Reading American Readings of Beijing 2008

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) 229: Orientalism vs. Occidentalism

“…Further, the clash of civilizations thesis was mainly hypothesized to decipher the explicit bias held among various civilizations due to historical reasons (Huntington, 1993). However, scholars have argued that the clash of civilizations thesis can offer means to understand implicit bias among various civilizations in social activities, such as sports (Dyreson, 2010(Dyreson, , 2012. In this study, I have examined the clash of civilizations thesis through the lens of Orientalism and Occidentalism notion.…”

“…For example, Billingham (2014) argued that the USA versus Iran in the 1998 soccer FIFA world cup was the most politically charged sporting encounter in the last century. Dyreson (2010) also underscored that the 2008 Beijing Olympics depicted a clash of civilization between American Capitalism and Chinese Confucian culture. Many Chinese believed that the Olympics is a Western-oriented phenomenon, and Chinese athletes winning the medal were considered a win against American imperialism.…”

The politicisation of the Beijing Olympics

“…The conclusion was that China was still far away from catching up with the USA's superiority in sport. 184 Mark Dyreson's essay entitled 'Hold Your Head Up, High, USA! USA!'…”

Manufacturing conflict narratives in Real Madrid versus Barcelona football matches

“…Narratives of conflict in mediated sport are invariably constructed around themes of gender (Billings and Eastman, 2002;Cronan and Scott, 2008;Daddario, 1997;Douglas and Carless, 2009;Hardin and Whiteside, 2009;Mclachlan, 2009), race and ethnicity (Birrell, 1989;Sterkenburg et al, 2010) and, most commonly, nationhood (Rowe, 2003). As David Rowe notes, 'media sport events generate contest narrative forms that are perfectly suited to articulations of nation ' (2003: 286) and there is little surprise that the investigation on sport conflict narratives have primarily focused on international competitions between nation states, particularly in global sports events such as the Olympic Games (Dyreson, 2010;Hilvoorde et al, 2010;Knight et al, 2005;Puijk, 2000;Real, 1989) and the FIFA World Cups (Alabarces et al, 2001;Crolley and Hand, 2006;Vincent et al, 2010).…”

“…As David Rowe notes, 'media sport events generate contest narrative forms that are perfectly suited to articulations of nation ' (2003:286) and there is little surprise that the investigation on sport conflict narratives have primarily focused on international competitions between nation-states, particularly in global sports events such as the Olympic Games (Dyreson, 2010;Hilvoorde, Elling and Stokvis, 2010;Knight, Macneill and Donnelly, 2005;Puijk, 2000;Real, 1989) and the FIFA World Cups (Alabarces, Tomlinson and Young, Crolley and Hand, 2006;2001;Vincent et al, 2010).…”