The Soccer Wars
That’s the title of my essay in Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook section. It bears more than a passing resemblance to this blog post from earlier in the week. The punchline: Soccer will never bring about peace on its own. The flip side is also true — by itself, soccer cannot start a war. The World ...
That's the title of my essay in Sunday's Washington Post Outlook section. It bears more than a passing resemblance to this blog post from earlier in the week. The punchline: Soccer will never bring about peace on its own. The flip side is also true -- by itself, soccer cannot start a war. The World Cup, like the Olympics, suffers from a case of overblown rhetoric. Bono's assurances to the contrary, the passions inspired by the World Cup embody both the best and worst forms of nationalism. A few citations, beyond those found in the earlier post. Joschka Fischer's quote about the World Cup can be found in Goldman Sachs' The World Cup and Economics 2006 Click here or here to find information about the soccer game that was played during the 1914 Christmas Truce. Both Sports Illustrated and ESPN discuss Pele's ability to inspire a temporary cease-fires in Biafra. Thanks to commenters who brought up both examples in the prior post. Here's a link to the Edmans, Garcia, and Norli paper demonstrating the correlation between international soccer losses and poor stock market performance. And here's a link to the 1973 Richard Sipes paper, "War, Sports and Aggression: An Empirical Test of Two Rival Theories" that appeared in American Anthropologist. For more on the World Cup and international relations, check out Michael Moran's useful and link-rich summary at cfr.org, and Pablo Halkyard's linkfest at PSDblog. Finally, a thank you to Frank Foer for getting on the phone and chatting with me about Frank Rijkaard spitting on Rudi Voller -- though Frank always enjoys talking about soccer. And let me once again praise Foer's How Soccer Explains the World as a good read regardless of whether you like watching soccer. And yes, between this and my Newsday op-ed on the World Baseball Classic, I plan on cornering the public intellectual market on sports and international relations. Bwa ha ha ha ha!!!
That’s the title of my essay in Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook section. It bears more than a passing resemblance to this blog post from earlier in the week. The punchline:
Soccer will never bring about peace on its own. The flip side is also true — by itself, soccer cannot start a war. The World Cup, like the Olympics, suffers from a case of overblown rhetoric. Bono’s assurances to the contrary, the passions inspired by the World Cup embody both the best and worst forms of nationalism.
A few citations, beyond those found in the earlier post. Joschka Fischer’s quote about the World Cup can be found in Goldman Sachs’ The World Cup and Economics 2006 Click here or here to find information about the soccer game that was played during the 1914 Christmas Truce. Both Sports Illustrated and ESPN discuss Pele’s ability to inspire a temporary cease-fires in Biafra. Thanks to commenters who brought up both examples in the prior post. Here’s a link to the Edmans, Garcia, and Norli paper demonstrating the correlation between international soccer losses and poor stock market performance. And here’s a link to the 1973 Richard Sipes paper, “War, Sports and Aggression: An Empirical Test of Two Rival Theories” that appeared in American Anthropologist. For more on the World Cup and international relations, check out Michael Moran’s useful and link-rich summary at cfr.org, and Pablo Halkyard’s linkfest at PSDblog. Finally, a thank you to Frank Foer for getting on the phone and chatting with me about Frank Rijkaard spitting on Rudi Voller — though Frank always enjoys talking about soccer. And let me once again praise Foer’s How Soccer Explains the World as a good read regardless of whether you like watching soccer. And yes, between this and my Newsday op-ed on the World Baseball Classic, I plan on cornering the public intellectual market on sports and international relations. Bwa ha ha ha ha!!!
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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