Between the Sporting Lines

Happy New Year and third week in January! There’s already so much happening this year that I’ve not had a chance to share these slides from a talk I gave in December for a Foreign Services Institute panel on Sport in Western Europe.

Our panel was oriented around the challenges and experiences foreign service professionals might face as they enter their next assignments. I spoke with the group to recommend a set of questions that could be used to analyze the social and political circumstances of their environments – rather than an overview of any one aspect of sport or region in Western Europe.

I described my presentation as “talking a bit about the ways sport can be a lens to better understand the communities in which the students will be situated; that includes thinking about the origins and functions of sporting clubs (as it contrasts with U.S. sport models) — and how a keeping an ear to media coverage of sport can tell more about the readership than the sport/event itself. I suppose I’d call my remarks a series of critical questions the students can take forward and more rapidly relate to the context of their assignments.”

While I can’t be sure whether the group felt immediate resonance with my presentation, much like teaching a research methods or theory course, I do hope these questions will be triggered in interactions in the future – leading to better integration and understanding of host cultures.

What kinds of questions would you include in unpacking the meaning, impact, and role of sport if you found yourself in a new city or country? Please share your thoughts or relevant resources in the comments.