ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the role of nationalism in the lives of (elite) sports participants with those who are largely confined to the stands or experience sporting nationalism through various forms of mass media. As a result, Sport and English National Identity in a 'Disunited Kingdom' reveals the complexities and contradictions of the phenomenon, and so provides a seminal statement on sport and Englishness in the early twenty-first century. A myriad of studies of notions of 'Englishness' or 'the English' have used a combination of historical evidence and sociological, political and cultural theories of nationalism to attempt to show, in a multitude of different ways, how the English have come to define themselves. The 'traditional–modern' debate has dominated literature on nationalism. Smith suggests that, within this dualism, there are many theories that explain how nations and their nationalisms have developed.