Adam Slotnick 1

August 6, 2012

The Anthropology of Sport: Olympic Analyses

Sport remains a fringe research area within cultural anthropology. There is a fairly robust

amount of research in our sister field of sociology. London based SAGE Publications prints the

Journal of Sports & Social Issues (monthly) and International Review for the Sociology of Sport

(bimonthly). There are no compatible anthropological journals. The preliminary American

Anthropological Association’s annual meeting lists 16 sessions under the ‘sport’ key word. Some

of them appear to have a very tangential relationship with sports. Yet, the anthropological study

of sport is a holistic field. Harvard biological anthropologist Daniel Lieberman’s research into

endurance running has earned him recognition as one of the founders of the barefoot running

movement. Archaeologists help us to understand the ball games of Mesoamerican societies and

my own research has examined sociolinguistics within sports. Niko Besnier and Susan

Brownell’s forthcoming article “Sport, Modernity and the Body” in the Annual Review of

Anthropology gives impetus for anthropologists to engage in sports research. Ethnography is an

important tool in this endeavor. Cultural anthropology has a unique opportunity to enhance the

field of sports studies.

The Olympics are currently captivating billions worldwide. While the Olympics

showcase the best professionals and amateurs in media sports, the Olympic platform offers the

opportunity to address contemporary cultural issues. Besnier and Brownell articulate the

importance of sport in anthropology: “Sport provides a novel angle for the investigation of

fundamental questions in contemporary anthropology” and “ethnography could contribute to

understanding the social problems in sport” (Besnier and Brownell 2012:454). Cultural issues

such as racism, female inequality, national identity in a globalized environment, unequal access

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to sport facilities and disability in a modernizing world can all be examined through the lens of

the 30th

Olympiad. I will utilize Besnier and Brownell’s paper as a basis for analyzing particular

issues highlighted by the Olympics during the next few weeks.

Sample Research Questions

How do viewers identify with athletes representing their nation? How do athletes negotiate

multiple nationalities? How do national rivalries form? Are they more intense in particular

sports? Is the number of athletes representing a nation and its medal count proportional to its

population? Did any athlete refuse to compete against an athlete from other nations? Do national

religious minority viewers identify with athletes of their faith? Are women allowed to compete in

the same sports as men? Are men allowed to compete in the same sports as women? Are men

allowed to compete with women? How does income affect athletic participation? How has the

inclusion of disabled athletes among their able bodied peers affected participants and viewers?

Will the Paralympic Games receive more coverage in the US due to the increasing number of

disabled military veterans competing? How effective are the founding Olympic ideals? Can sport

be used for development and peace? How is the Olympian body portrayed and received?

The author is an anthropology graduate student at Florida Atlantic University of Boca Raton.

His main interest involves the intersection of the anthropologies of sport and the body. One

chapter of his Master’s thesis involves examining the Ironman Triathlon M Dot tattoo using

sociolinguist Dell Hyme’s S.P.E.A.K.I.N.G. model.

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References

Besnier, Niko and Susan Brownell

2012 Sport, Modernity and the Body. Annual Review of Anthropology (Reviews in

Advance) 41:443-59.