
generate are primarily shaped by such everyday (political) culture in a broad sense.
Critical research thus aims at understanding the political impact – partly subtle and
indirect, partly openly conflictual – of sociological processes of “glocalization” in sports
cultures (Roberston 1992; Giulianotti and Robertson 2004; 2009; Markovits and
Rensmann 2010). Instead of solely addressing the more conventional framework of
“high politics” and soft power in IR, the focus is on the transformative potential of
sports cultures “from below.” The spotlight should also be on sociopolitical arenas
beyond commercialized sports mega events, which have attracted most scholarly
attention in contemporary research. Such new focus may disclose many still
unexplored problems of sports cultures, politics, and sports-related conflicts shaping
society. Such research requires a closer look at issues of local identity constructs and
conflicts; affective ties generated through sports and their meaning for exclusive and
cosmopolitan norms; as well as understanding contestatory politics in old and new,
local and global, (trans)national sports cultures that are exposed to new forms of
intersecting spatiality. In so doing, research needs to employ a broader conception of
politics and political culture beyond institutionalist limitations. Professional and
amateur sports cultures should be seen as a social context and forms of social practice
that can have a profound impact on citizenship conceptions, collective or cultural self-
understandings, and identity constructs. These can ultimately also translate into
political attitudes and may be involved in the transformation of (trans)national
political cultures in which politics operate.
Inspired by sociological theorizing, I therefore argue that a renewed critical
research agenda needs to further broaden the perspective. It can do so by expanding
the aforementioned scholarly directions in the study of global politics and sports in
three interlinked areas: (i) turning to the long neglected issue of the sociocultural
transformation of local identities anchored in or related to sports, and the seemingly

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indirect, yet potentially long-term and significant effects of these highly affective ties
on social and political value change; (ii) re-investigating the political impact of
reconfigured spatiality and “glocalized” social identifications with clubs and franchises
in this process, from small teams to major players; (iii) better understanding how
contestatory politics and profound public struggles take shape over key questions of
identities and values in these decentralized sports arenas. They constitute both local
and glocal spaces – and (re)generate both local and glocalized collective ties.
Especially soccer, the most global of games with multi-faceted local roots, can
serve as an enormously rich focal point for research in these areas. In particular, this is
the case for research on the relationship between glocalization, on the one hand, and
identity transformations and social or political value change, on the other hand.
Soccer, as a participant sport as well as a professionally organized sport catering to
local and global spectators, is also arguably one of the most globalized and
“glocalized” social phenomena in general (Giulianotti and Robertson 2009; Markovits
and Rensmann 2010). “Glocalization” hereby refers to the complex, mutual
penetration of global and local dimensions, spheres, and spaces. With Roland
Robertson (1992) it can be argued that through glocal hybridization processes of
differences neither the global nor the local stay the same, even though local responses
to global trends may vary and different local identities may be distinctly affected by
globalization. The local can hereby not only make it to the global stage but also
transform global developments (Markovits and Rensmann 2010: 27).
First, research needs to better understand how strong attachments and
allegiances to local clubs as a source of collective identity may lead to and robustly
anchor cosmopolitan value that is difficult to achieve by mere persuasion. I am
especially concerned with the role sports play in changing political and cultural norms,
identities, and allegiances in a socioculturally changing world – in how far sports and
sport cultures as vanguards of globalization and glocalization may actually be a
relevant factor in social value change and, more specifically, advancing cosmopolitan
norms (Markovits and Rensmann 2010).
Indeed, today citizens are generally likely to accept diversity and entirely merit-
based egalitarian norms in professional sports. In this sense, sports are a medium,
maybe the most popular medium, of cultural inclusion, i.e. the acceptance of diversity
and cultural cosmopolitanism, however limited and merit-based this recognition may
initially be. Local fans have a strong emotional attachment to their team which is a
source of personal and collective identification – mostly local – that usually lasts a life
time. And they want to see their teams win but in the age of glocalization and sports
migration they are not able to do so if they only count on ethnic co-national or your
local boys. This is why we have hypothesized earlier that especially professional team
sports open a window to a culturally pluralized world in which ethnic, religious or
cultural background does not matter. We predict this effect even in formerly ethnically
exclusive, closed societies (Markovits and Rensmann 2010).

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 Following previous work with Andrei S. Markovits, I therefore suggest that
particularly deep emotional ties and constitutive local identity constructs are
generated through sports allegiances (Lechner 2007). And I suggest that because of
these deep ties meaningful and lasting social value change can take shape (Markovits
and Rensmann 2010). It can do so in the wake of changing sports cultures and
professional sports environments that are marked by professional competitiveness
and global sports migration. Football fandom is entrenched in historical and cultural
identity narratives and entails rooting for a team for which one has declared lifelong
allegiance. It is through this deep affection and social identity that one cares deeply
about one’s club’s sporting success, and one implicitly learns to supports any player
that can help achieve that. Inclusiveness and cosmopolitan value change are thus
potential by-products of sports-generated identities and allegiances facing a changing
sociocultural and sporting environment. Yet such cosmopolitan inclusion through
sports may in turn be an important variable in potentially changing social attitudes vis-
à-vis diversity and egalitarian human rights in society at large. To substantiate and test
this set of hypotheses, new longitudinal data and experimental research designs
would be needed.
Second, in order to understand these processes of presumed cosmopolitan value
change through deep collective identity ties, it is important to also turn to questions of
reconfigured spatiality in the context of glocalization. If we investigate the process of
cosmopolitanization of sports cultures, it is relevant to assess the role that such
reconfigured spatiality or spatial dimensions of glocalizing processes (Giulianotti and
Robertson 2004) may have in “opening up” identities and in changing social values.
The transnational multiplication of followership may play a more than marginal role in
making identities more inclusive without reducing the emotional energy invested in
them. Today followers, and even die-hard supporters of a particular (mostly still local)
club or franchise, today tend to support and follow “second” or “third” teams and/or
are much more informed and interested in developments and players active abroad.
Citizens still tend to care most about their local team but also increasingly love and
admire and root for global teams in the sport they care for, such as Manchester United
or the LA Lakers, and they follow global events such as the World Cup. At times these
global teams and events just add an extra level to local ties. But they are not limited to
an extra level. At any rate, the competitions in which these clubs participate create
transnational publics and allegiances. This is nowhere more apparent than in the
European Champions League, the only truly European public sphere that draws
attention across the continent.
New social media have further expanded, accelerated and deepened
“glocalized” social identifications with clubs and franchises, which can now be
followed in the most distant localities. The impact of the reconfiguration of spatial
relations and transnational sports cultures is not limited to so-called global teams like
Manchester United or FC Barcelona, with their global icons on the pitch. It arguably

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also significantly affects modest clubs and lesser known leagues, even second and
third divisions. The process of glocalization has an impact, I argue, on small teams as
well as major players, though this impact may vary significantly with the different
scope and global outreach of clubs. However, new global layers and the relevance of
digital spaces, media and links in the age of the second globalization does not render
the centrality of locality – of local spaces, teams and allegiances – secondary or
irrelevant. Quite the reverse. The game and even the transformative potential of social
identity linked to this glocalized sport, still derive much of their vitality from passions
rooted in a sense of place and of community. If anything, the significance of the local
resurges, and with it the emphasis on attachments to an allegedly “authentic” local
space in cultural perceptions of sports and identities.
Third, while local norms, identities and spaces are inevitably permeated by
translocal, post-local, virtual, and transnational dimensions, the normative and
sociocultural cosmopolitanization of local identities is no automatic process but is
often contested. Indeed, I suggest that sports cultures and sports stadiums are key
arenas of public contestation, or contestatory politics, over sociocultural norms and
glocalization. Yet these particular struggles, while temporarily attracting public
attention, are so far hardly examined in scholarly research. The varying nature, origins,
and specific dynamics of opposition and contestation, which can take different
(socially restrictive or progressive) directions, have yet to be adequately studied. These
can range from protests against over-commercialization as a threat to local fan culture
and opposition to social domination and exclusion (such as calls for more socially
inclusive access to stadiums and ticket prices) to regressive forms of localism. These
may be limited to favoring the “home boys” but also include extreme forms of ethnic
exclusivist fantasies and racism articulated by right-wing extremists in the stands. The
suggested cosmopolitanization of sports cultures and local identities arguably often
faces fierce, often public and political opposition in stadiums and beyond. The
presumed cosmopolitan value change – the increase of inclusiveness, universalistic
norms, and recognition of diversity – encounters resilient culture residues and
resurgent constructions of traditional, anti-modern, exclusive identities. Sports arenas
do not just express society at large. They are also actively used by political agents as
highly publicized spaces of contestation. This is why local case studies and agency-
centered research are needed that explore the supply-side of sports-related political
contestation and the actual interactions and dynamics involved (Rensmann 2014b).
The new cleavage between inclusive cosmopolitan values, according to which
everybody matters or can matter equally independently of their cultural background,
and exclusive nationalism or regressive localism (Kaldor 1997) mobilized by anti-
cosmopolitan groups and people as well as those whom Kwame Anthony Appiah calls
“counter-cosmopolitans,” certainly does not stop at the entrance gates to sports
arenas (Appiah 2007: 137ff). The public arena that sports generates, with its vanguard
role in facilitating cosmopolitan diversity and transnational ties, also constitutes a

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space for counter-cosmopolitan discontent and contestation precisely because of its
cosmopolitan power and its locus of cultural and political value change.
It is in fact hardly surprising that such highly relevant spaces of popular culture
and identity, such as sports arenas, are also among the critical cultural battlefields in
which this cleavage is salient and fought over. There are several variations of this
culturally protectionist backlash against the globalization of sports. Its ugliest
expression is resilient – and in certain places resurgent – racism and random violence
against “others”. Some hooligan and extreme right groups deliberately target the
sports arena to act out their racist prejudices, to commit violent acts, and to agitate for
the politics of exclusion (thus against cultural cosmopolitanism). Even superstars like
the Cameroon forward Samuel Eto’o have been regularly exposed to racist slander in
Spanish stadiums, and fascist ultras in Italy hardly refrain from openly racist and
antisemitic chants (Markovits and Rensmann 2010: 207-270).
Sports arenas and sports cultures are indeed key locations of contestatory
politics in increasingly glocalized spaces. In sports venues the world over, the struggle
over social norms, citizenship, cultural identity and social “belonging”, as well as
spatial boundaries or the glocalized diffusion thereof, is in full force and on public
display. Yet we still know too little about these contestations, their conditions, agents,
and dynamics. At any rate, analyses of sports arena and sports cultures, which serve as
relevant spaces of sociocultural and political contestation or contestatory politics over
social norms and identities, are also likely to show the limitations of sports as a
glocalized, “transnational” cosmopolitan force. The claim about the power of sports as
a vehicle for cosmopolitan value change may require significant qualification in
specific cases. Sociocultural cosmopolitanism continues to meet exclusivist identities
and reactions – also and often drastically in the world of sports, which carries so much
weight in the construction of and emotional ties to social identity constructs. Ethnic or
racial discrimination continue to matter and are still mobilized by populist and radical
right groups that use sports as a platform. Moreover, while bearing enormous
potential to ‘anchor’ more inclusive norms, the massive mobilization of collective
identities, and the idealization of a constructed past identity or legacy, remains always
in danger of turning against the “other.” Such exclusive mobilization of identities often
resonates among groups in football arenas today. The rapid changes of the sports
world over the last decades have been met with opposition against sports’
commercialization, in Europe often identified with “Americanization,” and against
sports’ cosmopolitanization, personified in immigrant players who for some are
allegedly not “rooted” in the local or national environment and therefore not
“identified” with one’s team (Markovits and Rensmann 2010).
One should abstain from suggesting all too easily straightforward causal
mechanisms and generalizations, however. How these sociocultural and political
conflicts play out is likely depend on a variety of conditions and, as indicated, on
particular agency. Context matters. The level of inclusiveness and cosmopolitan

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identity within the space of hegemonic sports cultures appears still considerably
context-dependent. In terms of incidents and the level of acceptance of diversity,
there seem to be still significant differences around the world, and within national
contexts in Europe (Markovits and Rensmann 2010). The conflict over social identities
and values plays out distinctly in interaction with institutionalized responses, different
hegemonic political cultures, and different levels of the cosmopolitanization of
national politics and society with which sports cultures interact (Rensmann 2014b).
Boundaries vis-à-vis hate speech are drawn differently in different countries, leagues,
regions, and stadiums. But these boundaries are also in flux and often face
contestations from various groups, spectators, and institutional agents. Yet still too
little is known about these dynamics. Quantitative as well as qualitative research is still
sparse, including interviews with club officials, fan groups and ultras, and
questionnaires about attitudes to diversity, for instance, distributed among average
spectators. There is also a need for more case studies to understand the origins of
continuities and changes in spontaneous or organized fan behavior, and how social or
club identities are asserted or transformed. At any rate, the fight over sports’ identity,
team identity, and society’s identity is ongoing and at play in the stadiums of the
world.
For instance, the Timber Army, Portland’s ultras, were a vanguard of gay rights
supporters by featuring the entire stand in LGBT, gay pride rainbow colors,
supplemented by a banner stating “pride, not prejudice” – something still unthinkable
in many European soccer stadiums. The Timber Army hereby constructs and reinforces
a decidedly progressive political identity “from below”. The Spanish club Rayo
Vallecano features rainbow colors on its new jersey for the 2015/2016 season. How this
decision “from above” will play out with the fans remains to be seen. The Italian club
Hellas Verona learned the hard way to depart from an extremely racially exclusivist
policy. In the 1990s, the club leadership refused to hire international, non-EU nationals
and black players due to “respect” for its right-wing extremist hard core ultra fan
groups. Utterly unsuccessful when only relying on local home boys on the pitch, the
club declined and ultimately got relegated to the fourth division. Only then did the
club abandon its exclusivist policy and is now back in Serie A (Markovits and
Rensmann 2010). Conflicts over a club’s social identity, or identity struggles between
clubs, can still also follow more traditional left-right divides. Powerful club supporters
from different political camps can reinforce such political alignments. Before the
recent Greek referendum on accepting the conditions imposed by the EU, the
oligarchs behind the Greek football clubs articulated the club position: Panathinaikos
(pharmaceuticals) supported a “no” to EU proposals, Olympiakos (shipping industry) a
cautious “yes.”
Finally, identity conflicts in the stadium may also take important symbolic social
functions. Think of Glasgow and the “Old firm.” The inner-city rivalry between Catholic
Celtics and Protestant Rangers may be fierce. And it certainly still has political

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relevance: most Rangers’ supporters rejected Scotland’s independence, whereas Celtic
supporters tended to embrace the referendum on independence from the UK
(Ruthven 2014). Yet, despite many verbal assaults in the stadiums and occasional
violence between fan groups, the symbolic rivalry on the pitch may well have had an
overall pacifying effects on a deep-seated religious and cultural conflict. In other
places, without the ritualizing power of a well established sports competition, such
conflicts may have spun out of control (in Northern Ireland they did, for a start).
Increasingly, the bridging function of both participant sports and sports fandom has
been recognized by policy makers and researchers examining strategies of conflict
resolution in militarized conflict areas and among groups with hardened, exclusive
collective identities (Montague 2008; Robertson 2012).

POLITICS AND SOCIAL IDENTITIES AT PLAY: THE POWER OF SPORTS BETWEEN

INSTITUTIONALIZED SOCIAL DOMINATION AND GLOBALIZATION FROM BELOW

The systematic and cross-disciplinary study of global sports and politics is still in its
early, experimental stage. In this sense, Theodor W. Adorno’s lament about the lack of
systematic studies on sports and its multi-faceted ambiguities is still relevant today:

[O]ne must surely also study the role of sport, which has been insufficiently
investigated by critical social psychology. Sport is ambiguous. On the one hand, it
can have an anti-barbaric and anti-sadistic effect by means of fair play, a spirit of
chivalry, and consideration for the weak. On the other hand, in many of its
varieties and practices it can promote aggression, brutality, and sadism, above all
in people who do not expose themselves to the exertion and discipline required
by sports but instead merely watch: that is, those who regularly shout from the
sidelines. Such an ambiguity should be analyzed systematically (Adorno 1967:
196-7).

However, it is time to fully recognize the meaning of sports and sports cultures in
shaping politics and international relations, and many of the world’s citizens and their
socio-political identities. The overdue nascent research on global politics and sports
should thereby not limit itself to the critical analysis of institutions of sports
governance, global sports policies, the role of sports as part of states’ soft power
strategies, or the politics of sports mega events. The critique of institutional failures,
economic interests, power strategies, and institutionalized social domination involving
professional sports is an important task and still developing. Yet an equally relevant,
alternative area of research seeks to understand the complex, “glocal” cultural
significance of sports for politics, identities, and social values. Such research employs a
more decentered perspective on “globalization from below”. It turns to indirectly
politically relevant, yet socioculturally strong local and glocal social ties that are

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reproduced through hegemonic sports cultures, teams, and clubs (and their agents on
the sports fields and in the stands).
A corresponding multi-level research agenda, as outlined here in its first general
contours, also seeks to grasp the new political spatiality of sports’ glocalization.
Focusing on cultural dimensions of politics and their long-term transformations, such
research looks at sports cultures and their transnational and local spaces. They can be
viewed as arenas of public struggles over identity, diversity, and social values on
multiple levels. By critically employing case studies, survey data, and qualitative
analysis, such research seeks to find out how values, conflicts, and identities
specifically play out in interaction with sports cultures. In so doing, the envisioned
research agenda understands sports as profoundly embedded in socioeconomic,
cultural, and political forms of rule and domination – but does not conceive sports as
limited to such functions. A critical framework looks for the “other side” of sports as
well – the emancipatory sociopolitical effects of sports cultures. It seeks to disclose
sports’ contested ‘subversive’ potential: the often hidden power of sports to challenge
social domination, resolving or reducing conflicts, enabling public diplomacy and
“glocal” conflict resolution, advancing more inclusive cosmopolitan value change and
human rights norms, and promoting alternative forms of globalization from below
that empower those who are politically or socially marginalized.

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_____________________________________

Lars Rensmann is Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department
of Political Science and International Affairs at John Cabot University in Rome. He has
published many books and journal articles in areas of international political theory,
global and European politics, and global politics and sports. His books include Gaming
the World: How Sports are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture (Princeton UP, co-
authored with Andrei S. Markovits, 2010), Politics and Resentment: Antisemitism and
Counter-Cosmopolitanism in the European Union (Brill, 2011, with Julius H. Schoeps),
Arendt and Adorno: Political and Philosophical Investigations (Stanford UP, co-edited
with Samir Gandesha, 2012), and The Politics of Unreason (SUNY Press, forthcoming).

lrensmann@johncabot.edu

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