Global Sports Policy

This is an excellent analysis of the significance of globalisation for national sport policy and especially of the impact global processes at the local socio-cultural level. The book provides the reader with an empirically rich and theoretically stimulating insight into the interconnection between global processes and the experience of sport policy at the personal and community levels. Palmer's book is an important addition to the literature on sport policy-making
Barrie Houlihan
Loughborough University

Every once in a while a book comes along and you have to say to yourself, finally ! Catherine Palmer's Global Sports Policy culls and summarizes over two decades worth of research on the global relevance of sport, the impact of the global sport infrastructure on private, public and popular culture, and the increasing degree to which sport is celebrated in policy circles as a universal panacea. Global Sports Policy is a refreshingly sociological account of burgeoning policy movements in the world of sport, balanced by empirical case studies and Palmer's ability to present complex socio-political analyses of sport through accessible language. Faculty members and students will appreciate its truly pan-continental focus on the subject area, and diverse theoretical engagement with the subject. Here, Palmer includes both the theoretical and substantive 'usual suspects' in policy discussions, and a more extended and nuanced case analysis of sports mega-events.

Global Sports Policy will be most prized amongst sociologists of sport for its keen presentation of how policy matters in global sports arena illuminate core sociological questions relating to the distribution of power in society, the nature and effects of social inequality, modernist institutionalism, how social engineering is attempted through cross-national institutions, and the relationship between human and non-human networks including the environment. The book represents the ongoing 'opening up' of the sociology of sport across and within international spaces, and her illustration of the global significance of sport at private and public policy levels underlines the global sensitivity regarding the meaning of sport in diverse cultural spaces. Global Sports Policy is a text for anyone seeking an example of how to conduct a broad-scale sociological analysis of sport, and for those heretofore unconvinced by the ongoing relevance of the social sciences in policy-based discussions across the planet.
Michael Atkinson
Associate Professor in Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto

Catherine Palmer knows both sports and social theory from the inside. I cannot think of a better guide to the ways they come together in globalization.

Ulf Hannerz Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology
Stockholm University, Sweden

Overall, this is a solid account that adds to the literature on global sport and particularly the place of policy within this fast-developing arena of scholarly work. The text will be a useful one for lecturers and students engaging in courses such as sport governance, sports policy and international sport management. Palmer's anthropological expertise and experience in this area offers a particular vantage point and complements much of the previously published work written by those who have focused more on the business and management aspects of the global sports industry.

Global Sports Policy provides a very informative, timely, critical, and well-written point of departure for understanding the social aspects of globalization in relation to sports policy.