Series editor’s preface

There is now a considerable amount of expertise nationally and internationally in the social scientific and cultural analysis of sport in relation to the economy and society more generally. Contemporary research topics, such as sport and social justice, science/technology and sport, global social movements and sport, sports mega-events, sports participation and engagement and the role of sport in social development, suggest that sport and social relations need to be understood in non-Western developing economies, as well as European, North American and other advanced capitalist societies. The current high global visibility of sport makes this an excellent time to launch a major new book series that takes sport seriously, and makes this research accessible to a wide readership.

The series Globalizing Sport Studies is thus in line with a massive growth of academic expertise, research output and public interest in sport worldwide. At the same time, it seeks to use the latest developments in technology and the economics of publishing to reflect the most innovative research into sport in society currently underway in the world. The series is multidisciplinary, although primarily based on the social sciences and cultural studies approaches to sport.

The broad aims of the series are as follows: to act as a knowledge hub for social scientific and cultural studies research in sport, including, but not exclusively, anthropological, economic, geographic, historical, political science and sociological studies; to contribute to the expanding field of research on sport in society in the United Kingdom and internationally by focusing on sport at regional, national and international levels; to create a series for both senior and more junior researchers that will become synonymous with cutting-edge research, scholarly opportunities and academic development; to promote innovative discipline-based, multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches to researching sport in society; to provide an English language outlet for high-quality non-English writing on sport in society; to publish broad overviews, original empirical research studies and classic studies from non-English sources; and thus attempt to realise the potential for globalising sport studies through open content licensing with “Creative Commons.”

Caribbean cricket, especially the elite, professional game, has long been recognised as a force for unifying communities throughout the entire Caribbean region. In Sport in the Black Atlantic: Cricket, Canada and the Caribbean Diaspora, Janelle Joseph critically examines the meanings of being black and Caribbean in Canada. She reveals how cricket operates within the ranks of the diaspora, as a force for unity but also for exclusions, hierarchies and chauvinisms and replicates social divisions in the broader society.

Joseph demonstrates the ways in which first-generation Afro-Caribbean-Canadian immigrants’ culinary, musical, language, destination and, especially, sporting choices actively help the diaspora to construct homelands. She explores the ways in which playing and watching sport, and supporting or travelling with a sport club, are important to creating racialised, gendered, ethnic and/or national identities. In doing so, she extends, theoretically and empirically, the promise of intersectional analyses of race, gender and globalisation in sport.

The book’s chapters explore everyday life and the construction of community, as well as the place of transnational mobility in the formation of social networks. Examining the activities of an Afro-Caribbean-Canadian cricket and social club reveals much about Caribbean and Canadian belonging, pure and hybrid racial identities, transnational social networks and performances of nation and masculinity.

Sport in the Black Atlantic also moves beyond earlier analyses to suggest that the gendering of Afro-Caribbean diasporic cultural forms leads to the occupation of different spaces and roles for men and women. In this way, it contributes to the feminist critique of black diaspora studies by showing women to be an integral part of the Black Atlantic. The book builds on foundational sport and diaspora literature to explore how borderless racial and ethnic communities are made. In doing so, Joseph provokes the need for further examinations of other black diasporas in the context of specific nationalisms, transnational networks and physical cultural forms.

John Horne, Preston and Edinburgh