Playing the game: ethnicity and politics in Indonesian badminton

The scholarly study of sport--in which "sports are viewed as cultural products that develop within sociohistorical contexts" --is now well-established. However, the literature suffers from two important and related defects. One of these defects is its geographical focus. As van Bottenburg...

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Main Author: Brown, Colin
Format: Journal Article
Published: 2006
Subjects:
Online Access:http://cip.cornell.edu/seap.indo/1149868717
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/20688
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author Brown, Colin
author_facet Brown, Colin
author_sort Brown, Colin
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description The scholarly study of sport--in which "sports are viewed as cultural products that develop within sociohistorical contexts" --is now well-established. However, the literature suffers from two important and related defects. One of these defects is its geographical focus. As van Bottenburg notes in his study, Global Games, the scholarly literature on sport "is mainly limited to developments in the Western world. Information on the other continents is at best fragmentary, often collected in wide-ranging surveys." In particular, relatively little has been written on sport and politics in the Asian context.This study, albeit preliminary, shows that badminton--and sport generally, perhaps--deserves closer attention by students of Indonesian social history than has been the case thus far. In badminton, Indonesians found a competitive sport in which, for most of the past half century, their athletes could figure as world champions. Closer examination of the meaning of badminton to Indonesians is necessary for confirmation, but evidence from this study suggests that the game was important in the way it reinforced a sense of Indonesian national identity and worth in the world.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-206882017-06-22T05:50:45Z Playing the game: ethnicity and politics in Indonesian badminton Brown, Colin cultural identity badminton Indonesia nationalism ethnicity The scholarly study of sport--in which "sports are viewed as cultural products that develop within sociohistorical contexts" --is now well-established. However, the literature suffers from two important and related defects. One of these defects is its geographical focus. As van Bottenburg notes in his study, Global Games, the scholarly literature on sport "is mainly limited to developments in the Western world. Information on the other continents is at best fragmentary, often collected in wide-ranging surveys." In particular, relatively little has been written on sport and politics in the Asian context.This study, albeit preliminary, shows that badminton--and sport generally, perhaps--deserves closer attention by students of Indonesian social history than has been the case thus far. In badminton, Indonesians found a competitive sport in which, for most of the past half century, their athletes could figure as world champions. Closer examination of the meaning of badminton to Indonesians is necessary for confirmation, but evidence from this study suggests that the game was important in the way it reinforced a sense of Indonesian national identity and worth in the world. 2006 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/20688 http://cip.cornell.edu/seap.indo/1149868717 fulltext
spellingShingle cultural identity
badminton
Indonesia
nationalism
ethnicity
Brown, Colin
Playing the game: ethnicity and politics in Indonesian badminton
title Playing the game: ethnicity and politics in Indonesian badminton
title_full Playing the game: ethnicity and politics in Indonesian badminton
title_fullStr Playing the game: ethnicity and politics in Indonesian badminton
title_full_unstemmed Playing the game: ethnicity and politics in Indonesian badminton
title_short Playing the game: ethnicity and politics in Indonesian badminton
title_sort playing the game: ethnicity and politics in indonesian badminton
topic cultural identity
badminton
Indonesia
nationalism
ethnicity
url http://cip.cornell.edu/seap.indo/1149868717
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/20688