1st Edition
Sport’s Relationship with Other Leisure Industries Historical Perspectives
This innovative and timely volume of essays critically interrogates the shared histories between sport and a variety of leisure, entertainment and cultural pursuits. Sport’s Relationship with Other Leisure Industries: Historical perspectives spans the bowling greens of early modern England to the postmodern exhibition halls of contemporary Las Vegas, and considers examples from Europe, North America and India. Utilizing a range of historical methods and sources, they describe how sport has interacted with a broad range of leisure forms, including tourism, shopping, theatre, circus, carnival and film. The collection takes into account the economic, cultural, geographic and political interactions sport has forged and poses a series of questions: about how sport has been forged in contemporary consumer capitalism; about the manner in which it has been shaped by space and place; and the ways in which entrepreneurs, sportspeople and artists have represented sporting competition. The collection will help both students and scholars conceptualise sporting networks, and will be of interest to those working in multiple fields. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in History.
1. Introduction: Sport’s Relationship with other Leisure Industries: Historical Perspectives
Dion Georgiou and Benjamin Litherland
2. For the Recreation of Gentlemen and Other Fit Persons of the Better Sort’: Tennis Courts and Bowling Greens as Early Leisure Venues in Sixteenth- to Eighteenth-Century London and Bath
Angela Schattner
3. Running Pedestrianism in Victorian Manchester
Samantha-Jayne Oldfield
4. ‘That Little Sugarloaf Island’: Ailsa Craig, Romance, Reality and the Branding of Scottish Sport and Leisure, 1707–2013
Matthew L. McDowell
5. Sport and Tourism – An Effective Cooperation: Canoeing and Mountaineering in France before the First World War
Eric Levet-Labry and Pierre-Olaf Schut
6. The Rise of ‘The World's Largest Sport and Athletic Outfitter’: A Study of Gamage’s of Holborn, 1878–1913
Geraldine Biddle-Perry
7. Cycling Nostalgia: Authenticity, Tourism and Social Critique in Tuscany
Brian Joseph Gilley
8. Professional Bodybuilding and the Business of ‘Extreme’ Bodies: The Mr Olympia Competition in the Context of Las Vegas's Leisure Industries
Dimitris Liokaftos
9. Redefining the Carnivalesque: The Construction of Ritual, Revelry and Spectacle in British Leisure Practices through the Idea and Model of ‘Carnival’, 1870–1939
Dion Georgiou
10. From Lambeth to Niagara: Imitation and Innovation among Female Natationists
Dave Day
11. Sporting Entertainments, Discarded Possibilities and the Case of Football as a Variety Sport, 1905–1906
Benjamin Litherland
12. ‘Tri-ang Strong Toys’: Lines Brothers and British Motor Sport in the Inter-War Period
Jean Williams
13. Spectacular Bodies: The Swimsuit, Sexuality and Hollywood
Ellen Wright
14. Cricket, Entertainment, Glamour Industry and Promotional Culture in India, 1913–20
Souvik Naha
Biography
Benjamin Litherland is a lecturer in media and popular culture at the University of Huddersfield. He is interested in histories of popular culture, and how those histories are maintained and remembered.
Dion Georgiou recently completed a PhD at the School of History at Queen Mary University of London, UK. He is interested in the history of cultural industries, cities and suburbs, and temporality.