Playing on the Periphery is an innovative exploration along the edges of the modern sports experience. Using unusual case studies and covering a range of issues, it examines how the cultural content of sports that were once the epitome of Englishness - football, cricket and rugby - has moved away from the traditional mainstream, reinterpreted by the distant cultures of a former Empire, and fragmented by the new media and economics of the modern world.
From a unique perspective and with a distinctive voice, Tara Brabazon considers sport as it relates to tourism, colonialism and popular culture. She shows how, through the media's filter - through photographs and film, stadiums, shops and exhibition spaces - sport can acquire multiple and diverse meanings. Though it may appear peripheral, as a focus for collective emotion sport is at the center of society.
For all those interested in sport, media and popular culture, this is a stimulating new text.