Sport and physical culture in Occupied France

Sport and physical culture in Occupied France
Author: Keith Rathbone
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1526153270

Sport and physical culture in Occupied France examines the Vichy state’s attempts to promote physical education and sports in order to rejuvenate French men and women during the Occupation. Through this cultural lens, it illuminates the central paradox of state power during the Vichy Regime. The state organised a centralised physical cultural programme meant to control and discipline French men and women. However, these activities instead empowered individuals and sporting associations to create spaces for individual expression, protect entrenched business enterprises, preserve republican institutions and organise sites for mutual aid and assistance. Based on extensive archival research, this innovative, multi-city analysis demonstrates how French sporting federations, associations and athletes appropriated Vichy’s physical education directives to reshape the ideology of the state and serve their own local agendas.

Sport and Physical Education in Germany

Sport and Physical Education in Germany
Author: Roland Naul
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2002
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780419245407

This unique and comprehensive collection brings together material from leading German scholars to examine the role of sport and PE in Germany from a range of historical and contemporary perspectives.

The Making of Les Bleus

The Making of Les Bleus
Author: Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2012-12-16
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0739175092

The Making of Les Bleus traces the Fifth Republic’s quest to create elite athletes in two global team sports, football and basketball, primarily at the youth level. While the objective of this mission was to improve performances at international competitions, such programs were quickly seized upon to help ease domestic issues and tensions. The onset of the Cold War forced countries of all sizes to rethink their relevancy. A country’s ability to exert “soft power,” or influence others through the cultural sphere, became more important. Sport was but one way through which to do so. The extent to which France harnessed the athletic domain was unprecedented among other West European nations. In France, sport, particularly at the youth level, was used to cultivate soft power internationally, to transmit republican ideals of democracy and fair play to the youth, and to examine and create a modern, post-colonial French identity in a globalizing world. The French sought to find a “third way” in sports, much in the way that it sought to create an alternative between the diplomatic policies of Washington and Moscow. Fifth Republic sports systems placed the training of elite athletes under the state. At the same time, private clubs also played an important role in developing players to serve the republic in elite competition. Examination of the republic’s quest to create elite athletes provides perspective on how France coped with and adapted to the post-1945 world. In what ways did the country reconfigure its global role? How did domestic changes impact society? In a globalizing, post-colonial world, how has France come to terms with the past? In what ways has France sought to create a new “French” identity? This story helps answer such questions. The history of the state’s cooption of youth sports forms a compelling tale and serves as a prism through which to investigate the larger history of France, the evolution of society, the impacts of the media revolution, and the government’s mission of public health. It underscores just how much things have changed—yet still remained the same. You can find a podcast interview with the author about this book at: http://newbooksinsports.com/2013/11/14/lindsay-krasnoff-the-making-of-les-bleus-sport-in-france-1958-2010-lexington-books-2012/

Soccer Diplomacy

Soccer Diplomacy
Author: Heather L. Dichter
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2020-08-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0813179548

Although the game of soccer is known by many names around the world—football, fútbol, Fußball, voetbal—the sport is a universal language. Throughout the past century, governments have used soccer to further their diplomatic aims through a range of actions including boycotts, carefully orchestrated displays at matches, and more. In turn, soccer organizations have leveraged their power over membership and tournament decisions to play a role in international relations. In Soccer Diplomacy, an international group of experts analyzes the relationship between soccer and diplomacy. Together, they investigate topics such as the use of soccer as a tool of nation-state–based diplomacy, soccer as a non-state actor, and the relationship between soccer and diplomatic actors in subnational, national, and transnational contexts. They also examine the sport as a conduit for representation, communication, and negotiation. Drawing on a wealth of historical examples, the contributors demonstrate that governments must frequently address soccer as part of their diplomatic affairs. They argue that this single sport—more than the Olympics, other regional multisport competitions, or even any other sport—reveals much about international relations, how states attempt to influence foreign views, and regional power dynamics.

Le Football

Le Football
Author: Russ Crawford
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2016-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0803290284

There are two kinds of football in France. American football was first played in France in 1909 during the cruise of the Great White Fleet. Then, during World War I, the American military shipped footballs, helmets, and shoulder pads alongside rifles and ammunition to the western front. A 1938 tour of two teams lead by Jim Crowley of Fordham University maintained the game until World War II, when the arrival of millions of young Americans in France motivated the U.S. military to sponsor several bowl games. During the 1950s and 1960s, when the United States occupied bases in France during the Cold War, American soldiers, sailors, and airmen played more than a thousand football games. When France withdrew from NATO, however, American bases were forced to close, leaving American football without a natural home on Gallic shores. In the 1970s American college and semi-pro teams tried once more to generate interest in the game among French nationals through a series of tours, but until a French physical education instructor vacationed in Colorado and brought equipment back to France, there was little local enthusiasm for the sport. On the back of that vacation, and from one team in Paris, organized American football in France grew to more than 215 teams with more than 22,000 active players today. Le Football tackles the struggles and successes of American football in France and discusses how, unlike baseball and basketball, football has never been an overt instrument of American cultural influence. Russ Crawford keeps the chains moving as he shows how the modern, homegrown sport developed largely independent of American encouragement into a small but successful culture.

Ethics and Sport in Europe

Ethics and Sport in Europe
Author: Dominique Bodin
Publisher: Council of Europe
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2011-01-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9789287170774

Defending ethics in sport is vital in order to combat the problems of corruption, violence, drugs, extremism and other forms of discrimination it is currently facing. Sport reflects nothing more and nothing less than the societies in which it takes place. However, if sport is to continue to bring benefits for individuals and societies, it cannot afford to neglect its ethical values or ignore these scourges. The major role of the Council of Europe and the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS) in addressing the new challenges to sports ethics was confirmed by the 11th Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for Sport, held in Athens on 11 and 12 December 2008. A political impetus was given on 16 June 2010 by the Committee of Ministers, with the adoption of an updated version of the Code of Sports Ethics (Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)9), emphasising the requisite co-ordination between governments and sports organisations. The EPAS prepared the ministerial conference and stepped up its work in an international conference organised with the University of Rennes, which was attended by political leaders, athletes, researchers and officials from the voluntary sector. The key experiences described in the conference and the thoughts that it prompted are described in this publication. All the writers share the concern that the end result should be practical action - particularly in terms of the setting of standards - that falls within the remit of the EPAS and promotes the Council of Europe's core values.

Pour Le Sport

Pour Le Sport
Author: Roxanna Nydia Curto
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 180085689X

This edited volume gathers together studies examining various aspects of physical culture in literature written in French from Europe and around the Francophone world. We define physical culture as the systematic care for and development of the physique, and interpret it to include not only sport in the modern sense, but also all the athletic activities that preceded it or relate to it, such as bodily forms of exercise, leisure, and artistic creation. Our essays pursue diverse interpretive approaches and focus on texts from a wide variety of periods (medieval to the present) and genres (short stories, novels, essays, poetry) in order to consider the fundamental-yet highly neglected-place of physical activities in literature and culture from the French-speaking world. Some of the questions the essays explore include: Does the genre sports literature exist in French, and if so, what are its characteristics? How do governments or other political entities mobilize sports literature? What role do narratives about sports-especially the creation of teams-play in the construction of national, regional and/or local identities? How is physical culture used in literary works for pedagogical or ideological purposes? To what extent do sports performances provide a metaphorical and figurative discourse for discussing literature and culture?

Reign of Virtue

Reign of Virtue
Author: Miranda Pollard
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2012-07-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226924777

In Reign of Virtue, Miranda Pollard explores the effects of military defeat and Nazi occupation on French articulations of gender in wartime France. Drawing on governmental archives, historical texts, and propaganda, Pollard explores what most historians have ignored: the many ways in which Vichy's politicians used gendered images of work, family, and sexuality to restore and maintain political and social order. She argues that Vichy wanted to return France to an illustrious and largely mythical past of harmony, where citizens all knew their places and fulfilled their responsibilities, where order prevailed. The National Revolution, according to Pollard, replaced the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity with work, family, and fatherland, making the acceptance of traditional masculine and feminine roles a key priority. Pollard shows how Vichy's policies promoted the family as the most important social unit of a new France and elevated married mothers to a new social status even as their educational, employment, and reproductive rights were strictly curtailed.

Nazi Paris

Nazi Paris
Author: Allan Mitchell
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2010-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1845457862

Basing his extensive research into hitherto unexploited archival documentation on both sides of the Rhine, Allan Mitchell has uncovered the inner workings of the German military regime from the Wehrmacht’s triumphal entry into Paris in June 1940 to its ignominious withdrawal in August 1944. Although mindful of the French experience and the fundamental issue of collaboration, the author concentrates on the complex problems of occupying a foreign territory after a surprisingly swift conquest. By exploring in detail such topics as the regulation of public comportment, economic policy, forced labor, culture and propaganda, police activity, persecution and deportation of Jews, assassinations, executions, and torture, this study supersedes earlier attempts to investigate the German domination and exploitation of wartime France. In doing so, these findings provide an invaluable complement to the work of scholars who have viewed those dark years exclusively or mainly from the French perspective.

Landscapes for Sport

Landscapes for Sport
Author: Sonja Dümpelmann
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2022
Genre: Landscape architecture
ISBN: 9780884024903

Landscapes for Sport explores the intersection of place, body cultures, and politics. With a focus on outdoor spaces designed and used for exercise and sports since the early modern period, this volume uncovers the relevance and meanings of the overlooked landscapes that often constitute significant areas of open space in and outside our cities.