Sport in the “city of culture”

This article examines the emerging intrusion of sport into the realm of cultural policy in tandem with an increased emphasis on culture in civic planning programs. The empirical focus of the article is on the location of sport within recent campaigns by British regional cities to win the title of European City of Culture, to be conferred in 2008. The particular case study considered is the unsuccessful joint bid put forward by Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne and Gateshead. The article looks at how the economic revival of Newcastle has been driven by cultural regeneration, and at how sport has assumed a prominent place within the cultural symbolism and iconography of the city. Consideration is given to the policy background and implications; in particular, the developing links between sport policy and cultural policy and sport considered in relation to the “creative industries” and the arts as more traditionally perceived. The article offers critical reflection upon the role of sport within the desired cultural democracy of the planners and promoters of the “city of culture”.     

奥迪RS7点亮Audi Sport不眠夜 一汽-大众奥迪在北京奥迪金港汽车公举办“Audi Sport Night”大型庆典活动

6月16日,夜幕降临后,北京奥迪金港汽车公园一改往日的寂静。近千位来自各地的奥迪粉丝、奥迪特邀嘉宾和媒体朋友在此相聚,参加一汽-大众奥迪举办的“Audi Sport Night暨奥迪RS7上市投放庆典”活动。     

Sports,Politics and Ethnicity in the North. Workers’ Sport in Western Finnmark in the Late 1930s

Abstract

Internationally, ethnicity in sports has become an independent field of research amongst sports historians focusing on phenomena such as colonialism, immigration and indigenous populations. Studies demonstrate that sports have simultaneously been able to assimilate different groups, promoting majority concepts of identity and majority values, and enable groups to fashion their own singular ethnic identities in contrast to those of majority societies. In Norwegian historical research, sport and ethnicity has been given only scarce attention. Norwegian sports historians have mainly seen Norway as an ethnically homogenous society where sport has played an essential part in creating a unifying national identity. A major concern for Norwegian sports history research has been the political split in Norwegian sports in the 1930s. Research on this event has mainly been occupied with the relationship between the Workers’ Sports Association (AIF) and the “bourgeois” National Sports Federation (NLI), and by AIF's significance as a political movement. Less attention, however, has been given to its cultural impact. This article investigates the establishment and function of AIF in the multi-ethnic area of West Finnmark, a geographically and politically peripheral region of Northern Norway, at the end of the 1930s. The town of Alta, the main focus of attention, was in the 1930s a small fiord community with an ethnically mixed population of indigenous Sámi, Kvens and Norwegians, sharp political divisions and a vibrant sporting milieu. Although the political division of Alta's sports establishment displays many of the traits that characterize similar events in the country at large, the ethnic factor brought another, important, dimension to it. This highly politicized period in Finnmark sports underlines the importance of sports as an arena for the construction and reinforcement of not only political identity, but also for the production of ethnic and local identities.