BY
JOEL NATHAN ROSEN
Foreword by Dominic Standish
January 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9832982-3-6
Paperback, TSI Press
Available at online bookstores everywhere on Jan. 1, 2021.
On Barnes & Noble, click here.
Joel Nathan Rosen casts a forensic historical light on the culture war currently raging in American sport. This second edition of The Erosion of the American Sporting Ethos comes at a crucial time when elite sport finds itself under siege from an array of naysayers who decry athletic competition.
—Dr. Carlton Brick, co-author Key Concepts in Sports Studies
Fifteen years after its initial publication, The Erosion of the American Sporting Ethos continues to be remarkably contemporary. The updated information shows how the nature of competition in sport has both changed and has remained the same.
—Dr. Lisa Doris Alexander, Wayne State University
The first American professional sporting event was most likely baseball, beginning in 1876. There were norms adhered to and a certain amount of pride of rising to the task and, of course, pride in winning. Along comes Professor Rosen arguing that all of this has changed for the worse.
—Dr. Earl Smith, Emeritus Rubin Distinguished Professor of American Ethnic Studies and
Sociology, Wake Forest University
Joel Nathan Rosen argues convincingly that if you want a fuller understanding of the role of competition, look no further than sport. In a thoughtful and wide-ranging critique of the contemporary understanding of competition as it is contested in sport, Rosen provides a crucial context for further discussions and brings scholarly research and an encyclopedic knowledge of sport together in an acute analysis of a key feature of American culture and identity.
—Dr. Uppinder Mehan, CAO, Western Kentucky Community and Technical College
About the Author
Dr. Joel Nathan Rosen is Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA. His research focuses primarily on the relationship between human activity and stratification as informed by cultural idioms such as music and sport. He is the author of From New Lanark to Mound Bayou: Owenism in the Mississippi Delta (Carolina Academic Press, 2011); co-author of Black Baseball, Black Business: Race Enterprise and the Fate of the Segregated Dollar (University Press of Mississippi, 2014), and the co-editor of a five volume series on celebrity athletes and the construction of challenging reputations (University Press of Mississippi, 2008-2021).
About the Book
This work examines American sport from its traditional roots to the influence of the 1960s-era counterculture and the rise of a post-Cold War ethos that reinterprets competition as a relic of a misbegotten past and anathema to American life.
Keywords
Competition, Culture, Inequality, Counterculture, Sportsmanship, Violence, Racism, Feminism, Role Model, Masculinity, Comparative Social Sciences, Race, Gender, Ethnicity, Sociology, Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, Global Studies, Political Economy
Readership
Advanced undergraduates in sociology, anthropology, communications and media studies, history, American studies, African American studies, and general readers interested in sport and sport studies.
Contents
Foreword: Sport Locked Down
Dominic Standish
Preface: Reconsidering an Aging Manuscript
Preface (2007): A Nation at Play
List of Figures
Introduction: Through a Prism of Discourse
Shifting Attitudes toward Competition
A Clashing of Cultural Imperatives
1. Sport in a Broader Context
Post-Cold War Anxieties and Countercultural Values
Risk and the Rise of Victim Culture
A Recoil from Excellence
Masculinity Reconsidered
Toward a Modern Critique of Competition
- Establishing of a Competitive Ethos
Leisure and the Closing of the American Frontier
A Transitioning Workplace
Reform Measures and Victorian Interventions
Muscular Christianity
Boy Workers
20th Century Sport
Beyond Accepted Boundaries
The Toy Department
- Sport and the Countercultural Shift
The Countercultural Turn
A Challenging Critique
Race and Its Impact
Curt Flood and the Reserve Clause
Enter Women’s Sport
A New Public Face
- Moral Tensions in Modern Sport
Sportsmanship
Hypercompetitiveness
Pete Rose and the Future of Immortality
Hypermasculinity, Aggression, and Violence in Sport
Role Modeling and Mentoring through Sport
The Doping Panic
- Youth Sport in America
Childhood and Child-Rearing Today
Youth Sport under a Microscope
Confronting Authority
Competing Assessments
On Coaching and Winning
The Wussification Debate
Parental Disturbances at Youth Sporting Events
- Sport and the Self-Esteem Conundrum
Self-Esteem in the New Century
A Brief History of Self-Esteem
The Debate
Youth Sport in the Age of Self-Esteem
Psychologizing Youth Sport
- Difference and Discord in 21st Century Sport
Inside New Margins
Sport’s New Color Line
An Expectation of Malice
Out in Team Sport
Gendering Competitiveness
Conclusion: W(h)ither Sport?
Running With (or Perhaps Without) Caster Semenya
A Level Playing Field?
CODA
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
