What Google Can Tell Us about the 2012 Field

People used to be Rockefeller Republicans, and now everyone wants to be a Ronald Reagan Republican. Will people some day be bragging that they are Michele Bachmann Republicans? Not if the number one things she is associated with continue to be chutzpah and slavery. Chutzpah and slavery -- not a good combination.
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One also wonders how "Michele Bachmann hot" is a major search term. Most people use search engines to find out stuff. How do you change a tire? Is it bad to drink bleach? Is Michele Bachmann hot? Then again, "Michele Bachmann Jewish" is another common query on Google. This could be because she "considers herself Jewish." She worked in a kibbutz, and she loves Israel more than almost anything. But she is an evangelical Lutheran (yes, that's a thing) of the sort that may or may not think the Pope is the antichrist. One thing is certain under a Bachmann administration: Israel's security will be assured, but we may have to go to war with Vatican City.

What about Mitt Romney? One would imagine that Google searches would be like a word association game, and the likeliest terms would be "plastic," "wooden" (odd that you can be both plastic and wooden, but Mittens makes it work), "flip flopper," "Ken doll," "Brill creme." Somehow, one of the main terms associated with Mitt Romney is "skinny jeans." Who knew he was a hipster? This raises an urgent question: will Romney's cassette-only electro-folk release of Bollywood covers come back to haunt him in Iowa?  

Also, as Gail Collins has been fond of pointing out, Mitt may never overcome his dog problem. Barack Obama may be a Nazi/Communist, but he never drove to Canada with his dog strapped to the top of the car.

The lesser lights of the Republican field play more or less to type on Google. Tim Pawlenty is boring, though being associated with "definitely not gay" has to be counted as a plus in a GOP primary.  

Herman Cain hates the Federal Reserve and abortion. Back in the 1990s or early 2000s you might have wondered if if there was anything Republicans could hate more than abortion; then you found out about the Fed and Barack Obama.
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Again, Google tells us what we already know: Newt Gingrich is a player who blings it out at Tiffany's. Basically, he's a rapper. He don't love them hos.
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Rudy Giuliani is a cross-dresser. This may not play well in Iowa or New Hampshire, but it does explain why he focused his 2008 campaign efforts in Florida.
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What this exercise teaches us is that Mitt Romney, again, edges out his rivals. Bachmann is a sexy Jewess (plus), but pro-slavery (generally a minus). Pawlenty is definitely not gay (plus), but we don't really have anything else to say about him. Giuliani loses points for dressing in drag (like Obama, he is viewed by most of the GOP primary electorate as a kind of foreigner, to be treated with a reasonable degree of suspicion), while Gingrich makes the only political error that really matters: failing to distract people from his odious personal behavior. Cain has the Federal Reserve but Ron Paul already owns that issue, and being against abortion in a Republican primary is like being against lice in the Gulag. It's not going to set you apart from the crowd.

This leaves Romney -- the hipster who passed sort-of universal healthcare in Massachusetts and drove to Ontario covered in dog shit. Compared to the competition, that doesn't seem half bad.

Goats, Swords, & Fried Oreos: The Old 321 Flea Market as a Landscape of Globalization

The Old 321 Flea Market in Dallas, NC is now known as the I-85/321 Flea Market, even though it is even farther from Interstate 85 than it is from Highway 321.  The name change is most likely designed to lure the bargain hunters who seek out flea markets to come to the small town of Dallas by suggesting that the market is right off the interstate, when it is actually situated in a semi-rural stretch of town on the way to the even tinier hamlet of High Shoals.

But the name change also reflects the greater connection of Dallas and Gaston County in general to the broader world, as symbolized by the interstate that connects the area's mill villages to a more cosmopolitan circuit of commerce and culture from Atlanta to Raleigh, with the all the migration that the transportation infrastructure brings.  Gaston is part of the larger Charlotte-Concord-Rock Hill metropolitan statistical area with an estimated 2009 population of 1,745,524, a large increase of the 2000 census tally of 1,330,448.  Up until the 2008 financial crash, the economic prosperity of the greater Charlotte region brought not only migrants from dying industrial areas in the Northeast and Midwest but also a vast number of immigrants from beyond the borders of the United States.  Gastonia itself witnessed an 8.2% population growth rate between 2000 and 2010, and large numbers of new Latino, Asian, African and other migrants contributed to these totals.  

The Dallas flea market offers a fine indicator of the economic and demographic changes that have reshaped Gaston County over the last twenty years.  Home to trucking and bartering in all things cheap, defective, reused, copied, stolen, unregulated and possibly illegal, it offers a place for enterprising people to make something out of next to nothing, from bootleg CDs and bizarre household nicknacks to low-priced necessities for families struggling to stretch every dollar.  Its complexion has surely changed in the years since it was a dusty outpost of good old boys chatting and haggling in the Southeastern Sunday morning heat, and the material culture of the flea market -- Mexican wrestling masks and pinatas side by side with Confederate flags, 50 Cent remixes and Earnhardt encomia -- reveals how commerce can bring people of different origins and ideologies into the same space.  Indeed, it is one of the few spaces in Gaston County where people of different races, religions, and immigration status regularly come into contact with each other.

A Saturday Morning at the Flea Market

 

 

 

 

KY gel and a gonorrhea test -- everything you need to plan for a big weekend.

Many of our photos were taken from oblique angles.  People often do not like having their picture taken, of course, but the flea market brings with it many other issues of intrusion and anxiety where documentation is concerned.  Anyone with a camera who comes into another person's world may be an unwelcome intruder, and although I went to high school around the corner and have been coming to the flea market for years, I am still an outsider -- especially when I'm holding up my phone to take pictures.  Some shoppers and sellers at the market might have their own suspicions about who was taking pictures: undocumented immigrants, for example, might wonder if the INS or the local police were monitoring them, especially given the recent passage of bills in states such as Arizona and Georgia that gave local authorities the right to profile and harass immigrants.  At least one food seller instructed his employees not to let me take pictures of the food they were selling.  When I was asked why, the young woman said, "I just work here," although I imagine they might have been concerned about a visit from the Gaston County Health Department.  We also did not take many direct photos of the "Out of My Cold Dead Hands"-style gun dealers because they might think we were agents of Obama's oppressive regime and they are, of course, armed.
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1990s R&B and 1970s punk are neighbors at the Inner Hippie Shop, one of the vendors that operates within several closed hangar/warehouse buildings at the market.  Other memorabilia includes framed photographs of classic jazz musicians, Bob Marley, and Dale Earnhardt -- an amalgam that strays over the boundaries of standard head-shop/counterculture fare.

 

Ismaili, a Turkish emigre, sells iPhone accessories.  Note his scowling colleague with the eye patch in the back.

We generally tried not to take pictures of people's faces when they could be targeted for any kind of prosecution for what they were selling (e.g. see photos of bootleg CDs and DVDs without the merchants).  It is no guarantee that a local cop or an RIAA/MPAA crusader will not randomly click on this blog and decide to "crack down" on these small sellers; indeed, in the IRB era, our project of documenting the flea market raises a lot of thorny issues.  Are we obligated not to take photos of this social arena for fear that somehow, someone there might be threatened as a result?  Is there any scholarly or journalistic imperative to create a record of this place and the people there?  Should we have to get permission from everyone whose photo we would take, and if so, what are the implications for photojournalism?  Should people only be depicted in the way they want to be depicted -- and not depicted at all if they say no?

Sandra's Simply Sinful Side Items, home of the fried Oreo, fried cheese danish and, of course, funnel cakes.

At the end of the morning we sample the legendary fried Oreos, drizzled with chocolate syrup and caramel.

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The Flea Market as Historical Crossroads

It goes without saying that people have long associated trade and marketplaces as transnational spaces of interaction. In the pre modern and early modern world, Timbuktoo, Baghdad, London, and what was then Constantinople and today Istanbul, provide only a few spaces of this economic cosmopolitanism. Adam Smith saw civilization in free markets and capitalism’s invisible hand. The Islamic religious prophet Muhammad was a trader. Any high school history teacher worth his or her salt will tell you that trade is one of the main forms of cultural diffusion, enhancing the spread of language, religions, ideas, and products. These seem to be obvious facts.

So perhaps it should come as no surprise when Professor Cummings points to the Dallas, NC flea market as an amalgamation of transnational kitch. The professor’s points about immigration are well taken. A 2004 Economist article pointed out the increasingly suburbanized nature of immigration. For example, as of 2000, more immigrants resided in suburbs than cities and the numbers continued to rise. Furthermore, this suburbanized migration proved as true in New York and Chicago as it did in newer sites like Las Vegas, Washington D.C., and yes, Raleigh Durham. It happens fastest in the new “emerging gateways” of Dallas, TX and Professor Cummings’s southern jewel, Atlanta (Economist, “Immigration into the Suburbs”, March 11, 2004).

Cities like Chicago have long exhibited this sort of travel vista via marketplaces. For example, Maxwell Street market in Chicago began on Chicago’s west side over 120 years ago. The flea market, located on predictably, Maxwell Street, stretched from 16th Street all the way to Halsted Avenue. Forced to move in 1994 by a larger more moneyed transnational institution, the University of Illinois Chicago, the market landed on Canal Street in 1994 staying there until 2008 when it was forced by area businesses to relocate to the River North area along Desplaines Street between Roosevelt Road and Harrison Street. As one vendor admitted, “Flea markets such as Maxwell Street don't fit the changing image of the area.” Though it has long been heralded as multicultural space, who predominated usually developed accordance with migration to the city. What began with Russian Jews gave way to Poles who then receeded as African American migrants from the South became a dominant presence to today, where Mexican immigrants define the market. In fact as a Chicago chef Rick Bayless pointed out on a recent episode of the Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods, Chicago has become the artisanal tortilla capital of the world. Moreover, some traditional Mexican cooking is more available in the city of Big Shoulders due to the wider availability of ingredients, which partially reflects the Midwestern agricultural hinterland that supports the metropolitan area. As with any change, some viewed the market’s current configuration with a sense of loss, "I miss the hot dog stands and the smell of onions," noted on longtime customer. "And pork chop sandwiches. Some of that comes with the changes in ethnicity. Today, you have a lot of taco stands."

Still, one should always remember the multi directional nature of these kind of spaces even when located in “semi-rural” or suburban locals. Mike Davis explores these locations in his work on Latino immigrants in America. In Magical Urbanism, Davis notes the more traditional insights in this regard such as whole “transnational communities” residing in one city block in L.A. but also draws attention to the place transnational suburbs have come to occupy for Latino immigrants. Remittances from work fuel rural development in Mexico, while creating a transnational flow of capital and people to these burgeoning suburban/metropolitan communities. “More than ever, repatriated “migradollars” (an estimated $8 billion to $10 billion annually during the 1990s) are a principal resource for rural communities throughout Mexico and Central America. Surpassing sugar and coffee, they are now the largest source of foreign exchanged in the Dominican and Salvadorean economies.” (Davis, 80) Global restructuring forces traditional communities to juggle capital and people between “two different, place rooted existences.” (80) Davis describes these connections between places like Dallas, NC and Puebla, Mexico as “economic and cultural umbilical cords.” (80) In this way, the “sending communities” serve as “transnational suburbs” distant from places like Atlanta, New York, or Miami, but as “fully integrated inot the economy of the immigrant metropolis as their own nation-state.” (80)

 

The power of these places is not confined to economics. Mexican politicians have been known to purchase media advertisements in American urban areas enticing Mexican nationals to vote from their homes in metropolitan areas of San Diego, Chicago, New York, and elsewhere. When the Dominican Republic’s dictatorial president Joaquin Balaguer exiled leading Dominican dissidents to New York, the Big Apple became the “main base for the country’s oppositional politics.” When political reforms relaxed the once authoritarian government’s grip on the nation, New York remained “the second home for the republic’s turbulent political life.” Davis notes it probably should then be no surprise that when Leonel Fernandez Reyna, who grew up on New York’s upper west side, won the nation’s 2004 presidency. Reyna still held a green card and fully expected to split his time between Manhattan and the D.R making Reyna perhaps the first transnational migrant ever elected to such an office. (84)

Still, if one believes the Economist, the Sunbelt is the future of immigration. After all, sprawl, a defining trait of many Sunbelt metropolitan areas, attracts immigrants. “Now, as sprawl consumes an ever-widening swathe of cornfields and meadows, immigrants are close behind," the Economist declares. "Who else will cut the grass, clean the houses or flip the burgers of suburbanites?” However, as has been seen in Queens, NY and elsewhere, immigrants can also generate what Saskia Sassen has called “low level gentrification.” Immigrant purchases and home starts in the greatest borough of New York spurred development. This points to the bifurcated nature of today’s immigration where on the one hand you have English speaking college educated legal immigrants and non-English speaking, poorly educated, and largely unskilled undocumented migrants: “Indian doctors and engineers represent the first group, Mexican day-labourers the second.” Granted, it is unlikely the Dallas flea market serves as a site for the H-1 Visa set, but as Leonel Fernandez Reyna illustrates, that vendor you bought the velvet Bob Marley picture from just might the next President of somewhere.

Scattershot Politics: Sport and Its Serpentine Political Meanings

Over the past fifteen to twenty years, historians have increasingly emphasized the role of sports as both a driver and reflection of society. The recent Bill Simmons inspired and ESPN produced 30 for 30 documentary series tackled a number of difficult subjects via Sport. In "The Two Escobars," directors Jeff and Michael Zimbalist traveled through 1980s Columbia, following the lives of Pablo (international drug dealer/murder/local philanthropist) and Andres Escobar (captain of Columbia’s 1994 World Cup team murdered in a nightclub alteration several months later). The two unrelated protagonists encapsulated the travails of late 20th century Columbia. Drug money filtered into the nation’s soccer infrastructure, boosting its competitive success but also adding layers of complexity and violence to a nation already struggling with decades of conflict. Writing for the Onion’s AV Club, Todd VanDerWerff summarized its importance similarly: “The film's portrayal of Colombia as a nation that made its compromises and learned to live with the hell they unleashed is also particularly good, as the story of the two men at the center slowly radiates outward to encompass more and more of the nation's society.”

This is not a wholly unusual conclusion for the series. In “Pony Exce$$,” director Thaddeus Matula explored the corruption and ultimate destruction of Southern Methodist University’s (SMU) then dominant football program as booster money flowed in from the oil wealth that defined the Southwest US in the 1980s. Though the Southwestern Conference consisted of eight schools (Baylor, Rice, SMU, Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Arkansas, and Texas Christian University), Dallas served as a hub for numerous successful graduates of each school. As several observers note in the documentary, football rivalries crackled in the board room meetings of Dallas high rises as alumni from all schools engaged in recruiting practices that seemed to define the decade.

Likewise, Billy Corben’s film, “The U” about the dominance and bravado of Miami University’s 1980s football teams reflects similar themes. Miami’s football team served to unite a divided city behind a collection of local talent that also rewrote the rules of the game. Miami’s players excelled spectacularly on the field but stoked controversy with their trash talk and exuberance. If oil money shaped SMU, Miami’s notoriously tough African American neighborhoods, embraced by Miami’s first successful coach Howard Schnellenberger, came to symbolize “The U’s” power. Along with cultural productions like Scarface, Miami Vice and the notorious Two Live Crew, players like Michael Irvin challenged college football and its fans. Unlike “Pony Exce$$”, “The U” reveals the racial undertones that marked some of the criticism faced by the Miami program. When teamed with Steve James’ masterful “No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson” and the recent “Fab Five” film about the innovative early 1990s Michigan basketball team, “The U” reveals so much more about American life than just college football. Race, money, and a changing cultural landscape collided. As one writer observed, James’ movie looks at Allen Iverson “more as a phenomenon, a human inkblot whose polarizing effect on people often says more about them than it does about him. They see whatever they want to see, and that may or may not be the truth.” In essence, all these films and others in the 30 for 30 series function to elevate sports to a level of political and social importance that might have been derided in early decades.

Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and pace of modulating reality and engendering dreams. It is a matter of not only of plastic articulation and modulation expressing an ephemeral beauty, but of a modulation of producing influences in accordance with the eternal spectrum of human desires and the progress in fulfilling them. The architecture of tomorrow will be a means of modifying present conceptions of time and pace. It will be both a means of knowledge and a means of action.

- Ivan Chtcheglov, Formulary for a New Urbanism, 1953

Writing in 1953, nineteen year old architect and devotee of the Situationist movement Ivan Chtcheglov published his sweeping indictment of mid-century urban planning. For Chtcheglov, the architecture of cities past reflected the dead life of capitalist production. City dwellers had been hypnotized by the built environment, thus, focusing exclusively on capitalist accumulation to the extent that when “presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal.” One can see parallels with sport, most clearly in the above examples regarding SMU and the Escobars. The excess capital of drug and oil money created a vehicle for the egos and dreams of ruling classes that were then imposed. (To be fair, soccer teams as several interviewees in The Two Escobar note, serve as great money laundering devices. One might suggest the same of Enron and other corporate entities in recent years.)

For Americans, sports provided both meaningless entertainment and incredible important cultural moments of resistance. Dave Zirin documents athlete resistance of the twentieth century in his 2005 work, What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States. To Zirin’s credit, What’s My Name, Fool? gathers countless examples of political acts by athletes across the sports spectrum, engaging in issues of race, gender, and class. For example, Zirin traces the complicated politics of Jackie Robinson who, despite his bravery in desegregating MLB, came to be unfairly seen by radical Black nationalists of the late 1960s as a sell out. Some have described Zirin as sort of Howard Zinn of spors journalism. Perhaps. He does look at major historical events like the 1968 Mexico City Olympic protest by Tommy Smith and John Carlos, in which both athletes upheld closed black gloved fists. Zirin explores many facets of the event that had gone unnoticed. Unfortunately, while Zirin collects valuable stories worth reflection, he too often veers in the direction of soap box oratory. Moreover, Zirin seems to feel the need to conclude paragraphs with zingers. For example, how about this gem regarding the failure of several WNBA sports franchises: “while some franchises found success, others have folded faster than a rib joint in Tel Aviv.” (186) When discussing Allen Iverson, Zirin notes Iverson’s role as an anti-corporate anti-hero summarizing his nickname may have been A.I. but “there was nothing artificial about him.” (163) Nuance is not the most prominent feature of What’s My Name, Fool. Still, even if the equivalent of street corner radical, Zirin contributes something to our knowledge of American culture and sport.

If baseball and to a lesser extent American football and basketball have served as venues for political expression, predictably, football occupies a similar position for Europeans. How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, Franklin Foer traipses through countries around the world, but predominantly Europe, exploring the meanings and processes that manifest themselves in the sport. Throughout How Soccer Explains the World one thing becomes clear, the political complexity of football and more generally, sport, radiates in countless directions. When Foer presents Barcelona’s “bourgeois nationalism” as a model for 21st century cosmopolitanism, he goes so far as to claim that it “redeems the concept of nationalism.” (198) For Foer, Barca never demonizes opponents the way supporters at Red Star (Belgrade- the subject of a previous chapter, one that found soccer fan bases and clubs of the former Yugoslavia as germs for the paramilitary organizations of the Balkan wars in the 1990s) have. Instead, Barca illustrates that “fans can love a club and a country with passion and without turning into a thug or terrorist.” (197)

A central aspect of Barca’s identity rests on its foundational myth, its role as a means of Catalan resistance toward the post Spanish Civil War fascist Franco regime. According to this myth, Camp Nou, Barca’s legendary stadium, enabled Catalan fans to express themselves in ways forbidden by Franco. Camp Nou allowed for political and social subversiveness. “Its fans like to brag that their stadium gave them a space to vent their outrage against the regime,” writes Foer. “Emboldened by 100,000 people chanting in unison, safety in numbers, fans seized the opportunity to scream things that could never be said, even furtively, on the street or in the café.” (204) Yet, as Foer acknowledges, there is another way to view Barca’s history. More likely, Franco saw Camp Nou and Barca as harmless outlets for his repressed populations. Unlike the Basque region and its terrorist/separatist movement ETA, Catalonia never developed any similar liberation fronts. Instead, Catalans pragmatically went to work, benefitting from subsidies and tariffs that contributed to Barcelona’s metropolitan industrial boom. This success may go far in explaining Barca’s place in the Catalonian psyche. Foer argues, many Catalonians have a self conscious suspicion, that unlike their forefathers and other Spanish regions, “they feel as if they have lived lives devoid of struggle and without epic dimension. They worry that their fathers would be disappointed with their staid existence.” (214) Catalans employ Barca as a “balm” for a guilty conscience and resentments over “Castilian centralism.” Even in this less than ideal motivation, Foer finds strength. Catalans hold contempt for a concept ("Castilian centralism,” as represented by arch rival Real Madrid) rather than a people, hence the reason Barca lacks the kind of history of hooliganism or violence that seems so prevalent at other clubs. If anything, the history, identity, and place of the Barca (this year’s Champion’s League victor) in Spain points to a deep complexity that lay at the heart of sport in the West. However, one needs to ask, what does sport mean outside the West?

Decolonizing Cricket

It is no exaggeration to suggest that cricket came closer than any other public form to distilling, constituting and communicating the values of the Victorian upper classes in England to English gentlemen as part of their embodied practices and to others as a means for apprehending the class codes of the period. 

--Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimension of Globalization, 91

“Rock star” anthropologist (probably the equivalent of “rock star” bands like the Soft Pack—what never heard of them? Exactly) Arjun Appadurai also believes sport reveals deeper issues than won loss records. In Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Arjun devotes an entire chapter to the “decolonization of Indian cricket.” Appadurai’s interest lay in what he labels the “indigenization” of cricket on the subcontinent. The former University of Chicago anthropologist (he's currently at NYU) identifies four processes that interacted in ways that led to cricket’s unique indigenization in India:

1. the “implicitly corrosive” affect the “elite Victorian values” embedded into the sport on the “bonds of empire”
2. internal sustainability of the cricket due to its ability to develop talent outside urban
3. issues of post colonial masculinity in which spectating came to be associated with “bodily competition and virile nationalism”
4. the ability of media and language to disconnect Englishness from the sport

Perhaps the most intriguing of Appadurai’s processes is the paradoxical affect that the initial values of the sport exerted. “Quintessentially, masculine,” the codes of cricket regulated broader male behavior. These codes consisted of four essential tenets: 1) sportsmanship 2) fair play 3) emotional control over one’s person 4) loyalty to team and sublimation of personal interests to the group. Yes, it functioned to socialize and discipline subjects, but it also provided an “an instrument of elite formation.” As Appadurai points out, “it both confirmed and created sporting solidarities that transcended class.” (92) The field allowed lower and middle class competitors a limited equality with their Victorian superiors. Appadurai also credits the lower classes with doing “the dirty subaltern work of winning so that their class superiors could preserve the illusion of gentlemanly non competitive sport.” (92) The greater importance, he argues, is that as an elite sport, cricket nonetheless emphasized an idea of fair play that demanded “openness to talent and vocation in those of humble origins … a key to the early history of cricket in India.” (92) English officials believed it to be the perfect way to “socialize natives into new modes of intergroup conduct and new standards of public behavior.” (93)

With that said, one of the most critical developments unfolded as Indian princes began paying English and Australian professional players to train their own squads in India. This line of patronage and the coaching it brought with it proved critical to the sport’s development. Princes loved cricket because it confirmed their own masculinity, provided avenues for furthering their English contacts, and enabled them to extend their places in “royal public spectacles” seen as integral to the intrigue and responsibilities of Indian royalty. This resulted in a class of players form outside India’s major colonial cities. The monies given to them by these Princes allowed for many to occupy a space in the cosmopolitan world of cricket. As these new class configurations compiled, Indian cricket exhibited a class complexity that Appadurai argues “persists to today.” (95) “In the circulation of princes, coaches, viceroys, college principals, and players of humble origin between India, England, and Australia,” writes Appadurai, “a complex imperial class regime was formed.” Functioning as a sort of network of Indian and English “social hierarchies”, by the 1930s the various interactions occurring within this nexus of empire had created a “cadre” of non elite Indians who identified as both legitimate cricketeers and “genuinely Indian.” (96)

Unlike in England, where cricketing organization represented territory and nationhood, Indian organization refracted this meaning instead focusing on community and cultural distinctiveness. This meant Indian clubs were organized around local religious identities. Thus, spectators and players developed distinct ideas about their identities as Hindus, Muslims, and Parsi through the public spaces of cricket. When contests between English sides and those of indigenous colonial players expanded, the idea of India had to be invented. In other words, in order to field a team to play British sides, there existed a need to construct a team that represented Britain’s South Asian possession, India. At the very least, the teams constructed embodied protonational visions of an Indian state. In the post 1948 world, cricket as a vehicle for Indian nationalism seems obvious. Moreover it ties the tangled ends of empire together servings as a space for Indians, Pakistanis, Australians, English, their respective Anglo colonial counterparts, to engage and interact. While Appadurai also notes what he sees as the negative influence of globalized financial flows and commodization, he nonetheless recognizes its powerful undercurrents. “[Cricket] is an agnostic reality, in which a variety of pathologies (and dreams) are played out on the landscape of common colonial heritage. No more an instrument for socializing black and brown men into public etiquette of empire, it is now an instrument for mobilizing national sentiment in the service of transnational spectacles and commoditization.” (109)

Operation Iraqi Freedom

"Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign," [Iraqi midfielder Salih] Sadir told SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. "He can find another way to advertise himself."

-- Grant Wahl, Sports Illustrated, “Unwilling Participants” August 4, 2004

Appadurai’s exploration of cricket through the tentacles of imperialism points to the multivalent nature of sport. Though employed as a means to inculcate imperial pride and English Victorian values, cricket served to sculpt communal identities while contributing to post colonial imaginaries that envisioned an independent subcontinent. With the rise of an increasingly globalized mass media, cricket provided the state with cost free way of emphasizing nationalist tropes to a transnational diaspora.

While American occupation of Iraq differs in many ways from the English equivalent a near century before, many Iraqis view it as neocolonialism. Take, for example, George W. Bush’s attempt to appropriate the newly reconstituted Iraqi soccer team for electoral gain. Linking the team’s achievements at the 2004 Olympics (they ultimately took fourth, a remarkable achievement for a nation at war) with those of his administration, Bush attempted to use it as evidence of his administration’s efficacy. On the eve of the 2004 election, in speeches and ads, Bush lauded the fact that had the US not intervened, Iraq would not have fielded such a successful team. “It wouldn't have been free if the United States had not acted." While all players acknowledged that none wanted a return to the days when Uday Hussein tortured Iraqi athletes, neither did they appreciate Bush’s line of logic. Coach Adnan Hamad summed up the general tenor of the team’s opposition: “My problems are not with the American people . . . They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?" Of course, the attempt by an American president to take credit for Iraq’s soccer exploits is ironic for several reasons. Unfortunately for Iraqi players, more than a few observers will conclude American intervention did improve their team’s chances. After all, its fourth place finish remains its highest Olympic finish in soccer. In this way, soccer performs a contradictory function to at once provide a unifying expression of Iraqi identity, one couched in resistance to US prerogatives, while also serving as measure of justification for the very occupation they resent.

Iranian Revolution

Perhaps few places in the world today represent the political power of sport more than Iran. Again, this power flows simultaneously in two directions. Two recent events help convey the duality of soccer. The recent death of Iranian goalkeeper Nasser Hejazi underscores its disruptive effect on the Persian nation’s coercive government. Known as the Eagle of Asia, by most accounts, Hejazi was considered the greatest Iranian goalkeeper in history. Yet, the regime refused to celebrate him, nor did he celebrate it. Banned from national competition due to an arbitrary age limitation placed on the national team by the newly triumphant regime in 1979, Hejazi remained a thorn in the government’s side from then on. In 2004, Hejazi attempted to run for office but was denied by authorities. He later commented on the Iranian government’s failed promises. “I am agonised,” he said, “to see [the authorities] interpret poverty as contentment, inefficiency as patience and, with a smile on their faces, they call this very stupidity wisdom.” (Economist, June 2, 2011) The remark earned him a temporary ban from Iranian television. Even in death, the Iranian government remained fearful. The first half of his funeral drew over 20,000 mourners. As the Economist noted, the chanting of anti-government slogans pervaded the event and authorities quickly whisked the body away to a secret burial where contrary to tradition, no prayers were uttered.

Hejazi complicated football for Iranian rulers. The government had hoped to use the Iranian national team for its own purposes. The 1998 World Cup victory over America provided one such opportunity. However, an unexpected victory over Australia the year before sparked controversy within the regime as Iranians bounded into the streets in celebration. Of course, this being Iran, gender comingling remains distinctly discouraged. One particular English periodical commented sarcastically: “In their delight, men and women surged onto the streets of Iran’s cities and—O tempora! O mores!—celebrated together uninhibitedly.” When the Iranian team lost to Bahrain in 2001, the team played lethargically or as some argued “inertly.” Many Iranians suspected the team had been bribed or threatened by the powers that be. Hejazi had long advocated women attending games with men, and the fact that women attended his funeral was seen as an indictment of official policy.

Clearly, football represents a risky proposition for rulers. Speaking to NPR, Middle Eastern soccer expert James Dorsey noted the careful balancing act that some governments experience via sport. According to Dorsey, Middle Eastern football remains a “battlefield in which governments - certainly authoritarian governments - try to keep tight control of the game because the pitch is potentially, and often is, a venue for expression of dissent.” Recent events in Egypt, where soccer fans have disrupted games to make political statements, illustrate that Dorsey’s reflections ring true outside of Iran as well.

Nonetheless, Iran’s government continues to use football as a means for its own ends. FIFA’s ban on the Iranian women’s team for refusing to stop wearing the hijab has given the regime a talking point about western corruption and bias. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called FIFA "dictators who just wear the gown of democracy." Granted considering FIFA’s current state (corruption scandals abound with prominent periodicals like the Economist labeling the organization “rotten” and “awful”), any ruling by football’s governing body appears suspect. However, consider the fact that Iran continues to ban women from attending games and demands that its team wear a hijab and long pants. FIFA had been holding talks with officials to work out a compromise when a Bahrain FIFA official refused to allow the Iranian women’s team to take the field against Jordan. Of course, the New York Times noted that Bahrain’s own religious make up consists of a Shiite majority ruled by a Sunni minority. Sporting politics can tumble into transnational spaces. As for Iran, the Economist obituary frames the temptation of football succinctly: “Thanks in part to Mr Hejazi, Iran’s regime knows that the circus of the football stadium holds as many hazards as rewards.” Bread and circus are everywhere, but in some places, maybe they mean just that much more.

Ryan Reft