Sport, Sectarianism and Society in a Divided Ireland by John Sugden

Sport, Sectarianism and Society in a Divided Ireland by John Sugden

In Northern Ireland every significant aspect of life is bound up with the politics of division. Sport is no exception. Politics - the politics of partition - is integral to the rivalry between clubs, and indeed to the very choice of games to be played and watched. After the church, the most important sources of communal division are education, physical location and sports preference. While the importance of education and community segmentation has been recognized, the complex role which sport plays in civil and political relations in the province has been neglected. By its very nature sport provides a focus for sectarian identification and a forum for confrontation which can exacerbate conflict. State-sponsored attempts to use sport and recreation to diffuse the volatile political situation seriously under-estimate the important significance of these areas of popular culture in defining the boundaries between two warring factions. This book, the first examination of the political nature of sport and leisure in Northern Ireland, is the product of a number of years of experience and research into sport, leisure and socio-political relations in the province. It fulfils three overlapping functions: it's a book about the political sociology of sport in Northern Ireland; it's an addition to the literature of political sociology of Northern Ireland in general; finally it's an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge about sport and politics in general. The study is centred on an explanation of the relationship between the state of Northern Ireland and the forces which determine the shape and substance of its distinctive civil societies: sectarianism, ethnicity, nationalism and social class.

Sugden, John: -

John Sugden is a native of Hull, England, and he received a doctorate in Modern History from the University of Sheffield. He is currently Joint Director of Studies at Hereward College in Coventry and is a contributor to academic journals in Britain and the United States. Sugden is especially interested in Indian resistance movements, and his article, The Southern Indians in the War of 1812: The Closing Phase, was awarded the Arthur W. Thompson Memorial Prize in Florida History in 1982 and was judged the best article to appear in the Florida Historical Quarterly that year.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780718500184
ISBN 10	0718500180
Title	Sport, Sectarianism and Society in a Divided Ireland
Author	John Sugden
Series	Sport Politics And Culture S
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Year published	1995-06-01
Number of pages	160
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.