Sport, Gameplaying and Sportspersonship: Frist Slide: 2 Slide: C.L.R. James
Sport, Gameplaying and Sportspersonship: Frist Slide: 2 Slide: C.L.R. James
This week you will explore issues of responsible action in the field of sports and esports.
Concepts such as Sportspersonship, patriotism, partisanship are employed as a means to
allow you to reflect on your own attitudes to responsible thought and action.
Frist slide:
*role model
2nd slide:
* C.L.R. James:
• Incredible writer from Trinidad.
• Heavily involved in politics around the world. Major body of work in sociology,
politics, history, race studies.
• Also interested in sport.
• His book, Beyond a Boundary, about cricket in the late 1800’s argues that you can
learn more through the sports than any other social phenomenon.
• More people watched cricket than went to art galleries.
• James writes that British culture used sport, especially cricket, to teach certain
values.
• However, the great practitioners of the sport evolve the game, the way they respond
to the challenges that the sport presents change the behaviors of the future
participants who mimic them.
• The stiff upper lip.
• The barefoot bowler.
• The athlete wrestling with time and physics, but also with culture.
After reading Claudia Rankine's essay on Serena Williams, and after considering the content
of the sports and morality lecture, reflect on how race, gender, or social expectations of
athletes can show up moral problems in contemporary society (refer to Rankine's essay in
your response).