COURSE STRUCTURE
Module 3 Topic D: Discussion Questions
Following the lecture, and having read the assigned readings and watch relevant video clips, you are expected to prepare answers for TWO (those questions in green) of the following discussion questions. Your prepared answers will form the basis of your verbal contributions within discussion sections
These answers should:
1. Be a minimum of 150 words for each answer (not including the question or reference list).
2. Be typed and double-spaced.
3. Have the complete question immediately prior to the answer.
4. Cite appropriately any sources used in your answer (use appropriate Style and Format Guidelines).
5. Include a complete reference list (use appropriate Style and Format Guidelines).
6. Hand in a hard copy of answers during discussion section
The aim of these answers is to get you to engage and extend the information covered within each theme, in order to generate a better understanding of core concepts, knowledge, and issues.
These questions are intended as preparation for both the discussion section and exam related to this topic.
PLEASE NOTE: Within the multiple choice section of the module exam, you can expect to be asked questions on the information related to any of these questions.
However, the ONE thematic essay question for the module exam will be selected from those questions in green.
Following the review session for this module the selected question will be designated in red. This will be one of the questions that may be randomly selected as part of the "Written Thematic Question" section of the module exam.
Theme 1: Sport, the Nation, National Identity, and Nationalism
1. Precisely what does it mean that the nation is an “imagined” community? Is the nation any more or less imagined than other forms of community? What is the relationship between the nation as imagined community and communitas? How, within the contemporary context, is the nation and nationalism imagined through sporting communitas?
2. Why we nations “invented” during the period 1850-1920, in other words, what broader forces made the nation an important element of collective organization, identification, and belonging? Outline some examples of the elements responsible for the invention of national traditions and hence identity? Where does sport fit within the process of inventing national traditions and national communitas?
3. What is nationalism, and how can it be a uniting and dividing force within the nation? Outline what is meant by ethnic nationalism, and its exclusionary and absolutist tendencies. Can you think of any sporting examples of ethnic nationalism?
Theme 2: The American Sporting Landscape
1. What is American exceptionalism, and what role has it played in the construction of American national identity? How is the emergence of specific American sporting traditions related to the ideology of American exceptionalism, and how has this ideology prohibited the Americanization of other forms of sport?
2. Which sport form do you feel is perceived as being the most “American” in terms of its symbolic value, and which do you consider to actually be the most truly American sport in terms of origins and development?
3. Why are international sporting competitions so pronounced a part of American sporting life as they are within other nations? If America is a relatively insular sporting system, from where do Americans derive their sense of national identity through sport?
Theme 3: The Contextuality of Sporting Nationalism
1. Sport spectacles are identified as playing important roles in the ritualistic display and performance of American national identity. Provide an example of this from one not mentioned within lecture. What does it mean that sport spectacles are both political and commercial entities, and how are these two elements related in the sport spectacle?
2. The nationalism expressed within and through sport spectacles was identified as being contextually specific across different cultural and historical contexts. Provide examples of the changing nature of American sporting nationalisms over the past 40 years or so.
3. Describe hot, cool, and banal nationalism, the relationship between the three and how they have been manifest within American sport culture.
Theme 4: Sport, Nationalism, and the 9/11 Moment
1. Events such as 9/11 have been identified as creating a spontaneous communitas. What is meant by this, and how does it related to longer term attempts to generate a manufactured communitas. In what ways could we consider the spontaneous communitas of the immediate 9/11 context to carry out a positive function for the American nation?
2. With regards to political dimensions, how and why was a manufactured communitas attempted to be created in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Where did this take place within the sporting sphere, and was it successful?
3. How was the manufacturing of communitas commercialized in the post-9/11 moment? What are your thoughts on the appropriateness, or otherwise, of the forms of commercial nationalism which emerged at this time. Was the framing of any post-9/11 sport spectacles an example of the commercially inspired manufacturing of national communitas?
Theme 5: Hot and Banal Sporting Nationalism in Post-9/11 America
1. What are the major elements that have shaped American nationalism, and the framing of sport spectacles, in the post-9/11 context? Where does the concept of freedom fit into this equation?
2. Why is such a close connection between sport and the military? Why, if indeed it was, did this relationship strengthen in post-9/11 America? Are there some forms of sporting militarization which you feel are more appropriate than others? Also, are there political and/or commercial dimensions to the role of the military in the creation of sporting communitas?
3. The national consensus manufactured through sporting communitas may be illusionary, but it has potential significant political effects. What are some of there? How is it possible to argue that the manufacture of sporting communitas contributes to the suppression of political dissent/opposition?
Theme 6: The New Normal Within Sporting Nationalism
1. Much of this topic has focused on the military/terrorist threats to the U.S., and various sporting responses to them. What other threats do you also see being responded to within expressions of sporting nationalism?
2. What, in terms of sporting nationalism, is the new normal? How does speak to the relationship between hot and banal sporting nationalisms?
3. Do you consider the sporting nationalist (and both spontaneous and manufactured communitas) responses to the 9/11 attacks, and subsequent national crises, to be a positive or negative force within American life? Have any of them positively or negatively effected your everyday existence in any way?
