The field : truth and fiction in sport history / Douglas Booth.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Booth, Douglas.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sports--History.

Sports.

History.

Physical Description:

ix, 342 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, 2005.

Summary:

Sport history comprises a vast literature, covering sport from ancient to modern times, activities from aerobics to yachting, and themes such as race, class, gender and identity. Though the field is in good health, Douglas Booth argues that in comparison to most mainstream history, sport history has rarely been called upon to explain the foundations of its historical knowledge.

In The Field: Truth and Fiction in Sport History, Booth offers a comprehensive assessment of sport history as an academic discipline, exploring the diverse ways in which professional historians gather materials, construct and interrogate evidence and arguments, and present their stories about the sporting past.

In advocating greater reflexivity and openness, The Field makes clear the need for a new rationale within sport history, and sets the agenda for the debate to come. With a clear structure, sport-specific examples, summary tables and a glossary of terms, The Field provides students, teachers and researchers in sport history with an unparalleled resource to tackle issues that are fundamental to their subject.

Contents:

1 An introduction to sport historiography 5

Models 7

Explanatory paradigms 13

Clarifications 20

Part I Models 23

2 Facts, objectivity and interpretation: truth in sport history 25

Questioning the facts 26

Validating historical truths 31

Reconstructionism and questions of objectivity 38

3 Facts, concepts and structures: theory in sport history 43

Reconstructionism: theory, agents, facts and concepts 44

Constructionism: formal concepts, structures and theory 48

Functionalism 50

Structuralism 53

The politics of theory 58

4 Narratives, non-narratives and fiction: presenting the sporting past 62

Narrative in reconstructionist thought 63

Non-narrative historical presentations 67

Deconstructionism: the poetics of narrative 69

History and fiction 76

5 Remnants of the past: sources, evidence and traces in sport history 82

Official documents (and archives) 84

Documents of mass communication 88

Oral testimony (and memory) 94

Visual materials: films and photographs 98

Part II Explanatory paradigms 107

6 Advocacy: debunking myths 111

Setting the record straight 112

Advocacy, partisanship and objectivity 118

The contexts and functions of sporting myths 123

7 Comparison: expanding the evidence 127

Metaphorical allusions 130

Systematic comparisons 133

Post-binary comparisons 138

8 Causation: explaining determinants in sport 143

A contentious and problematic paradigm 144

Narrative and causation 147

The 'science' of causation 150

Agents as causes 153

Structures as causes 157

9 Social change: explaining transformations 159

Systematic evolutionism: from traditional to modern sport 162

Structuralism: from modern to late capitalist sport 165

Relational structurism: making modern sporting culture 173

10 Context: interpreting the big picture 178

The nature of context 179

Problems of context 183

A model for contextualisation 189

11 New culture: interpreting language and discourse 194

Language and discourse: avenues of knowledge, truth and power 195

Sport, cultural texts, narratives 199

Epistemological issues 202

Conclusion: returning to the present 207

Reflexivity 211

Politics and the purpose of history 217

Finale 221.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [307]-333) and index.

ISBN:

0415282276

0415282284

OCLC:

60421199