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Introduction: Uber-Sport as Culture Industry

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Making Sport Great Again

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Abstract

This chapter provides an on overview of the focus of the book’s primary focus: examining the relationship between sport and politics in the contemporary U.S. It introduces uber-sport as the project’s primary object of study, and situates it as the sporting expression of a late capitalist society driven and defined by the processes of corporatization, commercialization, spectacularization, and celebritization. The discussion turns to the critical theory of the Frankfurt School as a way of explaining how uber-sport is reified; ascribed sense of independent materiality, which obscures the broader social, cultural, political, and economic forces shaping the structure and experience of uber-sport. Adorno’s, Horkheimer’s, and Marcuse’s respective theories of consumer capitalism are used in identifying uber-sport as a culture industry reinforcing the practices and values of late capitalist society.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physical Cultural Studies Research Group, Department of Kinesiology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    David L. Andrews

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  1. David L. Andrews
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Correspondence to David L. Andrews .

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Andrews, D.L. (2019). Introduction: Uber-Sport as Culture Industry. In: Making Sport Great Again. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15002-0_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15002-0_1

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15001-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15002-0

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