Abstract
In 1984, the year of sundry reflections on the prophetic validity of George Orwell’s early Cold War novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and on the late Cold War Los Angeles spectacle often referred to as the “Hamburger Olympics,” Sut Jhally published an influential article on sport and media in the Insurgent Sociologist. The name of the journal itself marks the passage of time and the transformation of sociocultural context – who now, in the post-9/11 world and Iraq-invasion universe, boldly declares the virtues of “insurgency,” even if only of an engaged intellectual nature? “The Spectacle of Accumulation: Material and Cultural Factors in the Evolution of the Sports/Media Complex” was one of the few explicitly Marxist works in the English language up to that point to examine the relationship between sport and media in any analytical depth. The critical edge evident in Jhally’s work contrasted significantly with other works of the period that either lauded the potential for enhanced capital accumulation through extending and deepening the commercial media’s (especially television’s) connection to sport, or complained that the modern institution of sport (including its industry, if not its grassroots communities) had been taken over by another modern institution – the media.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | A Companion to Sport |
Editors | David L. Andrews, Ben Carrington |
Place of Publication | U.K. |
Publisher | Wiley-Blackwell |
Pages | 61-77 |
Number of pages | 17 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781405191609 |
Publication status | Published - 2013 |